CONTENTS COPVRIONTEB 1936 JUNE 1936 ,«3g^, ASrV-.' ' 5a«!i^-5^ , ._^»i£'--v,j SssSsfe >!iSft«-Ki. llfem ' '>i 'io.nC'SCjofio.- r ;Oil^f J Sfe - . - J '.TTi'srfi^™ ' I 'o L i'lRVt^.HH-Af^ psste^#?s .^eJiveVty Vcituei That’s exactly what we mean! No Money Down — Not one cent in advance — No C. O. D. to pay on arrival! All we ask you to do is to examine any of these values for TEN DAYS at our expense. After full free inspection, if you agree with us that our style and quality values challenge duplication by cash or credit jewelers anywhere, take 2 Diamond baguette Now only Royal offers you the most liberal credit terms without any embarrassment! No red tape — No direct inquiries — No interest or extras. Just send us your name and address and a few personal facts such as age, occupation, etc. (if possible mention 1 or 2 business refer* ences:) All dealings strictly confidential. After 10 DAYS FREE TRIAL — pay the 10 equal, easy monthly payments, stated under eacn article, without Further obligation. eainlincd men. Loo** ! ! 17 Jewel WALTHAM k HoW only Your satisfaction is always assured when you buy at Royal. A written guarantee — fully backed by ROYAL — America’s ^Largest Mail Credit Jewelers — accompanies every ring or watch purchased from us giving you absolute protection. Hew 32 page < *1^91 show that for the year 1933 1 ran S32d0. Radio sert- ire doesn’t come toe tou^h for me now. You know who taught me Radio? — N. B. I.”— J. P. WILSON. Box 43, Westrille. Okla^ More W«rk Than He Can Do “At times ^ ^ I have more work than I can do and I also sell quite a few new Radios. I aver- age $400 to $500 praflt a year in my spare time. I can al- ways make a good living or better, in Radio, thanks to the N. R. I. Course." — GORDON ANQWIN. 1815 Barrett Ave., Richmond. Calif. Picked Up $t.800 While Studying "My opinion of the N. i R. I. Course is that it! Is the best to be had at any price. I picked up $1,800 while studj'ing. and I call that easy money — the time I gave my Radio work did not Interfere with my other business." OTIS DEN- TON. 14105 I^rain Aye- nue. Clereland, Ohio. MAIL THE COUPON NOW. Get the facts about Radio— the field with a future. N. R. I. training fits you for Jobs in connection with the manufacture, sale and operation of Radio equipment. It fits you to go in business for yourself, service sets, eperate en beard ships, in broadcasting, television, aviation, police Radio and many other opportunities. My FREE book tells how 1 train you -quickly at homo In spare time to be a Radio Expert. Many Radio Experts Make $30, $50, $75 a Week Why Struggle along In a dull Job with low pay and no future? Start training new for the live-wire Radio field. I have helped i many men make more money. Hundreds of successful men now in Radio got their start through N. R. I. training. Many Make $5, $10, $15, a Week Extra in Spare Time While Learning Hold your job. I'll not only train you In a few hours of your spare time a week, but the day you enroll I start sending you Extra -Money .lob Sheets which quickly show you iiow to do Radio repair jobs commen in most every neighborhood. I give you Radio Equipment (or conducting experiments ami making tests that teach you to build and service practically eveiw type of receiving sot made, .lames R. Rltj;, 3525 Cfiiapline Ht., MTieeJlng, W. Va., writes: "Piiring my training, my spare time earnings netted me an average of $1000 to $1500 yearly." Find Ont What Radio Offers — Mail Coupon My book has shewn hundreds of fellows how to make more money and win success. It's FREE to any arabitieus fellow over 15 years of age. Investigate. Find out what Radio offers you. Read what graduates are doing and making, about my Money Back Agreement, and the many other N. R. I. features. Mail the coupon in an envelope, or paste it on a Ic. post card TODAY. J. E. SMITH. President. Dept. 6CD National Radio Institute. Washington* D. C. J. E. SMITH* President* Dept. 6CD National Radio Institute* Washington* D. C. Dear Mr. Smith: Without obligating me. send your book which points out the spare time and full time opportunities in Radio and your 59-50 method of training men at home in spare time to become Radio Experts. (J*JcQ8C write plainly) J. E. SMITH. President National Radio Institute The man who has di- rected tlie Home-Study Training of more men for the Radio industry than any other man in America. NAME age . ADDRESS CITY STATE Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements ADVERTISING SECTION AMAZING NEW 37 FEATURE Big Muscle Building Training Course Yoa car* o?er hftif oo this unaxSng coarse of physical cultare. Bi(_ Husky lO Cable Muscle Builder Exerciser* 200 Lbs. Resistance (Adjustable). Two Heavy Duty Hand Crips. Wall Exerciser for beck and shontder de* relontnent. Head Harness (adjustable) and Foot Gear. Rowing Machine Attachments. Skip Rope. The Great Shadow Boxer. Completely Illustrated Coarse “HOWTO OCT STRONG”. FOODS -EAT AND GROW STRONG. Secrets ol Jiu-Jitsu. Wrestling Holds. Feats of Strength. Special Ways to Get Big Biceps. Strengthen Tour Back. Muscle Gauge. Test Yoar Own Streogth. Secrets of Chest Expansion. Stomach Muscles. Power for Legs and Thighs. “For Men Only,” facts roa shoald know. Stirrup Exercises for Husky Legs. Special ”30 Day Training Schedule” that tells yoa what to do each day and numeroas other foatares. All This— For Only $2.99. Act quickly before offer ex- pires. Send your name and ad- drass. We*ll ship ever^hing out by return mail. Pay postman only $2.99 plus postal charges. I Outside U. $. cash with order. HERCULES EXERCISES 49 East 21st St. Oeat. E-13 New York. N. V. @ I. P. D. Inc. HOwimO MACMIMC 30 OM SHAOC ^ BOXSR NOW YOU CAN HAVE A NEW SKIN IN 3 DAYS* TIME! GET THIS FREE — and learn that tvhat was considered impossible before — the re- moval of pimples, blackiieads. freckles, tan, oily skin, larse pores, wrinkles and other defects in the outer skin— can now be done harm- lessly and economirally at home in three days' time in many in* stances, as stated by legions of men and women, young and old. It is all explained in a new treatise called ‘^BEAUTIFUL NEW SKIN IN 3 DAYS” which Is being melled absolutely free to readers of this magazine. So worry no more over your humiliating skin end complexion or signs of aging if your outer skin looks soiled and worn. Simply send your name and address e^.njune the skin blemishes which trouble you must to UARVO PEAUTY LABORATORIES, Dqpt. 881-F. No. 1700 Broadway, New York, N. V.. and you will receive this new treatise by return mail in plain wrapper, postpaid and absolutely free, if pleased, tell your friends about it. Classified Advertising Patents Secured PATENT.S — Reasonable terms. . Book and advice free. L. F. Randolph, Dept. .513, Washington, 1). C. PATENTS SECURED. Two valuable booklets sent free. Write immediately: Victor J. Evans & Co., 811-D, Victor Building, Washington, D. C. Detectives — Instructions DETECTIVES EARN BIG MONEY. Work home or travel. DKTEC'riVE particulars free. Experience unnecessary. Write, GEORGE WAGONER. :i640'A Broadway; New York. MIGW POWERED TELESCOPE GENUINE AMEmICAN MADE BKUWNdvUHES Most powerful made for the money 1 15 power long range telescope. Can see moon's craters or time on pocket watch a block away. & sections. ,93 Approx. S ft. long. Pine lenses. Brass bound. |[ Can be used as powerful microscope. vol. magn. r>12x. Only gl.69post- paid C. (3. D. 24c extra. *4 cA Similar to above but more powerful, V I Guaranteed to see 900 times larger in sur- * face and 80 times closer. 31 mm. objective 4 power- fol lenare. Large field. Includes powerful microscope feature. Only 81 .98 postpaid. BROWNSCOPE CO. Dppt. S. 234 Fifth Ave.* Npw York Checkers BECOME AN EXPERT The book, that really teaches checker science. A complete course of lectures by a State Champion, as broadcast over Radio Station “W. N. Y. C.” Explains clearly the secrets of crossboard and restricted play. All the tricks and shots used by the checker expert. Also, section of games played by leading champions. Learn how to win every game by the new forcing system. Send 25 cents In coin. M. F. HOPPER. 331 First St., Brooklyn, N. Y. Diesel Now 13 your chance to get into a big new industry and grow up with it to an important position. Today there is practically no competition in the Diesel held, but the increasing use of Diesel engines will result in keen com- petition for jobs after a few years. If you start your training now and get estab- liahed la tbla field, you need not worry *boot competition. Is your Job Safe? Just as the gasoline engine changed the jobs of thousands who depended on horse-drawn vehicles for their living — so now the Diesel engine is fast invading both the power and transportation fields, and threatening the pres- ent jobs of thousands of workers. What This New Field Offers You Diesel engines are fast replacing steam and gasoline engines in power plants, motor trucks and busses, loco- motives and ships, aircraft, tractors, dredges, pumps, etc. —opening up an Increasing number of welLpald jobs for Diesel-train^ men. You will get full Information about the latest Diesel developments— two- and four-stroke cycles: low- and high-speed and heavy duly types; Diesel- electric generating systems, etc. — in our course. Includes all text material — with special diagrams for quick un- derstanding of this new power. Get our Free Piesel Booklet and 6nd out what: the Diesel field offers you — how quickly you can obtain a complete understanding of Diesel engine principles and operation by spare-time study at home. Asking for infor- mation Involves no obligation — but it may mark the turn- ing point in your life. Write TODAY for full information. ■American School, Dept. D-57, Drexel Avenue at 58th Street, Chicago, lilinois- Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements ADVERTISING SECTWN NEVER TOOK A USSON FROM A TEACHER — yei Bob is the envy of his music-loving friends You, too, can learn to play any instrument this amaz- ingly simple way. No expen- sive teacher. No tiresome exercises or practicing. You learn at homo, in your spare time. Yet almost before you know it you arc playing real tunes ! Then watch the invi- tations roll in — see how popu- lar you become. Yet the cost is only a few cents a day. Easy Method You don’t have to be “tal- ented.” You can’t be too young or too old. No teacher to make you nervous. Course iB thoroush, rapid, simple as A-B-C. First you are told what to do— then a picture showa you how to do It — then you do it yourself and hear it. In a short time you become the envy of your friends, the life of every party. Demonstration Lesson Free Write today for Free Demonstration Lesson, together with big free booklet which gives you details and proof that will astound you No obligation. Instruments supplied when needed, cash or credit. U. 8. School of Music, 3595 Brunowick Bldg., New York. N. Y. LEARN TO PLAY BY NOTE Piano, Violin. Guitar, Saxophone. Drum, Ukulele. Tenor Banjo, Hawaiian Guitar. Piano Accordion. Or Any Other Instrument ELrCTRICITYS» MANYEARN$30,$40ANDUPEVERYWEEK WheCheryoo*r«16or40reareoldEtectrlcityoffen roaareelfutare.GetFoartralolnvatCoyna.Prmc- ti work, notbooka. Many earn while leamlnc. Lifetime employment service after eredostion. I’LL FINANCE YOUR TRAINING „ ^ , Send for dotails of **Pay-Tuition*After«Gradu- StftUi foi* atlon Plan, and biefrea book of bif pay facta. k M. C. Lewis. Pres. Ceyne Electrical School J SOO s. Paulina St..Dopt.S6>4S, Chicaco.llt# ADDRE88- TOWN $1260 to $2100 Year Get Ready Immediately Men-’- Women Common Eduoaclon Usually Sufficient Mall Coupon today sure. « Fraakbi Institute, Dept. J 196, Rsebester, N.Y. Sirs: Bush to me without chaise (1) ^ 32-page book with list of XJ. S. Oovern- A ment Big Paid jobs. (2) Tell me Im- ^ mediately how to get one of theBO jobs. N.m. / AdSnii From coast to coast green hori- zons are beckoning to lovers of the great outdoors. See the far-off places you’ve always wanted to see. Make the most of your Har- Icy-Davidson’s wide range of eco- nomical riding. Thrill to the surg- ing power and fast getaway of a 1936 Harley-Davidson. Enjoy its gliding ride — zooming speed — flashing style — low-cost mileage — speed-line design and up-to- the-minute motor improvements. Don^t wait sec your Harley-Dav- idson dealer for a FREE ride^ ask about his Easy Pay Plans and send in the coupon — NOW! MAIL THIS COUPON Harley'Davidson Motor Co. , Dept. SS. Milwautee, Wis. Interested in motorcycling. Send illustrated literature. Postage stamp is enclosed to cover mailing cost. Tiatne. My age is □ 16-19 years. '□ 20-30 years. □ 31 years and up, G under 16 years. Check your age group. Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements ADVERTISING SECTION ^ Price JfFP^ Now Only 10&^ AFTER 10 Day FREETna No Money Down rositively the Rreatpst bargain ever offered. A genuine full sized SIOU.OO office model Underwood No. 5 for only $44.90 (cash) or on ^■asy terms, lias up-to-date improvements including standard 4-row keyboard, backspacer. automatic ribbon reverse, shlftlook key, i-color ribbon, etc. The oerfert all purpose typewriter. Completely — rebuilt and FULLY GUARANTEED. Fully CUARANTEEO Learn Touch Typewriting Complete (Home Study) Course of the Famous Van Sant Speed T^iPC- writing System — fully il- lustrated, easily learned, given during this offer. Lowest Terms — 1 0c a Day Money-Back Guarantee Send coupon for 10-day Trial — if you decide to keep it pay only $3.00 a month until $4f).90 (term price) is paid. Lim- ited offer — act at once. INTERNATIONAL TYPEWRITER EXCHANGE. 231 West Monroe St., ChicafO, HI.. Dept. 512 Send Underwood No. 5 (F.O.B. Chicago) at once for 10-days trial. If 1 am not perfectly satisfied 1 can return it express collect. If I keep U I will pay $3.00 a month until I have paid $40.90 (term price) in full. Name Age Address Town State OQ. approval. Just mail the coupon and we'il send you a set of these remarkable auto books, just off tbe press. Whether you are a mechanic or helper, ex- pert or apprentice, auto owner or driver, if you're interested in knowing all about automobile mechanics, then take advantage of this FREE OFFER. Over 300 pages on DIESEL Engines A better job — in the gigantic auto In- dustry. BIGGER PAY — a chance to go into business for yourself and get a share of the huge profits ave waiting for any man who even half tries to improve himself. Ivearn auto engineering with these wonder books a new way — without studying or memori 2 ing. Simply use tbe JIFFY IN- DEX to look up the answer to any auto problem. Built by eleven of America’s greatest automobile engineers, and written in simple language so you can under- stand it. Very newest cars, all covered. FREEI Privilege of eonsuiting^ Automobfio Engineers of Amer- ican Technical Society for one year without cost If you mail I ’Coupon Immediately. CAN YOU FIX lit TbeM wond^ book* tejl et«p i>y ilep }10W to t«ko ont "plfcjr” IB digerenlUl — to kill tli« •himniT ia Bteerinc — to ■ et TIMING— bow to put your fioevr Instsntly oa cn- cine troublo ftnd th«n the tjuick ex^rt way to FIX it. Newert improTements fully myered. Equal to a cempl«<« trade eouree at leta tban m tourtli the coet. 6 Big Volumes 1935 Edition 3SOO pace*. 2000 Olustralionn, wiriDC diacrama. etc., inrhid- iOK Marine Eniinea, AvIaUon ■Motors. Dtsssl sneines. ete. He Luxe edition, cold-atamped t iexible bindinc. AMERICAN TECUNICAL SOCIETY. Drezcl Ave. A £8th St., Dept. AbS19, Chicsiro. HI- 1 w<>iild like to aee the new 6-volume edition ef your AUTO BOOKS. I wQI pay the few eenlfl delivery ebarrea only, but if 1 cbocae to. 1 may returo them expreaa ecUert. If after 10 daya ure I prefer to keep them, I will aend you $3 and pay tbe • .iilanee at the rate of only $3 a month, until S34.80 ia Mid. Fleaee include Itoa con- -ultiog neiniMrabip aa per your offer above. Send brand new 1836 edition. Name Addreve City State ^ Ita.-h l••ttcr atating are. occupation and name end addresa cl ciuplcycr and at leaat i ce buiiutaa men se relcienoe. KAc' AMERICAN TECHNICAL SOCIETY Drexel Avesue & 58th St, Dent. AS319, Chicago, II). Sensational new discovery, needed by business and professional men everywhere, saves hundreds of dollars for even smallest users. Y’ou make up to 79c out of each dollar of business done. Only three sales daily pay you $275 weekly. Permanent repeat business. No experience necessary : we train you. Just in- stall on FREE trial: it sells itself. Portfolio of references from leading firms closes deal, GUARAXTEE.S return of 12% times cost to customer. You risk no money trying this busi- ness. Write THOiVIAS YOUNG. General Manager, 105 W. Adams St., XX' E Fl. ISO. McGlaughlin of 1111- Qois made $135 in 10 days. McCarthy of Wise, earned $46 in one day. Xlvengood made over $150 in 4 days. 1 offer this same money-making opportunity to you. Write for FREE de- !tails NOW. Dept. G-53, Chicago. 111. PILES • for oile suffer! DON’T BE CUT Until You Try This Wonderful Treatment for pile suffering. If you have piles in any form write for a FREE sample of Page’s Pile Tablets and you will bless the day that you read this. Write today. E. R. Page Co., 416-AlO Page Bldg., Marshall, Mich. Ib'lhls On\5ur kHair 15 IKarys I Let Your Mirror Prove Rosutts. Tear hair oeed Coot thinoot. nor need yon become bald. This Dif- liferent Method stops tninnini; out of hair, lifeless _ ./ hair, itebiegr, dandruff, threatened or inereasing baldness by etrensxhening, prolonging the life of hair for men and wo- oseo. Send your name now before it’s too late for fiwo 16-day test offer. iUEL DENN, 207 N. Michigan Ave., Dept M7. Chkago, III. ECZEMA 1$ not a skin disease, says Dr. Hoermann. we^-kno^vn Milwaukee Eczema specialist. If yuu have Eczema, sometimes called salt rheum, weeping eczema, milk crust, scald head, moist tetter, write for book of little-known facts FREE. Also learn about Dr. Hoer- mann’s simple home treatment which has produced amazing results in his private practice. Dr. Rud. Hoermann, Inc., Suite 184, 2200 N. Third St.. Milwaukee, Wis. Prostate Sufferers An enlarged, inflamed or faulty Prostate Gland very often causes Lameback. Fre- quent Night Rising, Leg Pains, Felvlo Pains, Lost Vigor, Insomnia, etc. Many physicians endorse massage as a safe ef- fective treatment. (See Reference Book cf the Medical Sciences. Vol. VII, 3rd edi- tion). Use “PROSAGER.” a new inven- tion which enables any man to massage his Prostate Gland in the privacy of his home. It often brings relief with the first treatment and must help or It costs you nothing. No Drugs or Electricity. DR. w. D. SMITH FREE BOOKLET INVENTOR EXPLAINS TRIAL OFFER. ADDRESS MIDWEST PRODUCTS CO., B-305, KALAMA20O, MICH. Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements ADVERTISING SECTION In • btUiing $i»ft ... I w«i immcnt*. Th* d«ylfic«rd tONi* cliifdfCA l«wgk *t m* I dccKkd to 9«l • W«J B*l(. t ti«v« • f«elin9 of •ncrgy «nd pep . . . work better, eel better, pley better ... I didn't realiic bow nudt I wet miuinst Help Kidneys Don’t Take Drastic Drugs Tour Kidaeys contaiu 9 millioa tiny tubes or filters Tvhieh may be endangered by neglect or drastic, irri- tating drugs. Be careful. If functional Kidney or Bladder disorders make you suffer from Getting Up Nights, Nerrousness, Loss of Pep, Leg Pains, Kheu- matic Pains, Dizziness, Circles Under Eyes, Neuralgia, Acidit 3 % Burning, Smarting or Itching, you don’t need to take chances. All druggists now have the most modern advanced treatment for these troubles — a Doctor's prescription called Cyster (Siss-Tex). Works fast — safe and sure. In 48 iiours it must bring new vitality and is guaranteed to make you feel years younger in one week or money back on return of empty package. Cystex costs only 8c a dose at drug- gists and the guarantee i)rotects yau. PAYS HOUR) KAR-NU rcfinlshes any color automobile easily, quickly and economically without polishine, waxing, rubbing or painting. ,, , ^ . JUST WIPE IT ON WITH A CLOTH! Magic-like fluid rorers old paint with tough, elastic coat. Absolutely transparent, self-leveling, self-pollshing. Guaranteed, lasts 8 to 12 months. Equal In beauty to repaint job costing $10 to $35. Write for Free Sample to prove our claims and Territory offer. KAR-NU CO. Dept. B-46, Oakley Sta. Cincinnati, 0. Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements GOOD JIVith Each Order for Two Tires BALLOON TIRES SIzeRifl Tirt$ Tubes 2014.40-21 $2.18 $0.85 ^ - ... ^5 20t4.50-20 2.3S 3»s4.50-21 2.40 28x4.7fr-l» 2.45 20x4.75-29 2.50 2«x5.0e-lP 2.S8 »0x5A»-29 6.35-17 28x6.36-18 30x526-10 80x526-30 81x52621 6.50-ir 28x6.60-18 20x5.50-19 .85 .05 .96 1.05 GOODYEAR GOODRICH- FISK FIRESTONE- U.S And All Other Makes AatoondinGrTire Bargains, un [•quailed and unbeatable else- where, onStandard Brands. Every tire repaired by our Improved method and by skilled experts. 20 years of oxperlence as- Bures superior product. THOU- SANDS OFU^RSthrong^hout the U.S. A. any our tires GIVE liONG.SATI^ACTORY SER- VICE. ORDER NOW I DON'T WAITI-— Geta Brand New Cir- cular Molded Tube absolutely FREE with each two tires ord- ered. Offer good limited time. REGULAR CORD TIRES Size Tires TubesiSizeTires Tubes 30x8>i $2.3S$Q.76|33x4H $3.45 $1.15 31x4 |.9S .|5|34 x4H 3.45 1.15 2.85 126 '!.90 1.15 :.90 1.15 i-H •S' 2.95 1.16 *• 83x620-21 . . 82x6.60-20 3.7$ ~2»-18 3.7S 1.25 1.35 L4M '83x4 34x4 83x4H rftlsOxS 3.6S 1.36 :||l83xft 3.75 1.46 Ll5|86x6 3.95 1.65 HEAVY DUTY TRUCK TIRES eration of the airport officials ; and it was not more than a week before he had made the announcement that electri- fied the Earth. “I have proved,” he proclaimed, “that the Glowworm Flower originates from an infinitesimally small three-pointed spore, of a type never known before. Multitudes of these spores have been found, upon microscopic examination, to be clinging to the sides and interstices of the Reimers-Bayle rocket car. The con- clusion, therefore, is irresistible. “They have been flying through inter- planetary space, and have been picked up by the car on its flight. In what world they originated we do not know ; but, manifestly, it was not Earth. Thus, for the first time in history, we may have the opportunity to witness the growth and development of extra- terrestrial life !” THE SENSATION created by this announcement, it is safe to say, was hardly less than that aroused by the Reimers-Bayle expedition itself. News- papers to»k up and featured the repwrt ; scientists rushed to Southern California, for a personal examination of the new plant; members of learned societies de- bated its significance, and physicists and biologists weighed the possibility of the survival of spores in outer space; the THE GLOWWORM FLOWER 25 public was startled into interest, and the Glowworm Flower became the subject of discussion among men who had but the vaguest idea of its meaning. Had the plant originated on Mars, on Venus, or on the satellite of some re- mote sun ? Through what incalculable eons had its germ cells been drifting amid interstellar vacancy? Concerning one fact, at least, there could be no doubt ; the Glowworm Flower had actually originated outside the Earth. All the investigating scien- tists — and they were numbered by the hundreds — were at one on this matter, although they had few other points of agreement. The vegetation of the stars had, literally, been transported to our planet ! Had the Glowworm Flower not been curiously beautiful, and remarkable alike for its exquisite fragrance and its luminescence at night, it might eventu- ally have passed out of view, except for the few specimens retained and studied in scientific laboratories. But, like many another treacherous thing, it allured by its loveliness, and soon had worked its way into favor in the salons of the well-to+do no less tlian in the gardens of common folk. The cultivation of the Glowworm Flower had become a fad, a craze, a passion with thousands. As fast as the spores could be developed, the young plants were distributed. Special nurseries arose for that purpose ; and at any point throughout the length and breadth of the United States, in Canada, in Mexico, and even in Europe, the traveler was likely to be greeted by the interlacing gray-green tendrils and un- Earthly rainbow-hued blossoms of the stranger from space. Unfortunately — as it ultimately turned out — it throve equally well in all climates, from the sub-polar to the tropical, and seemed to adapt itself to nearly every variety of soil. IT WAS in May, 1977— after the Glowworm Flower had become fairly well established — that medical journals began to speak of a new disease that had invaded widely scattered localities. The symptoms, it appears, were fairly definite, although they varied in minor details from case to case ; always it was the mind rather than the body of the victim that was affected. The sufferer would first undergo a i:ieriod of ecstasy in which he would call out in wild joy, like an intoxicated man ; then he would fall into a deep coma, from which no effort could awaken him for many hours ; then, finally, he would come to himself, invariably with a tale of the most astonishing dreams and visions, surpassing those of the opium smoker. As a rule, the experience would leave the patient greatly weakened, and he would be as long in recovering as though he had undergone a major oj^eration ; yet, invariably, his recuperation would be temporary only ; after a few weeks, he would succumb again, undergoing a still more dread visitation of the mys- terious malady. A peculiar fact about the disease was that it seemed to affect only the more highly sensitive and intellectual elements of the population. Writers, artists, pro- fessional men, scientists, preachers, scholars, philosophers — all those whose innate gifts and minds required the de- velopment of a delicate nervous system — these were the ones that appeared most susceptible, whereas common laborers, street sweepers, truck drivers, and the like, seemed totally immune. Naturally, physicians were alarmed — particularly as the disease was spreading rapidly. It seems incredible to us to-day that they did not immediately detect the cause ; but the fact is that they either remained in doubt, or feared — not with- out reason— that the announcement ot the truth would do more damage than good. At all events, it was months be- fore the source of the ailment was 26 ASTOUNDING STORIES openly recognized, and meanwhile it was constantly claiming new victims. The strangest thing about the afflic- tion, according to all accounts, was the nature of the visions which the sufferer claimed to see. In all cases, he would describe a sensation as if he “had risen out of his body” ; in all cases, he would refer to an intoxicating sense of flying through “tremendous spaces,” through distances passing all computation. But, beyond this point, no two accounts agreed entirely, although they all had certain points in common : the descrip- tion of weird far-off worlds, of comet- swept skies, of flaming galaxies and un- familiar constellations, of suns and moons unknown to man, and of popu- lated countries fantastic beyond belief. To consider a typical account, here is the story of Dr. Francis Carlson, the British mathematician, who, as a hard- headed practical man, could scarcely have been expected to indulge in any vagaries of the imagination. “MY FIRST FEELING,” he wrote, “was one of great buoyancy and light- ness, as though I had left a weight of scores of pounds behind me. Suddenly I seemed to rise in the air. A shadowy form, which I took to be my own life- less body, was lying on the couch in my room. I rose through the walls and ceiling as though they did not exist, and out into the air over the house, which I could clearly see, then upward with a rocketlike velocity, until I had passed above the very Earth, and saw it diminishing beneath me like a shooting star. “It seemed much later when I found myself on the surface of another world. Three suns glared brilliantly down upon me — one, near the northern horizon, of about the color of our own Sun, al- though less than a tenth as large; an- other, halfway down from the zenith to the south, of a sultry copperish red, and much less bright than the first, but with fifty times its disk; while the third, of an unbearable pure-white radiance, was rising slowly in the west. There were also, I think, several moons, colored with shifting pinks, mauves and yellows, but these I did not notice par- ticularly, for my gaze was absorbed in the spectacle beneath. “The entire surface of the globe was covered with a bewitchingly beautiful foliage, with a jungle growth which, weaving its lovely gray-green tendrils in whorls and spirals to the height of great trees, displayed incalculable multitudes of the most resplendent flowers I had ever seen. “Larger than a man’s face, and more fascinating to behold than the most appealing woman ever put on Earth, each of the blossoms revealed shimmer- ing rainbow-hued petals about a core of pure-white; each, like a sentient being, swayed and tossed gracefully, although no wind was blowing ; and each exhaled an odor that it was heaven itself to breathe. “Truly, I thought that I was in Para- dise! And so enraptured was I that it was long before I even noticed the resemblance of these fairy blossoms to the Glowworm Flowers that had so de- lighted us on Earth. “It seemed that a long time went by, while I floated gently, as if on wings, through long twilight corridors beneath the masses of gray-green tendrils. And there, among branching lanes shot through with shafts of red and golden and silvery sunlight, I encountered the most glorious folk I had ever beheld. “Never speak to me of elves ! No elf could be so blithe and airy, so spry, so nimble, so kindly, so radiant with laugh- ter as these little creatures that, borne on dragon-fly wings, came singing to- ward me out of the forest of foliage. Only in the remotest way were they human — rather, they were more than human ; they were like angels, like gods ! Each, wrapped in a shimmering many- THE GLOWWORM FLOWER 27 colored gown like the robe of a hum- ming bird, had the daintiest of arms and legs in addition to wings ; each displayed long, flowing corn-colored hair, and eyes of an intense, an ethereal blue, set amid features iridescent with a thousand changeful tints. And the song that came from them all was to me as a heavenly chorus. “Yet none of these strange people could have been, I think, over a foot in height. Indeed, judging from the light- ness and ease of their movements as they curved and tossed and played and chased one another in air, I doubt if any of them was as substantial as a dove. “They did not seem surprised to see me. Their melodious cries, as they ap- proached, were as a carol of greeting. With a sense of encountering old and well-loved friends, I mingled among them ; and, as I did so, I seemed to have been reduced to their size, and to par- take of their qualities, and to dance and flit as one of them, and a sense of in- finite well-being was upon me. “There was one of their number — a frail and fragile creature, with eyes more deeply blue than those of her com- panions, and features that shimmered more brightly, and a gown of greater iridescence — who kept always at my side, and matched my every movement, until she seemed my breathing counter- part, and I was drawn toward her with a love that was wholly of the spirit. For we had no physical contact, and desired none, but wished only to float forever amid this world of endless light and shadow, of gray-green foliage and ambrosial perfume, and flowers more ravishing than a lover’s kiss. “A very long while seemed to go by; and we were ecstatically happy, and never ceased to glide through the sing- ing groves. But there came a moment when a sadness burst upon me, and a weight seemed to press down upon my shoulders, and something clutched at my heart, and drew me away. My airy lit- tle companion looked up at me with a speechless sorrow. In speechless sorrow I looked back. Suddenly all the light and the fragrance vanished, and I seemed to be far away, dropping back through the abyss of space. “After a time, I saw the Earth below, and it rose to meet me, and I entered the heaviness of its atmosphere, like one who, from some realm of light and joy- ousness, suddenly plunges into a deep, dank tunnel. At first I saw my house beneath, and passed through the roof, and on a couch was the shadow that was my body, and with a strange clicking sound I reentered it, and awoke, feeling very weak and ill, and sadder at heart than I can say. But they told me I had been out of my head. None would be- lieve my tale of the glorious world I had visited, and the word which they gave to all the radiance and the splendor was ‘insanity.’ ’’ IF THIS had been but an isolated story, it might not repay repetition at such length. But since Dr. Carlson’s vision corresponded with that of thou- sands, it is important as showing the type of delusion common to all the sufferers from the new disease. Naturally, the victims protested that their visions were not delusions, that they represented actual experiences. But it is well known, of course, that no lunatic has ever been made to acknowl- edge his own lunacy. However, the remarkable uniformity of the accounts was without a parallel in the history of psychiatry — and, as a consequence, not a few independent observers argued for a serious basis for the visions. One fact, at least, came to be everywhere accepted after the period of preliminary confusion; that the dis- ease had a single cause — a cause which was eventually identified as nothing else than the Glowworm Flower. Soon after the discovery of the plant, it was revealed, one of the investigating 28 ASTOUNDING STORIES scientists had made the experiment of tasting a thick, sticky nectar that formed at the base of the blossoms. He had been the first victim of the disease — and had been rapidly followed by others, to whom he had secretly confided the na- ture of his ailment. Through underground channels, the news had spread long before it had be- come publicly known ; hence the victims began to multiply at an alarming rate. Men of a dull and strictly prosaic turn of mind, it seemed, were not especially en- dangered, for, upon sipping of the mys- terious nectar, all that they would feel was a faint nausea; but the more sen- sitive and imaginative the partaker, the more completely he would succumb. To cure the chronic user of morphine or opium was less of a task than to rescue the devotee of the Glowworm Flower; once having tasted, he would have no object in life except to taste again and again — and, indeed, it seems hard to blame him, since he had the sen- sation of experiencing a far more ex- hilarating and beautiful existence. Nothing, however, could have been more deplorable than to see keen and creative minds wasting away in a drugged languor, to observe painters who had ceased to sketch, poets who had ceased to sing, musical virtuosos who had ceased to play, chemists who had turned from their test tubes, physicians who had abandoned their vials and stethoscopes, and judges who had de- serted their law books — all in order to enjoy the magic trance induced by the Glowworm Flower. To the practical and everyday world, the unanimous protestations of these de- luded ones seemed as fantastic as the outcries of some fanatical religious sect. Who could believe that the afflicted per- sons were really transported in spirit to the planet of the Glowworm Flower’s origin? Who could believe that they witnessed the actual scenes and en- countered the actual inhabitants of some other sphere? Yet this is what the victims of the disease firmly maintained; and to con- vince them of their error was impossible. Hence some of them were put behind the walls of institutions, where, in their madness, they would cry out for the Glowworm Flower, and would soon die if it were denied them ; and others, per- mitted their indulgence, would go olT into successively deeper trances, from one of which they would not awaken. The term of a man’s life, it was foun^, would not be more than six months or a year, once he had succumbed to the fascination of the Glowworm Flower. PUBLIC OPINION, usually slow in awakening, at last was fully aroused. Men everywhere became alive to the peril of permitting the ablest and most useful minds to be cut off by the mys- terious invader from space; and it was conservatively predicted that, in less than a generation, the intellectual bloom of the race would be destroyed forever. Yet all prohibitions, all laws were futile. The curious among the uninitiated, and those already victims of the Glowworm Flower, could not be deterred by any penalties. In all countries, the death rate was rapidly mounting; within a year, the casualties from the new disease were said to be as numerous as those of a great war. The only remedy, obviously, was to arrest the malady at its source : to eradicate the Glowworm Flower. At a hastily called international convention, representatives of every nation signed a pact calling for the extermination of the plant; everywhere the possession of it was made illegal, under the severest penalties, and tens of thousands of men were engaged to enforce the law and to see that every existing Glowworm Flower was uprooted and burned. But alas, it was not so easy to drive out the invader, once it had taken pos- THE GLOWWORM FLOWER 29 session ! The plant was bootlegged by profiteers who heaped up fortunes in the illicit traffic — and the most drastic pun- ishments were required to restrain them. Worst of all. even after the law break- ers began to be mastered, the Glowworm Flower was found to spring up volun- tarily in scattered parts of the Earth — in farm lands and deserts, on mountain- sides, islands and beaches. All efforts to control its spread appeared futile. Whether we desired it or not, it seemed to have settled among us to stay! More than a year had passed before, amid the darkness of the world’s despair, the International Investigating Commis- sion was driven to make a radical recommendation : “Let all interplanetary flights be ended ! Each new expedition into space gathers a new supply of the spores, which cling to the car and scatter on reaching the Earth’s atmosphere. There- fore the Glowworm Flower will be. with us until space flights are abolished.’’ Naturally, there was a great outcry against so stern a proposal. Since the Reimers-Bayle expedition, space excur- sions had become popular ; scores of parties had voyaged to the Moon and back, and plans were well advanced in their preparations for cruises to Mars, Venus and Mercury. Hence the pro- hibition of space travel seemed cruel and bitter to contemplate. Yet the authorities, in their eagerness to stamp out the menace, were ready to accept a lesser evil in return for a greater. With the consent and coopera- tion of all nations, and in defiance of world-wide protests, the licenses of all space pilots were withdrawn, and all apparatus for space flights was de- stroyed. And, from that time forth, the fight against the invading plant began to succeed. To-day, after ten years, not one of the beautiful, strangely seductive blossoms remains anywhere on Earth, except for the few preserved in museums. There are still many who sigh in remembrance of its divine fragrance, its other-worldly loveliness. There are many who voice regret that, because of the plant, space expeditions should have been nipi^ed in the bud. But, recalling how many of our best and wise.st citizens sleep in un- timely graves, we know that the measures we pursued, however greatly to be deplored, were the only ones open to us if the race was to survive. Hence- no words are more frequently quoted to-day than those of Dean Cam- eron Prince — unfortunately, so little heeded when first uttered! “Beware, gentlemen, before you attempt an in- terplanetary flight ! Beware, not be- cause you may not succeed, but because you may succeed too well!” Truly, those were words of wisdom more profound than we could have known ! Part Two of The Cometeers A New Epic of the skyways and the sequel to the **Legion of Space’* UP TO NOW: For want of a better word, the startled astronomers of the thirtieth century termed the invader a “comet.” A colos- sal cloud of shining green, sharp-edged, impenetrable , it came out of mysterious interstellar space. Controlled like a ship — although it is twelve miles long — it halted in space, beyond Pluto. Man’s amazement changed to panic O.S unseen raiders— -the Cometeers — invaded the system, and learned of Stephen Oreo. Stephen Oreo is the legion’s most dangerous prisoner. A brilliant, mysterious rebel, mockingly de- fiant of all humanity, he is dangerous because he has learned the secret of AKKA. AKKA is the symbol for humanity’s secret weapon. Its user, tvith simple instruments, can destroy any object in the universe — by so altering the warp of space that neither matter nor energy can exist. The only possible barrier is the counterwarp of space, by which any master of AKKA can prevent the de- structive use of the weapon. Aladoree Star is the keeper of AKKA. Her son, Bob, is with her when her husband, John, comes with an order from the Green Hall, headquarters of the legion of space, to destroy the Com- eteers. Before doing so she is interrupted by Jay Kalam, commander of the legion of space, who withdraws the order. He is going to take the Invincible — nezvest and most powerful of the legion’s space ships — and visit the Cometeers. If he does not return in twelve days, they are certainly enemies and must be destroyed. In the meantime, John Star is to take Aladoree to some even more secret and secluded place. Bob goes zvith Jay to enter the service. Jay explains to Bob that Oreo sur- rendered to them only on the guarantee that his life zvould he spared. He made an exception of only one individual who was free to kill him if he could: Bob Star. Bob, in turn, explains to Jay that there is a personal score to be settled be- tween them. While at the academy of the legion of space, Oreo burned Bob’s brain with an omega-ray projector . . Each pledged, then, to kill the other. But Bob never recovered from the burn- ing pain, and with it came an obsession .against ever killing any man. Now Bob must face this man — zvith the intention of killing him. His con- tinued existence holds a menace for the entire system. VIII. T he Invincible drove down to- ward the south pole of Nep- tune. The eighth planet, 2,800,000,000 miles from the Sun, receives a thousand times less solar radiation than Earth ; and only the heat of internal radioactivity prevents its very air from falling as everlasting snow. Radiation turns its atmosphere to freezing, never-ending fog. by JACK WILLIAMSON "It came across the floor, to the precious generator. The green- white mist swirled out — reached into them " 32 ASTOUNDING STORIES Despite tlie vast size of the planet — its diameter is 30,000 miles — a low, mean density results in a surface gravi- tation nearly equal to that of Earth. And the planetary engineers had made life possible there, oxygenating the at- mosphere and building heated, insulated cities over the rich mines in the equa- torial belt. But the eternal winter dark of the south polar continent had defied even the engineers. A waste of frozen des- ert, utterly lifeless, larger than all Earth, it spread a blank, white area upon the interplanetary charts, marked : Unin- habited, perilous, shipping keep clear. The Invittdble, however, descended toward the center of it, through green- ish, freezing clouds. Bob Star and his two old guards set foot upon a flat, frozen plain. Giles Habibula’s squat bulk, as always, seemed about to burst the seams of his plain green uniform. Hal Samdu was still the rugged-faced giant, gaunt and powerful, proudly glit- tering with the decorations he had re- ceived for his part in the historic raid to Yarkand. Already shivering, they ran away from the air lock. Rockets thundered behind them; ghostly in the fog, the ship quivered, slid forward. They dropped flat to escape the hot, blue hur- ricane of her exhausts. A moment, and the blue glare was fading in the clouds ; thunder became a far-off whisper, ceased. The Invincible had carried Jay Kalam on his risky mission to test the good will of the Cometeers. A squad of legionnaires came down, challenged the three, examined Bob Star’s creelentials, and guided them to the strange fortress on a low and bar- ren hill, the hidden prison of Stephen Oreo. They were almost upon it before Bob Star could see anything; then, ab- ruptly, a vast and massive wall loomed above them in the fog. “The wall is ring-shaped, sir,” the officer informed him, extremely respect- ful since he had seen the signature of Jay Kalam himself upon Star’s papers. “There’s a circular rocket field inside, where our four cruisers lie. You don’t see the real prison at all; it is a buried cylinder of perdurite. Merrin’s cell is a thousand feet below the field.” A ponderous, armored door admitted them to the wall’s hundred-foot mass. Bob Star immediately asked to see the prisoner. And at last, beyond confus- ing, narrow passages walled with gray perdurite, behind huge cylindrical doors, massively locked, beyond hidden eleva- tors and grimly alert guards in turrets of vitrilith, he looked upon the man whose very life was a threat to the ex- istence of humanity. A HUGE DOOR let him into a square, bare little room, where two sen- tries watched. Its farther wall was a shining mass of vitrilith. Beyond that impregnable transparency was Stephen Oreo’s cell. Clear, soft light flooded it, and it was furnished comfortablj'. Beside a tall, frosted glass of scar- let wine, the prisoner sat in a big chair, reading. His gigantic, splendid body was relaxed in a green dressing gown. Bob Star could see the angle of his handsome face, the light smile that clung to his big, womanish mouth. “This is Merrin, sir,” said the officer. “He was sealed beyond that wall of vitrilith when the prison was built, two years ago. No one has held any com- munication with him since. The cell is soundproof. All metal objects have been kept from him. Air, water, and liquid food are pumped to him through screened tubes ” He broke off to indicate a small red button on the gray wall beside them. “I must warn you, sir. The red but- ton would flood the cell with lethal gas. I thought I should tell you, for we have AST— 2 THE COMETEERS 33 orders to preserve his life as a sacred trust.” Bob Star scarcely heard the last words, above the sudden, confused ring- ing in his ears. Abrupt sweat chilled his body. He swayed with faintness. The red disk stared at him, a sinister eye. He had just to touch it — that was all. And the score of nine years would be settled. An intolerable burden would be lifted. Even the old pain, he felt, would die ; and the haunting fear would go He was aware, then, that Stephen Oreo had seen him. The blue eyes, cold and burning with a reckless defiance, had come up from the book. The hand- some face smiled mockingly. The pris- oner got to his feet and strolled to the transparent, unbreakable wall. He pointed at the red button, and slapped his leg with silent merriment. His full, dark lips moved to some derisive, soundless greeting. Bob Star felt a sudden desire to speak to him. This was their first encounter since tliat night of pain. Perhaps his fear was just a mental complex born of torture, an illusion that a few words might dissolve. Yes, said the officer, there was a telephone, but its use was forbidden. “I will speak with him,!’ said Bob Star. AFTER a conference with the com- mandant, it was arranged. Bob Star was left alone in the square, gray room, and a magnetic speaker thumped. The clear, rich baritone of Stephen Oreo came to him, carelessly: “Greet- ings, Bob. I’ve been amused at your efforts to put your finger on that lit- tle button.” Bob Star’s white face set. He rasped : “I’m going to do it.” “You won't do it. Bob. I know the effect of the omega ray upon the tissues of the brain. No, I’ve never been afraid AST— 3 that you will kill me. And I know that no other, will — because of a foolish code the legion has.” Bob Star braced himself, forced one hand a little way toward that malicious red eye. But the old fear yelled, you can’t A numbing chill struck down his hand. He staggered back, his shoul- ders sagging with defeat. Tears stung his eyes; his hands knotted impotently. “I’m really glad to see you,” Stephen Oreo was saying, smiling. “Because you must have been sent here with the ill-grounded hope that you could de- stroy me. That means that my already rather fantastic defenses are considered inadequate. I conclude therefore that I have powerful allies outside, and that I may hope shortly to be set free.” “Not if I can prevent it,” said Bob Star, grimly. “You can’t. Bob. I’ve beaten you.” Bob Star was amazed at the black hate that peered suddenly through that smil- ing levity. “I’ve broken you!” The voiefe was abruptly lower, hoarse, monstrously evil. “When first I knew of you, when we were children, it filled me with fury to think that an incompetent weakling, without any effort of his own, should one day become the most powerful of men — while I had nothing. I then re- solved to crush you, take your heritage for myself.” Stephen Oreo paused. His wide mouth lifted in a sudden, brilliant smile of satisfaction, and his tone was light again when he resumed : “You were easy to break. Bob. That night in the laboratory, the ray killed all the dan- ger in you. For a time I was disturbed by ethical questions, though now they are clear enough. Consider it this w'ay: one of us has AKKA given to him, the other must find it by his own efforts. Which better deserves it?” “The keeping of AKKA is not an advantage,” whispered Bob Star, faintly. 34 ASTOUNDING STORIES “It is a duty to mankind. But how — ' how did you find it?” The prisoner smiled patronizingly. “I shall tell you, Bob,” he said, “if only to establish the superiority of my right, and the justice of what I have done — and shall do. I followed the method of investigation that should have suggested itself to any person of intel- ligence. I collected the data available, formulated hypothesis, tested them by experiment, developed my conclusions. “I secured access, at the academy, to a secret library, and studied there all existing accounts of the use of AKKA, from the discovery of it by Charles Anthar — when he was in prison as I am. “The last use of the weapon had been to destroy Earth’s old Moon — after the invading Medusae had seized it. With my foster father’s space yacht, I searched the orbit of the lost satellite, until, at last, I found three small metal- lic buttons. “No larger than the end of my thumb, they were all that remained of the Moon. I have since realized how sin- gularly fortunate I was to find a single atom. It was only because your mother was working hastily, with a crude in- strument, that a tiny remnant of heavy, refractory elements escaped complete annihilation. “Some months of careful work, with ultra-microscope, spectroscope, radio and chemical analysis, among other means, revealed the nature of the par- tial effect of AKKA upon the speci- mens. From effect to cause was a mat- ter of mathematical reasoning. It re- mained but to test alternative hypothe- sis, and elaborate the surviving con- struction — and I was master of AKKA.” Bob Star stood voiceless until he sighed and relaxed, saying: “Don’t such abilities merit reward, Bob? I am cer- tainly the most gifted of men; reason assures me that I am therefore their rightful ruler. And I should have been that, already. Bob — but for my blun- der.” Hoarsely, Bob Star whispered, “What was that?” With a bright, careless smile, Stephen Oreo replied: “I should have killed your mother. Bob. Then I should have been able to use the destructive force of AKKA. The blunder put me here,” His lithe shoulders shrugged. “When I am free, I shall not repeat it. Bob. I’m not afraid to tell you, for I know you can’t touch that button — even to save your mother’s life.” IX. WEARILY, Bob Star rapped on the metal door, and had the telephone cut off. With the prisoner sealed again in his tomb of silence, he remained alone in the little outer room, grimly resolved to stay there until the crisis came — if it must come. Stephen Oreo had calmly returned to his chair and his book. He relaxed in the green robe, sipping the scarlet wine, apparently oblivious of Bob Star mis- erably hunched on the hard bench out- side. Twice again Bob Star had tried all his faculties in an effort to touch the button. But no force of will seemed able to erase the mark of that flaming ray. At last he abandoned the attempt for the time, desperately hopeful that the grim stimulus of emergency would aid him. His blue eyes, as he sat there, nar- rowed abruptly. His breath sucked in, his lean hands clenched. He leaned for- ward on his seat, staring at the gray wall. For its surface had begun to shimmer with vague, moving shadows. The metal door was still locked be- hind him; the alarm gong was silent. There was no hint of another presence in the room — only the creeping shad- ows on the wall. He watched, breath- less. THE COMETEERS 35 A blue, misty circle flickered against the gray. Ghostly shadow forms darted through it. Abruptly then, as if some unseen projector had come suddenly into focus, it melted into an amazing scene. Swiftly, his first bewildered mistrust of his eyes was burned away by the vivid wonder of what he saw. He looked into a curious chamber, sunk like a niche into the gray wall. Its hollow surface followed tapering spiral curves. It was singular, absolute black, spangled with small crystals of brilliant blue, that were various as snowflakes. The girl stood upon a many-angled pedestal of blue transparency. Its cold sapphire flame burned up against the oddly curving walls, writing fantastic runes of flame in the tiny flakes of blue. Against darkness and blue flame, she was vividly white. Her wide, solemn eyes were brown, golden-flecked ; her black hair glinted with red. One slim wliite arm was thrust out toward him, and upward, in an arresting gesture of warning. The pale oval of her face was grave with the expectation of dan- ger; her bright lips parted as if she spoke some warning word. In bewildered fascination. Bob Star came up like an automaton from the bench, and started toward her. She stopped him with an imperative ges- ture. She pointed through the panel of vitrilith, at the oblivious Stephen Oreo. Then, keeping her regretful, yet de- termined, golden eyes on Bob Star, she thrust a slender finger again and again at the button on the wall. Bob Star made a little motion toward it, and stopped with a helpless shrug. She had plainly told him to touch it — but that ancient fear still chained him. He turned back toward her, with sick misery on his face. Her face became a pool of tragic resignation. A light died in her golden eyes. Then, abruptly, she started, as if to a silent voice. She looked away through the gray wall. Her slender body quivered in the white robe, grew rigid. Her bare arms made a quick, little impulsive gesture of compassion toward Bob Star. He started forward, and again she stopped him, gesturing at the red button imperatively, desperately, hopelessly. THEN, as she made a fleeting little gesture of farewell, a bomb of cold flame exploded in the blue pedestal. Sapphire light swirled up against the crystal rime upon the spiral walls. Her gentle, tragic beauty was wrapped in supernal fire. Blue radiance filled the niche, and died. A blue shadow faded from the gray wall. Bob Star was alone in the silent room. He swayed, trembling. Tears burned his eyes. He flung his head and looked at Stephen Oreo, who was just setting down his empty glass, still absorbed in the book. His mind was roaring confusion. Was she real? Was she real? All won- der in him had been suspended, but now the question hammered at him. Real- ity? Or hallucination born of the con- flict of fear and effort in his tortured mind ? He jumped, when the gong shattered the silence in the room. Harshly, from a speaker beside it, rasped a hoarse com- mand: “Emergency stations! Seal all doors! Stand ” The voice choked strangely. A ragged whisper gasped, “Quick ! Invisible things I can’t see ’’ Now! breathed Bob Star. He must do it now, or doom the system. Eight- ing a numbing inertia, he took a halting step toward the gray wall. The red button winked at him, like a mocking eye. He was aware that Stephen Oreo had laid aside the book, was watching him with careless amusement. He took another jerky step. Abrupt 36 ASTOUNDING STORIES sweat chilled him. His ears were roar- ing again. With mounting blows, the old pain shocked every fiber of his tor- tured nerves. “Stop!” shrieked fear. He set his teeth and took another step, clinging to his picture of the girl, finding a strength, a new courage, in her brown eyes. Something was wrong with the light; it was turning 'green. Or was there a green light shining through the wall? He must hurry. There were only two steps more A green mist had flooded the room — or was it in his eyes? The gray walls swam. The red button winked at him out of the haze, maliciously. His skin prickled strangely. New numbness stole over him. Stiffness seized his limbs. He thrust out his arm — or tried to. He could no longer see or hear. He no longer had a body. He didn’t know when it hit the floor. Abject misery clung for a moment to his disembodied mind.- He had failed the brown eyes. The old fear had beaten him, the red hammer of pain, and something else he didn’t understand. Then even the sickness of despair was gone, before overwhelming darkness. X. MUTTERED THUNDER of de- scending rockets woke Bob Star. Bit- ter cold was settling into his stiff limbs, and his eyes opened upon oppressive green twilight. His body lay sprawled upon frozen soil, yet stiff with the queer, tingling numbness that had robbed bim of consciousness. Groping dimly for recollection, be had the disturbing sense fliat the gap in his consciousness contained some- thing unthinkably hideous — something that his mind had sealed away, to pre- serve its sanity. Then the dreadful sense of failure came back, a slow, sickening wave. He lay for a time in utter apathy, until the increasing sound of rockets penetrated his mind again. He gulped cold air into his lungs, then, and sat up. He was bewildered to find himself on the brink of an appalling chasm. The flat, barren plain broke before him into a sheer abyss of greenish darkness. Floor and farther walls were lost in a misty infinity. The scrape of a foot drew his glance, and he saw Giles Habibula and Hal Samdu behind him, staring up at a vague blue glow that flickered through ragged wisps of green-black cloud. “Aye !” boomed the giant. “ ’Tis a ship !” “Ah, me, ’tis time,” came the familiar jdaintive tones of Giles Habibula. “Giles,” Bob Star called weakly. “Where are we? What’s happened?” “Lad !” The thin voice reflected sur- prised relief. “We thought you would never wake, until you died of cold.” They lifted Bob Star to his feet. Clinging to Giles Habibula, he felt a little sob of gladness. “Ah, ’twas an age of mortal evil ” “That pit?” said Bob Star, still tor- mented by the dread that had shadowed his awakening. “Tell me ” “The pit is where the mortal prison was.” The old voice was a, thin rasp of dread. “After the raiders had taken the prisoner away, a red light shone down from the invisible ship. And the walls flowed into red liquid. The very blessed ground turned to red fire, and sank away. Ah, the pit is all that’s left of the prison and the garrison, lad. ’Tis a mortal mile deep!” “So he’s gone,” whispered Bob Star. “I failed, and they took him away.” HIS MIND was numbed anew with the overwhelming consequences of his failure. Dull, incurious, his eyes fol- lowed the blue glare of the rockets that roared above, sinking and shifting in the; clouds. THE COMETEERS 37 “ ’Tis landing near,” said Giles Habibula, gratefully. “At last we are saved ” “Tell me what happened,” demanded Bob Star again. “How does it come that we are alive, when all the rest are dead?” “The prisoner spared you, lad, and us with you. He told us he was the rebel Oreo, whom the system thought dead — but you knew that. “Hal and I,” he amplified, “were wait- ing for you outside his cell. Of a sud- den my poor old nerves were shocked by a frightful alarm. Gongs were ring- ing, men running, half-clad, to their sta- tions. “Then I saw the blessed men begin to fall, lad. And a green mist dimmed my own old eyes. My poor, ailing body failed me. I went down helpless with the rest, and so did Hal. “Yet for a time I clung to my old wits, when all the rest knew nothing. I heard the clatter of locks, and saw the great doors revolving. Then I heard some mortal creatures passing through, though I could not see them. “Presently the prisoner' Oreo came walking out of his cell, speaking and making gestures to creatures I could not see. They answered him with hootings and boomings from the empty air. And your body was following him, lad, float- ing — carried in unseen arms. “The prisoner pointed to Hal and me. The invisible creatures lifted us, and we were carried helpless out of the prison. Little I remember, until we were all lying out here upon the frozen ground. Near us was some great ship —it was invisible, but I could hear ma- chinery and the clang of valves. “Then the prisoner, now himself in- visible, spoke near me. “ ‘You are Giles Habibula, the pick- lock?’ he said. ‘I bow to the fame of your accomplishments.’ He laughed a little and said, ‘I think we are brothers.’ “Then his voice went dark with hate. ‘I understand that your unfortunate master will presently recover,’ he said. ‘Tell him that I have spared his life — in return for sparing mine.’ “He laughed a black, hard laugh. ‘Tell him that you three are the only men alive on this continent. It is five thousand miles to the sea, and nine thousand more to the Isle of Shylar. I fear he won’t live to reach it — but he will live long enough to know that I have won.’ “He laughed again; it was a mortal ghostly sound in the empty air, lad. He said, ‘Tell Bob I go to seek his mother.’ “A valve clanged then. lad. Creatures hooted and boomed. The green fog swirled, and the invisible ship was gone. I found two long, straight groves in the soil, where it lay. “Then a cold, pale-red light shone down from the clouds. ’Twas a fearful thing, lad ! The fortress melted into a red and flaming liquid, and that sank away, until this fearful pit was burned into the blessed planet.” HE SHIVERED. “Mortal me, the Cometeers are fear- ful enemies ! ’Twere better if the rocket hadn’t come for us. If we live to leave Neptune, ’twill be only to see mankind crushed and destroyed.” “Do not say it, Giles !” boomed Plal Samdu. “If we live, it will be to fight for the system and Aladoree. Come! We must seek the rocket, before it goes and leaves us.” The glaring rockets had vanished in the clouds, but Bob Star had felt a faint shock when the ship struck the frozen plain, “It landed too hard,” he whispered anxiously. “It may be injured.” They stumbled shivering through the fog, around the ragged hp of the chasm. A shattered and riven mass of wreckage loomed at last before them. Bob Star sank into apathetic despair. 38 ASTOUNDING STORIES “Mortal me!” sobbed Giles Habibula. “ ’Tis no more than the tenth of a ship! ’Tis but the nose of some blessed cruiser. ’Twill never serve to carry us out of this mortal waste. We sliall freeze and die here, as the prisoner intended ” Bob Star was looking dully upward. Great plates of armor were twisted, blackened. Ports were shattered. Rocket muzzles projected at grotesque angles. A colossal proton gun had been hurled from its turret. Then his heart came up in his throat. He staggered back, dazed. He swal- lowed, whispered : “The Invincible ” A cruel, iron band grew tight around his chest ; he could speak no more. Sick despair descended anew. If the Invincible had been destroyed, it meant that Jay Kalam’s gesture of friendship had failed. It meant that the Cometeers were enemies — ^and now, since Stephen Oreo was free, they could not be de- stroyed with AKKA. XI. “AH, SO,” said Giles Habibula, bit- terly. “ ’Tis a miserable fragment of the great Invincible. Alas, poor Jay! ’Tis, no doubt, his coffin ” A faint hope kindled in Bob Star. “The rockets were working when it fell. He was -fighting for his life. Per- haps he’s still alive.” “Not in such a fearful wreck,” said the old man, wearily. Yet it was he who came forward, when Bob Star and Hal Samdu had failed to find entrance to the intact sec- tion of the great hull. “I-.ad,” he asked, “you say the for- ward valve is clear?” “It is,” said Bob Star. “But locked.” “Then help me reach it, lad,” he pleaded. They aided his trembling ascent into the wreckage. He clung before the valve, peering in the darkness at the lock. “Ah, me !” he muttered sadly. “Why must they lock up a fighting ship like a blessed safe? Ah, but it speaks ill for the courage of the legion.” But Bob Star, watching, marveled at the deft, quick certainty of the thick fingers. He was hardly surprised when the lock snapped and whirring motors began to lower the outer valve. “Do you know, lad,” the old man wheezed triumphantly, “there’s not an- other in the whole blessed system who could master such a lock? But come, let us search for poor Jay.” The bridge room was dark and empty. Upon the log strip was the neatly printed legend : Wreck falling toward south pole of Nep- tune. Will attempt to land at Merrin’s prison. General order : The Cometeers are enemies, and the legion will fight to the end. Kalam. Hal Samdu’s great voice was boom- ing: “Jay ! Where are you. Jay?” “In his den, of course!” Bob Star ex- claimed abruptly. “It is soundproof.” He ran through the chart room to the little hidden door, rang, and waited. It flung abruptly open. Golden light poured out. A tall, lean man in the green of the legion stood in the door- way. The surprise on his grave, dark- eyed face gave way to sudden joy. “Bob!” his soft voice exclaimed. “Hal ! Giles ” His voice broke. “I thought you must all have perished.” He brought them into the luxurious, rich-hued simplicity of the long hidden room, and closed the door. They re- laxed to grateful warmth, and he found them hot food. “I tried ” Bob Star burst out sud- denly. “I tried, commander!” He set down a steaming bowl, unable to swal- low. His lean face twisted with black self-reproach. “And I couldn’t!” His voice was high, savage. “I’m just a coward ” THE COMETEERS 39 GRAVELY, Jay Kalam was shaking his dark head. “Don’t say that. I suspected that you might be unable to do it, yet I wanted you to have the chance, partly for your own sake. Your incapacity is due ap- parently fo an actual injury to the tis- sues of the brain. Don’t blame your- self for it ’’ “I tried !’’ Bob Star broke in, wildly. “And almost I did it, commander ! But I failed — and now he’s free to murder my mother, and lead the Cometeers against the system. And it’s all my fault ’’ “No.” Jay Kalam’s voice was troubled, yet decisive. “If there is a fault, it is mine, for holding a standard of honor too high. Remember, my word is all that has preserved Stephen Oreo’s life. And it was only rny mistaken sense of magnanimity that stayed the order to destroy the comet.” “You’re sure,” whispered Bob Star, white-faced, “that it should have been destroyed ?” The commander nodded grimly. “The Cometeers are absolutely ruth- less, completely devoid of the high quali- ties I had hoped for. The attack upon the Invincible was needless, unprovoked, wanton. But let me tell you !” He plunged into a swift account of the catastrophe. “Three hours after we left the prison, the telltale flashed red. The gravity detectors betrayed an invisible object of fifty thousand tons, following us from Neptune. In the hope of setting up friendly communication, I ordered the heliograph room to flash a series of sig- nals. “At the first flash, a terrific force caught the Invincible. The geodynes were helpless against it. We spun like a toy boat in a whirlpool. Like a pebble on a string, we were drawn toward the unseen craft. * “Can you conceive an invisible beam of force. Bob — what a mathematician might describe as a tube field of etheric strain — strong enough to drag the In- vincible against her fighting geodynes, five thousand miles in five minutes ? That’s what happened. “Then a red light burned for a mo- ment among the stars — aboard the in- visible ship. And the Invincible was destroyed. All the afterpart of the ves- sel shone dull-red, melted into shining red liquid, vanished ” “Aye,” muttered Hal Samdu. “So was the prison blotted out.” “An atomic effect, it must be,” specu- lated Jay Kalam. “The atoms couldn’t be disintegrated — there’s too little en- ergy released. Perhaps the space lattice is simply collapsed, with a residue of impalpable, neutronic dust ” He jerked his dark head, came back to the narrative. “Forty men were left alive with me. I made no effort to stop their rush to the life rockets. The vortex gun was wrecked ; we couldn’t fight. I remained aboard alone. “The six rockets made a little fleet, headed back toward Neptune — a little swarm of blue stars, dwindling in the dark of space.” His eyes closed as he paused, as if with pain. “They had gone only a little way,” he said huskily, “when that red light burned again. They all shone red and vanished.” Hal Samdu’s big, gaunt face flamed with anger. “They killed men of the legion?” he asked. “When they couldn’t defend themselves ?” Jay Kalam nodded grimly. “That is our measure of the Comet- eers — and of Stephen Oreo. For he was aboard the invisible ship ; those men were doubtless murdered with his ap- proval.” Bob Star’s hands jerked into quiver- ing knots ; his shoulders came straight. Grimly anxious, his voice rasf>ed : “Which way did they go, commander?” “As far as I could follow them with 40 ASTOUNDING STORIES the detector, Bob, they were still headed toward the comet.” “We must follow.” Bob Star’s voice was quietly deadly. “Stephen Oreo must be destroyed.” “He must,” said Jay Kalam, wearily. “That is why I struggled so to save my life, as the wreck fell.” “Ah, so,” said Giles Habibula, with admiration. “And it must have been a mortal bitter fight, you alone in less than half a ship.” “But it’s a small chance we have,” put in Bob Star hopelessly. “The only men on the whole frozen continent, with- out a ship ” Hal Samdu broke in, “Bob, we aren’t the only men.” “WhaM” “Ah, so, there are others — enemies!” wheezed Giles Habibula. “In the mor- tal confusion of disasters we had not told you, lad. “ ’Twas while you lay unconscious be- side the pit. Some stranger came through the fog, muttering, and snarling like a beast. Thinking him a chance sur- vivor of the garrison, I called out to him. He flashed at me with a proton gun. It went wide, thanks be to the fog. Then Hal flung a rock, and the stranger fled, whimjjering like a hurt .animal.” “Eh?” Jay Kalam had leaned for- ward, a new light in his dark eyes. “You’re sure he wasn’t from the prison ?” “That I am. Jay. I saw his face in the light from his gun. It was bearded. He was an unkempt, shaggy brute, clad in tattered scraps of cloth — no trim le- gionnaire.” “Strange.” The commander whistled softly. “I wonder ” XII. BOB STAR paused in the foggy dark. The light tube wavered in his quivering hand, flickered away across the barren, rugged plateau, and came trembling back to the thing that had stopped him. “Lad,” Giles Habibula whispered fearfully, “what have you found ?” Jay Kalam and Hal Samdu came up beside them in the frigid, greenish mist. The four stared down at what lay in the light : scattered garments, torn, bloodstained, flung carelessly over the ashy soil ; a little dark pile of viscera, frozen ; a few large bones, stripped ; the fragments of a skull, to which short yel- low hair still adhered, burst, scooped clean of brains. “This green,” whispered Bob Star, picking up a torn sleeve. “The legion uniform ” “Ah, so !” It was a ragged wail of fear. “A poor soldier was eaten here by some mortal creature of the dark. As we may be ” “A legionnaire who strayed from the garrison, perhaps,” speculated Bob Star. Jay Kalam picked up a bright, blood- splashed little object, held it under the light. It was an enameled pin of white metal, a vivid-colored bird clutching a minute, inscribed scroll. The com- mander’s breath came out between pursed lips, silently. “No,” he said, “this man didn’t come from the fort. I knew him.” His low voice drifted back into time. “He had pale, timid, blue eyes, under that yellow hair and his voice was soft as a wom- an’s. He used to paint pictures — dainty little landscapes; he' wrote jingling verse. A queer, violent fate that cast away the bones of such a man on frozen Neptune ” Bob Star whispered, “Who was he?” “Justin Malkar, his name was — his men called him sometimes, behind his back, Miss Malkar. But for all his ef- feminacy, he was an efficient officer in his mild, thorough way, and his crew admired him enough to give him this pin, the last time they called at the base on Earth. THE COMETEERS 41 “He liked it. He was weak as a, woman for anything brilliant, flashy Gravely, the commander laid the pin on a little rock beside the scattered re- mains, and turned thoughtfully away be- fore he plunged into a brisk reply to Bob Star’s question. “He was captain of the Halcyon Bird. He and Stephen Oreo were the same rank, the year they were ordered to the Jupiter Patrol. But Oreo already domi- nated him, and when the revolt came, Malkar was one of the first to join. He wasn’t a bad man ; Oreo simply under- stood and used his peculiar weaknesses. “When the rebels surrendered, the Halcyon Bird was missing. We soon found that one Mark Lardo, a wealthy Callistonian planter who had been Oreo’s chief lieutenant, had fled upon it. We scoured space for the missing ship, but this is the first trace ’’ He looked back at the gleam of the pin on the rock. “But what,” Bob Star’s voice was gray with horror, “what could have at- tacked him?” “I think we shall know the answer,” said Jay Kalam, “when we find the bearded stranger.” He looked down at the white, illumi- nated face of the tiny gyrograph in the palm of his hand. Fumbling for the stylus, he made a notation on the record strip. Then, pressing a stud and reading numerals from the glowing dial, he said : “We’re seven miles, now, from the. wreck. This is the first clue. We must be near what we’re looking for. We shall circle ” “Ah, so,” said Giles Habibula. “Let’s be moving, before we freeze and die, and lie here to be eaten ” THEY tramped ' away. Bob Star shivered from the penetrating fog. Again the eternal twilight quenched his hope. It was no use, he told himself. It was a timeless world, this desert of endless winter dark. Nothing ever hap- pened — Three days before, while they were still within the ivory-walled comfort of Jay Kalam’s long, hidden room upon the wreck, he had asked : “We can’t sig- nal for a ship?” The commander shook his head. “The signal house, amidships, was destroyed, with all the spare equipment in the stores.” “But we must have a ship.” Bob Star looked at Jay Kalam suddenly. “We couldn’t build anything that would fly, out of this wreckage?” The commander smiled briefly. “The rockets weigh two hundred tons each. Bob,” he said. “Rather heavy for us to handle. Besides, the delicate parts of the injectors and firing mechanisms must have been pretty well smashed.” Bob Star’s hands clenched. “What possible way ” “We must search, I think,” said the commander, “for the stranger in the fog. If he isn’t a member of the garri- son, he must surely have some private means of communication. Anyhow, I see no more promising course of action.” And for three timeless, frigid days, they had been stumbling through the misty dark. More hopeful, yet with new appre- hension, they went on from the remains of Justin Malkar. Dark fog breathed upon them with the breath of death. Bob Star led the way around crumbling boulders, up frozen slopes, across mid- night declivities, as Jay Kalam, watch- ing his glowing instrument, softly called directions. The plateau remained bare of any other mark of life or man. Bob Star was trembling with cold, reeling with fatigue and hunger, when Jay Kalam said: “Swing to the left. Bob. We can’t go any farther ” “Ah, thank you. Jay,” gasped Giles 42 ASTOUNDING STORIES Ilabibula. “I feared you would never turn, until we died.” “Yes, commander,” said Bob Star, fighting sick despair. “But there’s a big boulder to the left ” His voice stopped, with a little eager catch. He strained his eyes. The thing was vague, ghostly. He tried his light tube again, although he knew that it was burned out, useless. Breathless, he stumbled nearer. The shimmering shadow took on real- ity. His heart leaped against his ribs. The thing was a cylinder of gray metal, fifteen feet through, eighty long. He made out the black ovals of observation jx)rts, the bulge of a gun turret. “Bob?” called Jay Kalam. Bob Star stumbled back toward him. whispering urgently; “Quiet! There’s a ship. They will hear ” His words were cut off by a beam of blinding light that struck against a rock beside them. “A searchlight,” he gasped. “They heard ! Get down ” They tumbled flat, scrambled swiftly for cover. The protecting bulk of stone was stabbed abruptly with a sword of violet flame, riven. Fragments of in- candescent rock spattered from it. “Bob,” whispered Jay Kalam. “Giles. Hal. All safe?” “Aye, Jay,” rumbled Hal Samdu. “But where are the others?” “Bob !” called the commander, louder. “Giles!” But frozen Neptune made no reply. BOB STAR, standing nearest the ship, barely escaped the hissing violet blast of the great proton needle. Elec- tricity transmitted on ionized air hurled him to the frozen soil, momentarily dazed, paralyzed. He saw the slender needle swinging S«Ui»r M«h«s « (p«rktinq «Htalaift9 soiu> fieri cenfainSng eit aMlgefie iyl $olicylof 0 ). You drink H and if 9ivM prompf. plMMof relief lor Headaches. Stomach. Oistrass -after Meats, Colds and ether miner Aches and Pains. lACID INOl«5TlOH| Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer ALL DRUGGISTS 30^60^ Ecce Homo by Chan Corbett A study of the distant future B ehold the man! Ecce Homo! The heir of all the ages, the sum total to which the driv- ing evolutionary force that had infected the first formless blob of protoplasm with the strange disease known as life had inevitably led — El, superman of the millennial century ! El lay snugly incased in his bath of nutrient liquid. He was perfection, the ultimate! The long, slow climb from the amceba was over. All the strange, queer, primitive forms that had inhabited the Earth for millions of years had ex- isted only that El might eventually be achieved. It was for liim that life had spawned and struggled ; it was for him that a hundred thousand types had been tested and cast away as wanting by a care- lessly profuse nature; it was for him that apelike forms deserted their trees and used prehensile thumbs for grasp- ing tools and weapons instead of branches ; it was for him that the savage grew into a society, the society into a primitive civilization. It was with him in mind that man toiled and pioneered and invented and fought, climbing through the slow, in- evitable ages toward the godlike. El, physically immortal, mentally omnis- cient ! Long before, unimaginable centuries of time, Earth had been inclosed in a crystal shell, even as El. No wander- ing meteor could pierce its infinite hard- ness, no inimical radiation from the ex- plosions of extra-galactic space could penetrate its exterior. Air and water and warmth no longer seeped in irre- mediable waste into the outer void ; weather was a function under strict con- trol. Coal, oil, tides were long for- gotten. The almost infinite power of the atom furnished warmth, food, mo- tive force, everything. El was a geometric round, a mem- branous sac immersed within the nu- trient liquid of the sphere. Nothing else! But his constant attendant, Jem, was a man, normal in form and limbs, not much dissimilar from the primitive creatures who had inhabited Earth as far back as the twentieth century. Jem and his kind had been bred care- fully for static, non-evolving qualities. It all dated from that vast upheaval in the eighty-ninth century, after the cata- clysm. The survivors of mankind had divided into two classes. The Masters forged ahead, under the leadership of one Jones. He had discovered the , se- cret of controlled mutations. Drosophila flies, exalted to the nth degree, so to speak. Methods of shifting genes, those tiny units of heredity within the nuclear material of the cell; methods of chemi- cal activation of desirable genes and eradication of those that seemed un- necessary. OF COURSE, the initial efforts of Jones were halting, somewhat fumbling. But the race he evolved, with accentua- ated minds and specific talents, im- proved and reimproved, until — ^behold I El and his kind came into being. There were only a few of these. Naturally! Jones had a certain fierce contempt for the vast body and gener- ality of mankind. It was a pity, thought he, that the cataclysm had not eradi- cated the unwanted commoners. But, being a biologist, and not a man of war, he devoted himself to his superrace, his mm te The orb Red with blasting speed through resistant air, over machines the ever-iunctioning cities of the aristocracy of Masters, rather than to the completion of the task of destruc- tion. As for the others, the progenitors of Jem, they were at first permitted to spawn in the teeming disorder of an elder day. Gradually, however, as the Masters grew separate and apart, and the gulf widened between them, it was inevitable for the normal, primitive type 58 ASTOUNDING STORIES of humans to become subject and sub- ordinate, to be given the menial tasks of life. As even these were eventually taken over in tolo by the ever-increasing com- plexity of the machines, and the manual, laborious work of earlier times became a dim anachronism, the usefulness of the Attendants grew less and less. Then it was that the Masters of the hundred thousandth century took them in hand — though even then, the term “hand” had become purely a metaphor, a figure of speech, related to nothing physical in the structure of the Masters. The Attendants were ruthlessly ex- terminated as lower forms of life whose presence disturbed and cluttered up the surface of the Earth. All, that is, ex- cept for a certain number, thereafter carefully to he bred by a proper manipu- lation of the genes for loyalty, submis- siveness, for fanatical devotion to the Masters. Not, it must be understood, to the body of Masters as a whole — the supermen were too fiercely individ- ualistic for such low-grade, communal conceptions — but for lifelong attachment to a single Master, and that one alone. But to -return to El, in that unim- aginable century of tbe future whose very number was staggering. The ideal had been reached, the end of all the Masters’ artificial evolution. Beyond him there was — nothing! He was a round, membranous sac — the perfect geometric figure. He had no arms or legs or other vestigial or- gans. They were useless. Translation in space, the satisfaction of all physical needs, the regulation of a well-patterned world, Were all infinitely better accom- plished by the vast complex of ma- chinery, automatic, robotlike, self-start- ing, self-regenerative. Nor had he heart or lungs ot the muddled, intricate mess of viscera and skeletal framework of an earlier era. Consciousness, thought, awareness, intellectuilization and brooding on the few remaining unsolved problems of the universe — what else was required? So that, in the interests of symmetry and a beautiful, ordered efficiency, El and his brethren were evolved. Without arteries to harden, bones to grow brittle, hearts to wear out, stom- achs to ulcerate under the pressure of crude, natural foods, small wonder that he was immortal ! A huge, convoluted brain, inclosed in an indestructable sac, in turn inclosed in a bath of nutrient ichor, which oozed by osmotic processes through the sac, and fed, regenerated and cleansed the pulsing brain within. But, alas ! Nature, outwitted, arti- ficialized, twisted into a seemly order by this race of supermen, had exacted a profound revenge! For perfection, the too-perfect, had never been contemplated by a universe of rawness, of cruelty, of alternate birtb and destruction, of fum- bling trial and error, of blasting nova and lifeless suns, of relativity and ex- panding, out-rushing nebulae. El and his mates had achieved ! There was no longer anything left for them to seek. The physical, the ex- ternal, had been conquered, utterly sub- dued. They alone survived in a world whose every aspect was predictable, controlled. All other forms of life vrere extinct, destroyed as unnecessary, waste- ful — except for the Attendants. II. IN AN EARLIER TIME the Mas- ters had thrilled to the conquest of other planets, but that had also died in the achievement. With their mighty machines, the supermen soon trans- formed cinder-burned Mercury and frozen-gas Pluto to exact replicas of the Earth. They tired of the game in the course of ages. Even the far off, beck- oning stars held no further lure. With their machines they could have hurled themselves across the intervening space, but to what profit? To recreate but ECCE HOMO 59 another Earth, similar in every respect to the home they had quitted. So they abandoned the planets and returned to Earth. There were not many of them — so there was ample space for all, for the individual solitude they craved. Slowly, one by one, the few remaining intellectual problems were solved. There was nothing more. Evo- lution had ceased ; growth had become a stagnant pool. Appalling boredom ! Profound qui- escence ! The weight of passivity grew insupportable. The machines required no attending, the devotion of the At- tendants was almost the only fillip left to life. A fierce possessiveness waxed in the highly convoluted Masters, an overmastering delight, ludicrously primi- ■■ tive, for the constant little ministrations of these static replicas of primordial time. Had there been a spirit of covetous- ness, too, of desire for the Attendants of their fellows as well as their own, all might yet have been well. For this would have produced dissatisfaction, biologic urges, envies, annihilations, war — and perfection would have exploded with a loud, resounding crash. Life would have been recreated on a lower plane, raw, cruel no doubt, but with the upward path a shining incentive before them. But, unfortunately, the Masters were supermen, complete. They looked not with envy upon the Attendants of their fellcnvs ; they had sufficiency in their sin- gle slave. Not that their services were required ; the machines could have per- formed the little tasks far better. But the Attendants had become a fixed tra- dition, and the Masters looked upon change as something brutal, primitive, from which their delicate convolutions shrank with fastidious repugnance. The need for change had died. Processes slowed, ceased. So slowly, so imperceptibly, that one by one the Masters passed into oblivion without any one, not even the hovering Attend- ant, quite knowing that he had died. Their deaths were nothing organic, had nothing to do with disease. They represented merely a cessation of en- ergy changes, a degradation into a wave- less, motionless state of inertia. EL OBSERVED the slow attrition of his fellows with what was at first indifferent torpor. What did it mat- ter? What did anything matter? Be- ing or nonbeing; it was all the same. He lay in his bath, feeding automatically, soaking in with a vast quiescence the physical impressions of the universe. He had no eyes for seeing, no ears for hearing. Instead, every quiver of a molecule in the material scheme of things; every shift of state of an elec- tron in its orbit, sent its pulsing waves through empty space and barrier matter alike to impinge on the delicate con- volutions of the brain. - The hidden round of the Antipodes, the masked, invisible nebulae of the outer darkness, disclosed their secrets to his receptive neurons equally with the phys- ical texture of Jem, hovering inter- minably before his crystal containment. El yawned — that is, if a yawn had been possible. A settled boredom was upon him. Jem, the hundredth in de- scent of a long, remote-stretching line of descendants, no longer amused him. Jem fed him deftly. It was almost his only function. For this he had been reared; for this he lived, until his spe- cific span of mortal years was ended. Five hundred years an Attendant lived, and died to the expected second. Jem soon finished his task, then hum- bly fed himself with a cruder, more bulky food out of a special container in the carrier machine. He was tall, youthful-looking, virile, handsome by the standards of an earlier age. He had been bred for physique and regularity. As the machine rose and flew swiftly away he squatted before his master, in 60 ASTOUNDING STORIES patient, perpetual expectation of new commands. El’s gaze — a crude term, expressing really the patterned interior reception of energized states — flicked over him in- differently. He was tired of that per- petual attitude. He was tired of every- thing, even the ichor that nourished him. His gaze drifted past him, over the smooth, hard expanse of Earth, a vitreous, even floor on which no tree or tesselated patch of grass broke the monotonous stretching, past the cities of the machines, seeking for the nonce the quiescent spheres of his fellows. Round and through the Earth he bored, seeking. Something sharpened within him, quivered — a strangely new sensation, the first almost in uncounted years. The process had been so slow, so imperceptible, that, though the per- ception of it had naturally impinged on him as it progressed, awareness of its totality, of its meaning, had completely eluded him. Now for the first time he saw what had happened through the sluggish centuries, saw it with a realiza- tion that ripped through his quiescence like a flash of atomic disintegration. HI. THE RACE of Masters had died out — they and their respective Attendants ! On all the Earth, in all the universe, only two remained : El, and — at the Antipodes — Om ! His similar sphere glowed in the eternal rays ; it cradled in its hemispherical base even as El’s did. And, squatting before its majestic orb, was an Attendant, a female, tall and straight even as Jem, but with slimmer limbs, more delicate face. El and Om, sole remnants of the race of perfect beings ! The rest had ceased to be, quietly and willfully, seeing no good reason to continue an interminable sameness of existence. One by one, each in his respective sphere, until the machines, finding the ichor untouched and the Attendants gone or sprawled in moveless death, removed the master — a bulge of brain sac in a clouded fluid — for swift incineration in the disruptor tubes. A quiver coursed through El’s in- volved convolutions. Thought shim- mered and played with lightning swift- ness. Strange stirrings moved, and had their being within his depths. Neurons darkened with chemical change, long- disused synaptic paths channelized and broke contacts with breath-taking rap- idity. For the first time in misty eons El felt the surge of new ideas, of the strange and novel rise of fierce, urgent emotions of which he had had formerly only an intellectual, apathetic awareness. It was a tremendous sensation. The gray, pulpy matter of his being actually shook within its sac, like a storm-swept sea. It was agonizing, delicious in its very tortured unaccustomedness. Life suddenly blurred and misted at the edges, evolved before him with incalcu- lable forces. He almost sang and ex- ulted. A faint buzz of electric friction actually exuded through the sphere. Life had a purpose, meaning, direction, once more. He tested his emotions and found them good. What were they? What had caused this sudden snapping of the self-suffi- cient, moveless perfection of an ageless time? What strange, illimitable forces had been brought into play? The an- swer is exceedingly strange. It was the sight of Om, his fellow and equal ; it was the sight of An, his at- tendant. From the tiny dislocation of a single atom a new universe is sometimes born ; another destroyed. El knew the majestic march of cause and effect, but for the nonce he possessed not his former wisdom to probe them deeply and without distortion. Certain emo- tions had been born in him full grown, and they clouded his ordered faculties, hid the future. Which was excellent; which was the very essence of life ! ECCE HOMO 61 “Jem!” he said to his attendant, “come closer. We are going to visit Om.” Now it must not be considered that El had a mouth, a larynx for the formation of sounds. His speech was a mechanical contrivance, activated by the electric surge of his brain. For himself, for the rare conversings with his equals, mere willing was sufficient. Jem was startled. It was on the most infrequent occasions that the master spoke to him, and then only on little matters of really inconsequential attend- ance. But this was staggering. Never, in his memory, had El stirred from his timeless, moveless condition on his cra- dling base. “Om?” he queried vaguely, puckering up his brows with unaccustomed thought. He did not know Om ; had never seen him. His eyes were the eyes — a little sharper focused, perhaps — of the man of the eightieth century. He could not see around the earth, some twelve thousand miles away. “Yes, Om !” his master repeated with a touch of impatience — a wholly new quality. “Obey my orders, fool.” AS IN A DREAM, and because obedience was a matter of inherited genes, Jem moved forward, close to the sphere. A strange force caught at him, sucked him sprawling to the crystal convex. Then, suddenly, the orb with its im- mersed perfection, rose into the quiet stillness, fled with whistling, blasting speed through resistant air, over whir- ring, ever-functioning cities of the ma- chines, over huge, wide monotonies where nothing stirred, nothing moved. Earth was a vast graveyard, devoid of life, of all things but the soulless, un- knowing machines. The wind howled and tried to pluck Jem from his eerie perch; the breath labored and gasped in his lungs as they rushed along. In a thrill of strange new terror he cried out to his master to slow his awful speed, to return to his famil- iar base and renew the ordered quies- cence of his former being. But El paid no heed. For one thing, the novel wishes of his attendant were weightless, insubordinate even ; for an- other, a fierce impatience glowed within him, a sparkling, crackling turbulence that surprised, even as it elated him. Like a plummeting meteor the sphere plunged to Earth beside Om, settled without a jar. A carrier machine came swiftly forward deposited a hemispheri- cal base on the ground, and went off in noiseless flight. El lifted, dropped into the base, settled into seeming quiescence. The force of supermagnetism that had held Jem gasping to the incasement of his master, vanished as suddenly as it had sprung into being. Jem tottered back, loose, befuddled, his brain, un- used to cataclysms of this order, seeth- ing with new impressions. The sight of Om was not in itself disturbing. He was like unto his master, indistinguish- able as star with star. But An ! He had seen only one other Attend- ant before in all his life — a male who had wandered masterless into the re- stricted horizon of his vision, and top- pled dead on the hard, smooth surface. But this creature, who had cried out sharply at the terror of their whistling approach and had been silent ever since, staggered him! He sensed that she was like unto himself, yet somehow subtly unlike. She was slimmer, more delicate, for one thing. Strange sensations welled through him; sensations he had never experienced before. She was watching him also, a little apart, with sidelong glances, that pre- tended to be unaware of his presence, yet embraced him completely. They did things to his internal economy. Deli- cious thrills coursed over him, set him tingling. An irresistible urge swept him closer ; to touch her, to feel for himself this 62 ASTOUNDING STORIES new miracle. Never before had he for- gotten, like this, even for an instant, his consuming absorption in his mas- ter. She must have sensed his parlous state, for as he moved, she darted swiftly, gracefully, to the other side of Om’s incasing sphere, as if for protec- tion. Jem stopped, bewildered, like males in all the ages, at this rebirth of feminine coquetry. Om knew that El had arrived. It was an invasion on his privacy, a thing that had been scrupulously respected for an hundred thousand years. But he did not resent it. Resentment liad no place in the perfect end product of evo- lution. What did it matter anyway? The mere physical transposition of a fellow being did nothing to color ex- istence with novelty for him. Had he wished discourse with El, he could easily have held it at twelve thousand inter- vening miles. But what profit would there have been in discourse? El knew nothing he did not know ; both were perfection, hold- ing already in wearied embrace all the knowledge, all the inner contemplations, of a known and patent universe. So he said nothing, did nothing, to evidence an awareness of El’s presence. In fact, it had already retreated into the recesses of his consciousness. FOR a long while there was silence, profound, immutable. The attendants had squatted once more before their re- spective masters, seemingly engrossed in their tasks, seemingly unaware of each other. El waited a decent interval. In- wardly he seethed with impatience, with eagerness to put into effect his care- fully mapped out plan. “Om!” he permitted the thought to emanate. “What do you wish, El ?” The query came back without any sign of interest, or real desire to be informed. “You and I are the last of our race.” “Yes, I know.” Om betrayed no ex- citement. It was a mere affirmation of an unimportant fact. “Our fellows died,” pursued El craftily, “because there was no reason for further existence.” “That is true,” responded the other indifferently. “Why do we not do the same?” in- quired El. “I am wearied of continued, interminable sameness. An eternity of dead monotony appalls me.” "The universe will not last forever,” Om pointed out. “It will last for frightening eons,” El declared. “We shall cease to be, even as our fellows, before that, no doubt,” said Om and withdrew his thoughts. But El was not discouraged. “Why should we wait?” he asked. “Let us seek the ultimate extinction now, at once.” “It would be senseless effort.” “Not at all,” El persisted. “Do you realize what it would mean? The de- liberate destruction of our own entities. The lopping off of immortality with a single, sharp and speedy stroke. The one thing that none of our kind has ever experienced. Something new at last, something novel in the long, weari- some history of the race. The one thing we have sought in vain in a too-obvious universe. The thrill of suicide, the notable defiance of ourselves. “Come, let us join in this last mighty gesture. With one stroke we wipe out life in toto, leave an infinite space time to the sterile movements of insensate electrons, protons, mere puckers in the texture of the all. What say you?” Om stirred. His brain sac quivered in its nutrient bath. El had insinuated something new in his concepts. Suicide, self-annihilation, the elimination by their act of life itself ! They twain, alone and solitary on the pinnacle of perfection, achieving at one irreversible stroke the superpinnacle of a superperfection. Be- ECCE HOMO 63 yond them nothing — nothingness ! Now and for all eternity! A magnificent con- ception I El waited with strained anxiety for the answer. Had his arguments, born of his newly acquired state, won over the calm, broodless indifference of his fellow solitary? “Very well,” said Om at last. “It is no doubt the best way for us to end. How shall we accomplish this ultimate act?” A surge of exultation swept over El. He had won! But carefully he veiled his thoughts in a closed electrical orbit. Only the answer he willed emerged. “Very simply. Do not exert yourself. I shall take care of the matter myself. I shall call the machines.!’ Not for thousands of years had it b^en deemed necessary to call the ma- chines. They were self-energizing, self- reproductive, geared for all possible re- quired tasks. But now, in obedience to the short-wave impingement of El’s will on key units in the city of the machines, two great metal monsters, with pointed noses like ancient torpedoes, rose swiftly from the towers, sped like hurtling asteroids along beam channels direct for the waiting, immovable spheres. Om watched their rushing progress with calm indifference. In seconds there would be a crash, and then “Their paths include the orbit of our attendants, no doubt,” he suggested. “They, too, are life, though of an in- ferior order.” “Naturally,” assented El craftily. “I have already plotted the courses.” His mechanical voice rasped suddenly. “Jem, stand over to that side — there — do not move.” Om gave like directions to An^ THE two attendants moved submis- sively to the appointed spot their mas- ters had ordered. Male and female, closer together than two attendants ever had been before, aware of their near- ness, feeling a subtle, exotic interplay of forces. Jem saw the hurtling giants of destruction, saw them without fear, without thought of avoidance. It had been El’s command. An felt a swift tremor, a surge of something within her she could not understand — yet she made no move. Silently the masters and their attend- ants waited. The swift metallic en- gines came on with a swoosh of scream- ing air; nearer, nearer. Om’s repose was intellectual, controlled. Annihila- tion, existence — neither mattered. But El concealed his processes in an im- penetrable orbit of interlocking waves, waiting for the supreme moment. Closer ! Closer ! The great torpe- does — tons of glistening metal — roared directly for the crystal spheres. An cried out sharply. There was a rending, splintering sound. Quartz shattered into a million jagged shards, nutrient ichor spattered geyserlike into the ambi- ent air ; a brain sac punctured like thin- nest film. Om — a huge, twisted con- volution of gray, spongy matter — spread fanlike in a rain of tiny, writhing blobs. Om was dead, annihilated before An's horrified eyes. Her master, the nexus of her being, was no more ! The second machine, abreast of its mate, smashed toward El. Almost at the instant of impact, so close to the fragile crystal incasement that barely a millimicron separated thrusting nose and shimmering quartz, El exerted alt his mighty powers to the utmost. A wave of meshed vibrations leaped out from his quivering brain to meet the invader, an impenetrable force wall against which stellite hardness smashed and fused into a flaming, futile disin- tegration. A paean of triumph sang inaudibly in the gray jelly of El. Life sang through him — life triumphant, supernal, irresistible. He had achieved his goal. Om was dead, even as he had cunningly 64 ASTOUNDING STORIES planned, unknowing to the end that he had been outwitted. El looked out on the universe and saw that it was good. He was the last of his race, the solitary perfection in a world that held no other. What a glo- rious vista! No longer was eternity a frightening prospect. An endless time was not too long in which to contem- plate the mastery of an entire universe, in which to brood on himself — the abso- lute, the unique, the single splendor! No wonder his fellows had willfully ceased to exist. They were end prod- ucts, but the all-embracing egoism from which the spark of life enkindles was not theirs. There were others — even as they. A dead level, a stupid equality of perfection. At one leap he had spanned the gulf, thrust himself into a glorious new state. There was no other El in all infinity. He was the ultimate, the unsurpassable! IV. JEM sat quietly before his master. Dim, unaccustomed thoughts struggled in his brain, yet without present effect. His task was implicit obedience, adora- tion. But An — the girl ! She had cried out at the sight of her master’s immo- lation. She had seen with wide eyes and affrighted mind the trick that had been played. Anger stirred; a new, a frightening sensation. El viewed the chaos of her thoughts, read them easily, without effort. He could have killed h?r easily. According to tradition she should die — a Master- less Attendant. But he had broken with tradition, had placed himself beyond those subtle, binding cords. With this new state had come new emotions. \’’anity had been one, possessiveness an- other. He wished her for himself ; he desired more than a single Attendant. He envisioned other possibilities. For vast ages Attendants had been repro- duced by solitary parthenogenesis. Now he would mate this pair, as in the long dim past. There would be variations, complexities. He would rear a horde of Attendants — subordinate forms of life, lowly, submissive — with which to amuse his eternal contemplation. It was good ! “An !” his thoughts filtered through the mechanical enunciator with metallic sound, “your master, Om, has ceased his being. I am your master now. It is my will that you and Jem, my at- tendant, mate for the propogation of a new race.” Jem stared. He did not quite under- stand, but vague racial instincts stirred within him. He glanced quickly at An and the sight was pleasing. Her face, so delicate and different from his own, was queerly the color of the distant Sun as it fell unheeded below the horizon. She did not look at him; could not, somehow. Her heart was thumping ; a sense of shame, unfelt before, per- vaded her being. Shame, and this new novelty of flaming anger. Then she did a monstrous thing — a thing unthinkable. She rebelled. “El !” she flared at the moveless brain sac in the crystal sphere, “I will not. I am not your attendant. My master is dead, done to extinction by some in- comprehensible treachery of yours. I shall die — it is my duty, my necessity — but I shall not obey your commands.” El could have slain her then and there for her defiance. But he did not wish that. He had plans, bound up inex- tricably with this new confusion of emo- tions that coursed through him with novel thrills. “You shall neither die nor disobey,” he said coldly. “Jem,” he proceeded, “behold, she is your mate. Go to her !” Jem was shocked. How dared this strange girl — this being whose nearness made him feel warm all over — defy the mighty master? He moved slowly to- ward her, obedient to the command of El. AST-4 ECCE HOMO 65 An faced him bravely. Her face was the deep-red of copper, her eyes held strange scorn. “Jem,” she said, “come no nearer. I hate you, I despise you. You are not a man ; you are an attend- ant, an obedient automaton to the will of your master.” Jem stopped, dazed, bewildered. The whip of this young girl’s scorn cut and wounded. Yet slie seemed infinitely de- sirable, though she hated him. Why? He was only obeying the command of his master, as was right and just. While she Still he did not speak. Speech was painful, slow to him. He had not had much occasion to use it. Neither did he advance. El received the vibrations of his con- fusion. He saw no rebellion therein; only such stupidity as was normal to an Attendant. El, too, had lost some- thing, though he did not realize it. Per- fection had become a little less than per- fect. Life in a ferment, fraught with vigorous emotions, could not be static. So that he did not read aright the tor- tuous neurone paths that were forming in Jem’s brain. ANGER, rage, stimulating, electric, yet clouding to an all-awareness, raced through El. An Attendant, a crawl- ing form of life, had defied him! An, a slim and delicate thing. The metallic syllables of his speech comported oddly with the words. “Jem !” he cried. “I order you — seize this rebel. She is yours. On pain of annihilation I insist upon your obedience. Do not dare aught else.” He had lost his head — to use an an- cient phrase. The poison toxins of anger, of mad, unthinking rage, dark- ened the gray of his convolutions. Thereby he forfeited his dignity, his power. Jem heard and wondered. He saw the girl. An. There was a new look AST— 5 in her eyes. A look of fear, of help- less, imploring appeal. A feminine ap- peal. Racial instincts stirred again. He felt protective, masculine. He felt all- powerful in the light of those eyes. Overwhelming rage swept over him. But rage was an emotion suited to his primitive body, its appendages and mus- cles. What was degradation to a Mas- ter was a source of strength to an At- tendant. Red madness seethed against the one who had made this girl to hate him, to dread his approach. Without quite knowing what he did, he bent suddenly. A strut of the ma- chine which El had fused lay on the ground. It was a short bar, incredibly hard and compact. He swept it up into his hand, hurled it with all his strength. The distance was short, the movement exceedingly fast. Yet to El — who could stop a hundred ton missile in midflight, who could, with the exertion of his own inner powers, swing the Earth out of its orbit and send it hurtling to the farthest galaxy — this was child’s play. But El was no longer El ! He was a new being, overwhelmed with envy, with passion, with covetousness, with vanity, with rage. In that vital second he was literally blinded — unable to think coherently. Later he would have un- derstood, would have taken measures to regain his old clarity. But it was too late. The short, thick bar crashed through the quartz, clawed the liquid nutrient, punctured the membranous sac. El gushed forth, an oozing, tangled mass of pulpy brain, to mingle in horrible flow with amber liquid and jagged nee- dles of shattered quartz. El was dead. Jem stared stupidly, hardly grasping what he had done in that instant of an- cient emotion. His master was dead; he was a Masterless Attendant I He had slain with his puny hands the mighty one, the all knowing ! The world rocked and reeled before him, the cease- 66 ASTOUNDING STORIES less vita rays darkened on his vision. A low moan escaped his tortured lips. What had he done? What would hap- pen to him now ? HE WAS brought to his senses by the sound of some one calling him, by the touch of soft fingers on his arms. “Jem ! Jem !” Unaccountably it was An. “I am proud of you ! You are wonderful ! You have killed the mighty El unaided. I — I love you !” He opened his eyes, incredulous. What was that? What had she said? She approved— more than that — ^thought him wonderful ! She loved him ! Words that had come from remote an- cestors, that had been lost for incredible centuries. His chest swelled; he stared with a certain condescension at the adoring girl. He even strutted a bit. “Pooh! It was nothing!” he said. “I could do it again. I am stronger than a Master.” Deep down within him he knew, of course, that El had been the last of his race, yet he actually helieved in his new- found strength. Especially in the re- flected light of An’s eyes. He took her arm masterfully, drew her to him. She did not resist. But then, in the transports of that first kiss, he suddenly shivered. They were alone — the two of them — alone in an alien universe. No Masters, no other Attendants, only the strange, im- personal machines ! He drew back. “What shall we do now. An?” he asked timidly. “Do?” she echoed with the guile of the serpent, and the wisdom of all women. “Why, dearest, you are a man, and you will provide. There are the machines — you will force them to their wonted tasks. You shall be their mas- ter, instead of El and Om and the others who ceased before them.” “I had intended that all along,” Jem said hastily. He believed it, too. He bent toward her, whispered something. She flushed as she slipped her arm in his. “A new race!” she breathed in awe. “A race of men and women like our- selves to people this Earth again, to strive, to conquer, to seek new knowl- edge always.” Her eyes brooded on the infinite with tender gaze, this mother of a new and upward-groping life. Slowly they walked toward the city of the machines. “Then I fell in — from a long jump! I couldn’t avoid it!” At the Center of Gravity Accident in the spaceways! by Ross Rocklynne T he two of them, Lieutenant Jack Colbie and Edward Deverel, hung suspended with- out visible support in a space which, had it not been for the beam of light thrown by the lieutenant on his captured pris- oner, would have been quite dark. Jack Colbie was a direct social op- posite of the other man. And Jack Colbie, of the Interplanetary Police Force, was widely known as a relent- less tracker of criminals. Edward Deverel was the criminal, at the present instant, and Colbie had caught up with 68 ASTOUNDING STORIES him. The chase had started in Deverel’s own domain, the domain of his piratical activities — the red deserts of Mars, and the broad canals that cut through them. Both were clad in the tough, insu- lated, smoothly curving suits that man must wear in space. The transparent helmets afforded external vision, and now Deverel was looking through his at Colbie, insolently. But, since the scant illumination Colbie received came from the reflection of the beam he held on his prisoner, Deverel saw him as a gray shadow on the complete darkness stretching away behind. “Well?” he inquired, with a disdain- ful flash of his white teeth, whiter still in the light of the beam. “Well, nothing. Don’t look so peeved. What else did you expect? You knew I’d catch up with you. I’ve got to maintain an unbroken record.” Deverel shrugged his shoulders. They could just be seen through his helmet. “Precedent doesn’t prove any- thing.” “Oh, I suppose not. Forget it.” Colbie studied the corsair’s face. De- verel was good-looking, undoubtedly — better-looking than Colbie, certainly, who had a ravaged profile and a long jaw. Deverel’s nose was straight; he pos- sessed attractive, but almost bitterly formed, lips ; his eyes were blue, and the constant inner deviltry of his nature burned in their depths. “Let’s forget you’re my prisoner. Let’s talk a while. I’m curious as to why you landed on Vulcan.” “Why ?” Deverel laughed. “Did you want me to take a dive into the Sun? “Well, you were crowding me. I had to leave Mars, of course, when my band of canal marauders succumbed before Jack Colbie and his police. You chased me, Colbie, as I’ve never before been chased in this incarnation. I was go- ing to land on Earth — I could have found a hide-out— but you headed me off. So I tried Venus. Same thing. So what was left but Vulcan? Mer- cury was fooling around somewhere on the other side of the Sun. “Oh, I guess I was a fool to land, since I knew that was what you wanted me to do. But you know what empty space and stars do to a man. The big- ness of things gives him a colossal in- feriority complex, and it puts him in the mood for anything. What I mean is, a man doesn’t care. I was feeling some- thing of that, and besides, I was tired of running, of being chased. That’s why I landed on Vulcan, when I knew there wasn’t a hiding place on its smootla surface.” “And, as it turned out,” Colbie put in, “there was a hiding place. Only, I found you.” “And what good’s it going to do you?” Deverel laughed in genuine amusement. “I’ve just been checking, and, according to the oxygen gauge, I won’t live for twenty-four hours. I’ll bet a binary your tank is in the same condition. There isn’t any way of es- cape. “Well,” he went on in a dreamy fashion, “I suppose I’ve been skid- rayed. Skid-rayed by a cop at last. I always knew it would happen, though. That last stunt of breaking up the em- press’ canal excursion party was what got the I. P. after me.” He craned his eyes at Colbie. “But things have a habit of checking to zero. You’re what 3'ou are. I’m what I am, and we’re going to die. But Avho had the most kick out of it? Did you like to put men in prison? I wonder. But me ! It was fun to slip the rings off the fat fingers of the empress !” THERE WAS a shrug in Colbie's voice. “Maybe it was. Let’s leave philosophy out of it. How did you happen to find the hole?” “Well, I didn’t look for it. Vulcan’s never been considered worth a detailed AT THE CENTER OF GRAVITY 69 investigation, and so nobody kfiew the startling facts about the little planet. “I saw the hole on a jump of ten miles across the surface, revealed by starlight. As much as I remember, it was about forty feet across, and on the night side, with the day side only seventy or so miles away. Anyway, I saw it, and I knew you were hopping after me somewhere on the night side, and I didn’t give a damn any more, which, added to plain curiosity, made me jump in. The hole,” said Deverel whimsically, ‘.‘was deep, and I fell for hours. I suppose you knew I was down here, when you found the hole, eh?” “After I had started falling,” Colbie said. “I’d looked everywhere on the night side and hadn’t found you. The day side was of course too hot. I was going back to the two ships. Wher- ever you were, you wouldn’t escape the planet. Then I fell in, from a long jump. I couldn’t avoid it. “About seven hours down,” he con- tinued, “I began to suspect the truth — that Vulcan is as hollow as a bubble, probably is one, the result of a huge, internal explosion, just before it cooled, ages ago. Some other explosion pushed a hole through the crust. “At first I thought I’d stop when even with the inner surface. Second thought showed otherwise. If the planet was actually hollow. I’d drop to the center, at a steadily decreasing speed. The law of gravitation says that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is di- rectly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. Of course, Vulcan being a sphere, there was lateral attraction as well as vertical. The gravitational force pulling me away from center was less than that pulling me toward it, but as I went along they tended to become equal to each other, until, here at the center of gravity. the forces of gravity neiUraiize. Tor every pull from one direction there’s another of equal force from the opposite direction. “We fell to Vulcan’s center in a straight line, but on Earth, if it were hollow, we wouldn’t. Weight manifests itself in a line somewhat removed from the center of gravity, because of cen- trifugal force on the Earth’s surface. You’d fall in a spiral path. But Vulcan doesn’t rotate.” Their two bodies, having tendencies to drift to the exact center of Vulcan, were touching. Colbie pushed Deverel away by raising his knee. “You’ve remarked a few times that my taking you prisoner was a joke,” remarked Colbie. “What makes you think so?” “Because there’s no way of escape,” said Deverel calmly. “Maybe you think so, too, and don’t know it. Else you’d have put me in handcuffs, in addition to taking my projector. “Here’s the situation! Vulcan is hollow. I’m sure there’s only one out- let. We’re at the center. Now how are we going to reach the outlet? It’s a riddle, and I know yOur first guess.” “All right. I’ll make it! How about reaction? I’ve got a hundred rounds for my projector, and — you’ve got at least fifty on your belt.” “First guess wrong.” Deverel mock- ingly shook his head. “I’ve thought of reaction — the only thought, incidentally. I was here hours before you were, and I was able to pick the thing to pieces. “No matter which way you take it, it won’t work. Worse than that, it’s sui- cide. Consider. Vulcan is eight hun- dred and ninety miles in diameter, and hollow. Probably the crust is a hundred miles in thickness — a thinner one would crack up under the attraction of the Sun. That would give us three hundred and forty-five miles to travel by reaction — to the inner surface. Once we got there, our simple problem would be to 70 ASTOUNDING STORIES find the hole, which is anywhere on the inner surface, quite a considerable area. But probably we wouldn’t even get there, because we wouldn’t know whether we were going toward the day side or the night side. Or, we might execute circles. “But let’s say we do reach the inner surface. How would we stay there? By hanging onto jutting rocks? Then what if we lost our holds? We’d di'Op back to center. Then, too, the inner surface is probably a hotbed of chem- ical action. Where else would these gases come from?” He swept his arm through a short arc, producing a swish- ing whine by way of illustration. “It wouldn’t be fun to grab hold of smoking-hot spur of basalt, even though your doxite gloves are nearly perfect nonconductors. “Don’t think I’m afraid of taking a chance,” he hastened to add. “But this isn’t even a chance. It’s simply quicker death. We’d drop back. I’ll bet a binary, and there’d be a batch of ex- plosive shells waiting for us. They wouldn’t travel all the way to the sur- face, and the least contact with anything solid would set them off. And they’d drop back to center.” COLBIE listened him out, and sud- denly sna])ped off his flashlight. “You picked the flaws in the tube,” he said heavily. “But — ” “If it gets to that point,” Deverel agreed with the unvoiced thought, “we’ll try reaction. Or else, if we can dis- cover some means beside reaction to get to the surface, we’ll do that. But ” There was infinite doubt in his voice. He came out of the darkness, and rubbed against his captor. Almost peevishly Colbie pushed him away. In- stantly he was contrite. The situation was too serious for a petty display of anger. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m a little on edge. Come on back.” “I’m subject to the whims of a uni- versal law — gravitation,” Deverel said cheerfully. “I’ll be along presently. In the meantime, scion of law and order, that cop’s mind of yours should be able to figure out what we’ll do in the time remaining.” Colbie did not answer, and Deverel went on talking, in his light-hearted way. “We could eat, and sleep, think a while, and try that reaction business. Or else we wait until our oxygen tanks run low, and then cut a hole in the fabric of our suits. This atmosphere is most likely lethal.” Colbie’s mind agilely grabbed a thought from his words. “Wait a min- ute!” he snapped. “Deverel — maybe I’ve hit it. We’ll sleep!” He cut the darkness with his beam, throwing it on Deverel’s face. “What do you know about Vulcan?” he demanded. “What do I know about it?” Deve- rel cocked his head in curiosity, and then said, “Vulcan was first discovered in the middle of the nineteenth century by a Frenchman who saw a spot moving across the face of the Sun. But no- body thought it was a planet ; they thought it was a Sun spot. Later, every- body forgot about it. Then it was dis- covered to exist in actuality, when the first space flight was made in the twenty- third century. “It is eight hundred and ninety miles in diameter, presents one face to the Sun, has an extremely eccentric orbit, has a year of three Earth months; its orbit cuts the plane of the ecliptic at a greater angle than Mercury’s; it has a high albedo ” Colbie cut him off. “That’s enough. I’m interested in the eccentric orbit. How far is it from the Sun when the planet’s nearest, in perihelion, that is?” “Little under five million,” “In aphelion?” “Thirty-eight million miles.” AT THE CENTER OF GRAVITY 7i COLBIE NODDED, and again pushed Deverel from him. While the danger both faced had placed their per- sonal relationships in the background, Colbie didn’t want to take a chance. At any moment since Deverel had Ijeen, taken prisoner, Colbie reflected, the out- law had had an opportunity to turn the tables. “Vulcan’s almost exactly in aphelion now. Listen to this : Suppose we were to take somnolene, and sleep until peri- helion, or, rather, near perihelion. The Sun would be ” Deverel’s blue eyes fairly snapped, and his finely cut features lighted up ip an expression of revelation. “I’ve got it!’’ he exclaimed. “Certainly. But it doesn’t call for that much enthusiasm, does it?’’ Colbie regarded Deverel curiously. “Are you thinking of the same thing I am?’’ he demanded. Deverel hesitated for an instant. He smiled. “I am! You’re thinking of the Sun pulling us from ” “Right. And it seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Near perihelion the attrac- tion will be sufficiently powerful to exert a kind of tidal drag on us. We’d be pulled from center of gravity to the in- ner surface, of the day side. “That would leave us in the same predicaments you mentioned a while ago, except — there’d be no danger of falling back. And, of course,” he added with a touch of unleashed irritation, “it’d be like climbing a precipice to reach the hole. But we have to take our chances. No use hanging here, using up oxygen with each idle moment.” Deverel looked at him with an enig- matic expression, and nodded briefly. For a moment Colbie met his eyes with a frown of puzzled doubt; then they bumped against each other again Col- bie said: “You’ve got somnolene?” “Got it, but never had occasion to use it.” “It’s safe. Carter used it in 2490 when his ship broke down on Uranus. By the time he had it repaired, the fueling station on Ganymede, one of the Moons of Jupiter, was so far away he couldn’t make it. He took somnolene, slept fifteen years to conjunction with Jupiter, and made it back from Gany- mede none the worse. But we won’t have to stay under more than a month — Vulcan makes the rounds in three. How does it sound?” “Fine. But you needn’t ask my ad- vice, since I’m your prisoner, you know.” Colbie’s eyes narrowed. He could hardly miss the undercurrent of mock- ery in the outlaw’s manner. But since there was nothing tangible he could put his finger on, he cast the doubt from his mind, at least temporarily. “Then it’s us for somnolene. I don’t really place much faith in the idea, but it’s a chance, and we couldn’t live to perihelion on the oxygen we’ve got. I wish we could put the stars where they ought to be, as the saying goes, but that’s life.” They drifted together again. Colbie smiled a little, and grasping Deverel’s shoulders, whirled him around. “Very sorry,” he apologized. “But if you woke up before I did, you might play tricks. There’s a look in your eye, my fine fellow. Hands behind.” Deverel’s answer to this was to break free, with a sudden twist of his body. He floated away, Colbie’s beam calmly playing on him. The outlaw’s lips were twisted, almost stubbornly. Colbie smiled into his eyes. “Oh, no you don’t. It’s handcuffs for you, De- verel, or else this.” He drew his projec- tor, and leveled it at the outlaw. For a moment their eyes locked. De- verel tossed his head. “You win,” he said gruffly. AFTER A TIME he drifted back, and Colbie snapped the cuffs on with a click. 72 ASTOUNDING STORIES Colbie turned the outlaw around, flashed his beam on the waist of his suit. Beside the belt holding projector holster, and projectile compartments, there was a row of white buttons. “Somnolene is third on left,” mut- tered Deverel. Colbie pressed the third on the left. Instantly a thin rod arose, bearing in its grappling hook clutches a pellet of somnolene. Deverel reached out a tongue, and captured the drug. He swallowed it. The rod dropped back into the spacious interior of the suit, folded up inside the mechanism of which it was a part with a click. “Water,” murmured Deverel. “First on right.” Colbie elevated a thin metal tube. Deverel sucked and sighed. “That’ll keep us under a month. Right?” Jack Colbie grunted. He watched the other man, noted the glazing eyes, the face set in a sleepy half smile. Then he quickly swallowed his own pellet. He snapped off his beam, and lightlessness in the fullest sense of the word descended. He hung motionless. Deverel suddenly rubbed against him. “Happy dreams.” “Good night,” Colbie responded. He laughed to himself. There’d be no dreams with this sleep, for metabolism in the body ceased entirely with the in- troduction of somnolene into it. His thoughts suddenly skipped into haze, and then, for one second, his mind worked at a furious rate. He found himself saying, “It won't work! It won’t work!” Then he found himself unable to fol- low the thought. He felt a weight on his eyes, and the darkness of Vulcan’s interior rushed in upon his mind. His conscrbvisness dwindled to tiny points of thought, ^^ulcan — a bubble — not a chance — Kepler 1 He slept. HE AWOKE, with the sensation of spinning up from an abyss. Little thoughts came back, added to them- selves and presently chained them- selves together to perform that miracle called memory. Then he was fully con- scious, and conscious of a burst of sound that filled the darkness, and then died away. “Deverel!” He shouted it. “What the ” “Oh, you’re awake. It’s time.” Colbie collected his wits. He drew his flashlight. The beam caught Deverel in the face. “How long’ve you been awake?” he demanded. “And what in blue hell was that sound?” Deverel grinned. “That,” he said, “was me. I’ve been awake about two hours. I’m heavier than you, and the somnolene didn’t last as long.” He ex- pelled a long breath, “That sound was just one of the de- vices I’ve been using to amuse myself. First, when I awoke, I pushed against you to see how far away I could get. It wasn’t far. I always drifted back. I became horribly bored, and started shouting like a fiend. I was just won- dering if the sound wouldn’t be taken up by the cup-shaped sides of Vulcan, and reflected back a thousand times magnified. I haven’t got an echo yet, but I’m hoping for one any minute now. “Then I sang — terrible. You’ve no- ticed how flat our voices are, and that’s how, only w’orse, my song sounded. On Earth there are hundreds of blending echoes for a single sound. There’s noth- ing here for sound to reflect from. And then I gave that last shout you just heard.” “I’m glad I wasn’t awake for the singing,” Colbie remarked dryly. He paused, and said slowly, “Bad news, IDeverel. Just before I slept, I had a thought. The Sun can’t pull us from center.” AT THE CENTER OF GRAVITY 73 Deverel evinced no surprise. “I know it,” he said calmly. “I’ve been thinking deeper into the subject than I did be- fore, and have come to the same con- clusion. Do you know why, though?” His arms were twisting around be- hind his back, trying to ease the stiff- ness. “Kepler’s Second Law,” answered Colbie disconsolately, 'his eyes on Deve- rel’s twisting arms. “Turn around,” he said suddenly. “I’ll take those damned things off — must be uncomfortable. And it doesn’t make any difference now.” He unlocked Deverel’s wrists, and repeated, “Kepler’s Second Law. The radius vector of a planet describes equal areas in equal times, which is another way of saying that the nearer a planet gets to its primary, the greater is its angular velocity. Which means that centrifugal force equals centrepital.” Deverel nodded. “So we’d have just as much tendency to be thrown toward the night side as to be drawn toward the day side.” THEY lapsed into a silence which Deverel broke by absently humming an air. Colbie looked at him in surprise. Deverel shrugged his shoulders. “If we escape, I go to prison. The outlook is the same for me, whether we escape or don’t. Hm-m-m. We should’ve heard those echoes by now, if they’re coming at all.” Colbie laughed. He wished he could share Deverel’s view, but he decided he wasn’t that kind. And then he sud- denly wondered if Deverel ’s air of un- concernedness was based on something he knew that Colbie didn’t know. Was there actually a means of escape? His train of thought was broken when Deverel bumped against him again. He shoved the outlaw away, and then he felt himself spinning, head over heels. Suddenly he swept through the short distance separating him from Deverel, and contacted with a thud. He started spinning again, once, twice, and finally grabbed at Deverel’s legs. “I, too, am gyrating,” Deverel mur- mured, laughter in his subdued tones. He took a quick half spin, and locked his long legs about Colbie’s waist. Colbie put his flashlight in a pocket. “What is it?” he inquired. “Listen,” Deverel replied. Colbie listened, and heard a murmur- ing, sighing sound. The murmuring rushed into a whine. Colbie threw his arms around the outlaw. They spun madly, became motionless, and then felt themselves moving at a quickly accel- erating speed. Colbie heard a whining, keening sound that gradually grew louder, snapped off, and became a steady, rushing whir. Then, with an instantaneity that was startling they spun again, gyrating in the opposite direction with such pin- wheel rapidity that they lost their holds on each other. After a moment they crashed to- gether, the metallic parts of their suits clinking dully. Deverel was faughing as he locked his arms about Colbie. Colbie in turn hung on tightly. He had no time to think matters out, save that he knew they were in the grip of a swiftly moving current of gases. They con- tinued to spin, even as they swept for- ward at constantly increasing speed. Minutes of furious, driving speed passed. Colbie’s mind became fogged, for the swift rotation of his bodjr sent the blood to his head. Dimly, as from a far distance, he could hear a booming, thrphing, at times screaming, sound. He supposed, as in a dream, that num- berless gas currents in conflict were causing the bedlam. The cause of the wind he could only dimly suspect. HOW LONG their motion in this di- rection continued, Colbie did not know. But he calculated it to be some thirty or forty minutes. At the speed they had been going, fully half the distance be- 74 ASTOUNDING STORIES tween center and inner surface must have been consumed. After that time they began decelerating very rapidly. Simultaneously there was a rise in tem- perature. Groggily, Colbie hung on to Deverel. To have done otherwise would have subjected them to the bombardment of each other’s bodies. Perspiration began leaking through his skin, and soaked his inner clothing. He loosed an arm, and peaked a refrigeration unit up a notch, and gratefully felt the air in his suit cool off. Somewhat irrelevantly he wondered about Deverel’s echoes, and decided that if they really had been on the way back to center, they would have been lost by now in shifting vol- umes of gases. Gradually they became motionless, both in lateral motion and in rotatory. Somewhere off in the darkness whining, shrieking noises, the product of catapult- ing winds, still reigned. But here they were for a blessed moment becalmed, swaying back and forth in an indecisive, warm current. Colbie collected himself, took a deep breath. He released himself from De- verel, and drew his flash. For just a moment he saw the tense, anxious ex- pression on the face of the outlaw, and then it was gone. Deverel was grinning. “Some wind,” he murmured. “Yes, wind. But why? What caused it?” Deverel hesitated, and then said, “Well, Colbie, consider. Vulcan’s near the Sun, and the Sun’s heat worked through the day-side crust. The high albedo of the planet’s been fighting the heat, but the Sun got so close the heat sank through. The gases on the hot surface became heated, and came in conflict with cooler gases above. Winds would result.” He assumed an expression of alert- ness; then his eyes rested, for a mock- ing moment, on Colbie’s. Suddenly he threw his arms around Colbie. “Hang on! Listen!” Colbie listened. He heard a moaning, dipping cadence that seemed as if it were infinitely distant. It grew in vol- ume. Abruptly it took on a thousand discordant, screaming, weirdly chilling sounds. Colbie waited apprehensively. Then, as if some imponderable force had hurled itself against them, they felt themselves flung forward, in a straight angle. There was an abrupt sense of acceleration. Whether this was the same direction they had first pursued, or whether it was perpendicular or at an angle to it, Colbie did not know. Again he and Deverel whirled. Again his men- tal powers were fogged by the onrush of blood to the head. THF. WIND that bore them shrieked and moaned, and rose to a crescendo roar that culminated in a clap of thun- der. Abruptly they were tossed side- wise into the maw of a cooler current, and Colbie supposed they were falling toward the day side. The sudden change of direction did little to help him regain his full faculties. The current which held them con- tinued its straight course. It bellowed, and crooned, and quivered along false minors that were grotesquely plaintive. Then, point blank, it met a head wind. It shuddered, broke up into countless tiny currents that spewed off in all di- rections. The oncoming wind veered off, and the two men found themselves decelerating, hovering in a gentle breeze that cooled them. Colbie disentangled himself from the outlaw. “We can’t be far from the day side,” he remarked, shining his beam on De- verel again. “We’ve traveled a good distance,” Deverel admitted. “And,” he added, “we’re going to travel more. Here comes another wind.” Colbie heard it, an awful, hurrying AT THE CENTER OF GRAVITY 75 sound. He barely had time to attach himself to Deverel before the wind was on them. It struck them with the force of a tornado. It plowed into them, took them from the grip of the disinterested cur- rent in which they swayed, and gave them a tremendous initial velocity. The shock was too much. They grunted, and lost consciousness. Colbie regained his senses to find that he still held on to Deverel. They were eddying steadily but slowly. He heard a steady drone, tireless, relent- less, and indicative of great speed. Though other sounds could be heard, they were subordinated. There was a tiny, far-away scream; a hissing, in- sidious whisper; a spasmodic, tearing, angry roar, and all ^seemed fighting for admittance. And because they could not enter, Colbie felt a sensation of se- curity, as if he were in a sanctuary pro- vided by a swift, kindly current. He relaxed in relief, though danger had certainly not passed them by. Be- low somewhere, perhaps only a few miles,' was the jagged inner surface of the planet. He felt Deverel move in his arms. Up to this time the outlaw had been un- conscious. Long moments passed. The outlaw chuckled dervishly in his ear. “What’s amusing?” Colbie shouted above the drone. “What’s amusing?” Deverel reiterated. He laughed again, and stilled himself to say, “Colbie, I’ll tell you. But you won’t like the joke. I’ve just been think- ing how I’ll hate the prison bars, and the workshops on Mercury. I am a desperate criminal who needs freedom. WITH a sudden jerk he freed him- self. Then he placed his great space boots against Colbie and pushed — hard. “So.” he concluded, “au revoir!” His voice dwindled away into the darkness. and was swept away at the last by the drone. Though the reason for Deverel’s sud- den exodus was not apparent, Colbie’s reaction was sudden. With one hand he sent a beam of light stabbing into the darkness. With the other, he grabbed for his projector, and found it — gone. Colbie cursed, and continued to send the beam forth. For one instant he thought he saw Deverel, and with flail- ing arms he tried to make his way in that direction. He contacted nothing of a solid nature, but still he strove. At last, swearing steadily, venom- ously, but in real puzzlement, he relaxed. Then he listened. Nothing but the mo- notonous drone, and the evanescent, pleading sounds outside, met his ears. Deverel was gone, but where had he in- tended going? He abandoned action, and put his mind to work. He was spinning again, but slowly. Somehow Deverel had known a means of escape from Vulcan’s interior. Ever since Colbie had mentioned the Sun, he had known it. Colbie knew that now. And since then his actions had been suspicious. He had been more reluctant than was necessary when Col- bie locked his wrists together. He had been restraintive in discussing the cur- rents raging about them. Of course, the convection currents was the whole thing. Colbie cursed at his own idiotic lack of understanding, for now he knew. The winds! Sun heat had warmed up the day-side atmosphere ; cooler winds had been pushed and drawn from the central portion of the planet as the day-side winds rushed up along the sides of the planet. He and Deverel had been drawn Sunward by falling cur- rents. Erratic currents had grasped at them, some warm, some cooler. But the main thing was that the gases, in warming, would also expand. 76 ASTOUNDING STORIES Vulcan was filled to capacity with gases produced within itself. The expanding volumes of gas would have to escape. The only avenue of escape was the hole. Deverel had figured it out, step by step. He knew they would fall toward the day side in the arms of the descend- ing currents. He had kept his secret merely to keep Colbie off guard. It had worked splendidly. Colbie had had both projectors. Deverel had had ample op- portunity to confiscate both. Colbie could adequately grasp his motive there. “Damned good,” Colbie muttered an- grily, more in resentment against his own stupidity than against Deverel. “First, he’ll use reaction to shove him- self into the current of escaping gases. That’ll leave me out in the cold, unless I’m picked up by the current anyway. Second, if I do escape, I won’t be able to push myself toward the surface of Vulcan when I get out. That’ll give him plenty of time to effect a good es- cape, and throw me off his trail. Smart.” He waited patiently. He craned his ears for sound of a shot, but he didn’t hear it. Possibly Deverel had not thought reaction necessary ; possibly the bedlam of noise swallowed the sound. Colbie didn’t know. THE steady drone went on endlessly. Then, when Colbie was beginning to fear that he was merely traveling in a huge circle, the drone changed from its mon- otone to a struggling, beating roar, like that of surf breaking on rocks. It would die away in a furious churning, surge up again into a poisonous, scream- ing fury, and then recede again to the sound of rushing waters. Then its velocity broke, slackened, and its mighty, unchallenged superiority was gone, as currents from a dozen an- gles smote it. A maelstrom of conflict- ing winds tore at Colbie. He was caught up in a devil whirl, flung vio- lently about, like a puppet attached to innumerable contrarily pulled strings. Then another purposeful wind stream caught him, transferred to him a sensa- tion of security, and moved him along at acceleration. The temperature arose swiftly, and Colbie felt a leap of joy. Ht was in the grip of the escaping cur- rent ! A drop of perspiration grew on his nose. He blew it off with a breath ex- pelled upward. He waited, bracing him- self for the next shock. It came a soul-wrenching jerk, a burst of speed that eclipsed all others. At the same time the screaming and ranting of the winds opposing each other rose to un- precedented heights, and almost de- stroyed coherent reasoning in an awful cacophonic blast. Then it was gone, and all that could be heard was a rising, keening note that eventually passed beyond the limit of audition. Another single sound was born, and rose to nonexistence. And Colbie heard a gurgling, choking, belch- ing, sucking polyphony like the death rattle of a giant. He began spinning, slowly, evenly. He knew now that he was on the way through the crust of Vulcan. Apprehensively he waited, hoping he would not be brushed against the sides of the hole. But the current was twist- ing, the region of low pressure at cen- ter. The greater pressure on the out- side of the column, he reflected, would keep him at the center. A tornado, or twister, did the same thing when it sucked objects up. A second later, he burst into the cold of Vulcan’s night. The stars stared down frigidly, as he was spewed forth. EAGERLY, he looked about. But Deverel was not to be seen, either above or below. He arose swiftly, in the arms of the ascending current. He scanned the billowing, uniformly white surface of the planet from one horizon to the other, but he saw no sign of Deverel. AT THE CENTER OF GRAVITY 77 Down below, not more than five or six miles from the outlet, were the two ships, black cruisers anchored from chance, external forces by metal bits that ate deep into the surface. Deverel was still inside the planet, undoubtedly. Probably he had tried re- action, but the force had sent him the wrong way. It was hardly possible, Colbie reflected, that Deverel would not be thrown out, considering his own ease of escape. He went up and up. He suddenly saw the Sun, large as Jupiter from Ganymede. Its boiling rays brought beads of perspiration. He kept his refrigeration unit working at full power. Vulcan receded, its horizons drawing in toward each other. Colbie kept his eyes on the hole. And then — Deverel was erupted ! He came up, tumljling head over heels. He arose at tremendous velocity, a thousand and more feet below Colbie. Colbie watched, saw him draw a pro- jector, and fire it, straight up. Colbie winced as the projectile whizzed past his ear at two miles per second. Deverel, however, was not attempting to annihilate Colbie. His purpose had been to check his own velocity. He suc- ceeded. He came to a halt. For a mo- ment he was still ; then he fired again. The reactionary force sent him spin- ning awkwardly from the up-blast, and down toward the white, wavy surface of Vulcan. Colbie was still rising when Deverel landed. In a single leap the outlaw reached his ship. Then he stood in front of it, and waved his arms, both of them. Colbie half-heartedly waved back. Deverel tumed back to the ship, worked on the door for a moment, opened, and stepped into the air lock. The door shut after him. , A few moments elapsed, and then the cruiser rose. With a hack firing of rockets, it swiftly disappeared into black, star-speckled space. Colbie kept it in sight as long as he could. He smiled in chagrin. Skid-rayed! He felt like a child who has missed lessons in school. But he found that he didn’t really care. Deverel would es- cape, yes, but not for long. Hours later, he started drifting back. Bubble it was, but Vulcan had enough pull to save him from the Sun. GLAGULA He came from somewhere in space — but space charts, too, are relative! by Warner Van Lome F ive years and more have slipped away since that fateful expedition into the arctic wastes in 1931. Five years in w’hich Jim VVeatherall’s hair has grayed at the tem- ples; years during which he has re- fused to change his address, although business blocks have hemmed his house until it stands alone among towering structures of stone. Perhaps even I would not understand had he not felt the desperate need to get away st)metimes. But he has felt that need — and some one had to remain in his house, some one who knew At first he held me to my promise of silence rigidly. But as the weeks be- came months he weakened. “If you must write it,” he said, “you may — after five years. But do it as a story, as fiction, or you will be laughed at as a lunatic.” THE white blanket spread like a boundless, glistening sea in every direc- tion — clean snow, unbroken by the fee- ble works of men. Majestic Alaskan mountains, towering only a few miles away, made Jim feel small, insignificant. One spot in all that vast expanse was marked by dirt thrown from a jagged hole that cut several feet down into the ftuzen earth. Jim’s eyes clouded slightly as they touched it; it represented dis- appointment. For weeks, six men had toiled un- ceasingly, hopefully, tracing the slight showing of gold. Tliey had dreamed of fortune; but the dream faded. Now they would dig and test at other spots short distances apart. Somewhere in the vicinity of their diggings, the earth held a heavy lode of virgin gold. Jim Weatherall treasured a map, sketched by old “Sourdough” Graves, who had staggered back to civilization half frozen, with a fortune, in his jeans. Storms had buried all signs of the work- ings before Graves had returned with new supplies, and the secret still waited rediscovery. But Jim, advonture-bent, gathered five friends who were certain they could succeed, where the close- mouthed old prospector had completely failed. He, Bill Heally, Harold Pratt, John Forbes, and Malcolm Green, invested all they had on the prospect ; leaving Tom Hoag, a wealthy young doctor, just finished with his interneship, only half the expenses of the expedition to meet ! Tom wanted a fling at travel and adventure before settling down to a practice. And because he had been Jim’s roommate in college, because they thought and talked alik& — and could agree !— he welcomed the venture. Now, for six weeks they had been digging. But the map showed a gen- eral location — not a spot — and the cabin they occupied only placed their work within an encircling half mile ! The mapped area was at the very edge of the belt of thaw which reached its fingers into the North country. The snow never quite disappeared from the It was all the six men could do to carry the great carcass up the bank of snow. ground. The earth itself never thawed. It was a country of bad storms, with only a few months of the year when men could exist in any semblance of comfort. Before noon the diggers were near- ing the frozen earth surface. The snow thrown from the hole had been piled as a windbreak to prevent drifting into the diggings with the first storm. It seemed useless to erect a shelter before they found the lode. Jim had left for the snow-banked cabin to prepare a lunch when Tom Hoag whistled suddenly and leaned for- ward. His companions gazed, spell- bound, while he slowly and carefully uncovered the object his shovel had touched. A few minutes later Jim called to them from the doorway, but there was no answering hail, so he donned his snowshoes and moved slowly across the field. His eyes were squinted against the bright light when he reached the hole and peered down. Then he, too, stood speechless. His five companions were lifting the frozen body of a man out of the hole. And what a man ! Huge ! .With skin like the surface of an alabaster vase ! A body perfectly symmetrical, with features that were strong, intelli- gent — but somehow alien. The body appeared to be in perfect preservation, as if the cold had penetrated instantly and had frozen a stirprised expression on the features. 80 ' ASTOUNDING STORIES JIM RECOVERED from a little of the shock, and hurried to give them a hand. It was all the six men could do to carry the great carcass up the bank of snow. The weight seemed to be far greater than it should be, even allow- ing for the gigantic proportions. Sweat poured from their bodies, though the thermometer was hovering just above zero. As his eyes became accustomed to the light, Jim noticed that the man was dressed in .most peculiar garments. During frequent pauses he examined the clothing carefully. Leather sandals, with lacings crisscrossed nearly to the knees, were all that protected the legs. A har- ness arrangement of leather which was soft, pliable and seemingly impervious to the cold which had stiffened its wearer. A light garment, like a silken rohe, was thrown carelessly across the shoulders, of a texture which did not seem woven — but rather seemed as if it were spun as a spider spins a thread, continuously in its entire area. There were beautifully wrought metal buckles, with an\ opalescent sheen, sug- gesting the art of craftsmen more skilled than we in the Machine Age have known. And the metal in the fittings was light; lighter than aluminum, yet hard and tough. Bill Heally, testing, found it would cut glass. It was harder than a diamond point! Very carefully, the body was laid in the snow outside the cabin. It was a find which left Tom’s’ eyes glowing. It meant more to him than gold. Jim helped him stretch a tape measure from the man’s head to his feet. Seven feet eight inches! “What do you think, Tom?” It was Jim who broke the silence. “I thought I knew something about history, but he doesn’t fit — and he doesn’t look like any of the natives I’ve seen.” Tom shook his head dazedly. “I don’t know, Jim. I don’t know. He is too heavy for his size — too heavy, that is, for a normal Earthling. I would guess that he weighs five hundred pounds, possibly even more. I have never seen a body so perfectly pre- served, as if the cold hit him so quick and hard that it caught him in mid- motion, freezing every cell in his body — like catalepsy. “He might have lain here for cen- turies unnoticed. And then again — he may have been here only a part of this winter. I — did you notice the peculiar quality of his skin ? And a certain alien effect in his features ?” “Do you mean to say this — thing comes from another world?” Tom shook his head slowly. “No,” he answered, “I don’t mean to say anything, except that I want you fellows to drop me out of the digging business for a time. I want to study this giant of ours. “It may mean a great deal to the world, historically or medically. I don’t know. But I fear that its return to a warm climate might end bur chance to study it. Here, if we build a shelter to protect it from the Sun’s rays, it will keep forever.” “O. K.. Tom, if that’s the way you want to play, but as far as I’m con- cerned, you’ll have to play all by your- self. I’m still a prospector ! How about you fellows?” Bill Heally asked. Harold Pratt, Malcolm, and John, nodded and turned slowly away. Jim alone seemed to hesitate, but he caught a slight wink from Tom, and a jerk of the head. So he, too, turned and went back to the cabin. LONG AFTER his tired compan- ions had gone to bed, Jim Weatherall sat with his head in his hands, think- ing. Tom had entered the cabin sev- eral times to warm himself by the fire, but had returned immediately to his minute study of the frozen stranger. He was making copious notes. Jim glanced at them once. The condition of GLAGULA 81 the skin, the veins, the muscular posi- tions, the number of sweat glands. This was all natural. But Tom’s ex- citement had increased as the hours passed ; and it should have lessened ! Something very unusual must cause this increasingly eager study, and Jim, feel- ing the tension in his friend, waited pa- tiently. At two o’clock it happened. Tom had warmed himself before the fire, never losing his expression of strained expec- tancy. And as he left he beckoned for Jim to follow. In a hoarse whisper then, he broke tbe news with startling abruptness. “Jim, I think he’s alive.” Tom watched his friend’s face hopefully, fear- fully, but Jim didn’t answer, and he went on, “I’ve given him every test that my limited medical equipment allows. I’ve even extracted a bit of bis frozen blood. It’s slightly different from ours, Jim, but I believe I have adrena- line — I have, I think, everything I need. If we take him back to civilization, he’s through. I — ^you’ve always understood, Jim — the other boys couldn’t. Help me through, will you? I want to try to bring him back to life ! “It will be the greatest step forward in the history of medical science if I succeed, and I feel I will. Life might not come back normal. If it doesn’t ii will be tragedy. But if it does, this stranger will learn to talk to us, and I think we would be surprised by what he could tell. “Will you help me, Jim?” Jim’s voice was hoarse as he an- swered. “And if you fail ?” “If I fail?” Tom’s words seemed pointed at a distant star. “If I fail, the cold will do its work again, and we will return him to civilization.” Jim nodded solemnly and they shook hands under the arctic sky, like two men who were about to separate forever. There was a fever glowing in Tom’s eyes, and Jim caught some of its in- fectious urge as he asked: “Have you thought how we could keep them” — his head inclined backward toward the cabin — “from butting in?” Tom nodded quickly. “Yes. I’ve thought it out. Let’s cover our friend against marauders and get some sleep. There’s plenty to do to-morrow.” II. IT WAS expected that Tom would spend his time studying the frozen stranger. So he was able to putter about the camp without raising the slightest further curiosity. The main party returned to the new diggings, ami weren’t even mildly concerned when Jim lent a hand in erecting a shelter to house the giant’s body. The active diggers were not even aware that Tom had appropriated the spare gasoline stove and the extra tank for melting snow. They did not even bother to look into the makeshift labora- tory. Had they done so, they might have been surprised to find that weather stripping made the shack wind-tight, and that the temperature was kept above the freezing point — and gradu- ally increased as the hours stretched into days. It was on the fourth night, after the aching bodies of four men had relaxed in sleep, that Tom hurried Jim Weath- erall out to the shelter with him. “We’ve got to hurry,” he explained. “The body is close to the point of limp- ness. Before morning we should know the answer. No sleep to-night.” The tense expectancy which had driven Tom day after day with little or no sleep caught Jim now. His friend’s words seemed to come from some vague distance, and he had to force himself to listen. “The big tank of water is ready, and I believe it will draw the rest of the frost in an hour. We must raise its temperature slowly, almost to blood 82 ASTOUNDING STORIES heat, before I try restoratives. It may take all night.” Hour after hour slipped away. Tom’s cheeks were colored by a hectic fever flush as his mental faculties concen- trated on watching every detail of change. Time after time his arm dipped into the tepid water, touching the iron- hard flesh, testing, changing. Both men grew tense. Anxiety was written on brows, which were concentrated on a seemingly impossible purpose. But slowly the stiffness was leaving the body. Slowly it was returning to a natural state of limpness. Slowly the tepid water became lukewarm. Slowly the thermometer in the shelter crept up- ward. Time seemed to creep slower and slower as the crisis neared. Tom Hoag, alone, moved fast, testing every reflex and every slightest hint of change in the cumbersome body ; with- drawing a drop of blood as limpness returned to the giant. Again and again he tested the blood. It was not con- gealing ! After the eleventh blood test he turned to Jim. His voice was a hoarse whisper, for his throat was dry. ‘‘The frost is gone,” he said, and to- gether the two struggled until they had lifted the body from the tank and laid it on warm blankets beside the tank. Touching the limp flesh for the first time, Jim felt a queer, tingling fear per- meate his being. But Tom Hoag re- acted like a machine. He put Jim to work at artificial respiration, while he massaged the body briskly with a towel. Then he seized a hypodermic needle which lay waiting, and injected a serum into the heart. Tom devoted three minutes more to brisk massage, then gave a second in- jection, then a third. Jim was tiring, and Tom replaced him astride the bar- rellike chest, never losing a stroke in the artificial breathing. Time was for- gotten. But it seemed like hours to their aching muscles. Jim again re- placed Tom. The giant’s cheeks were beginning to show a touch of color. Tom took Jim’s place again. They had forgotten everything except that the color of fife was coming into the face of the stranger. Time passed, and tired muscles shrieked messages even into their excited brains! They forgot how often they changed places. Jim was working now, forward and down, up and back, motions timed to normal breathing. Tom took a long chance and injected another shot of adrenaline. When Tom once more took up the work, Jim gasped as he glimpsed the gray of early dawn through the crack under the door. It brought a new fear that they be disturbed on the verge of success. He heard Tom exclaim, and saw him stop moving. Jim’s tired eyes focused slowly on the huge body, then for a second time sleep was washed from his system in an instant. The strange giant was breathing naturally, unas- sisted! He sank to the floor, his aching mus- cles quivering from the strain; but his brain raced. They had succeeded ! The giant was coming back to life ! Tom emptied a hypodermic into the pulsing arteries, and wrapped the living body tight in the blankets. He turned up the stove and the heat hovered around eighty in the tiny room. The stranger was sleeping. He moved slightly in his sleep! Tom Hoag’s face glowed with a mix- ture of exultation and accomplished de- sire. Jim’s reflected incredulity; an in- ability to believe his senses as he kept glancing toward the sleeping stranger. Tom’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “Jim, can you keep our prospectors from coming over here before noon? Try? Our new friend will sleep for a while; I’ve seen to that. You’d better not return until they’ve gone to work. He may be awake by then, and I may need you.” The words sobered Jim, and he nod- GLAGULA 83 The two men from Earth remained quiet, as pictures of this strange giant’s civilization flashed through their minds. 84 ASTOUNDING STORIES ded slowly. The great fear still re- mained that the man’s brain might not function properly. Or if it did, he might be a savage, and with the strength of that gigantic body, Tom might well need a friend when he awoke. THREE HOURS LATER Jim opened the door to the shelter, fearful of what he might find inside. There had not been a sound or a word from Tom since he had closed the door be- hind him and returned to the cabin. But now, as his eyes adjusted them- selves to the half light, he found two men looking at him. One he knew. The other? His knees felt suddenly weak and he sank down beside the door. For several minutes Jim Weatherall's fascinated eyes were glued to those of the giant. He noted that although the temperature made perspiration boil out on his body, the stranger seemed to hover close to the stove, as if he were cold. “I’m glad everything’s all right,” Jim said hoarsely, and to his amazement it was the giant who answered. In some unknown tongue, to be sure, but unmis- takably in greeting. Tom smiled. “I’ve been talking to him for an hour, Jim. His brain is O. K. And he is enough of a master of thought trans- ference so he can not only read our thoughts, but can transmit his own clearly to us. He is, as I suspected, a contemporary. At least, we think so. He hails from another planet, but since names do not match up very well, I am unable to place it exactly as yet. You see, he studied the galaxies from a dif- ferent viewpoint from ours, and it might take days or weeks to orient the two viewjx)ints and discover whether he means one of our familiar neighbors, or whether he hails from some unknown world in the outer galaxies. “However that may be, his world is smaller than ours, and because of its lesser gravity its people have developed a greater weight and size. His world is close to some sun, for it maintains a constant heat much greater than we have in this room.- As nearly as I can understand it, he never knew the mean- ing of cold until it gripped and froze him. He had not gone far from his space ship before it happened ” “Space ship!” Jim exploded. “Space ship? You mean to say ” He glanced toward the giant, who was smil- ing and nodding his head affirmatively. The man understood everything they had been saying I Shivers of fear began to crawl in Jim’s spine. The giant was looking directly into his eyes, and Jim could jeel his thoughts, but the message he felt was reassuring, and his fears re- laxed. Tom’s words seemed almost to break in on a conversation when he said : “Yes, Jim, he came in a space ship which cannot be far from here. He may have landed centuries ago. We cannot know until he can check the gal- axies for time position by means of his instruments. But it seems more reason- able to believe that he is a contemporary and that he may have landed no longer ago than early in this present winter season.” The giant’s thought images had with- drawn as Tom spoke. Jim had to jerk his mind back to the words. They seemed to grate after the wordless un- derstanding thrown on his mind by the giant. “What do you call him, Tom?” Jim was curious. To his surprise, the giant answered; “Glagula!” The man had understood the thought behind Jim’s words. He repeated, “Glagula,” as he pointed to himself, then “Tom,” pointing, and finally “Jim” as his finger stabbed for- ward. GLAGULA 85 FOR SEVERAL MINUTES Jim looked into his eyes, suddenly realizing — they were getting acquainted, as if talking with words. After a moment it seemed a natural way to converse. There was nothing strange, except that he had never done it before. A country of heat slowly formed in his mind, not too hot to live in, but comparable to the heat of the Sahara. There were beauti- ful buildings, with green lawns around them. The people seemed happy and not out of proportion — they Nvere all the size of the giant. His people; the race he came from, with the same character- istics. Huge ships sailed majestically over- head. They did not appear to be made of metal; they looked more like frosted glass. They were all lighter than air machines, resembling a tear drop in shape, beautiful beyond description. There were moving tracks in the streets for transportation. Everything repre- sented a higher civilization than that on earth. The architecture was strange, with a foreign beauty. Every mechanism, as well as the buildings, were placed in what would be considered a rural atmosphere on Earth. Green growth covered as much space as the structures, giving a very pleasing effect to everything. It showed planning well ahead of develop- ment; an understanding of a future far beyond the point of Earthtime. Suddenly his mind was snapped back to see the giant smiling at him. Tom was smiling, too. He knew what had been passing between the two minds. Then Jim smiled as well, and held out his hand to the stranger from another world. They had become friends in the few minutes of perfect understanding. Three men, two from Earth and one from untold distance, sat for a long time with pictures of the world and its civili- zation pictured in Tom and Jim’s minds while the giant returned the pictures of his own land. There were many things beyond comprehension in the strange country, and Glagula tried to explain by showing their action. But the cars re- mained a mystery. There was no source of electric energy, no power plants of any kind, yet they traveled smoothly at terrific speeds. The greatest wonder to the giant was the cold and snow. He could not coin- prehend heat, and try as they would, they could not explain it to his satis- faction. He. had never known any rela- tive heat values. On his native planet they did not exist; his people used a different means of manufacture. The j)ower came from some source the Earthmen could not understand. After struggling to make tlieir thoughts understood for several minutes, Jim got so excited he burst into speech. “Darn it all; it’s as -’’ Then he stopped as they all burst into laughter. All restraint between them was gone. At a slight sound Jim glanced up. Malcolm Green stood in the doorway ! For a moment he stood frozen, his eyes trying to pop out of his head. Then, with a groan, he crumpled in a faint ! The sight of a corpse come back to life had been too much. Jim carried him outside and rubbed snow in his face until his eyes opened, and he looked wildly around. Jump- ing to his feet, stark fear in his face, he glanced toward the small Iniilding, then ran like a wild man toward the cabin. HI. LUNCH TIME had come and the prospectors had returned. Finding Jim absent, Malcolm went searching for him. Jim realized the party had to be told, and from the sound of excited voices Malcolm was telling plenty. But what could he say? Eyes peered around the corner of the building, but none came to investigate. Jim decided to let them talk for a few minutes and went back inside. Tom 86 ASTOUNDING STORIES and the giant, too, would want to eat. He could tell his story while he got lunch. The men were still talking in awed tones mixed with fear when Jim en- tered the cabin. Malcolm still looked as if he had seen a ghost. There were strings of questions waiting. “Don’t look as if you’d seen a ghost, Malcolm. He is a human being. Tom brought him back to life. We knew you wouldn’t have put up with the experi- ment if you had known, so we kept it secret. You happened to stumble in there before we told you. “The facts will astound you. He’s not of this world, but from another planet. You will want to get acquainted with him ’’ Suddenly Jim stopped. They were looking at him as if he him- self was a freak from another world. They could not believe him! For a moment he didn’t comprehend. Then the truth struck him. They thought he was trying to joke at the expense of their common sense. When he knew they didn’t believe, he stopped. “All right, then, come over and see for yourselves. He won’t mind, and then you will know.’’ He started toward the shelter, but they were slow to follow. Malcolm wouldn’t budge, but the others came slowly out of the door, looking as if they expected to go through a terrible ordeal instead of displaying any interest in what they might find. When they reached the doorway they stopped. A green pallor slowly crept up Bill Heally’s neck. The giant was facing the other way, and they watched for a moment before he turned to them. This was too much, and with one con- certed rush they headed back for the cabin to join Malcolm. If there had been any way of fast escape from the spot they would have taken it without a second’s thought. The giant was plainly puzzled, but Jim explained their actions as best he could. A frown appeared on the crea- ture’s forehead. He seemed to be think- ing. Tom and Jim, watching him, were puzzled trying to fathom his thoughts. The door opened again and the four men walked in, looking straight toward Glagula. For the first time Tom and Jim felt a slight fear. The rest of the party was helpless to oppose his will. The room was small, and with seven in it there was hardly air to breathe. When they were all standing around the wall facing him, the giant seemed to re- lease them. They looked startled at first, then fear showed plainly. When he looked at them to make his thoughts known they were more fearful than ever. There was no possibility of a friendly understanding immediately. The stranger gave it up with a sigh. These men weren’t worth bothering with. When they felt free to leave there was no time wasted. The door shut behind them before either Tom or Jim could say a word. It was a long time before Jim started back to the cabin. His friends had dis- appointed him, but he realized they were no different than the majority of the human race. It left him with a sort of empty, insignificant feeling toward his own. The giant was watching, reading his thoughts. Jim understood when Gla- gula let his mind say he was sorry things had to be that way. He had hoped to visit the world and learn its secrets ; but he knew now that it couldn’t be done; he would be a freak. There was no hope that a stranger from another planet could pass among the world of men without creating a sensation. Jim finally went back to the cabin. His four comrades were too upset even to ask questions. They talked together, in tones too low for Jim to understand. The little party seemed suddenly divided into two groups, an invisible barrier be- tween them. GLAGULA 87 THE rest of the day Jim spent in the small building with the giant. He and Tom thoroughly enjoyed the company of the stranger and spent hours in si- lent, mental conversation. They learned many things about his strange country and told him many things about their own Earth. The others wouldn’t come near all afternoon, but toward dark they came in a body to stand for a few minutes and look at the man. He paid no at- tention, did not try to create any men- tal contact with them. When they th(jught they had done their duty, they turned in a body to retrace their steps to the main building. Somewhere, only a short distance from where they found the man, was his ship. It must be covered with snow, as he had been. The man could not have gone far with his light clothing in the arctic cold. It was a fairly flat plain where they had camped and there was not much opportunity for anything of any size to be hidden by the snow. There was a slight ridge of snow a few hundred feet away, but after spending several hours ti'ggi'ig they struck earth. A dome of ice a half mile away had never been investigated. Now it caught their attention. They were tired from shoveling snow all day, but the possibil- ity of seeing a strange ship gave them new energy. Each man had created a different idea of the ship in his own mind. But they all knew it must be something strange to conquer space. When they drew closer, this dome appeared like ordinary ice, yet it was not until they had examined the ex- posed surface carefully that they knew it ended the search. If a petrified whale had been covered with snow and the skin had the glint and appearance of green glass ; that would describe the sight clearly. With one end large, it tapered to very near a point at the far end. It was impossi- ble to hold a footing on the smooth sur- face except directly on top, where there was no slope. The ship must be quite large, as the section above snow was nearly a hun- dred feet long and the widest part over thirty feet. The surface had the appear- ance of glass that had been walked on by thousands of feet until it no longer allowed any one to see what was inside. The five men walked back and forth, examining every inch of surface. It looked to be perfectly round at the large end. If they had not been looking for a ship it would have been passed un- noticed as just another peculiar ice formation. Upon careful scrutiny they could see fine hair lines in the surface, spaced evenly. These looked like very fine welded seams. It was a certainty, the ship was built of separate pieces. Jim had more than half expected to find it was just one huge casting of some kind. They went to w'ork, and before dark made a good impression on the surface. It would take weeks to uncover the whole ship, if there were enough of them to do it, during the time between storms. Darkness caught them before they had uncovered many feet more than was clear when they found it. The whole party w'as excited; Jim was the least affected of the group, for he had grown 'more accustomed to strange things. The others were more interested in the ship than they had been in the strange man. This was something they were not afraid of ; it did not seem superhuman. The next morning they were back at work as soon as there was light enough to see by. Instead of digging along the edge in different places, they went to work in one spot and soon had ex- posed quite a bit of the side. This area was gradually extended, and be- fore lunch, what appeared like a port in the side was uncovered. From then on the excitement knew no bounds. 88 ASTOUNDING STORIES They did not want to stop for lunch, but finally gave in when nothing else was found in an hour. THE AFTERNOON passed the same way, until just before dark. Then the snow where they were working slid into a large opening in the hull. It was a port! Frantically the snow was dug out of the way and thrown to the side until the passage was clear enough so they could crawl into the entrance by getting down on hands and knees. It was too dark inside to see more than shadowy outlines of objects, but these set imaginations running riot. They cleared away enough snow out- side so there was no danger of the opening being covered again by wind. It was shoveled back and banked as a windbreak. When they turned toward the cabin it was pitch dark. The news of their success was wel- come to Glagula. He listened as Jim told Tom what he had seen of the ship. He described it in detail, but it did not seem to interest Tom to a great extent. He was satisfied to just sit in silent un- derstanding w'ith the giant. It was tiresome for Glagula to sit in- doors all the time, but the cold was a real menace to him. Used to much greater heat than the other men, the cold had that much greater effect. He even felt a chill when the door was opened, although it was uncomfortably warm inside. There were no clothes to fit him, and he had to get along by just wrapping blankets around himself for warmth. The giant seemed to take a slight liking toward the others w’hen he real- ized they had spent all day trying to dig out his ship ; but he and Tom seemed completely satisfied with each other’s company. There was a potent bond be- tween them. Tom was building a live interest in the other man’s world and listening, mentally, for hours, to descrip- tions of the civilization shown to him. Jim joined the main party just after daybreak in a hurried breakfast, then returned to the ship. The fever of curiosity was burning in them all. They entered the ship with a feeling of looking at another world. Things were strange, but there was some equip- ment which there was no mistaking. Rooms with sleeping equipment were built along one side, adjoining a well- stocked galley. Many strange foods were stored on the shelves in wrappers of thin material which evidently re- placed cans for preserving. There seemed to be no direct passage from the section they entered to the rest of the ship. This puzzled them considerably. There was a blank wall running through the middle of the ship, lengthwise, with no break in it. The section with the sleeping rooms and gal- ley was only about thirty feet long, but search as they might, there seemed no way to enter any other part of the ship. They searched every inch of wall without success, and were about ready to give up in disgust when Jim realized one of them was missing. Bill Heally was gone! He had been standing with them a minute before. John Forbes went out to see if it was possible he could have headed for camp without say- ing anything. There was no sign of him. The four men began to have creepy feelings along their spines. Even Jim felt that something was wrong. After thinking for several minutes they placed the spot he had been the last time they noticed. There was a small space side of the galley, like a small storage space, with- out anything in it. Harold Pratt re- membered Bill examining that space, and no one could recall seeing him after- ward. Jim approached the opening wdth a feeling of unexplainable trepidation. It was perfectly plain, with no sign of opening except to the passage they stood in. After a careful examination GLAGULA 89 The control cabin of the ship held their attention for quite a while, stopped Bill just before he tried one of the levers experimentally he stepped inside. It was just large enough to hold one man the size of the giant. He looked over the wall, but there was nothing; then some one was shouting in his ear. “Help! Help! Oh, is that you, Jim? I thought I had gone a little bit nutty. I was with you fellows one minute — the next I was in a different part of the ship. Boy, am I glad to see you!” Jim’s mouth hung c>pen. He was no longer where he had been ! He was with Bill Heally. The others had dis- ajijreared. Then the truth of what hap- pened cleared, although he did not try to understand. THE SPACE he had entered was the means of getting from one part of the ship to the other ; but he had felt no movement. Before him was the nose of the craft ; thdre was no mistaking it. A clear vision plate was before an in- strument panel, with odd charts and dials set in a sloping board overhead. The simplicity, yet the feeling of great 90 ASTOUNDING STORIES power, held him in its grip for a mo- ment before he stepped forward to ex- amine at close range. As he bent over to see the small le- vers and buttons there was a commotion behind him. Harold Pratt was in the room with them; a second later John Forbes and Malcolm Green joined them. They had got up nerve enough to follow. The control cabin held their atten- tion for quite a while, and Jim stopped Bill just before he tried one of the levers experimentally. “Don’t! There might still be some power in this thing. We don’t want to find ourselves out in space somewhere.” It was a different matter to get out of the room again. The door or elevator — they never decided quite what it was — would not work. It evidently was auto- matic from only one direction. From this side it did not seem to operate. Jim thought over every possible solu- tion, but nothing would answer. As he stood in it, after giving up hope, he thought of the galley — and found him- self back there. For a moment the full significance did not appear. Then he realized — it was actuated by thought waves. When the truth was brought home he could not force himself to ap- proach it again for several minutes, but the thought of the others caught on the other side madd him find nerve enough to reenter the space. He was back with them before he had time to think what was happening. He explained, then experimented himself. He was not satisfied to stop his trip through the ship if there was any way to continue. Trying out a different thought, the action was very slow. ' He thought of the engine room, but evi- dently the mechanism could not under- stand just what he wanted. He stood for two or three minutes ; .^then, as if it had figured out what he wanted, like a human brain, he was sud- denly at the point he wanted to reach. It was uncanny, but it worked. He returned, after some trouble, and per- suaded the others to follow him. He knew what the room looked like, and the “space that moved” as they nick- named it, carried him back without a hitch. The others appeared a moment later. It took them some minutes to recover from the feeling of mystery enough so they could enjoy their surroundings. The warmth of the ship began to affect them. Excitement had been enough to hold their attention to other things be- fore. It must have been close to a hundred inside the hull. There was some source of warmth beyond their understanding. Everything in the ship had the same temperature, yet this did not affect the snow lying against the hull. Their heavy garments began to come off one after the other to hang over arms as they continued the tour. The engine room was a disappoint- ment. There was nothing to see ! One huge box, or case, in the center was the only object aside from a few gauges on the wall. It was very plain, with no sign of a motor to drive the ship. There was no possible way for the box to connect with the outer hull so as to give driving force. It evidently employed some unknown power. The rest of the small party was will- ing to follow Jim, as if they felt he was the only way to get out of the ship. He led them from one part of the hull to another, but there was not a great deal of interest to be seen. Too many of the things were not understandable. He found that, thinking of any part of the ship while standing in the space that moved, placed him there instantly. They could tour the whole hull with- out trouble. Each time he went to a new room he returned to the others to tell them where to come, otherwise GLAGULA 91 they might find themselves in separate sections. One big storage room was very in- teresting. They spent a long time there. Food enough to feed an army was stored away in neat tiers. It was very interesting to look at food that only faintly resembled any on Earth. The containers were semistiff, but of very tough material. IV. IT WAS NOON before they re- turned to camp. Time had flown. Jim got lunch and took it over to Tom and the stranger before he told them of the further discoveries. They tried to figure out some means of transporting the giant to the ship. 'I'liere he would have a warm atmos- phere, with room enough to move around. But there seemed no way to get him there without exposure to the cold. The only possible method was to wrap him in heavy blankets and draw him on the sled they used to move heavy things around camp. Even that would be dangerous. Jim was certain the heat in the ship was sufficient to make him comfortable, with room to get a little exercise. He hadn’t been able to move more than a few feet from the time he was revived. The ship would make more comfortable living quarters for all of them. During the evening he spoke to the others about moving the stranger, and they joined him in trying to devise some way. The relief they would feel at be- ing separated farther from him, rather than his comfort, drove them to think of every type of conveyance. They de- cided finally to construct a shelter on the sled — not very big, but large enough to hold the man — which could be heated enough to keep him from freezing. In the morning they went to work building the shelter, and installed one of the small oil heaters. With padding, it would be very comfortable, and they could move him safely. Before dark it was finished, but they waited until the following morning for the trip. The sled with the shelter was heavy, and with the man inside, it would be a ter- rific task. Jim returned to the ship and made sure it was heat, and not just imagina- tion, which made him sweat inside the hull. The temperature remained the same. The heat had a peculiar quality, very much the same as rotting vegeta- tion casts off. ANOTHER EVENING passed while Jim and Tom spent their time in silent exchange of thoughts with the giant. He had a wonderful mind, and it was a pleasure to be able to see the visions passing within that brain like a marvelous moving picture, displaying scenes of surpassing beauty, set in a strange land. The pictures were so clear Jim felt he would know where he was if sud- denly transported. Many of the sights were beyond his faintest comprehension — too intricate for minds unaccustomed to their use. Great machines with slowly moving parts, performing tasks of every description. There seemed no speed to any of the big machines, just silent, powerful forces working at a majestic rate. They did not strain; there was ample power without effort. The means of transportation were very odd. For all surface travel this world used moving platforms. Through the rural districts these were units ; but in the cities they were a steady-moving belt. Set on the level with the ground, it was simple to get on or off. Where there was high speed required, they changed from one track to another with a gradual increase in speed, until the platform was flying along at many miles an hour. On the faster tracks wind- breaks protected the riders from the blasts as they shot forward, but nowhere 92 ASTOUNDING STORIES was there a ground track with any kind of cover. There was nothing to show any sort of protection from storms. They were not prepared for them, and evidently did not have any. A strange world in- deed, without fear of the elements. A land of perpetual sunshine, for the .sun never dropped below the horizon. The glow of sunshine came through a con- stant filming of mist, diffusing the light evenly over the landscape. The sun changed position every few hours, and sank toward the ground only to swing up again before it could dip below the rim of the horizon. The planet seemed to be very close to its sun. The only reason it was habitable was the protection of the thick cloud banks, throwing back the rays before they could touch the surface. Jim asked about the other side of the planet with his mind, and a great fear and dread of the dark surface showed plainly on the giant’s face, while his mind showed such strained and tortured pictures it was hard for the Earthmen to follow the thoughts. They turned their minds quickly away from this nightmare. Animals vaguely resembling the do- mestic beasts of Earth, but of much greater proportion, grazed in the sun- lighted fields. There were, unmistak- ably, some milch animals. These re- sembled the nearly extinct bison of the western plain more than any other type of Earth animal. They appeared as gentle as cows, and were handled and trained the same way. They were also the great supply of meat, and huge herds were raised for the city markets. Glagula held some exalted position among his own people, wielding power and influence. Tom and Jim relived the start of the interplanetary flight, saw a vast crowd watching him take off. There were two others in the party when they started, but a terrible ex- perience on a small planet midway to Earth cost both their lives. Glagula carried many scars from the encounter with completely savage beings. Truly, the trip between planets had beetr a great adventure. Slowly the thoughts faded as the giant looked at Tom and Jim expectantly. They followed with complete pictures of Earth civilization. Several times Glagula stopped them to have the pic- tures of heat and fire gone over a sec- ond time. Heat seemed completely be- yond his comprehension ; fire stirred a strange unrest in him. He had dis- played great fear of the stove at first, but gradually became accustomed to it. Any flame or intense heat was far too great a wonder for him to try and un- derstand. Several times he tried to show his lack of understanding, and had them explain different means of controlling fire. When they showed pictures of big fires destroying buildings, with men working to stop the spread, a satisfied expression appeared on his face, as much as to say, “I knew it, they can’t control it.” This was amusing at first, but there was no question but what it presented a fearful picture to him. Steam power was a strange force to him, although he seemed to have a very good understanding of electrical energy. A gasoline motor was another marvel when he saw heat harnessed directly for work. These Earthmen certainly had to fight hard for existence, conquer- ing terrible monsters of power to do their work. He was satisfied to live in his own land. IN THE MORNING tliey heated the sled shelter to the point where the rest of the party would have been ex- ceedingly uncomfortable, yet it would probably feel cool to the giant. It was warm enough to avoid danger in ' the short trip, and the stove, installed, would hold the temperature. GLAGULA 93 Before noon they were ready, and the giant was shut in the shelter for the heavy haul to the ship. Tom joined the others in the long pull. It was more of a task than they anticipated, with a man weighing over five hundred pounds inside. The snow was soft and the run- ners cut deep, but slowly the distance was covered. The sled was too large to be pulled into the port, and the giant had to enter the ship himself. It gave him a chill that lasted several minutes from ex- posure to cold for only a moment, but there were no ill effects once he was in the warmth of the interior. The cold seemed to p>enetrate every pore in his body in a moment. They massaged his hands and feet to return the circulation to normal. A moment in the cold for Glagula was as serious as an hour for the Earthmen. In many ways the giant was a very hardy individual, but cold broke down all his resistance. His skin whitened as jf frosted, and the same treatment was used as if he suffered from frostbite. Only they used lukewarm water, heated hurriedly on the stove. Snow would have been disastrous to him. It re- mained a mystery how the man could ever have traveled so far from the ship when he landed. He must have suffered untold tortures. Glagula was happy. The ship was home to him. He went through one section after the other with eyes glowing. It was his; a breath of the home planet — comfort such as he had not known since returning to consciousness. Every- thing was in perfect condition. Nothing had been injured by the exposure to cold and storms. It was lunch time, and Glagula in- vited them to have lunch with him. Tom and Jim were delighted. The others hesitated for a moment, but they, too, joined the party. The Earthmen sat down to the strang- est meal they had ever known. Meat of unknown flavor, but very delicious, with vegetables tasting as fresh as if just picked from the garden. Nothing had any of the taste of preserved food. It was fresh ! To the little party, who had been in a frozen country for many weeks, tbe green foods were a great treat. Secretly they hoped the invita- tion would be followed by more. Clear, cool water replaced the melted snow they had lived on for a long time. The water was warm, as Glagula drew it from a small container on the wall, but Bill took the glasses, or glassite con- tainers outside for a moment and re- turned with a drink they w’ould have walked many miles to receive. The water tank was a puzzle. There was no way for the water to enter it, yet they drew off more than the tank could hold, and the giant offered them all they could drink without fear of ex- hausting the supply. The men were not slow to drink their fill; it was worth more than all the strange food he could offer. Harold Pratt disappeared after lunch and returned with every container he could find in camp to fill with the fresh water. This seemed to amuse the giant immensely, but he let him have all the water he wanted. Still the tank did not show any sign of emptying, but con- tinued to flow as if it tapped an end- less supply. Tom and Jim accepted two of the , staterooms in the hull. It was uncom- fortably warm, but worth the little dis- comfort to be able to spend more time with the man. He explained as clearly as he could the operation of the ship, but its principle of action remained vague in their minds. The power sup- ply was intact; the ship seemed to be in as good condition as when landed. The others returned to sleep in camp. Tom and Jim could not persuade them to enjoy the comfort of perfect beds for a change. They still could not accus- tom themselves to the proximity of the. 94 ASTOUNDING STORIES giant. To them he remained a mystery man, endowed with superhuman power. They had not forgotten his bringing them into the small building under con- trol of his will. They did not actually fear the man, but safety was the better part of valor. When the three were alone, Giagula smiled and a thought reached them. He was going to give Tom and Jim a treat. He called them into the pilot house, and after looking over the instruments, pulled a small lever. A slight vibration throughout the ship resulted. Then he moved the lever back farther and the ship moved free of the snow. When it stopped, it hung several hundred feet above the ground. The rise had felt more like the swift motion of an elevator than any other motion. Their breath was taken away by the ease with which the ship had forced itself out of snow that would have taken weeks to clear away. Power beyond anything they had ever dreamed ! Power under perfect control, ready at the touch of a hand ! A ship operated without a single mov- ing part! No propellers, no blast tubes, nothing that seemed able to move the ship, yet it sailed as easily as if an in- visible hand were lifting it. The marvel of the action held the two Earthmen spellbound until the ship set- tled again, this time only a few steps from the camp, building. They could picture the consternation of their friends when the ship was found just outside the door in the morning. Jim went to bed, to spend a night in the greatest comfort he had known in several months. The bedding was soft, and warm without weight. As he sank into the mattress, vents opened in the inner hull, and cool air soothed him. He had worked hard, with very little sleep, for several days, and there was nothing less than a cannon under his ear which could disturb him. V. WHEN he finally awakened the ship was moving. He jumped out of bed to peer through a small clear plate in the wall. They were slowly sailing across the flat plain. The ship went nearly to the mountains, then made a slow circle and sailed back. There seemed to be no reason for the action, and he diur- riedly donned clothes and went to find the giant. Tom and the stranger were bent over a small instrument in the pilot house when he reached it. They did not at once notice his presence. It allowed Jim to tune in on their mental conver- sation. The thoughts of the giant were strong enough for him to understand without effort. “I am glad, Tom, that you have de- cided to go with me. I will enjoy your company on the trip, and a man with your knowledge will have a place wait- ing for him in my world. It is well that we are able to give your friends what they sought without success. It would be wise for you to leave all that should lielong to you to your friend, Jim. You will have no more need of anything here.” One thing was plain : Tom was going with the giant ! It seemed like a return to the strange planet — but could it be? They felt his presence after a minute, and Tom looked up to see the question- ing expression. “You know what we plan, Jim. Don’t try to change my mind. It will be a great adventure; life may hold more there for me than it possibly can here. “We have been searching for the gold lode on the plain. It is only a short distance from the spot we were work- ing, and shows signs of rich ore. It will probably make you all wealthy. I want you to have my share. The others will have enough without taking mine, too. You and I have been close friends, while I owe them nothing. GLAGULA 95 “I will tell them you’re going to have my share so there can be no mistake. I don’t want them to know what’s go- ing to happen. They will take my word about my share just in case anything happens to me. “Some day I’ll return to see you if I can. I would like to have you with us, but you have a family. I have no one.” It was a great adventure — a dream of stars and galaxies — of infinity. When the ship finally settled down they had checked and rechecked the lo- cation of metal. There could be no mistake. Glagula’s instruments told the location as plainly as a map, and they set the ship down a few feet from the spot. The others had been watching them circle around, and came rushing to the hull. Tom let them in and explained there was enough energy to still move the ship a little, and they had located the gold. Forgotten was the ship and the stranger. To Glagula’s great amuse- ment they rushed for shovels to start work. Gold! GOLD! What was a stranger from another planet compared to that. Be- fore they started digging, Tom stopped them. “There is just one thing more, fel- lows. I feel I may never reach civiliza- tion to use my share. I want Jim to have all that belongs to me. You’ll each have sufficient to take care of you the rest of your lives, if it turns out the way it looks. Will you promise now that Jim gets all that belongs to me if I don’t get back?” They were quick to promise. He was holding them up from the work. What a lot of foolishness! The gold was the important thing. Nothing else mat- tered. Jim watched them hurry out, then turned to Tom. “When are you leav- ing, Tom? It will mean a lot to me to see you go.” “We figure on starting as soon as my things are all on board. • There is no point in waiting. The others will hardly miss me now. They’re too excited. Some day I’ll be back, Jim. I don’t want to live this life out without seeing the Earth again. If you need us — send for us.” Jim helped carry the bags aboard and silently shook hands. When the giant gripped Jim’s he thought it was going to be crushed, but kept a straight face. It was real friendship. He turned and walked slowly out of the open port. It slammed to behind him. In his hand was a small piece of metal set with a peculiar stone. The giant had handed it to him as he shook hands. Slowly the ship rose above his head. Tom waved from the clear plate in front. It rose several hundred feet, then started forward and slowly increased speed un- til it traveled like a bullet over the mountains in the distance. Jim finally turned away, a catch in his throat. THEY FOUND their gold and re- turned wealthy men, but all lips were sealed in a pact of silence. They claimed Tom was lost in the snow and never found. It was as good a story as any that would be believed. Even Jim sometimes caught himself believing — but there remained an empty spot his friend had filled. Then he would look at his memento — a strange stone — not ruby nor emerald — not even of Earth. And Tom had promised to return — he never broke a promise! — that fact and Tom’s last words, “If you need us — send for us.” Somehow that stone and Tom’s words were linked together in his mind ! A scientific discussion Accuracy The first article in a fascinating series which will include the entire solar system by John W. Campbell, Jr. Tycho Brahe’s Quadrant P RACTICALLY no statement made in this series will be ex- actly accurate, perhaps a tenth will be Inaccurate to the point of virtual uselessness, and at least a twen- tieth will be wholly wrong. But that is the fault of lack of preparation, and lack of time to study the subject. Men have had less than one full century to use telescopes with the necessary accu- racy. In astronomy, time is so immensely important because errors and displace- ments become cumulative and hence ob- servable. Pluto was discovered because over a period of years systematic map- ping of the heavens by photography had been carried out, and finally enough time had elapsed so that the cumulative dis- placement of Pluto’s slow motion in its orbit built up and added till it became a visible difference between a plate sev- eral years old and a comparatively re- cent plate. Time is important. Accuracy is important ; by it a theory may stand or fall. Newton’s theory of gravitation was right but inaccurate. But it took cumulative work over years to detect the slight difference Einstein’s law expresses. AST-6 ACCURACY 97 In 500 B. C. the Greek philosopher Plilolaus advanced the theory that the Earth revolved on its axis, and followed an orbit about the Sun; others followed and agreed with him, though the gen- eral belief was in the apparent immo- bility of the Earth, with moving Sun. Moon, and stars. In 100 A. D. the two theories were in existence, and Ptohney worked on the theoiy of the stationary Earth. He combined his mathematical observations with observations of the planets and the Sun and Moon and finally, by immense labor, he developed the theory of cycles and epicycles : a rotating dome of heaven, across which the planets, the Sun, and the iVIoon moved, following a series of curved tracks. Without the data represented by knowledge of gravitation, inertia and action and reaction, both theories seemed equally tenable — the rotating Earth go- ing about the Sun and the rotating bowl of heaven. Then the two must stand or fall by test of observation. Ptolmey’s won, because Ptohney’s was more accurate, not because people liked it l>etter. Sailors don’t worry about how they like a theory, they want it to predict where they can look for star or planet to guide them. Ptolmey’s did, more accurately than the theory of the orbits. Accuracy had defeated the circular orbit by 125 A. D. At that time, the human eye being a very old observa- tional instrument, and already at about its peak, there was little change in ac- curacy. Not till nearly 1600 was suffi- cient advance made in observational ac- curacy to detect errors in Ptolmey’s theory. About 1600 A. D. Tycho Brahe was doing his work. Tycho was a crusty old man, then, and not at all a theorist. He was not above practicing astrology, in which he did not greatly believe, to gain ends in which he thoroughly be- lieved : bigger and better observational AST— 7 instruments, in a quite literal sense. To get second, marks one sixteenth of an inch apart on a quadrant of 90 de- grees, each degree having sixty minutes, in each of which are sixty seconds, would require a structure almost half again as high as the Empire State Build- ing. Tycho couldn’t get that. But Tycho did build instruments of unexampled size. He used whole walls to lay out his quadrants ; he used slits in the walls of a round tower for peep- holes while he stood on the other side of the tower to get accuracy. He got accuracy, more than any man before him had, but he didn’t stop to theorize. He recorded his data, and sought more. It was Kepler who did the theorizing on Tycho’s data, some years later. Copernicus had revived the orbital planet hypothesis about 1525 with such convincing arguments it was never again abandoned, but he again had circular orbits. At first Kepler, too, assumed circu- lar orbits, but so accurate were Ty- cho’s observations, they ruled out both the circular orbit and very definitely the Ptolmaic theory as well. For the first time, Kepler abandoned the per- fect curve, the circle, and tried and found the elipse. At last they had a theory that greater accuracy merely strengthened. Perhaps it is not fair to call Ptol- mey’s system a theory to explain so much as a highly ingenious and suc- cessful system of mathematical analysis to locate planets. From that viewpoint it is, was and always will be a triumph, because it was absolutely successful for over a millennium and a half. Greater accuracy made it, as a system of mathe- matics, useless. Modern work depends on the tele- scope’s power of magnification — not of objects but of lack of objects, the mag- nification of separation. The eye can- not separate two stars less than four and a half minutes of arc apart, while 98 ASTOUNDING STORIES the telescope measures accurately a star’s displacement of three fourths of a second caused by Earth’s movement around the Sun — a quantity about one three-hundredth as great. The work of time and accuracy of vision combine to make possible the de- tection of binary stars. It takes as much as five centuries for some binary stars to complete one circuit of their orbits, and the telescope is required to sepa- rate them visually. Without the tele- scope, we would see one star. With the telescope, over a period of time, we would see two independent stars that happened to be close together. Only time makes their slow orbital creep observable. But the telescope has its limitations, of course, for, accurate as it is in the measurement of angles, once beyond the solar system the angles it is called upon to measure are too minute for even the greatest instrument’s capabilities. The lower limit of error is approximately .CX)5" of arc, and that limit of error means that stars more than 650 light years away cannot be located by di- rect measure of triangulation with an accuracy greater than one part in two. The error is equal to the quantity to be measured. Then evidently, if we want to retain accuracy, we must keep away from slight angles; if all measurements contain at least that error, the bigger the angle measured, the smaller the percentage of error. The distance to the Moon can be found by having one observatory on one side of the Earth and one on the an- tipodal point of the Earth, both focused on some selected spot on the Moon. We know the diameter of the Earth, and thus with three angles and a side of the triangle, we can readily determine the distance to the Moon. Extremely accurate work on the Earth itself has determined its diameter with precision about equal to the con- stancy of the planet — it is distorted by tides, planetary cross pulls, earthquakes, by the seasonal shifting of incalculable tons of snow and ice, etc. — to be 7,899,984 miles. The distance to the Moon works out to be 238,854 miles. And because the angles are quite measurable, and the diameter of the Earth quite accurately determined we have a right to say the last figure is just about 4, and the fig- ure certainly isn’t as much as 238,875 miles. But the next step is the Sun, and there we simply can’t get a big angle. It’s just about the same angle you have between your left eye and your right eye looking at a man a mile away. It is vanishingly small, anyway, and fur- thermore that optimum figure of only a few thousands of a second error doesn’t apply because the conditions are not optimum. The Sun is shining on the instruments — they don’t use the big telescopes l)e- cause it would ruin them to have the full heat of the sun strike them — and they are distorted. The air is heated unevenly, so that it acts to produce heat ripples, and the image of the Sun wavers badly, more so than the image of a star on a clear, cool night, and the distance we are trying to measure is some 11,000 times our base line. We can’t get a good determination, and we won’t till we set up our ob- servatory on the Moon, where there is no interfering atmosphere. We’ll rough it in as about 92,897,000 miles, but know that our error is such that that last figure isn’t any too good; it may be 887 or it may be 907, or 900, but it is about that. But we can do this : We will assume that the distance is one unit ; we will define it as one astronomical unit, and let the exact distance go for a bit. But since we defined it, whatever it is in miles as being one unit, we can go on ACCURACY 99 from there and assemble another few dozen of the scraps of the cosmic jig- saw puzzle of knowledge, isolated as yet, but ones we can connect in with other blocks later, when we know what that unit is in actual miles. For the time we can make progress along other lines. We can use a new base line now: the diameter, not of the lElarth, but of Earth’s orbit, not 8,000 miles now, but 186,000,000 miles. Now to determine the distance to Mars. We can (firect telescopes toward it in June, and again in December, when Earth has moved on hundreds of millions of miles. Mars has moved, too, but there are fairly easy ways to eliminate that in the equation. The angle formed from the June po- sition, the December position, and Mars gives us three angles of the triangle, and our orbit gives us a base line two units long. The base line is the same sort of size that the distance we are measuring is, so the angles are large and easy to measure accurately, much more accurately than we can measure the angle to the Sun. The same sort of system applies for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, all superior planets, planets be- yond the Earth from the Sun. For the inferior or inner planets, Venus and Mercury, a slightly different system is needed, but the general outline is the same. Step One has been taken; we have laid out the solar system to scale, with a pretty fair idea of its accurate size. The t4ble now reads: Distance From The Distance From The Sun In Astronemical Sun In Approximate Planet MERCURY Units 0.3871 Milas 35,960,000 VENUS 0.7233 67,200,000 EARTH 1.0000 92,897,000 MARS 1.5237 141,540,000 JUPITER 5.2028 483,310,000 SATURN 9.5388 886,100,000 URANUS 19.1910 1,782,700,000 NEPTUNE 30.0707 2,793,400,000 PLUTO 39.5967 3,680,000,000 Knowing now their distances from the Sun, and our own distance from the Sun, it is easy to calculate their distances from us at any given moment. With photographs which give the ap- parent diameter of the planet, knowing the magnification the telescope made, it is easy to calculate the actual diameter of the planet. We get results fairly accurate for all save Pluto, so far and so small that it is very difficult to photograph, though the very fact that it is difficult gives us some data as to the planet’s size. It certainly isn’t large. The results on their diameters plus results from cal- culations on their gravitational influ- ences on other planets, their own satel- lites if they have any, give us their masses, and finally their densities. They range : Planet MERCURY Dieiiieter (Miiee) 3,009 Mass (Earth=l) 0.04? Deaaltjr 3.80? VENUS 7,575 0.81? 5.09? EARTH 7,919 1.000 5.52 MARS 4.216 0.108 3.95 JUPITER 86,728 316.940 1.33 SATURN 72,430 94.920 0.73 URANUS 30,878 14.582 1.36 NEPTUNE 32,932 16.93 1.30 PLUTO S.??? .2?? 4.?? It will be noticed that the diameter of Pluto, in fact all its properties, are questioned, for the photographs are so inaccurate. The masses, and hence the densities, of Mercury and Venus are questioned because, having no satellites, they cannot be “weighed” as accurately as the planets having satellites. Actu- ally, the indicated data on Pluto is sci- entifically called an “estimate” and col- loquially, “an educated guess.” The solar system is taking shape, but a surprising and intensely interesting shape! It is not one. but two systems! This scientific discussion of the solar system will be continued next month. Ofigin of Thought by Spencer Lane ERRY MOORE read the advertise- ment through once more and flung tlie paper down disgustedly. He liitched his hat lower over his eyes, fin- gered the last, lone nickel in his pocket, then slowly reached down for the paper. The wortls “good salary” stuck but and danced before his eyes like a bar- ber pole on a spree. But he knew too much about the man whose name was printed at the end of the item. Jerry’s hand moved once more, as if to fling the paper aside, but a twinge of hun- ger made him draw it back, again. ORIGIN OF THOUGHT 101 Half the civilized world was up in arms about the statements made by Professor Hill. They called him a sci- entist gone mad, an opportunist scaveng- ing a fortune from ignorant people; in fact, they called him everything that could be politely translated into print. And it was true that, in growing numbers, men and women in the com- mon walks of life were forming “Pro- fessor Hill” clubs. They were accept- ing his teaching as that of a new dis- pensation ! The professor’s statements that thought had active power were out- rageous. Yet through some unexplained chicanery he was convincing hordes of willing listeners. Worse, these follow- ers swore to the truth of his claims. They themselves had been able, under his guidance, to make inanimate objects move by mere thought projection. The better-trained groups — advanced classes ■ — were able to reproduce tones on a piano, ring bells, and perform other feats which were seemingly impossible. Jerry Moore viewed the hysteria as a grand-stand stunt executed by a clever charlatan. Where Hill went, what he ate, the last detail of the clothes he wore each day, made the front pages of the Metropolitan dailies. Every word the professor spoke in public was quoted, and the more com- plete the account of his activities, the better the sale of the paper which car- ried it! His name crept into advertising. One cereal announced over Hill’s endorse- ment, “A brain food — leaves a clear mind for mental endeavor.” Cars, ra- dios, linens, and furniture ads followed, with neatly turned phrases of commen- dation from the professor’s lips. It was disgusting — but Jerry was hungry I He had tried for job after job. But experienced men tried, too. And Jer- ry’s lifelong experience liad been made up of spending the money his father had left him. He and useful work had been strangers too long! Professor Hill’s advertisement seemed like a last resort, yet he hesitated. The final argument which made him note the address was his hunger. Jerry hadn’t had a square meal in three days ! His fingers pinched hard on that last, lone nickel in his pocket. It was either carfare, or — and he might not get the job! — a cup of coffee. After that there was the bre^ line at one of the charity places. Funny if it came to that. He’d given them money many times. At least he would feel his food was paid for. It was getting toward noon when Jerry arrived at the professor's build- ing. It was new, built as a school. Probably with some of the publicity money, Jerry thought, as he watched the throngs passing in and out. Pro- fessor Hill’s name showed blatantly on their books. He entered and approached the desk marked “Information.” “Did you wish to join one of the classes? The first door to the right for registration.” The girl hadn’t waited for him to speak. “Sorry, beautiful, but I’m not a cus- tomer.” Jerry grinned. At least the receptionist was interesting. But the look she gave him cooled his admiration several degrees. “Then what do you want?” The note of sarcasm persuaded him that she wasn’t really pretty. “Sorry, miss. I came looking for the job you advertised.” “You’ll have to wait, then,” she told him, “the professor’s class is in session. What’s your name?” “Jerry Moore, in person” — he bowed stiffly, his eyes dancing — “much in need of employment. If I get the job, maybe you’ll go to lunch with me. I enjoy a meal — when I have one. You might like to see a really hungry man eat.” The girl turned her back. 102 ASTOUNDING STORIES TEN MINUTES LATER an office boy led him to the professor’s office, a huge room with silvered walls and ceil- ing. A quick glance showed it to be severely simple in its furnishings. Just a mahogany desk, two cabinets, and a half dozen chairs. Tlie man was very cordial. He ex- tended his hand as if to an old friend. “Come in, come in and sit down, Mr. Moore. Miss Hartford has told me something about you. She didn’t like your calling her beautiful.” Jerry could feel his neck and ears burning, but the professor only leaned back and laughed. “Don’t be too much upset, Mr. Moore,” he continued, “I knew your father very well. Went to the same school with him. You’re just a chip off the old block. The only difference is” — the man leaned forward and shook his finger in Jerry’s face — “you spend money where he made it. “I know your qualifications, so there’s no need of an examination. There’ve been few applicants who could qualify at all. Perhaps you will hesitate, but I suppose you need money. “I’ll pay you a hundred dollars a week, and I’ll get it back ten times over through the use of your name. I’ll put you through a hard training to awaken your mind, then teach you to receive thought from a large group of people. “I plan to try and transport you by thought waves! “If it works, you may find yourself in some strange part of the world. Of course. I’ll try then to bring you back again, but should I fail in that you’ll have to look out for yourself wherever you may happen to be. “Perhaps the experiment will fail ; but if it works you’ll have a reputation worth a fortune to you. Meantime, you will spend five hours a day at study — all your mind can absorb. “That’s the job. It will entail some d