51203	----	A Coffin for Jacob By EDWARD W. LUDWIG Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] With never a moment to rest, the pursuit through space felt like a game of hounds and hares ... or was it follow the leader? Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him. His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets. Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen, Martians or Venusians. Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it was the dead man's hand. "_Coma esta, senor?_" a small voice piped. "_Speken die Deutsch? Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?_" Ben looked down. The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees. "I'm American," Ben muttered. "Ah, _buena_! I speak English _tres_ fine, _senor_. I have Martian friend, she _tres_ pretty and _tres_ fat. She weigh almost eighty pounds, _monsieur_. I take you to her, _si_?" Ben shook his head. * * * * * He thought, _I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul._ "It is deal, _monsieur_? Five dollars or twenty _keelis_ for visit Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams--" "I'm not buying." The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,--_tres bien_. I do not charge you, _senor_." The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices. They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed Earthmen--merchant spacemen. They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed tombstones. Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO_{2}-breathing Venusians, the first he'd ever seen. They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape. They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine. Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club against the stone booths. _Keep walking_, Ben told himself. _You look the same as anyone else here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead._ The officer passed. Ben breathed easier. "Here we are, _monsieur_," piped the Martian boy. "A _tres_ fine table. Close in the shadows." Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows? Frowning, he sat down--he and the dead man. He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra. The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of their _cirillas_ or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and forgotten grandeur. For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead man. He thought, _What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world? Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me, felt the challenge of new worlds?_ He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the faces of the Inn's other occupants. _You've got to find him_, he thought. _You've got to find the man with the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man._ * * * * * The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and about forty and he hated spacemen. His body was buried now--probably in the silent gray wastes outside Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a part of Ben as sight in his eyes. Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips spitting whiskey-slurred curses. Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle from a corner of the gaping mouth. You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a memory that has burned into your mind. It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him. "Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you see's spacemen." He was a neatly dressed civilian. Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here." "The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey. Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white, crimson-braided uniform of the _Odyssey's_ junior astrogation officer. He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe. He'd sought long for that key. * * * * * At the age of five--perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents' death in a recent strato-jet crash--he'd spent hours watching the night sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his collection of astronomy and rocketry books. At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space. And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the _Odyssey_--the first ship, it was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps beyond. Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth. What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?" _The guy's drunk_, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three stools down the bar. Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like people to call you a sucker." Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and held him there. "Thas what you are--a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!" Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and without warning, it welled up into savage fury. His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of life. He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw. Ben knew that he was dead. Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror--just as, a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger. He ran. * * * * * For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet. At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the city. He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette. A thousand stars--a thousand motionless balls of silver fire--shone above him through Luna City's transparent dome. He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run. Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision. _You can do two things_, he thought. _You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do. That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free._ _But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class jet-men on beat-up freighters--they don't want convicted killers. You'd get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by peeking through electric fences of spaceports._ _Or--_ There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth. And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their headquarters was Venus. Their leader--a subject of popular and fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines--was rumored to be a red-bearded giant. _So_, Ben reflected, _you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously. You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from Earth._ After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant second, to destroy a man's life and his dream? * * * * * He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new personnel even more so. Ben Curtis made it to Venus. There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs. But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways obscure the dead face? So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant, and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once. "You look for someone, _senor_?" He jumped. "Oh. You still here?" "_Oui._" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. "I keep you company on your first night in Hoover City, _n'est-ce-pas_?" "This isn't my first night here," Ben lied. "I've been around a while." "You are spacemen?" Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will you?" Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "_Ich danke, senor._ You know why city is called Hoover City?" Ben didn't answer. "They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner, _monsieur_?" Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy. "_Ai-yee_, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music." The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness. Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him--reddish balloon faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a face with a red beard. A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this. He needed help. But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The Martian kid, perhaps? Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of white. He tensed. Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought. His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness. And then he saw another and another and another. Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a wheel with Ben as their focal point. _You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!_ * * * * * Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded, realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been turned on. The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor. Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away. Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward, falling. The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised. A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in Ben's direction. "Curtis!" one of the policemen yelled. "You're covered! Hold it!" Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into which the musicians had disappeared. A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall ahead of him crumbled. He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the mildly stunning neuro-clubs. Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit. _Another second_, his brain screamed. _Just another second--_ Or would the exits be guarded? He heard the hiss. It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle. * * * * * He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of his body. He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have fifteen--maybe twenty--seconds before complete lethargy of mind and body overpowered him. In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice yell, "Turn on the damn lights!" Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that someone had seized it. A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?" "Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word. "You want to escape--even now?" "Yes." "You may die if you don't give yourself up." "No, no." He tried to stumble toward the exit. "All right then. Not that way. Here, this way." Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight flicked on. Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his vision--if he still had vision. "You're sure?" the voice persisted. "I'm sure," Ben managed to say. "I have no antidote. You may die." His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection, massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender at once. "Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced from his throat. "No ... I'm sure ... sure." He didn't hear the answer or anything else. * * * * * Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness. He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders, hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to transfer itself to his own body. For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered constantly above him--a face, he supposed. He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was a deep, staccato grunting. But he heard someone say, "Don't try to talk." It was the same gentle voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. "Don't talk. Just lie still and rest. Everything'll be all right." _Everything all right_, he thought dimly. There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach. Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears: "Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food." Or, "Close your eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better." _Better_, he'd think. _Getting better...._ At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The mist brightened, then dissolved. He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket. Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side. "You are better?" the kind voice asked. * * * * * The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck. "I--I am better," he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. "I am going to live?" "You will live." He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?" "Nine days." "You took care of me?" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her sleep-robbed eyes. She nodded. "You're the one who carried me when I was shot?" "Yes." "Why?" Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it. "Why?" he asked again. "It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow." A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness. "Tell me, will--will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?" He lay back then, panting, exhausted. "You have nothing to worry about," the girl said softly. Her cool hand touched his hot forehead. "Rest. We'll talk later." His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept. When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon or afternoon--or on what planet. He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless void. The girl entered the room. "Hi," she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less prominent. Her face was relaxed. She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise to a sitting position. "Where are we?" he asked. "Venus." "We're not in Hoover City?" "No." He looked at her, wondering. "You won't tell me?" "Not yet. Later, perhaps." "Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?" * * * * * She shrugged. "We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city--these can be had for a price." "You'll tell me your name?" "Maggie." "Why did you save me?" Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Because you're a good astrogator." His own eyes widened. "How did you know that?" She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. "I know everything about you, Lieutenant Curtis." "How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers--" "I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four, you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation. Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8--the second highest in a class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?" Fascinated, Ben nodded. "You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the _Odyssey_. You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture. You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the Blast Inn." He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. "I--don't get it." "There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we have many friends." He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon." "Maggie, you--you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk again." She lowered her gaze. "I hope you'll be able to." "But you don't think I will, do you?" "I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now. Rest." He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture. "Just one more question," he almost whispered. "Yes?" "The man I killed--did he have a wife?" She hesitated. He thought, _Damn it, of all the questions, why did I ask that?_ Finally she said, "He had a wife." "Children?" "Two. I don't know their ages." She left the room. * * * * * He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side, his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room. He sat straight up, his chest heaving. The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly trimmed _red beard_! Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his brain. The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night. And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a chilling wail in his ears. His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed, the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping relentlessly toward him. He awoke still screaming.... A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a question already formed in his mind. She came and at once he asked, "Who is the man with the red beard?" She smiled. "I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You _were_ looking for him, weren't you?" "Who is he?" She sat on the chair beside him. "My husband," she said softly. He began to understand. "And your husband needs an astrogator? That's why you saved me?" "We need all the good men we can get." "Where is he?" She cocked her head in mock suspicion. "Somewhere between Mercury and Pluto. He's building a new base for us--and a home for me. When his ship returns, I'll be going to him." "Why aren't you with him now?" "He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how we operate?" He told her the tales he'd heard. * * * * * She nodded. "There are quite a few of us now--about a thousand--and a dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole. The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction, but with almost every advance in space, someone dies." "Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base--I might as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one." "Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people like yourself and Jacob." "Jacob? Your husband?" She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it? Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either." She lit a cigarette. "Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth--not even to Hoover City--except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies." "Don't the authorities object?" "Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining it, that's our business." She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we have friends planted in the I. B. I.--well, things might be different. There probably would be a crackdown." Ben scowled. "What happens if there _is_ a crackdown? And what will you do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't ignore you then." "Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It _could_ be us, you know--if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up your own." * * * * * Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator." Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. "If you want to come--and if you get well." She looked at him strangely. "Suppose--" He fought to find the right words. "Suppose I got well and decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me go?" Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion--alarm, then bewilderment, then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob." He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion that had coursed through her. "The only thing that matters, really," she murmured, "is your walking again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?" "Okay," he said. When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo. He was like two people, he thought. Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal. He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions: "A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space Officer Is Dutiful." Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts, mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it prisoner for half a million years. Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead, would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago. * * * * * Ben sighed. He had a debt to pay. A good officer would pay that debt. He'd surrender and take his punishment. He'd rip the crimson braid from his uniform. He'd prevent the Academy for the Conquest of Space from being labeled the school of a murderer and a coward. And by doing these things, the haunting image of a dead man would disappear from his vision. But the other half of Ben Curtis was the boy who'd stood trembling beneath a night sky of beckoning stars. The eyes in Jacob's photo seemed to be staring at the boy in him, not at the officer. They appeared both pleading and hopeful. They were like echoes of cold, barren worlds and limitless space, of lurking and savage death. They held the terror of loneliness and of exile, of constant flight and hiding. But, too, they represented a strength that could fulfill a boy's dream, that could carry a man to new frontiers. They, rather than the neat white uniform, now offered the key to shining miracles. That key was what Ben wanted. But he asked himself, as he had a thousand times, "If I follow Jacob, can I leave the dead man behind?" He tried to stretch his legs and he cursed their numbness. He smiled grimly. For a moment, he'd forgotten. How futile now to think of stars! What if he were to be like this always? Jacob would not want a man with dead legs. Jacob would either send him back to Earth or--Ben shuddered--see that he was otherwise disposed of. And disposal would be the easier course. * * * * * This was the crisis. He sat on the side of the bed, Maggie before him, her strong arm about his waist. "Afraid?" she asked. "Afraid," he repeated, shaking. It was as if all time had been funneled into this instant, as if this moment lay at the very vortex of all a man's living and desiring. There was no room in Ben's mind for thoughts of Jacob now. "You can walk," Maggie said confidently. "I _know_ you can." He moved his toes, ankles, legs. He began to rise, slowly, falteringly. The firm pressure around his waist increased. He stood erect. His legs felt like tree stumps, but here and there were a tingling and a warmth, a sensitivity. "Can you make it to the window?" Maggie asked. "No, no, not that far." "Try! Please try!" She guided him forward. His feet shuffled. Stomp, stomp. The pressure left his waist. Maggie stepped away, walked to the window, turned back toward him. He halted, swaying. "Not alone," he mouthed fearfully. "I can't get there by myself." "Of course you can!" Maggie's voice contained unexpected impatience. Ashamed, he forced his feet to move. At times, he thought he was going to crash to the floor. He lumbered on, hesitating, fighting to retain his balance. Maggie waited tensely, as if ready to leap to his side. Then his eyes turned straight ahead to the window. This was the first time he'd actually seen the arid, dust-cloaked plains of the second planet. He straightened, face aglow, as though a small-boy enthusiasm had been reborn in him. His tree-stump legs carried him to the window. He raised shaking hands against the thick glassite pane. Outside, the swirling white dust was omnipresent and unchallenged. It cut smooth the surfaces of dust-veiled rocks. It clung to the squat desert shrubbery, to the tall skeletal shapes of Venusian needle-plants and to the swish-tailed lizards that skittered beneath them. The shrill of wind, audible through the glassite, was like the anguished complaint of the planet itself, like the wail of an entity imprisoned in a dark tomb of dust. Venus was a planet of fury, eternally howling its wrath at being isolated from sunlight and greenery, from the clean blackness of space and the warm glow of sister-planet and star. The dust covered all, absorbed all, eradicated all. The dust was master. The dome, Ben felt, was as transitory as a tear-drop of fragile glass falling down, down, to crash upon stone. "Is it always like this?" he asked. "Doesn't the wind ever stop?" "Sometimes the wind dies. Sometimes, at night, you can see the lights from the city." * * * * * He kept staring. The dome, he thought, was a symbol of Man's littleness in a hostile universe. But, too, it was a symbol of his courage and defiance. And perhaps Man's greatest strength lay in the very audacity that drove him to build such domes. "You like it, don't you?" Maggie asked. "It's lonely and ugly and wild, but you like it." He nodded, breathless. She murmured, "Jacob used to say it isn't the strange sights that thrill spacemen--it's the thoughts that the sights inspire." He nodded again, still staring. She began to laugh. Softly at first, then more loudly. It was the kind of laughter that is close to crying. "You've been standing there for ten minutes! You're going to walk again! You're going to be well!" He turned to her, smiling with the joyous realization that he had actually stood that long without being aware of it. Then his smile died. Standing behind Maggie, in an open doorway, was a gray, scaly, toadlike monster--a six-and-a-half-foot Venusian. He was motionless as a statue, his green-lidded eyes staring curiously at Ben. His scaly hand was tight about the butt of an old-fashioned heat pistol holstered to his hip. Maggie suppressed a smile. "Don't be frightened, Ben. This is Simon--Simple Simon, we call him. His I. Q. isn't too high, but he makes a good helper and guard for me. He's been so anxious to see you, but I thought it'd be better if he waited until you were well." Ben nodded, fascinated by the apparent muscular solidity of the creature. It hadn't occurred to his numbed mind that he and Maggie were not the sole occupants of the dome. But Maggie had acted wisely, he thought. His nightmares had been terrifying enough without bringing Simple Simon into them. "Shake hands with Ben," she told the Venusian. Simple Simon lumbered forward, then paused. His eyes blinked. "No," he grated. Maggie gasped. "Why, Simple Simon, what's the matter?" The gray creature rasped, "Ben--he not one of us. He thinks--different. In thoughts--thinks escape. Earth." * * * * * Maggie paled. "He _is_ one of us, Simon." She stepped forward and seized the Venusian's arm. "You go to your room. Stand guard. You guard Ben just like you guard me. Understand?" Simple Simon grunted, "I guard. If Ben go--I stop him. I stop him good." He raised his huge hands suggestively. "No, Simon! Remember what Jacob told you. We hurt no one. Ben is our friend. You help him!" The Venusian thought for a long moment. Then he nodded. "I help Ben. But if go--stop." She led the creature out of the room and closed the door. "Whew," Ben sighed. "I'd heard those fellows were telepaths. Now I _know_." Maggie's trembling hands reached for a cigarette. "I--I guess I didn't think, Ben. Venusians can't really read your mind, but they see your feelings, your emotions. It's a logical evolutionary development, I suppose. Auditory and visual communication are difficult here, so evolution turned to empathy. And that's why Jacob keeps a few Venusians in our group. They can detect any feeling of disloyalty before it becomes serious." Ben remembered Simple Simon's icy gaze and the way his rough hand had gripped his heat pistol. "They could be dangerous." "Not really. They're as loyal as Earth dogs to their masters. I mean they wouldn't be dangerous to anyone who's loyal to us." Silently, she helped him back to his bed. "I'm sorry, Maggie--sorry I haven't decided yet." She neither answered nor looked at him. Grimly, he realized that his status had changed. He was no longer a patient; he was a prisoner. A Venusian day passed, and a Venusian night. The dust swirled and wind blew, as constant as the whirl of indecision in Ben's mind. Maggie was patient. Once, when she caught him gazing at Jacob's photo, she asked, "Not yet?" He looked away. "Not yet." * * * * * He learned that the little dome consisted of three rooms, each shaped like pieces of a fluffy pie with narrow concrete hallways between. His room served as a bedroom and he discovered that Maggie slept on a pneumatic cot in the kitchen. The third room, opening into the airlock, housed a small hydroponics garden, sunlamp, short-wave visi-radio, and such emergency equipment as oxygen tanks, windsuits, and vita-rations. It was here that Simple Simon remained most of the time, tending the garden or peering into the viewscreen that revealed the terrain outside the dome. Maggie prepared Ben's meals, bringing them to him on a tray until he was able to sit at a table. As his paralysis diminished, he helped her with cooking--with Simple Simon standing by as a mute, motionless observer. Occasionally Maggie would talk of her girlhood in a small town in Missouri and how she'd dreamed of journeying to the stars. "'Stars are for boys,' they'd tell me, but I was a queer one. While other gals were dressing for their junior proms, I'd be in sloppy slacks down at the spaceport with Jacob." She laughed often--perhaps in a deliberate attempt to disguise the omnipresent tension. And her laughter was like laughter on Earth, floating through comfortable houses and over green fields and through clear blue sky. When she laughed, she possessed a beauty. Despite her pale face and lack of makeup, Ben realized that she was no older than he. _If I'd only known her back on Earth_, he thought. _If I_--And then he told himself, _You've got enough problems. Don't create another one!_ Finally, except for a stiffness in his leg joints, he'd fully recovered. "How much time do I have?" he asked. "Before you decide?" "Yes." "Very little. Jacob's ship is on its way. It'll be here--well, you can't tell about these things. Two or three Earth days, maybe even tomorrow. It'll stay in Hoover City long enough to discharge and load cargo. Then it'll stop here for us and return to--to our new base." "What do you think Jacob would do if I didn't want to go with him?" * * * * * She shook her head. "You asked me that before. I said I didn't know." Ben thought, _I know a lot about you, Jacob. I know you're based on an asteroid. I know how many men you have, how many ships. I know where this dome is. I know you have men planted in the I. B. I. Would you let me go, knowing these things? How great is your immunity from the law? Do you love freedom so much that you'd kill to help preserve it?_ Fear crawled through his mind on icy legs. "Maggie," he said, "what would Jacob do if he were me?" She looked amused. "Jacob wouldn't have gotten into your situation. He wouldn't have struck Cobb. Jacob is--" "A man? And I'm still a boy? Is that what you mean?" "Not exactly. I think you'll be a man after you make your decision." He frowned, not liking her answer. "You think the dream of going into space is a boy's dream, that it can't belong to a man, too?" "Oh, no. Jacob still has the dream. Most of our men do. And in a man, it's even more wonderful than in a boy." Then her face became more serious. "Ben, you've got to decide soon. And it's got to be a _complete_ decision. You can have no doubt in your mind." He nodded. "On account of Simon, you mean." She motioned for him to come to the window in his room. He gazed outward, following the line of her finger as she pointed. He saw a man-sized mound of stones, dimly visible beneath the wind-whipped dust. A grave. "He was a man like you," Maggie said softly. "God knows Simon didn't _try_ to kill him. But he was escaping. He--he made the decision not to join us. Simon sensed it. There was a struggle. Simon's hands--well, he doesn't realize--" She didn't have to explain further. Ben knew what those mighty scaly paws could do. * * * * * The moments were now like bits of eternity cloaked in frozen fear. Somewhere in the blackness of interplanetary space, Jacob's rocket was streaking closer and closer to Venus. How far away was it? A million miles? Fifty thousand? Or was it now--right now--ripping through the murky Venusian atmosphere above the dome? A _complete_ decision, Maggie had said. Jacob didn't want a potential deserter in his group. And you couldn't _pretend_ that you were loyal to Jacob--not with monstrosities like Simple Simon about. Soon Jacob, not Ben, might have to make a decision--a decision that could result in a second cairn of stones on the wind-swept desert. Ben shivered. Before retiring, he wandered nervously into the supply room. Maggie was poised over the visi-radio. Simple Simon was intently scanning the night-shrouded terrain in the viewscreen. "Any news?" Ben asked Maggie. The girl grunted negatively without looking up. Ben's gaze fell upon the array of oxygen masks, windsuits, vita-rations. Then, on a littered shelf, he spied a small Venusian compass. Almost automatically, his hand closed over it. His brain stirred with a single thought: _A compass could keep a man traveling in a straight line._ Simple Simon restlessly shifted. He turned to Ben, blinking in the frighteningly alien equivalent of a suspicious scowl. Ben's hand tightened about the compass. He tried to relax, to force all thought of it from his mind. He stared at the viewscreen, concentrating on the ceaseless drift of dust. The Venusian's eyes studied him curiously, as if searching his mind for the illusive echo of a feeling that had given him alarm. "I think I'll turn in," yawned Ben. "'Night, Maggie." Simon frowned, apparently frustrated in his mental search. "Ben--not one of us. I--watch." * * * * * Without answering, Ben returned to his room, the compass hot and moist from the perspiration in his hand. He took a deep breath. Why had he taken the compass? He wasn't sure. Perhaps, he reflected, his decision had already been made, deep beneath the surface of consciousness. He stood before the window, peering into the night. He knew that to attempt to sleep was futile. Sleep, for the past few days an ever-ready friend, had become a hostile stranger. _God_, his brain cried, _what shall I do?_ Slowly, the dust outside the window settled. The scream of wind was no longer audible. His startled eyes beheld dim, faraway lights--those of Hoover City, he guessed. It was as if, for the space of a few seconds, some cosmic power had silenced the Venusian fury, had guided him toward making his decision. He whipped up his compass. He barely had time to complete the measurement. "Sixty-eight degrees," he read. "Northeast by east." Fresh wind descended onto the plain. Dancing dust erased the vision of the lights. "Sixty-eight, sixty-eight," he kept muttering. But now there was nothing to do--except try to sleep and be ready. Strong hands shook him out of restless sleep. He opened his eyes and saw complete darkness. He thought at first that his eyesight had failed. "Ben! Wake up!" Maggie's voice came to him, crisp, commanding. "The rocket's coming. I've decoded the message. We only have a few minutes." The girl snapped on a small bulkhead light. She left him alone to dress. He slid out of bed, a drowsiness still in him. He reached for his clothing. Abruptly, the full implication of what she had said struck him. Jacob's rocket was coming. This was the time for decision, yet within his taut body there was only a jungle of conflicting impulses. * * * * * Maggie returned, her face hard, her eyes asking the silent question. Ben stood frozen. The slow seconds beat against his brain like waves of ice. At last she said, "Ready, Ben?" She spoke evenly, but her searching gaze belied the all-important significance of her words. In the dim light, the photograph of Jacob was indistinguishable, but Ben could still see the image of the dead man. He thought, _I can't run away with Jacob like a selfish, cowardly kid! No matter how bright the stars would be, that brightness couldn't destroy the image of a dead man with staring eyes. No matter what Jacob and Simon do to me, I've got to try to get back to Earth._ He suddenly felt clean inside. He was no longer ashamed to hold his head high. "Maggie," he said. "Yes?" "I've made my decision." Outside the window, a waterfall of flame cascaded onto the desert, pushing aside the dust and the darkness. The deep-throated sound of rocket engines grumbled above the whining wind. The floor of the dome vibrated. "The rocket's here!" Maggie cried. The flaming exhaust from the ship dissolved into the night. The rocket thunder faded into the wind. The alarm on the dome's inner airlock bulkhead rang. Maggie ran like a happy child through the concrete corridor, Ben following. She bounded into the supply room, pushed Simple Simon aside, stopped before a control panel. Her fingers flew over switches and levers. The airlock door slid open. A short, stubble-bearded man clad in windsuit and transparalite helmet stomped in. He unscrewed the face plate of his helmet. His ears were too big and he looked like a fat doll. "We're ready for you, Mrs. Pierce," he said. Maggie nodded eagerly. She whirled back to Ben. "_Hurry!_ Get your helmet and suit on!" She spun back to the big-eared little man. "Cargo unloaded? All set for the flight home?" _Home_, Ben thought. _She calls a place she's never seen home._ "Cargo's unloaded." "No trouble with the I. B. I.? No investigation?" "Not yet. We're good for a few more hauls, I guess." * * * * * Ben slipped on his windsuit. He glanced at the control panel for the airlock. Yes, he could manipulate it easily. He contemplated the heat pistol at Simple Simon's hip. A tempting idea--but, no, he wanted no more of violence. Then he bit his lip. He cleared his mind of all thought. Simple Simon evidently had not noted the impulse that flicked his adrenals into pumping. The big-eared man stared strangely at Maggie. "Mrs. Pierce, before we go, I'd better tell you something." "You can do that on the rocket." Maggie stepped forward to seize her helmet. The man blocked her movement. "Mrs. Pierce, your husband--Jacob--was on the rocket." "What?" The girl released a broken, unbelieving little laugh. "Why, he wouldn't dare! That idiot, taking a chance like--" Alarm twisted her features. "He--he wasn't captured--" "No, he wasn't captured. And he took no chance, Mrs. Pierce." A moment of silence. Then she sucked in her breath. Ben understood. Words echoed in his mind: "Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth, not even to Hoover City--except dead." Maggie swayed. Ben and the big-eared little man jumped to her side, guided her back into the compartment used as a kitchen. They helped her to a chair. Ben turned on the fire beneath a coffee pot. Simple Simon watched silently. Her eyes empty and staring, Maggie asked, "How did it happen?" "We were heading into a clump of baby asteroids the size of peas. The radar warning was too slow. We couldn't pull away; we had to stop. The deceleration got him--crushed him. He lived for five minutes afterward." The little man produced a folded paper from a pocket of his suit. "Jacob said he had some ideas he had to get down on paper. God knows why, but during those five minutes he drew up this plan for improving our deceleration compensator." "Plans for--" she gasped. "He was a spaceman, Mrs. Pierce." The man handed her the paper. Ben caught a glimpse of scribbled circuits, relays, cathodes. "When he finished," the man continued, "he said to tell you that he loved you." She started to hand the paper back. The spaceman shook his head. "No, the original is yours. I've made copies for our own ships and for the brass in Hoover City." * * * * * Maggie kept talking to the little man, lost in the world he was creating for her. Ben was excluded from that world, a stranger. Then Ben saw his opportunity. Simple Simon's face was expressionless, but tears were zig-zagging down his gray, reptilian features. Ben stared for several seconds, wondering if his vision had deceived him. Till this instant, he'd somehow assumed that the big Venusian was devoid of emotion. But Simple Simon was crying. It was unlikely that the creature would peer into his mind at a moment like this. Step by step, Ben backed toward the open door in the rear of the compartment. Silently, he slipped through it. He attempted to move automatically, without feeling. He darted into the supply room. The continued drone of voices told him his action had not been observed. He didn't like it at all. Escaping this way was like crumpling Maggie's grief into an acid ball and hurling it into her face. But he had no other choice. A few seconds later, he was dressed in windsuit and oxygen helmet. A can of vita-rations was strapped to his back and his compass was in his hand. Heart refusing to stop pounding, he threw the levers and switches to open the airlock. He cringed under the grinding, scraping noise, as loud to him as the ringing clash of swords. But the murmur of voices continued. He stepped outside. The airlock door clanged shut. He was caught by the biting dust and the shrill banshee wind. He fell, then scrambled erect. To his right, he saw the silver sheen of Jacob's rocket shining behind a row of golden, eyelike portholes. Beneath it were black outlines of moving, helmeted figures. He bent low to study the luminous dial of his compass. Behind him was a grating and a sliding of metal. A movement in the darkness. He turned. Dimly illuminated by the glow from the rocket ports was the grim, stony face of Simple Simon. * * * * * The Venusian was like a piece of the night itself, compressed and solidified to form a living creature. The impression was contradicted only by the glowing whiteness of his eyes. The reptilian body shuffled forward. The scales on his great face and chest reflected the lights from the rocket like Christmas tree ornaments dusted with gold. His hands reached out. Words thundered in Ben's memory: _God knows Simon didn't try to kill him. Simon's hands--well, he doesn't realize--_ Ben hopped away from the groping hands, slipped the compass into his pocket, balled his fists. The wind caught at his body. He stumbled, then recovered his balance. Despite the wind and his suit's bulkiness, he was surprised at his own agility. He recalled that the gravitational pull of Venus was only four-fifths of Earth's. That was an advantage. Crouching against the wind, he stepped to his left, away from the rocket. He was reluctant to enter an area of greater darkness, but neither did he want to risk observation by the men he'd seen near Jacob's ship. Simple Simon followed. He moved like an automaton, functioning with awkward, methodical slowness. His hands, speckled with reflected light, rose up out of the darkness. Ben stepped back, wiped the dust from his clouded face-plate. One swoop of those hands, he knew, could shatter his helmet, destroy his oxygen supply, leave him choking on deadly methane and carbon dioxide. But, so far, Simon seemed bent on capture, not destruction. That fact gave Ben a second advantage. Scaly fingers, moving now with greater swiftness, closed over the shoulder of his suit. Ben felt himself being pulled forward, a child in the grasp of a giant. His brief surge of confidence vanished. Cold terror swept upon him. He lashed out wildly. His right fist found his target, found it so well that the skin split on his gloved knuckles. Simon's head snapped back. The grasping fingers slipped from Ben's suit. But still the Venusian lumbered ahead, an irresistible juggernaut, the hands continually groping. Ben ducked and slipped aside. The can of vita-rations was ripped from his back. He crouched low, fighting the wind, maneuvering for another blow. His lungs ached, but he had no opportunity to increase his helmet's oxygen flow. His weak leg muscles were beginning to pain as though with needles of fire. * * * * * The hands crashed down upon his shoulders. This time, his fist found Simon's stomach. The creature released a grunt audible above the howling of wind. His body doubled up. Ben struck again and again. His lungs throbbed as if they'd break through his chest. A fresh layer of dust coated his face-plate, nearly blinding him. He fought instinctively, gauntleted fists battering. Simple Simon fell. Ben brushed away the dust from his face-plate, turned up his helmet's oxygen valve. Then he knelt by the fallen creature. A new fear came to Ben Curtis--a fear almost as great as that of being caught in Simon's crushing grip. It was the fear that he had killed again. But even in the near-darkness, he could distinguish the labored rise and fall of the massive chest. _Thank God_, he thought. From the direction of Jacob's ship, a flash of light caught his eye. The black shapes of helmeted men were becoming larger, nearer. Ben tensed. The spacemen couldn't have heard sounds of the struggle, but they _might_ have noticed movement. Puffing, Ben plunged into the darkness to his left, slowing only long enough to consult the dial of his compass. "Sixty-eight degrees," he breathed. The compass dial was now his only companion and his only hope. It was the one bit of reality in a world of black, screaming nightmare. * * * * * At first Ben Curtis fought the wind and the dust and the night. His fists were clenched as they had been while struggling with Simon. Each step forward was a challenge, a struggle and--so far, at any rate--a victory. But how far was the city? Five miles? Ten? How could you judge distance through a haze of alien sand? And were Simple Simon or Jacob's men following? How good was a Venusian's vision at night? Would the scaly hands find him even now, descending on him from out of the blackness? He kept walking, walking. Sixty-eight degrees. Gradually his senses grew numb to the fear of recapture. He became oblivious to the wailing wind and the beat of dust against his face-plate. He moved like a robot. His mind wandered back through time and space, a pin-wheel spinning with unforgettable impressions, faces, voices. He saw the white features of a dead man, their vividness fading now and no longer terrifying. _A Space Officer Is Honest. A Space Officer Is Loyal. A Space Officer Is Dutiful._ The words were like clear, satisfying music. He cursed at the image of a pop-eyed Martian boy. _A tres fine table, monsieur. Close in the shadows._ And yet, he told himself, the boy really didn't do anything wrong. He was only helping to capture a murderer. Maybe he was lonesome for Mars and needed money to go home. Ben thought of Maggie: _While other gals were dressing for their junior proms, I'd be in sloppy slacks down at the spaceport with Jacob.... If I'd only known her back on Earth--_ Maggie, sitting alone now with a wrinkled paper and its mass of scrawled circuits. Alone and hollow with grief and needing help. Ben's throat tightened. Damn it, he didn't want to think about that. What was it the little big-eared man had said? _I've made copies for our own ships and for the brass in Hoover City._ Why had he said that? Why would renegades give their secrets to the Space Corps? The Corps would incorporate the discoveries in their ships. With them, they'd reach the asteroids. Jacob's group would be pushed even further outward. Ben stopped, the wind whipping at his suit and buffeting his helmet--but not as hard as the answer he had found. * * * * * Jacob and his men had an existence to justify, a debt to pay. They justified that existence and paid that debt by helping humanity in its starward advance. Maggie had said, _We carry cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's getting scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. If we want to risk our lives getting it, that's our business.... The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago. We lost a few men in the construction, but with almost every advance in space, someone dies._ The wind pressed Ben back. The coldness of the Venusian night was seeping into his suit. It was as if his body were bathed, at once, in flame and ice. He slipped, fell, his face turned toward the sandy ground. He did not try to rise. Yet his mind seemed to soar above the pain, to carry him into a wondrous valley of new awareness. Man would never be content to stay on nine insignificant globes-not when his eyes had the power to stare into a night sky and when his brain had the ability to imagine. There would have to be pioneers to seek out the unknown horror, to face it and defeat it. There would have to be signposts lining the great road and helping others to follow without fear. For all the brilliancy of their dreams, those men would be the lonely ones, the men of no return. For all the glory of their brief adventure, they would give not only their cloaks, but ultimately their lives. Ben lay trembling in the darkness. His brain cried, _You couldn't rig up a radar system or a deceleration compensator, but you could chart those asteroids. You can't bring a man named Cobb back to life, but you could help a thousand men and women to stay alive five or ten or twenty years from now._ Ben knew at last what decision Jacob would have made. The reverse of sixty-eight on a compass is two-forty-eight. * * * * * Like flashing knitting needles, strong hands moved about his face-plate, his windsuit, his helmet. Then they were wiping perspiration from his white face and placing a wet cloth on the back of his neck. "You were coming back," a voice kept saying. "You were coming back." His mouth was full of hot coffee. He became aware of a gentle face hovering above him, just as it had a seeming eternity ago. He sat up on the bed, conscious now of his surroundings. "Simon says you were coming back, Ben. _Why?_" He fought to grasp the meaning of Maggie's words. "Simon? Simon found me? He brought me back?" "Only a short way. He said you were almost here." Ben closed his eyes, reliving the whirlwind of thought that had whipped through his brain. He mumbled something about pioneers and a scrawled paper and a debt and a decision. Then he blinked and saw that he and Maggie were not alone. Simple Simon stood at the foot of his bed--and was that a trace of a smile on his reptilian mouth? And three windsuited spacemen stood behind Maggie, helmets in their hands. One was a lean-boned, reddish-skinned Martian. Simple Simon said, "Ben--changed. Thinks--like us. Good now. Like--Jacob." The little big-eared man stepped up and shook hands with Ben. "If Simon says so, that's good enough for me." A blond-haired Earthman helped Ben from the bed. "Legs okay, fellow? Think you're ready?" Ben stood erect unassisted. "Legs okay. And I'm ready." He thought for a moment. "But suppose I wasn't ready. Suppose I didn't want to go with you. I know a lot about your organization. What would you do?" The blond man shrugged untroubledly. "We wouldn't kill you, if that's what you mean. We'd probably vote on whether to take you with us anyway or let you go." His smile was frank. "I'm glad we don't have to vote." Ben nodded and turned to Maggie. "You're still coming with us?" She shook her head, a mist shining in her sad eyes. "Not on this trip. Not without Jacob. I'll get one of our desert taxis back to Hoover City. Then I'll be going to Earth for a while. I've got some thinking to do and thinking is done best on Earth. Out here is the place for _feeling_." Her eyes lost a little of their pain. "But I'll be back. Jacob wouldn't stay on Earth. Neither will I. I'll be seeing you." The big-eared man put his hand on Ben's shoulder. "Think you can get us back to Juno?" he asked. Ben looked at Maggie and then at the big-eared man. "You're as good as there," he said confidently. 
51407	----	SEA LEGS By FRANK QUATTROCCHI Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction November 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Rootless and footloose, a man in space can't help but dream of coming home. But something nobody should do is bet on the validity of a homesick dream! Flight Officer Robert Craig surrendered the tube containing his service record tapes and stood waiting while the bored process clerk examined the seal. "Your clearance," said the clerk. Craig handed him a battered punch card and watched the man insert it in the reproducer. He felt anxiety as the much-handled card refused for a time to match the instrument's metal contact points. The line of men behind Craig fidgeted. "You got to get this punched by Territorial," said the clerk. "Take it back to your unit's clearance office." "Look again, Sergeant," Craig said, repressing his irritation. "It ain't notched." "The hell it isn't." The man examined the card with squinting care and nodded finally. "It's so damn notched," he complained. "You ought to take care of that card; can't get on without one." Craig hesitated before moving. "Next," said the clerk, "What you waiting for?" "Don't I take my 201 file?" "We send it on ahead. Go to Grav 1 desk." A murmur greeted the order. Craig experienced the thrill of knowing the envy of the others. Grav 1--that meant Terra. He crossed the long, dreary room, knowing the eyes of the other men were upon him. "Your service tapes," the next noncom said. "Where you going?" "Grav 1--Terra," fumbled Craig. "Los Angeles." "Los Angeles, eh? Where in Los Angeles?" "I--I--" Craig muttered, fumbling in his pockets. "No specific destination," supplied the man as he punched a key on a small instrument, "Air-lock ahead and to your right. Strip and follow the robot's orders. Any metal?" "Metal?" asked Craig. "You know, _metal_." "Well, my identification key." "Here," commanded the clerk, extending a plastic envelope. Craig moved in the direction indicated. He fought the irrational fear that he had missed an important step in the complicated clerical process. He cursed the grudging attitude of the headquarters satellite personnel and felt the impotence of a spaceman who had long forgotten the bureaucracy of a rear area base. The knowledge that much of it was motivated by envy soothed him as he clumsily let himself into the lock. "Place your clothing in the receptacle provided and assume a stationary position on the raised podium in the center of the lock." Craig obeyed the robot voice and began reluctantly to remove his flight jacket. Its incredibly fine-grained leather would carry none of the strange, foreign associations for the base station clerk who would appropriate it. He would never know the beautiful, gentle beast that supplied this skin. "You are retarding the progress of others. Please respond more quickly to your orders." Craig quickly removed the last of his clothing. It was impossible to hate a robot, but one could certainly hate those who set it into operation. "You will find a red button at your feet. Lower your head and depress that button." Stepping on the button with his bare foot produced an instant of brilliant blue illumination. A small scratch on his arm stung briefly and he was somewhat blinded by the flash even through his eyelids, but that was all there was to the sterilizing process. "Your clothing and effects will be in the dressing room immediately beyond the locked door." He found his clothing cleanly and neatly hung on plastic hangers just inside the door to the dressing room. The few personal items he carried in his pockets were still there. The Schtann flight jacket was actually there, looking like new, its space-blue unfaded and as wonderfully pliant as before. "Insert your right arm into the instrument on the central table," commanded the same voice he had heard before. "Turn your arm until the scratch is in contact with the metal plate. There will be a slight pain, but it is necessary to treat the small injury you have been disregarding." Craig obeyed and clenched his teeth against a sharp stinging. His respect for the robot-controlled equipment of bases had risen. When he withdrew his arm, the scratch was neatly coated with a layer of flesh-colored plastic material. He dressed quickly and was on the verge of asking the robot for instructions, when a man appeared in the open doorway. "I am Captain Wyandotte," said the man in a pleasant voice. "Well, what's next?" asked Craig somewhat more belligerently than he had intended. The man smiled. "Your reaction is quite natural. You are somewhat aggressive after Clerical, eh?" "I'm a little anxious to get home, I suppose," said Craig defensively. "By 'home' you mean Terra. But you've never been there, have you?" "No, but my father--" "Your parents left Terra during the Second Colonization of Cassiopeia II, didn't they?" "Yes," Craig said. He was uncomfortable; Wyandotte seemed to know all about him. "We might say you've been away quite a while, eh?" "I was entered as a spaceman when I was 16," Craig said. "I've never been down for any period as yet." "You mean you haven't been in a gravity system?" "Oh, I've landed a few times, even walked around for a while...." "With the help of paraoxylnebutal," supplied the captain. "Well, sure." "Mr. Craig, I suppose you've guessed that the next step in our little torture system here is psych." "So I gathered." The captain laughed reassuringly. "No, don't put up your guard again. The worst is over. Short of Gravitational conditioning, there is nothing to stop you from going to Terra." "Sorry, I guess I'm a little touchy. This is my first time...." "Quite natural. But it being your first time--in quite a number of ways, I might add--it will be necessary for you to undergo some conditioning." "Conditioning?" asked Craig. "Yes. You have spent eleven years in space. Your body is conditioned to a normal state of free fall, or at best to a state of acceleration." "Yeah, I know. Once on Gerymeade...." "You were ill, couldn't keep your balance, felt dizzy. That is why all spacemen carry PON, paraoxylnebutal, with them. It helps suppress certain physiological reactions to an entirely new set of conditions. Channels of the ear, for example. They play an important part in our awareness of balance. They operate on a simple gravity principle. Without gravity they act up for a time, then gradually lose function. Returning to gravity is rather frightening at first." "I know all about this, Captain." "You've undoubtedly read popularizations in tapezines. But you have experienced it briefly." "I expect to have some trouble at first." Craig was disturbed by the wordy psychologist. What was the man actually saying? "Do you know what sailors of ancient times meant by 'sea legs?'" asked Wyandotte. "Men on a rolling ocean acclimated themselves to a rolling horizontal. They had trouble when they went ashore and the horizontal didn't roll any more. "It meant more than that. There were excellent psychological reasons for the old stereotype, the 'drunken sailor.' A port city was a frightening thing to an old sailor--but let's begin our little job at the beginning. I'll turn you over to psychometry for the usual tests and pick you up tomorrow morning at, say, 0900." * * * * * During the days that followed, the psychologist seemed to Craig to become progressively more didactic. He would deliver long speeches about the "freedom of open space." He spoke repetitiously of the "growing complexity of Terran society." And yet the man could not be pinned down to any specific condition the spaceman would find intolerable. Craig began to hate the delay that kept him from Terra. Through the ports of the headquarters base satellite, he scanned the constellations for the scores of worlds he had visited during his eleven years in space. They were incredibly varied, even those that supported life. He had weathered difficult landings on worlds with rip-tide gravities, had felt the pull of the incredible star-tides imparted by twin and even triple star systems. He had been on Einstein IV, the planet of eight moons, and had felt the pulse of all eight of the satellites at once that no PON could completely nullify. But even if he could accept the psychologist's authority for the cumulative effect of a gravity system, he could not understand the unspoken warning he felt underlying all that the man said. "Of course it has changed," Craig was protesting. "Anyway, I never really knew very much about Terra. So what? I know it won't be as it was in tapezines either." "Yet you are so completely sure you will want to live out your life there, that you are willing to give up space service for it." "We've gone through this time and time again," Craig said wearily. "I gave you my reasons for quitting space. We analyzed them. You agreed that you could not decide that for me and that my decision is logical. You tell me spacemen don't settle down on Terra. Yet you won't--or can't--tell me why. I've got a damned good job there--" "You may find that 'damned good jobs' become boring." "So I'll transfer. I don't know what you're trying to get at, Captain, but you're not talking me out of going back. If the service needs men so badly, let them get somebody else. I've put in _my_ time." "Do you really think that's my reason?" "Sure. What else can it be?" "Mr. Craig," the psychologist said slowly, "you have my authorization for you to return to Terra as a private citizen of that planet. You will be given a very liberal supply of PON--which you will definitely need. Good luck. You'll need that too." * * * * * On the eighth day, two attendants, who showed the effects of massive doses of PON to protect themselves from the centrifugal force, had to carry a man out of the tank. Many others asked to be removed, begged to be allowed to withdraw their resignations. "The twelfth day is the worst," a grizzled spaceman told Craig. "That's when the best of 'em want out." Craig clenched the iron rung of his bed and struggled to bring the old man's face into focus. "How ... how do they know when you ought ... to come out?" he asked between waves of nausea. "Blood pressure. They get you just before you go into shock." "How can they tell?" Craig fought down his growing panic. "I can't." "That strap around your belly. You mean you ain't noticed it?" "Haven't noticed much of anything." "Well, it's keyed to give them some kind of signal." The old man lapsed into silence. Craig wished him to continue. He desperately wanted something to distract his mind from the ghastly conditioning process. Slowly at first, the lines formed by seams in the metal ceiling began to bend. Here it came again! "Old man!" shouted Craig. "Yeah, son. They've dropped it down a notch." "Dropped ... it ... down?" "Maybe that ain't scientific, but it's the way I always think of it." "Can't they ... drop it down continuously?" "They tried that a few times--once when I was aboard. You wouldn't like it, kid. You wouldn't like it at all." "How ... many times ... do they drop it?" "Four times during the day, three at night. Twenty days." A nightmare of visual sensations ebbed into Craig's mind. He was vaguely aware of the moans of other men in the vaultlike room. Wave upon wave of nausea swept him as he watched the seam lines bend and warp fantastically. He snapped his eyelids shut, only to begin feeling the nightmarish bodily sensations once more. He felt the cot slowly rise longitudinally, felt himself upside down, then the snap of turning right side up once more--and he knew that neither he nor the cot had moved so much as an inch. Craig heard the voices around him, muffled, as though talking through wadding. "... got it bad." "We better take him out." "... pretty bad." "He'll go into shock." "... never make it the twelfth." "We better yank him." "I'm ... all right," Craig mumbled at the voices. He struggled with the bonds of his cot. With terrible effort he forced his eyes open. Two white-clad figures, ridiculously out of proportion, hovered wraithlike over him. Four elongated eyes peered at him. _Attendants coming for to take me home...._ "Touch me and I'll kick your teeth in!" he yelled. "I'm going to Terra. Wish you were going to Terra?" Then it was better. Oddly, he passed the twelfth day easily. By the fourteenth day, Craig knew he could stand Grav 1. The whine of the centrifuge's motors had diminished to a low hum. Either that or they had begun to produce ultra-sonic waves. Craig was not sure. Most of the men had passed through the torments of gravitational conditioning. The huge headquarters base centrifuge aboard the man-made satellite had gradually caused their bodies to respond once more to a single source of pull. They were now ready to become inhabitants of planets again, instead of free-falling ships. On the eighteenth day, automatic machinery freed them from their imprisoning cots. Clumsily and awkwardly at first, the men began to walk, to hold their heads and arms in proper attitudes. They laughed and joked about it and kidded those who were slow at adjusting. Then they again began taking paraoxylnebutal in preparation for the free-fall flight to Terra. Only one of the score of men in the centrifuge tank remained voluntarily in his cot. "Space article violator," the old man informed Craig. "Psycho, I think. Went amuck with some extraterritorials. Killed a dozen." "What will they do, exile him?" "Not to Chociante, if that's what you mean. They just jerked his space card and gave him a one-way ticket to Terra." "For twelve murders?" asked Craig incredulously. "That's enough, son." The old man eyed Craig for an instant before looking away. "Pick something to talk about. What do you figure on doing when you get to Terra, for instance?" "I'm going into Import. My father was in it for twenty years." "Sure," said the old spaceman, watching a group of young crewmen engaged in an animated conversation. "It's a good job. There's a future to it." "Yeah." Why did he have to explain anything at all to the old space tramp? "Once I get set up, I'll probably try to open my own business." "And spend your weekends on Luna." Craig half rose from his cot, jarred into anger. But the old spaceman turned, smiling wryly. "Don't get hot, kid. I guess I spent too long in Zone V." He paused to examine his wrinkled hands. They were indelibly marked with lever callouses. "You get to thinking anyone who stays closer'n eighty light years from Terra is a land-lubber." Craig relaxed, realizing he had acted childishly. "Used to think the same. Then I took the exam and got this job." "Whereabouts?" "Los Angeles." The old man looked up at Craig. "You don't know much about Terra, do you, son?" "Not much." "Yeah. Well, I hope you ain't disappointed." "My father was born there, but I never saw it. Never hit the Solar System, matter of fact. Never saw much of anything close up. I stood it a long time, old man, this hitting atmospheres all over the Universe." But the spaceman seemed to have lost interest. He was unpacking some personal belongings from a kit. "What are you doing in Grav 1?" Craig asked. The old man's face clouded for an instant. "In the old days, they used to say us old-timers acted like clocks. They used to say we just ran down. Now they got some fancy psychology name for it." Craig regretted his question. He would have muttered some word of apology, but the old man continued. "Maybe you've read some of the old sea stories, or more'n likely had 'em read to you. Sailors could go to sea until they just sort of dried up. The sea tanned their skins and stiffened their bones, but it never stiffened their hearts. When they got old, it just pulled them in. "But space is different. Space is raw and new. It tugs at your guts. It sends the blood rushing through your veins. It's like loving. You don't become a part of space the way you do the old sea, though. It leaves you strictly alone. Except that it sucks you dry, takes all the soup out of you, leaves you brittle and old--old as a dehydrated piece of split leather. "Then one day it shoots a spurt of blood around in one of your old veins. Something gives. Space is through with you then. And if you can stand this whirligig conditioning, you're through with space." * * * * * "_You can't figure it. Some of 'em urp all over and turn six shades of green._" "_You got to watch the ones that don't._" "_Yeah, you got to watch the ones that don't. Especially the old ones._" "_He's old. You think it was his heart?_" "_Who knows?_" "_They'll dump him, won't they?_" "_After a tracer is sent through. But it won't do any good._" "_He probably outlived everybody that ever knew him._" "_Wouldn't be surprised. Here, grab his leg._" * * * * * Robert Craig folded the flight jacket tightly and stuffed it into the cylindrical carton. A sleeve unwound just as he did so, making it difficult to fit into the place he had made for it. Exasperated, he refolded it and jammed it in place. Smaller rolls of underclothing were then fitted in. When he was satisfied with the layer, he tossed in a small handful of crystals and began to fill the next layer. After the carton was completely filled, he ignited the sealing strip and watched as the plastic melted into a single, seamless whole. It was ready for irradiation. Probably in another ten years his son-to-be would put it on and play spaceman. But Craig swore he'd make sure that the kid knew what a stinking life it was. At 1300 hours, the ferry bumped heavily alongside the starboard lock. It was the signal for relief in the passengers' quarters; many were beginning to feel a reaction to the short free-fall flight from the headquarters satellite. The audio called out: "Flight Officer Robert Craig. Flight Officer Robert Craig. Report to Orderly 12. Report to Orderly 12 through the aft door." With pangs of anxiety he could not completely suppress, Craig obeyed. Orderly 12 handed him a message container. "Who's it from? Somebody on Terra?" "From a private spaceman named Morgan Brockman." "_Brockman?_" "He was with you in the grav tank." "The old man!" The message container produced a battered punch card. Craig straightened it and was about to reach into his pocket for a hand transcriber. But then he noticed the card bore only a few irregular punches and was covered with rough hand printing. Son, when the flunkies get around to giving you this, they'll have shot me out the tube. How do I know? Same way you know when your turbos are going to throw a blade. It's good this way. There's something you can do for me if you want to. Way back, some fifty years ago, there was a woman. She was my wife. It's a long story I won't bother you with. Anyway, I left her. Wanted to take her along with me, but she wouldn't go. Earth was a lot different then than it is now. They don't have to tell me; I know. I saw it coming and so did Ethel. We talked about it and I knew I had to go. She wouldn't or couldn't go. Wanted me to stay, but I couldn't. I tried to send her some units once in a while. Don't know if she ever got them. Sometimes I forgot to send them at all. You know, you're way out across the Galaxy, while she's home. Go see her if you can, son. Will you? Make sure she gets the unit transfer I made out. It isn't much out of seventy years of living, but she may need it. And maybe you can tell her a little bit about what it means to be out there. Tell her it's open and free and when you got hold of those levers and you're trying for an orbit on something big and new and green.... Hell, you remember. You know how to tell her. Her name is Ethel Brockman. I know she'll still use my name. Her address is or was East 71, North 101, Number 4. You can trace her easy if she moved. Women don't generally shove off and not leave a forwarding address. Not Ethel, at least. Craig put the battered card in his pocket and walked back through the door to the passenger room. How did you explain to an old woman why her husband deserted her fifty years before? Some kind of story about one's duty to the Universe? No, the old man had not been in Intergalactic. He had been a tramp spaceman. Well, why _had_ he left? Fifty years in space. _Fifty_ years! Zone V had been beyond anybody's imagination that long ago. He must have been in on the first Cetusian flights and shot the early landings in Cetus II. God only knew how many times he had battled Zone 111b pirates.... Damn the old man! How did one explain? * * * * * Craig descended the ramp from the huge jet and concentrated on his impressions. One day he would recall this moment, his first on the planet Terra. He tried to recall his first thrill at seeing Los Angeles, 1500 square miles of it, from the ship as it entered the atmosphere. He was about to step off the last step when a man appeared hurriedly. A rather plump man, he displayed a toothy smile on his puffy red face. "A moment, sir. Just a little greeting from the Terra. You understand, of course. Purely routine." Craig remained on the final step of the ramp, puzzled. The man turned to a companion at his right. "We can see that this gentleman has come from a long, long way off, can't we?" The other man did not look up. He was peering into what seemed to Craig to be a kind of camera. "We can allow the gentlemen to continue now, can't we? It wasn't that we believed for a minute, you understand ... purely routine." Both men were gone in an instant, leaving Craig completely bewildered. "You goin' to move on, buddy, or you want to go back?" Craig turned to face a line of his fellow passengers up the ramp behind him. "Who was that?" Craig asked. "Customs. Bet you never got such a smooth screening before, eh?" "You mean he _screened_ me? What for?" "Hard to say," the other passenger said. "You'll get used to this. They get it over with quick." Craig made his way toward the spaceport administration building. His first physical contact with Terra had passed unnoticed. "Sir! Sir!" cried a voice behind him. He wheeled to see a man walking briskly toward him. "You dropped this, sir. Quite by accident, of course." Craig examined the small object the man had given him before rushing off toward an exit. It was an empty PON tube he had just discarded. He couldn't understand why the man had bothered until he realized that the plastaloid floor of the lobby displayed not the faintest scrap of paper nor trace of dirt. * * * * * The Import personnel man was toying with a small chip of gleaming metal. He did not look directly at Craig for more than an instant at a time, and commented on Craig's description of his trip through the city only very briefly between questions. "It's a good deal bigger than I imagined," Craig was saying. "Haven't seen much of it, of course. Thought I'd check in here with you first." "Yes, naturally." "Thought you could give me some idea of conditions...." "Conditions?" "For instance, what part of the city I should live in. That is, what part is closest to where I'll work." "I see," said the man noncommittally. It seemed to Craig that he was about to add something. He did not, however, but instead rose from his chair and walked to the large window overlooking an enormous section of the city far below. He stared out the window for a time, leaving Craig seated uncomfortably in the silent room. There was a distracted quality about him, Craig thought. "You are the first man we have had from the Intergalactic Service," the personnel man said finally. "That so?" "Yes." He turned to face Craig briefly before continuing. "You must find it very strange here." "Well, I've never seen a city so big." "Yes, so big. And also...." He seemed to consider many words before completing the sentence. "And also different." "I haven't been here very long," said Craig. "Matter of fact, I haven't been anywhere very long. This is my first real experience with life on a planet. As an adult, anyway." The personnel man seated himself once more and pressed a button on a small instrument. A secretary entered the office from a door to Craig's left. "Miss Wendel, this is Mr. Craig. Mr. Craig, my secretary. Mr. Craig will enter Minerals and Metals, Zone V." They exchanged formal greetings. She was a moderately pretty girl of medium height and, to Craig, a pleasantly rounded figure. He would have attempted to catch her eye had she not immediately occupied herself with unfolding the legs of a small instrument she was carrying. "This is Mr. Craig's first landing on Terra, Miss Wendel," the personnel man continued. "Actually, we shall have to consider him in much the same way we would an extraterrestrial." The girl glanced at Craig, casting him a cool, impersonal smile. "He was formerly a flight officer in the Intergalactic Space Service." The statement was delivered in an almost exaggeratedly casual tone. The girl glanced at him once more, this time with a definite quizzical look in her brown eyes. "Three complete tours of duty, I believe." "Four," corrected Craig. "Four tours of three years each, minus a year's terminal leave." "I take it you have no identification card?" the man asked. "The one I held in the service. It's pretty comprehensive." The other turned to the secretary. "You'll see that he is assisted in filing his application, won't you? A provisional Code II. That will enable you to enter all Import offices freely, Mr. Craig." "Will he need a food and--clothing ration also?" asked the girl, without looking at Craig. "Yes." The man laughed. "You'll excuse us, Mr. Craig. We realize that you couldn't be expected to be familiar with Terra's fashions. In your present outfit you would certainly be typed as a ... well, you'd be made uncomfortable." Craig reddened in spite of himself. He had bought the suit on Ghandii. "A hick," he supplied. "I wouldn't go that far, but some people might." * * * * * Craig noted the pleasant way the girl filled her trim, rather severe business suit. He amused himself by calculating stress patterns in its plain woven material as she assembled the forms for him. "Here, Mr. Craig. I believe these are complete." "They look pretty complicated." "Not at all. The questions are quite explicit." Craig looked them over quickly. "I guess so. Say, Miss Wendel, I was wondering--I don't know the city at all. Maybe you could go with me to have dinner. It must be almost dinnertime now. You could sort of check me out on some...." "I'm afraid that would be quite impossible. You couldn't gain admittance to any office you need to visit tonight. Therefore, it is impossible for me to be of any assistance to you." "Oh, come now, Miss Wendel. There are women aboard spaceships. I'm not a starved wolf." "Certainly you are not, Mr. Craig. But it is not possible for me...." "You said that already, but you can have dinner with me. Just company." "I'm afraid I don't understand." * * * * * The Galactic hotel strove to preserve an archaic tone of hospitality. It advertised "a night's lodgings" and it possessed a bellboy. The bellboy actually carried Craig's plasticarton and large file of punch cards and forms to his room. Tired from the long, confusing day, Craig was not impressed. He vaguely wondered if the little drama of the hotel carried so far as a small fee to be paid the bellboy, and he hoped he would have the right size of Terran units in his wallet. Outside the door to the room, the bellboy stopped and turned to Craig. "For five I'll tell you where it is," he said in a subdued tone. "Tell me where what is?" "You know, the mike." "Mike?" "All right, mister, three units, then. I wasn't trying to hold you up." "You mean a microphone?" asked Craig, mechanically fishing for his wallet. "Sure, they don't put in screens here. Wanted to, but the boss convinced 'em there aren't any Freedomites ever stay here." "Where is the microphone?" Craig asked as he found a ten unit note. He was too puzzled to wonder what he was expected to do with the information. "It's in the bed illuminator. You can short it out with a razor blade. Or I'll do it for another two." "Never mind," Craig said wearily. He waited while the bellboy inserted a key into the door and opened it for him. "I can get you a sensatia-tape," whispered the boy when they had entered. He nudged Craig wickedly. "You know what they're like?" "Yeah," Craig said disgustedly. Traffic in the illicit mental-image tapes was known as far into space as lonely men had penetrated. Intergalactic considered them as great a menace to mental and moral stability as the hectopiates. Craig wearily got the man out of the room, took a PON pill, and eased himself into the bed. It had been a weird day and he had not liked it. There was no telling how long it would take him to shake his--sea legs, the psychologist had called it. One thing was sure: Terra aggressively went after its strangers. * * * * * Ushered into the room by a sullen and silent secretary, Craig found himself facing a semi-circular table at which were seated five uniformed men. The center man, obviously their superior, rose to greet him. He wore the familiar smile Craig had come to know so well and hate so much. The man was somewhat over forty years old, short, stout, entirely unpleasant and puffy. "Mr. Craig, I believe," he greeted Craig. Since it seemed to be more of a statement than a question, Craig did not answer. He took up a position of more or less military attention at the center of the curved table. "You _are_ Robert Craig," insisted the man. "Yes, I'm Robert Craig," he answered, somewhat surprised. The stout man seated himself with a sigh and began to sort through some papers on the table before him. The other four men continued to stare at Craig silently, until he began to feel uncomfortable and hostile. He stiffened his position of attention defiantly. "You may relax, Mr. Craig," said the first man without looking up. "You aren't nervous, are you?" "No," Craig said, trying to smile. "This is the first time I've been here and...." He let the sentence trail off, hoping for a sympathetic response. But he did not get it. "Flight Officer, eh?" said the man. Then, looking up, he added, "Somewhat unusual to find a vigorous young man like yourself abandoning the space service for a Terran job, isn't it?" "I don't know. Is it?" "Leaving something behind out there, Mr. Craig?" "No, nothing," Craig snapped. The other man glared at him a full minute. Craig met the stare and realized the considerable power behind the weak face. "You don't like this sort of affair, do you, Mr. Craig?" Craig was forced to look away. "I'm afraid I don't see the necessity," he answered in a controlled voice. "I served the Intergalactic Service well. My records prove that." "Granted," said his questioner bluntly. "You are a Terran, are you not, Mr. Craig?" "I should think that would be obvious," Craig said, matching the blunt tone. The man rapped the table. "That's enough of your impertinence! You may very well have served the Intergalactic Service, but you are on Terra now. Terra, greatest, first of all civilized systems. Intergalactic may very well have to piddle with incompetent savages and wild colonists, but we of Terra assert our supremacy. Remember those words. You may not always find Terra so submissive to Intergalactic as Intergalactic would desire." "Where are your loyalties, Mr. Craig?" demanded one of the other men suddenly. "I am a Terran...." "But your first loyalty is to Intergalactic. Is that right?" "Is there a distinction?" Craig shot back, thoroughly angry. "Do you wish to be held in contempt of this committee?" asked the first man, leaning forward half out of his chair. "Of course not." "Then you will confine your responses to simple yes and no answers, if you please, _Mr._ Craig." Craig glared at the men in impotent rage. His head was beginning to ache. He had been many hours without paraoxylnebutal. "Now, Mr. Craig," the first man began in an overly mild tone, "we shall begin again. Please try to restrain your show of emotion. You are here in petition of an identity card of provisional Code II type. You maintain that you have never been on Terra before. Indeed, you state that you have never had a political affiliation." "Yes." "What are your reactions to the latest acts of the Liberty party?" a third man abruptly asked. "I have none," Craig answered, after an instant of confusion. "You do not condemn the Liberty party?" "I ... I...." "Then you must favor it." "I don't know anything about any...." "Now, then, Mr. Craig," interrupted the head of the group. "The Import service report shows that you passed your tests aboard your ship. You were enabled to accomplish this through night study." "Yes." "Yet you maintain in your application that you had considered the space service a career." "I changed my mind." "Oh. You changed your mind. I see...." * * * * * "What do you do if they turn you down on your food ration?" Craig asked the man by his side on the bench. He had intended it as a vaguely humorous question. "You don't eat." "You mean they would actually let you starve?" "If you could not eat, you would starve," the man said matter-of-factly. "What's all this for, anyway? I mean the medical part." "You are rationed fairly in accordance with your particular metabolism." "You're kidding." "One does not jest of such matters," said the man, getting up to take a seat on another bench. * * * * * "_But I'd like to keep it as a souvenir._" "_It is not permitted._" "_Look, it isn't issue. I bought the hide, had it made. I can pull off the marks of insignia and it's just another jacket...._" "_That is not the point, Mr. Craig. Your clothing ration is defined by law. There are no exceptions._" * * * * * "_These are your permanent quarters. You will occupy them immediately. Then, if you believe the location is wasteful of your time, you must petition the appropriate committee. This department cannot accept such a petition._" * * * * * "_Your petition to be permitted to purchase a private means of conveyance is hereby denied._" * * * * * The big man leaned far back in the battered desk chair. It creaked at worn joints, but touched the wall without sliding from under its enormous load. The man was silent through Craig's long, confused speech. By turns he examined his fingernails, picked at yellowed teeth, and stared above his head at the discolored ceiling. "... but you can get all this from ISS, maybe even from Import, if they'll release my file," Craig argued. "Uh-huh," the big man said between closed lips. "I just made a mistake, that's all. You don't hear much about Terra out there. It was different in my father's day. It must have been different." "Yeah." "I haven't any character references on Terra, but I can post a good-sized bond if they'll release my ISS units." The space-freight agent glanced up at Craig at the remark. "Anyway, I can get my units anywhere ISS has a base," Craig continued. "I can handle anything up to 15 Gs acceleration without a new license. I can go heavier if I get a check ride." The fat man leaned forward in the protesting chair. "You got everything, but you can't go. I can't hire you." "Why not?" "Look, kid--Craig, is it?--how long you been in?" "Four days. I'm still working on my work clearances." "Four days. You tried Intergalactic to see if they'd take you back?" "Yes. Their hands are tied by my Terran contract." "And ours aren't, eh?" The man rose from the desk and walked to a water tap. He popped a pill into his gaping mouth and drank from a tin cup. Then he returned to the inadequate chair. "So you're a spaceman. Flight officer--_ex_-flight officer. You know how to navigate through four star zones and the asteroid belt thrown in. You got a license for 15 Gs, could get five more. You got enough brains to pass Import's senior router's exam. "Still, you ain't got enough sense to come in out of the rain!" Craig sat upright in his chair. "We get guys like you two, three a day. You're hot. You're big. You're rarin' to go. But you ain't goin' nowhere!" Craig glared at the big man. "I don't know how you got here, Craig. It ain't none of my business. Maybe you did quit honorable. Quit to follow your daddy's footsteps. Or maybe you went and burned up a colony somewhere!" "That would be in my records, wouldn't it?" Craig challenged. "It still don't make any difference. You're stuck here. Nobody leaves Terra without a permit. Nobody. You couldn't get a permit with a crowbar and a blaster. You got a problem, son. You asked for it. Maybe they told you beforehand, maybe they didn't. You got a problem of adjustment. Terra's moved a long, long way since your daddy left it. We're doing things here. We're going places. Big things and big places. "You got to fit into that, kid. Fit in quick. Move with it. You don't like the red tape, the committees? I don't like 'em either. But I been here a while. I can cut red tape. Red tape is for guys like you, guys that don't know Terra, don't know where we're going. "Stick around, kid. You still got sea legs. You're still hopped up on PON. You're going to like it here on Terra. You're going to like it great. You can make a quick dollar on Terra. You can spend a quick dollar here too. Smarten up or you'll finish scrubbing radioactive dust off girders!" * * * * * The girl approached his table, her hard eyes scanning him. Wordlessly she slid into the booth opposite him and made a sign for the bartender. "Have a drink?" Craig suggested, smiling. "Yeah." "Work here?" "What you mean by that?" "I mean if you get a percentage on the drinks, I can...." "I don't get no percentage." The bartender brought them a version of N'cadian taz. The girl slouched in the booth and sullenly tapped the glass. The lights in the bar had dimmed to simulate some kind of planetary night. The walls came alive with projected images of Terran constellations. On their table, a globe lamp began to glow. Tiny bright lights swung orbits around a miniature sun inside the lamp. As a miniature Pluto swung on its slow arc, an image of it was projected on the girl's dusky face. She seemed to be staring at nothing. "Why d'you call me over here? You a purist, or don't you like the brand of sensatia-tapes they're peddlin' these days?" "I don't understand," Craig said. She smiled crookedly at him. Not a bad face, Craig decided, but hard, hard as the ceramiplate of a ship. She could not be very old. It was the kind of wild look in her eyes that gave her a false appearance of age. "Maybe you're writing a book--you got me over here for something." "I just got in," Craig answered. "What am I supposed to do for this drink?" "Nothing. Nothing at all. I suppose. I thought ... just skip it. I'm lonesome, that's all." "Lonely, huh?" said the girl. "Lonely and just in, huh? Just in from space." She turned away from him to signal the bartender. "What you need is drinks." There were more drinks. Many more drinks. The girl kept them coming, kept talking to him about--what was it? Craig looked at the girl and then at the globe lamp. He watched as the tiny bright orbs of light projected their images on the girl opposite him. He was aware of the gradual dimming of the lights, the suppression of sound in the bar. He watched the tiny lights of other globes appear around shadows, watched as the lights traced fiery trails across the dusky skin of the girl opposite him, watched as they crossed the warm, rounded flesh.... * * * * * "_I tell ya we didn't give him nothing but a coupla tazes._" "_The pump will determine that. You might as well tell the truth._" "_I am tellin' the truth. He drank, let's see ... two, three._" "_Four, five, six. You let her pump him full._" "_Hey, look, this guy's a spaceman, or was._" "_I didn't know that. Honest I didn't. He never told us._" "_All right, you didn't know. What you put in those tazes--ether?_" "_We denature the polyester just like the law says._" "_And you get it straight from M'cadii, eh?_" "_We put in some syn. So what? That ain't against the law._" "_He's probably got grav trouble, Chief._" "_Who was the girl?_" "_Girl? What girl?_" "_You know what girl!_" "_Just a girl, like a million of 'em these days._" "_Professional?_" "_There ain't any any more. You know, sensatia-tapes._" "_Know her name?_" "_I don't ask no names. How you going to know names? She's a girl. Just like ten million of 'em these days._" "_What you think a guy like this is doing here, Chief?_" "_Why not?_" "_Well, look at his clothes. He's got units, too. Can't figure that out. She must've been after something else._" "_How about his clothing and food tickets?_" "_Uh ... that's it. She got his tickets._" "_Come on, give me a hand. Lug him into the hold._" * * * * * The hard face of the Civil Control chief peered down at him. It was a thick, red face that displayed no trace of feeling except perhaps toughness. It was long yet full, and it contained the proper features; but it added nothing of expression to the harsh, rasping voice. "First time in, eh? Or else Central's too damned lazy to check the file. Okay, I ain't going to cite you. Waste of time. But listen to me. You got problems, we got problems. You solve yours and don't come back here." Craig was aware of officers glowering at his back as he fumbled with the door button. The door opened onto a city street. It was entirely foreign to Craig. It was not a clean, straight thoroughfare at the bottom of a canyon of towering white buildings and contrived but bright parks. It was an old street, a dirty street; an incredible welter of color and line, of big and little shops, of dirty human shapes in drab gray. A flood of tone and noise hit Craig as he emerged from the station and descended the long, broad steps. Craig's head was in a whirl despite the strong dose of paraoxylnebutal he had taken in the station clinic. He felt closed in and befogged. He could remember almost nothing of the night in Civil Control. Even the clinic was fading from his memory. He was aware that he stank, that he was dirty, that his clothing clung to his body. He was miserable. He must call Import. He was due to begin work this morning, his period of personal adjustment complete. Instead, Craig turned and began to walk. He could not carry on a coherent conversation in his present state. He could never find his way unassisted back to his apartment; he was not even sure he remembered the address. But the thought of returning to his quarters, to Import sickened him. What _was_ his address? East 71, North.... No, that would be old lady Brockman. The association irritated him. He had completely forgotten the unwanted assignment, had forgotten to inquire where the address could be found. Craig became aware of the heavy flow of vehicular traffic that roared a scant eight feet away. Large surface carriers whistled in the nearest lane of the complex four-lane pattern. Then there were the private surface craft; they were of many sizes and shapes. He guessed that they were turbine-powered, but he could not identify the odor of their exhausts. There was an odd, unreal quality about the busy thoroughfare. Even myriad sounds from it were sounds he had never heard before and could not break down into their component parts. Craig became aware of other humans, many of them, on the sidewalk. Again they were of a class that he could not identify. They had none of the brisk, purposeful stride of those he had seen near Import. They lacked also the graceful, colorful dress. Their faces, so far as he could separate them from the blurring film over his eyes, were different. They seemed somehow _looser_ faces, though Craig did not know exactly what he meant by the term. They were not tight, pinched, set, as were the faces he had seen before on Terra. There were bulbous noses, large ears, squint eyes, disheveled hair, the men's and women's faces strangely similar. Some were young, some old, but few were hard or fixed. They seemed more plastic, more full of expression than those he had come to know elsewhere in the city. He felt an inexplicable craving to know someone of this strange street. "You looking for something, mister?" asked a voice near him. Craig turned to find a middle-aged man eying him from the doorway of an empty building. "I got it," the man added. "Got what?" Craig asked. "Anything a guy just outa the can would want." "What would a 'guy just outa the can' want that you have?" Craig examined the weathered, sharp face. It was an unpleasant one, but it belonged to this street; it would do to tell him what he wanted to know of the place. "Follow me." The man quickly inserted a magnikey into the door of the vacant store building. "There's a station just up the street," Craig warned. "Sure. So what?" The empty room was dusty and dark and received little light through the grimy display windows that faced on the street. What kind of store it had been, Craig could not guess. The man led him through a kind of storage room which was piled high with moldy paper cartons and back to a rear door. With quick, dextrous movements, the man swung an ancient bar assembly and pushed open the rear door. It led to a litter-strewn yard enclosed by rough, eroded shacks and a wooden garage. They entered the garage through a creaking hinged door. It was a dank, almost completely dark room. Craig stumbled over something on the floor and fell against a packing box of some kind. "Just stand still," said the man. He was shuffling invisibly about in the darkness. Craig could hear him opening a kind of cabinet or drawer while saying in a steady monotone, "You got the right man, mister. My stuff is pure. You can test it. But you'd rather _drink_ it, right?" For the tenth time, Craig asked himself why he had accepted the furtive invitation. The thought of this man's kind of intoxicant--however 'pure'--nauseated him. Nevertheless, he felt himself compelled by a kind of insatiable curiosity to follow out the part he had accepted. Perhaps through this man, through this somehow fascinating street, he could.... "You got ten; I know that. Maybe you got more, huh?" the man interrupted his confused train of thought. "What makes you think I got ten?" Craig asked. He did not know himself how many units his wallet contained--certainly not after the previous night. "Don't get sore. I'm honest. But I know you got ten. Otherwise you wouldn't have got out of the station." The lack of clearly defined objects by which to orient himself in the darkness of the garage made his head begin to swim once more. He wanted to leave. "Don't get scared, buddy. They don't ever come in here." Craig fumbled for support in the darkness. He was afraid he would be sick. Fulfillment for the half-formed plan that was beginning to take shape in his mind would not come with the bootlegger. It would come into being somehow in the tawdry street he had just left, only he did not know how. "They don't really go after polyester. They don't want to stop the stuff. It makes their job easier. You don't have to worry, buddy. Come on, how much you want? You might have trouble finding more for a while." Craig said nothing. He fumbled for a grip on a packing box. "You're from Out, aren't you, buddy? You ain't used to us here yet. Most of my customers are from Out. What jam'd you get into?" "I got ten units, I think," Craig evaded. "It ain't none of my business what you done. Nobody around here is going to ask you any questions. Long as you got units, you get poly like the big shots that come over here all the way from Uptown." "Yeah," said Craig. "Gimme what I get for ten units and let's beat it out of here." "Myself, I never been Out. Not even Luna. Never wanted to. I stay here and have my little business--you can call it a business. You'll see, buddy, there are millions of guys like me. The controllers don't stop us. We're respectable. A damned sight more respectable than those...." "All right," snapped Craig. "Let's get out of here." "You got it bad, huh? This poly will fix that up. It's pure. You just come back to old Nave and get poly." "How ... how you get out of here?" asked Craig, nauseated. "Get lost pretty easy in the dark, huh?" The man was beginning to mock him. Craig lashed out suddenly at the unseen face in the darkness. He caught the thin throat in his left hand. His right left the packing box and cocked to deliver a blow. But he began to fall and had to let go. "Okay, buddy, okay," the other man said soothingly as Craig was forced to catch himself. "I _like_ ex-spacemen. I know lots of you. I sell you poly. You don't want to get tough with me." He shoved a block of ten small cubes into Craig's hand and, while Craig fished for his wallet, he produced a tiny, narrow-beamed flash. The transaction was quickly over. The cube was small enough to be forced without much difficulty into Craig's jacket pocket. The man led him back across the littered yard, through the empty store building, and out the front door. When Craig emerged onto the street once more, a uniformed figure was standing nearby. "He'll need two," whispered the man from behind him. Craig reached into his pocket and mechanically fumbled two of the small cubes of waxlike substance from the loose package. He placed them on the outstretched hand of the Civil Control officer. The officer did not look in his direction at any time, but accepted the offer and walked slowly on toward the station. Craig continued aimlessly down the long street. His head cleared as he walked and once more began to form a kind of vague plan. There was anonymity to a street such as this. There was also a kind of freedom. Everywhere in the universe, there were such streets. Neutralized streets, where a kind of compromise was reached between law and lawlessness. They were permitted because it was always necessary to provide such a place for those who were not permitted elsewhere. Those who would not fit, could not be "rehabilitated," could neither be jailed nor permitted complete freedom. Controllers of one kind or another patrolled such streets, keeping them in a kind of check--or, more accurately, in a kind of containment. But no amount of control would ever completely stamp out the likes of Nave, the bootlegger. Perhaps here, on this street, Craig could be "lost." Here he might find security for a time in anonymity, security and time to find a way ... to what? He did not know. "Mister! Mister!" cried a thin, high voice from somewhere to his left. "Here, quick!" It was a young boy of perhaps nine or ten. Craig caught sight of him as he motioned urgently. He wore a shabby, torn version of what appeared to be a space service uniform. "I'm not buying anything, son," Craig said, pausing briefly. "Come here, quick!" insisted the boy, his eyes large in a dirty face. "You already bought too much." The boy was motioning him to follow. He had stepped between two buildings. Craig approached him with suspicion. "What did you say?" "Slip in here quick! You bought from Nave the peddler. You bought poly, didn't ya?" "How did you...." Craig began. "Tell you later. Slip through here quick or they'll send you to _Hardy_!" The genuine fear of the youngster conveyed itself to Craig. With effort he forced his body through the space between the old buildings. At first he did not intend to follow the boy, but only to stop him for an explanation. The boy, however, continued down the tight corridor formed by the buildings. "There's a window soon," he said from ahead of Craig. "Hurry. You lost time with that peddler." Lost time? Cursing himself for becoming involved again in something he did not understand, Craig nevertheless followed as best he could. It was a tight squeeze and he found himself becoming breathless. "Dive down!" shouted the boy, looking back with terror in his eyes. Instinctively Craig did so. The rough walls tore at his suit. "Stop!" shouted a voice from behind Craig. "Stop or we fire!" Craig suddenly felt the sill of a window which opened into the building to his left. He quickly pulled himself into it. There was a sickening whine and a part of the window disintegrated in a cloud of splinters and plaster. "Through here," said the boy from the semi-darkness. "They'll blast their way inside in a minute!" Craig found himself in another empty building. He followed the boy through a doorway and felt his way as he half ran along the dark hall. "Who are _they_?" he panted. "Controllers." "Civil Control?" "Sure. You must be pretty important. I didn't get it all. But they say the controllers checked up on you after.... I'll explain later." The hall ended in a dim room piled high with plasmolite packing boxes in great disarray. The boy chose a box and lifted a lid. "Follow me. It's a passage." "Where to?" "No time now. Down here." The passage, which seemed to be constructed of plasmolite boxes, seemed somehow lit by daylight, although Craig could not actually see the source of the light. The tunnel ended in broad afternoon daylight. As he climbed out he saw a large clearing surrounded by ruins. "We're just inside the old city," the boy said. "We're safe now--unless those controllers are willing to take more chances than I think." "Wait a minute, son. You said 'old city.' You mean that this is a part of pre-war Los Angeles?" "Well, sure." "But that's supposed to be...." "Radioactive? Most of it, anyway. Good thing, too. Otherwise we'd have no place to go." "Look, kid, you better explain," said Craig. "You were right about somebody being after me, but I don't get the 'we' business. Or how you knew all about this." "All right, mister, but let's get away from here. Those guys won't come through to here, even if they find a way--I don't think. But they're gettin' smarter and you're pretty hot right now." The boy led the way to what appeared to be a completely demolished building. "Used to be the old library," he said. They circled the heap of plaster, brick, and twisted steel. On the other side Craig saw what appeared to be a window. The boy let himself down through it. Craig was amazed to find a large, relatively clear area inside, probably part of an old room that had been spared by some freak of the blast. "You _live_ here?" Craig asked the youngster incredulously. "Part of the time." The boy brought up an old crate and offered it to Craig as a chair. "Listen, mister, I don't know who you are. You're an ex-spaceman and that's enough for me." There was a slightly amusing attempt at adult hardness about him. "You shouldn't have wasted time with Nave. You should have got out of there." "Why?" "I don't know. What you done, anyway?" "I don't remember. Passed out at a bar...." The boy showed disgust. He glanced at the pocket which contained the polyester. Craig smiled. "I don't use this stuff. At least not enough to deserve what you're thinking." He tossed the remaining cubes on the littered floor of the room. The boy maintained his look of scorn for a time, but then softened. "I was afraid you got kicked out of the service for that." "How did you know I was ever in it?" "Easy. You don't know how to walk on a planet yet. Anybody can tell." "I didn't get kicked out," Craig said. "I came here to take a civil service job." "It'd almost be better if you had been." "I didn't know about Terra. None of us had any idea." "I know," said the boy sadly. "My father quit, too. _He_ quit to marry my mother. That was before it was ... so bad." "Where--" Craig began, then bit off the question. "Oh, gee, mister, Terra's in an _awful_ bad shape! They took ... my parents. They hunt us down. They...." Craig approached the boy and put a hand on his shoulder. "What's your name, son?" "Phil." "Phil what?" "I don't know exactly. My father had to use so many names toward the ... end. He once had only one name, but I guess even he forgot what it was." * * * * * They prepared to spend the night in the old library room, but first Phil left it and made his way into the wilderness of rubble. He returned dragging a packing box of plastic insulating material, out of which they fashioned a crude bed. Despite the thousands of questions that paraded across Craig's mind, he waited each time for the boy to speak. "I can't take you any further until...." "Until you know more about me?" "In a way. _They'll_ let me know." Craig would have risked much to identify the "they" Phil referred to, but he did not ask the question. As he watched the boy preparing the dimly lit room for the night, he felt sure Phil could be trusted. He was almost frighteningly mature for his age. The room was well hidden, for the once great library lay in a powdered ruin about it on all sides but a part of one. Only by accident or knowledge would a stranger recognize it in what was literally a world of rubble. During the moments of silence between the boy's volunteered statements, Craig tried to visualize the awful catastrophe that had befallen the old city. Piles of powdered masonry restricted his view greatly under the gathering night. He could see a scant city block through the window, but he knew the wreckage around them must extend for miles. "You don't have to worry, mister...." "Craig." "Mr. Craig. They don't come in here at night." "Radioactivity?" "Yes. Not right here, but all around, everywhere." "What?" "It's all around us. You go through it to get here, but you can't _stay_ anywhere but a few places like this." "How do you know all of these things, Phil?" "Oh, we know, all right. We had to find out." "You must have ion counters," he said in what he hoped was a casual tone. "We have lots of things." Craig was thoughtful for a minute. The boy was obviously on his guard now. "Those empty buildings?" Craig asked tentatively. "They built them too close," said the boy. It seemed to be a safe subject. "They built them up as close as they thought was safe. Space is very valuable here. But they built them too close." "Yet the 'we' you speak of live even closer?" The boy bit his lip and eyed him suspiciously in silence. "Look, kid," Craig said very deliberately, "I'm not a controller and I'm not interested in a bunch of petty thieves." The effect was just what he had intended. "We're _not_ thieves! And we're not traitors, either! We're...." The boy was almost in tears. Craig waited a moment, then continued in a soft voice. "Phil, I'm just beginning to realize what a rotten place Terra is. From just what I've seen--it isn't very much--I can imagine such a system producing a great many 'we' groups like yours. I don't know who you are or what you are, but you can't be any worse than what I've already seen of Terran officials. Tell me, kid, what's it all about? And is there any way out of here? I mean--_way_ out!" "You may tell him, Philip," said a quiet voice from the window entrance. "Like us, Philip, Mr. Craig is an enemy of tyranny, though he doesn't realize it yet." Craig instinctively jumped back to get out of range of the window, meanwhile feeling around for something that could be used as a weapon. But the boy ran to the silhouetted figure in the window. "Mr. Sam!" he cried eagerly. Craig relaxed his hold on a strip of heavy metal. When the man had entered, the boy pulled a ragged black cloth across the window once more. He then ignited a small oil burning lamp in a carved-out nook in the wall. "It's all right, Philip, nobody is following me," the newcomer said. Craig studied his face. It was an old face covered by a stained gray beard. With a shock Craig recognized the man as a tramp he had seen earlier on the street, napping, sprawled in a doorway. Now for the first time he saw the eyes. Sharp and clear, they caught up the yellow light of the oil lamp and glowed warmly as they turned to Craig. "I am 'Mr. Sam,' Mr. Craig. You might know me by the full name, Samuel Cocteau, but I doubt it. Even the names of the infamous do not penetrate space." "I guess not," Craig agreed. "But you said something about my being an enemy of tyranny." "Whether you like it at once or not, you are temporarily one of us--one of the 'we' Philip has been speaking of. But all of that in due time. Right now it is necessary for us to leave here." "They're going to try to find us _tonight_?" asked Phil, startled. "Yes, a tribute to Mr. Craig," said the old man. "A Geiger team is being readied at the station." Craig started to protest as the boy began hurriedly to pick up his few possessions in the room. "I'm sorry, Mr. Craig," the man said. "I must ask you to decide now whether to trust us and our judgment. There is grave danger for you if you are caught by the Civil Control. The report I have received is that you are largely unaware of the 'crimes against the state' you have committed. The Civil Control hoped to capture you before you find them out. But that, of course, is my word only. There is no time to give you proof, even if I had it." Craig's mind whirled under the sudden onslaught of new facts. He had followed a peddler without knowing why he did it. He had bought polyester he had no use for. He had followed a boy who beckoned to him. Now--how much longer was he to move haphazardly through Terra like a cork on a wind-blown sea? Who were these strange fugitives who said he was one of them and who lived in the heart of a radioactive city? "Well, Mr. Craig?" asked Cocteau quietly. Craig glanced at the boy. The child's eyes were wide and pleading in the dim light of the oil lamp. "Let's go," Craig said. * * * * * Darkness was swiftly falling on the wilderness of heaping ruin. The three made their way toward what Craig at first thought was an unbroken wall of rubble. The near-horizontal rays of the sun tipped the white mass of broken stone with brilliance, and gave the entire scene an unearthly quality. Below the towering rubble mountains, long black shadows were reaching toward what Craig knew to be the living city. Cocteau took the lead and set a fast pace for a man of his age. He took a highly devious path through the "mountain," or what began to seem to Craig needlessly difficult and that outlined them against the bright western sky. At one point Craig left the invisible path of the older man to avoid an exhaustingly steep rise. "Follow me exactly," warned Cocteau in a sharp voice. "There is only one relatively safe path through here." "They'll see us against the sky!" "It cannot be helped." But there was no indication that they were followed. They pushed onward, scurrying over heaps of weathered plaster and brick. The old man seemed to avoid with great care places where metal girders were visible. The exertion together with walking directly into the setting sun made Craig begin to feel the old nausea return. He resisted it for a time, but it would not be repressed, particularly as he strove to maintain his balance on difficult climbs. Once he stumbled on a splintered building stone and fell. It was a long minute before he could regain his feet and mutter a feeble, "Sorry." "We must push on, Mr. Craig," was Cocteau's only comment. "It's safe here for a _minute_, isn't it?" Craig panted, dizzy and breathless. "There is no safe place here, Mr. Craig." They continued their winding way through the growing darkness. For Craig it became a nightmare of stumbling over the endless piles of sharp stones. His mind spun sickeningly and he retched as he half ran along the path Cocteau set for them. "Please, mister," breathed the voice of Phil behind him. "It isn't so far now." Doggedness carried Craig onward long after awareness left him. * * * * * He became conscious suddenly, as though by an injection of stimulant. He found himself surrounded by a number of figures, including Cocteau and a white garbed man, evidently a doctor. "You are quite safe now, Mr. Craig," said Cocteau warmly. "Welcome to the _City of We_." "Where are we?" "Deep in the old city, in a place where the radioactivity is negligible," the man answered as the doctor took his pulse. "This is Dr. Grant and these others are members of the _Liberty party_." "Liberty!" "You've heard of it?" "Yeah, you're pretty unpopular, aren't you?" "Unpopular? Let us say that all of Terran _officialdom_ is dedicated to exterminating us." "The committee on something-or-other asked me about my attitudes toward the Liberty party," said Craig, rising to a sitting position on the cot. "And at the time you had a lack of attitude, which most likely was unacceptable to them," supplied Cocteau, smiling. "Well, you may be interested to know that you are considered one of us by most of Terra just now." "_What?_" "That is correct," said another of the group. "It seems you were in a bar in--ah--in a somewhat less than fully conscious state...." "But I didn't know anything about the Liberty party." "No, nor is it alleged that you actually mentioned the party in so many words," continued the white-haired man, smiling. "But it seems that you did make certain statements in the presence of certain persons that did indicate a definite predilection...." "That's crazy," said Craig angrily. "Of course," Cocteau agreed. "Furthermore," the other man said, "you are charged with wilful abandonment of duty and 'acts indicative of your desire to shun the best utilization of your talents in behalf of the state of Terra.'" "In other words," explained Cocteau, "you applied for a job on a private space freighter. Without permission to do so." Craig was silent. He lay back down on the cot and tried to absorb the data he had just received. "So I'm accused of belonging to something I don't know anything about?" "Then I'll tell you briefly about us. You have a right to know the magnitude of the crime with which you are charged." Cocteau took a seat by Craig's cot. The others also found chairs. "But first a brief bit of history--a history that you have never heard before. Not your fault. It is not allowed to penetrate Terra's atmosphere." "I don't know much about Terra," Craig interjected. "I'm just finding out how much I don't know." "God, I wish the rest of the Universe could find out with you!" said one of the group. "Yes, the history of Terra is almost lost now. That is, the part of it that followed the Great Wars of seventy-five years ago. You know of those wars; you have just walked through one of the physical results of them. No nation or alliance of nations can be said to have won them, but the wars had a most profound effect upon Terra. More than anything else, they made men reach to the stars, if only to escape the deadly conflicts of Terra. "Ideological issues were involved, naturally, but the underlying cause of the Great Wars was the struggle for power. The world was disunited. Peoples were divided from peoples by an almost inconceivable number of unimportant distinctions. These were ethnical, national, racial, cultural--name any brand of prejudice and you'll find it existed then. "Incredibly enough, the destructiveness of the Great Wars accomplished a kind of unity. Gone were the once proud aggressive nations. Gone into oblivion. Gone, too, were the systems of economics and sociology of which men were once so sure. There was a kind of 'plague-on-both-your-houses' attitude among the peoples of the world. There was a large measure of anarchy following the Great Wars. Not a violent, active anarchy of hate and terror, but of apathy and weariness. Apathy at the outcome of false conflicts, and weariness of the self-defeating strife of man against man. "At first men produced by the full extent of their labors barely enough on which to survive. Only gradually did they regain their ability to produce surpluses once more. Of course, surpluses mean exchanges--trade. And trade requires order and system. "The first ten years following the Great Wars was a period of gradualism in all things. Peoples united in small groups. There were no political or racial divisions. The units were built upon functional lines. They were natural and free. Above all, they were cooperative. "It was not communism. Men knew all too well the mental and physical slavery of that brutally rigid system. It was not rugged individualism either. Rugged individuals during this period either starved or were driven out by the starving. "This natural, cooperative unity spread and became more complex. There came into being natural associations of units. Not exclusive but inclusive associations that linked all who would join and could produce surpluses. Productivity increased thereby. Men were intelligent enough to avoid many of the old abuses. "Ways were found to harness the productivity of each man and woman. Genuine efforts were made to avoid misfits, to make those who produced fit. It was realized, Mr. Craig, that the unhappy man will infect others with his misery, and the trouble he will cause is much more difficult to undo than to prevent in the first place. "There were, of course, mistakes, false starts. But the new-found system of world-wide unity proved flexible. It was multiple-based. To a very large degree, all men fitted into it logically and naturally. It was the first truly 'grass-roots' economic and social system in the history of man. And it was a great tribute to his ability to work out his destiny, particularly since it came after a tragedy that was so enormous and devastating. "The list of its successes is incredible. For in a decade the age-old problem of poverty seemed to have disappeared. There were no significant outbreaks of disorder and lawlessness--indeed, there was comparatively little need for a written law. The principle of mutuality and cooperation was too strongly conditioned into the people. "Scientifically, the first half of the new century, a scant twenty-five years after the last bomb was dropped, was the greatest in man's history. Man reached the stars. He began to know the molecule, the atom, the electron. He pushed the frontier of his knowledge deep into both microcosm and macrocosm. "But a fatal flaw had long before developed in the structure, wonderful as it was. It was an age-old flaw. It was one that was disguised by the very nature of the new system. When it was recognized, that flaw had so weakened the system that its spread was all but inevitable. It is a flaw that will always plague man to a certain extent, but one that must keep us eternally vigilant. "It is this: the greatest human good comes not in how well you learn to control man and keep him from harming himself. What determines it is how completely you learn to free him. "Conversely, the law provides that no control system, however devised, will succeed in bringing happiness and security to man to any greater extent than it permits the fullest expression of his nature. "Man is _inherently_ good. He will _always_ choose a moral path when free to do so. He strives for justice and truth both as an individual and in mass. "Mr. Craig, democracy is man's greatest _a priori_. Yet based upon a law of restraint, it cannot escape the hopeless contradiction that leads to its own destruction. Man can democratically do the irrational and the insane. He can democratically limit and coerce the absolute highest nature of himself. Bad laws are forever passed to achieve good ends. But each new law produces new criminals while the cause of the new crime remains unsolved. "Ergo, the world you have just seen. Ergo, the Liberty party. Mr. Craig, our world is ruled by a vast and horrible bureaucracy whose terrible weapon is conformity. You would find few laws even today written in books. Our assemblies pass few statutes. They determine dogma instead. They 'resolve' and 'move.' They fix a new 'position,' define a 'stand.' Our equivalent of judge and attorney is no student of law. He is a kind of moralist. He is sensitive to the 'trend' and appreciative of the 'proper.' "Terra fits uncomfortably in the Intergalactic System. Like many of the undemocratic systems of the dark past, the Terran state must expand. It is based upon a self-limiting philosophy unless it can spread fast enough. You are charged with being 'unTerran,' Mr. Craig. A system that forever seeks 'unTerrans' must inevitably exile or kill itself!" It had been a long speech. Craig had listened in awe, for it was a completely new story to him. "And you propose to destroy this bureaucracy?" he said. "In so far as it is a philosophical entity, yes." "And you say I am one of you now?" "You are considered one of us. Your employer and his secretary are also suspected." "But I'm entitled to a trial, or at least a hearing." "Not now, Mr. Craig. It would do you little good, anyway. The 'position' of the Assembly on subversion is that it 'rightly behooves every loyal Terran so to conduct his behavior that a suspicion of membership in the Liberty party is unthinkable.'" Craig found himself regretting every minute of his stay on Terra. Old Brockman had been right--it was no place for a spaceman. Now it was probably too late. No Terran space freighter would accept him and Intergalactic could not. There was not even a way for him to recover his service records. "Will you join us, Mr. Craig?" asked one of the men. "We can use your skills, particularly your knowledge of space." "Look, how do I know you aren't a bunch of traitors? Maybe all this you've told me is true. I've seen plenty of that bureaucracy and there seems to be damned little freedom of action left on Terra. But how do I know you can do any better when you get in power?" "Liberty will never be 'in power,' Mr. Craig," Cocteau said quietly. "Liberty will attempt to reach the minds of the people with our message of hope, of freedom in true democracy." Another of the group joined Cocteau. "We are now hunted as criminals. We have only this small stronghold in the old city." "We shall attempt only to gain entry to the minds of the people," said Cocteau. "Gain entry to tell them how they live, for most of them have had no contact with any other kind of life." "It would mean killing a few people," Craig pointed out. "One of the basic principles of Liberty is the inherent goodness of every man," Cocteau repeated. "We have never taken a life, even in self-defense. We shall never take one. Nor will it ever be necessary for a member of the Liberty party to hold public office, to own a weapon, to coerce a man in any physical way." "But you will coerce them with ideas. Is that what you have in mind?" Craig protested. "If a point of view, a promise, a goal is coercion, then the answer to your question is yes. But ideas are not dangerous when a man is free to argue and act against them." "Look here, Cocteau," Craig said earnestly, "all you say may be true. I believe it is. But what can I do? I'm a spaceman, or at best an apprentice import clerk. I don't know anything about this sort of work." "Come here a moment," invited a member of the group. Through the window indicated by the man, Craig saw an incredible sight. The entire scene seemed to be on the inside of a vast underground cavern. There were other buildings and some kind of systematic work being done by many men and women. But the thing that caught Craig's eye seemed to be cradled in a kind of hangar. "A spaceship!" exclaimed Craig. "A very modest one, yet not so modest when you consider that it was necessary to carry in every single piece and part by hand." "Good Lord!" "_You_, Mr. Craig, might captain that ship. Very few Terrans have ever even flown in one. It will be necessary to establish contact with possible assistance outside of Terra. You can make that possible." Craig was thoughtful. "I suppose, now that I've seen all this, you can't let me leave here unless I join you." "No," denied Cocteau. "You may leave here any time you like." "I'd be sure to get caught, of course...." "Within limits, it might be possible to help you avoid capture." Cocteau reached into his beggar's coat and withdrew a wallet. "Identity card, food ration, clothing, work card, even a Government party card. It's all here, Mr. Craig. You could have a slightly altered physical appearance. Liberty accepts no unwilling members. You are given as nearly a free choice in this matter as is possible to give you." "Suppose I talked?" asked Craig, nodding bluntly toward the port. Cocteau smiled. "It was necessary to prepare for that. You were given a drug. It has not affected your thinking capacity in any way. But once it wears off, you will be unable to remember what took place while under its influence. "When agents of the Liberty party are sent out of here, they go having had all experience with Liberty take place while under the drug. None of us could remember for more than a few hours the exact location of this headquarters. When it is necessary to leave for very long, we carry a small amount of the drug with us. Many of our agents have been caught and a few have resigned. But none has divulged enough information to harm us seriously." Craig was postponing his decision to the last. "They must know you're somewhere in here. If the radioactivity keeps them out, why shouldn't they put a cordon around the entire old city?" "Periodically, they try. But there are many, many other ways of leaving here than by the surface. Underground water conduits, ancient power and sewer lines, a number of tunnels we have dug...." Craig was solemnly handed the wallet. "If you will submit to sufficient plastic surgery to make you resemble this man, you may safely leave here no later than tomorrow night." A long silence ensued. It was interrupted by a noise from outside the door of the room. It was the voice of Phil. "Has he decided to stay? Did you see him? He looks like my daddy did.... Will he stay?" "You mustn't interrupt, son. They're in conference now. We'll let you know." "Tell him yes!" said Craig in a loud voice. "Tell him hell, yes, I'm staying!" The men gathered around him to congratulate him on the decision. Phil was allowed in the clinic to join them. "Oh, Cocteau, one more thing," Craig said. "Yes?" Craig was fumbling for his own wallet. He extracted a folded card. "Where would East 71, North 101, Number 4 be?" "It _would_ have been somewhere here in Old City." "God! How did the old guy expect me to deliver this message? Old man named Brockman. He sent me a message just before he died in Gravitation. I was to visit his wife." "Brockman?" asked Cocteau. "You mean Ethel Brockman?" "Yeah. How'd you know?" "Ethel Brockman was one of the organizers of the Liberty party. She served as its chairman until her death only a few years ago. Her husband must have felt your 'sea legs' would lead you to us eventually. And, of course, they did." 
51414	----	... SO THEY BAKED A CAKE by Winston Marks (_illustrated by Tom Beecham_) [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction January 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He was tired of people--a "human interest" columnist, who specializes in glamorizations of the commonplace and sordid is likely to get that way. So ... this starship seemed to offer the ideal escape from it all. Sure, I was one of the tough guys who said it would be great, just great, to get away from the boiling mess of humanity that stank up every inhabitable rock on earth. Not being the Daniel Boone type, this was my private qualification for the job--being fed up to here with people, with the smothering bureaucracy of world government, with restrictions and rationing and synthetic diet supplements and synthetic blondes and mass hypochondria and phony emotions and standing in line to get into a pay toilet. I hated my profession, trying to wring glamorous interviews out of bewildered heroes and press-agents' darlings and pompous politicians and snotty millionaires and brave little wronged chorus girls. Their lives were no more glamorous than their readers. They were the same mixture of greed and fear and smelly sweat and deceit and two-bit passion. My particular prostitution was to transform their peccadilloes into virtues, their stubbed toes into tragedies and their fornications into romance. And I'd been at it so long I couldn't stand the odor of my own typewriter. Of course, I was so thunderstruck at being chosen as one of the 21-man crew for the _Albert E._ that I never got to gloating over it much until we were out in deep space. Yes, it was quite an honor, to say nothing of the pure luck involved. Something like winning the Luna Sweepstakes, only twice as exclusive. We were the pioneers on the first starship, the first to try out the _Larson Drive_ in deep space. At last, man's travel would be measured in parsecs, for our destination was 26 trillion miles down near the celestial south pole. Not much more than a parsec--but a parsec, nonetheless. As a journalist, such distances and the fabulous velocities involved were quite meaningless to me. My appointment as official scribe for the expedition was not based on my galactic know-how, but rather on my reputation as a Nobel-winning columnist, the lucky one out of fifty-six who entered the lottery. Larson, himself, would keep me supplied with the science data, and I was to chronicle the events from the human interest side as well as recording the technical stuff fed to me. Actually, I had no intentions of writing a single word. To hell with posterity and the immortality of a race that couldn't read without moving its lips. The square case I had carried aboard so tenderly contained not my portable typewriter, but six bottles of forbidden rye whiskey, and I intended to drink every drop of it myself. * * * * * So, at last we were in space, after weeks of partying, dedications and speech-making and farewell dinners, none of which aroused in me a damned regret for my decision to forsake my generation of fellow-scrabblers. Yes, we were all warned that, fast as the _Larson Drive_ was, it would take us over 42 years, earth-measured time, to reach our destination. Even if we found no planets to explore, turned around and came right back, the roundtrip would consume the lifetimes of even the new babies we left behind. To me this was a perversely comforting thought. All I wanted to know was how they expected me to live long enough to complete the journey? I could think of pleasanter ways to spend my last days than cooped up in this sardine can with a passel of fish-faced, star-happy scientists. I was 48 when we departed, which would make me a lucky 90 if I was still wiggling when we hove into our celestial port. But the mathematicians said to relax. Their space-time theory provided, they claimed, a neat device for survival on our high-velocity journey. The faster a body moves in reference to another, the slower time appears to act on the moving body. If, they said, man could travel at the speed of light, supposedly time would stand still for him. This, I reflected, would mean human immortality--much too good for people. Anyway, since our average velocity for the trip was planned to come out around a tenth of the speed of light, to us on the _Albert E._, only about five months would seem to have elapsed for the journey that would consume 42-1/2 years, earth-time. It seemed to me they were laying a hell of a lot of faith in a theory that we were the first to test out. Our food, water and air-supplies gave us a very small safety margin. With strict rationing we would be self-sufficient for just 12 months. That left us just two months to fool around looking for a place to sit down. I mentioned this item to Larson on the second day out. I found him at coffee mess sitting alone, staring at his ugly big hairy hands. He was a tall Swede with a slight stoop and the withdrawn manner of a myopic scholar. As commander of the ship he had the right to keep aloof, but as scribe, I had the privilege of chewing him for information. I said, "Skipper, if it took us generations to discover all the planets in our own little solar system, what do you figure the chances are of our spotting a planet near our goal, in the short time of two months?" * * * * * He was silent while I drew my ration of coffee and sugar, then he opened his hands and seemed to find words written on his palms. His eyes never did come up from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. "If they exist," he said slowly, "we might find one. We have better telescopes and our vantage point in space will be superior." He was a sorry-looking specimen, and I remembered that the fifty-year-old scientist had left behind a youngish wife who adored the ground he walked on. The handsome, blonde woman had stood heroically beside the ramp and watched, dry-eyed, as her husband ascended. There had been no visible exchange of farewells at the end, as he stood beside me in the air-lock. They just stared into each other's eyes oblivious to all but the maudlin sorrow of their separation. Then the portal had closed and widowed her, and I had the feeling that Larson was going to tear at the great, threaded door with his bare hands and renounce the whole project. But he just stood there breathing a little heavy and clenching those tremendous hands until it was time to take off. In a way I envied him an emotion that was long dead in me, dead of the slow corrosive poison of contempt for the whole human race. Dead and pickled in the formaldehyde of ten thousand columns for which the syndicates had paid me nothing but cold money. Here was a man whose heart could still love, and I hated him for it. I said, "You look like you still have regrets. Maybe this isn't worth your personal sacrifices, after all. If we don't find an inhabitable planet we won't have accomplished much." "You are wrong," he said quickly. "We have already served our purpose." "Testing the Drive, you mean?" He nodded. "This morning in our last radio contact with earth I dispatched the word. The _Larson Drive_ is successful. We have passed from our solar system on schedule, and our measurements of ship-objective time check out with the theory--roughly, at least." He spread his hands out on the table. "This was our primary goal. The expedition ahead is subsidiary. Colonization may result from our exploration, true; but now we have opened the universe." It was nice to know that things were progressing as planned. I asked, "What do you mean about things checking 'roughly'? Is there some error?" He nodded and swallowed the dregs from the magnesium cup. "A considerable error, but it's on the safe side. Our velocity checks perfectly, but our estimate of the time-shrinkage factor is so far off that Mr. Einstein's formulae will take some major revision to reconcile what has happened." "We'll arrive sooner than planned?" Larson nodded again. "According to shipboard elapsed time we will arrive in the vicinity of our destination in just ninety-two hours from now--a total of 122 hours since take-off. You were worrying earlier about our scanty supplies; this should put your mind at rest." It didn't displease me. The lack of privacy on this tin bathtub was even worse than I had anticipated. The news came as sort of a reprieve. I looked at Larson, and suddenly I knew why the long face. His Tina! For her, ten years would already have passed, and as we sat there talking, weeks of her existence were fading into oblivion--and Hans Larson was begrudging every second of it. Damned fool, should have stayed at home. I left him brooding into his empty cup and went forward to the little control dome. One wonderful attribute of the _Larson Drive_ was that there was no acceleration discomfort. Gravity was nullified at the outset, and ship's gravity was kept at an comfortable one-half "g". * * * * * Mac Hulbert, chief navigator, was alone up there, one foot cocked up on the edge of the broad instrument-board that looked like a cluttered desk-top with handles. He was staring out into the void. Yes, void! They had said it would be black in space, but not even a glimmer of light showed through the transparent dome. As you looked to the side and back, faint, violent specks seemed to catch at your peripheral vision, but it was impossible to focus on a single heavenly body. Mac didn't turn or greet me. His face was no longer that of the carefree adventurer with whom I had tied on a fair binge less than a week ago. "Getting you down, too, Mac?" I asked. He was about the only one aboard I could even tolerate. He wasn't as sour on humanity as I, but he granted me the right to my opinions, which was something. "God, yes!" he said. "Skipper tell you about the time-error?" I said, "Yes, but what's there to be sad about? You don't mind that part, do you?" To my knowledge, Mac hadn't left anything behind but his dirty laundry. Hulbert was in his mid-thirties, slender, balding and normally as cheerful and stupidly optimistic as they come. Now he looked worse off than Larson. "Yeah, I mind that," he said kind of resentfully. "I thought we'd have more time to--sort of get used to the idea of--well, outgrowing our generation. But think, by now many of my older buddies will be dead. A dozen World Series will be over. Who knows, maybe there's a war going on back there?" Of all the morbid nonsense. Yearning for the obituary column, the sports page and the headlines. But then people are rarely sensible when something disturbs their tidy little universe that they take for granted. It was a little terrifying, though, staring out into that smothering lamp-black. We were moving so fast and living so slowly that even the light-waves from the galaxies toward which we moved had disappeared. We were reversing the "redshift" effect of receding light sources. We approached the stars before us at such a velocity that their light impinged at a rate above the visible violet spectrum. Mac blurted out, "It will never work out." "What won't?" "Colonization. Not at these unholy distances, even if we do find an earth-type planet or two. People won't leave everything behind them like this. I--I feel cut off. Something's gone, everything, everybody we knew back there. It's terrible to consider!" * * * * * I sat down beside him, stared out into the India-ink and faced a few over-due realities myself. Our chances of finding a habitable planet were remote. Finding intelligent life on it was even more unlikely. That such life would resemble men, was so improbable that the odds in favor were virtually nonexistent. So--what had I really to look forward to? A quick survey of the star-system in the company of these nincompoop ideo-savants, then a return to a civilization of complete strangers--a culture in which we would all be anachronisms, almost a century behind the times. A parade of faces began peering at me out of the darkness. There was Bess with the golden hair, and Carol and petite Annette--and Cliff, my red-headed old room-mate who knew how to charcoal-broil a steak--and our bachelor apartment with the battered old teevee set and my collection of books and pipes, and there was my out-board jet up on lovely Lake Vermillion where a man could still catch a fat pike. What would it be like when we got back? More people, less food, tighter rationing, crowding beyond conception. Hell! When the rest of the crew learned of our sharply-revised estimated time of arrival they came down with the same emotional cramps afflicting Larson and Hulbert. It was sickening, a bunch of so-called mature technicians and scientists moping around like a barracks full of drafted rookies, matching miniature billfold photos of cuties that were now approaching crone-hood. The whole venture had become a tragic affair overnight, and for the next few days all thoughts turned backward. So nobody was remotely prepared for what happened. They were even unprepared to think straight--with their heads instead of their hearts. And Larson was worst of all! On the last day Larson eased off our 1800-mile-per-second velocity, and as the stars started showing again, shifting from faint violet down into the more cheerful spectrum, spirits aboard began lifting a little. * * * * * I was in the control-room with Larson and Mac when we got our first inkling. Mac was fooling with the electronic search gear, sweeping for planets, when he gave a yip and pointed a jabbing finger at the scope. "Audio," he stammered. "Look at that!" He lengthened the sweep and the jumble of vertical lines spread out like a picket fence made of rubber. "A carrier wave with audio modulation," he said with disbelief all over his face. Larson remained calm. "I hear you, lad. Don't shout." He studied the signal and frowned deeply. "It's faint, but you can get a fix." As they played with the instruments I looked forward through the green shield that protected us from Alpha C's heavy radiation. Our destination star was now a brilliant blob dominating our piece of heaven. It was a difficult thing to grasp that we had travelled almost 26 trillion miles--in five days, ship's time. Mac said, "It's a planet, sure enough, but that audio--" Larson snapped, "Forget the audio! Give me a bearing, and let's be getting on course. That may be the only planet in the system, and I don't want to lose it." His arms pumped and his big hands pawed at the controls as he brought the inertialess drive into manual manipulations. For the next few, tense hours we stalked the planet at a discreetly low velocity. When his navigation problem was complete and we were on a slow approach orbit, Mac began playing with the communication rig again. The ship's intercom was cut in, and we had to chase people out as excitement mounted over our discovery. Finally, when his elbow had been jostled once too often, Larson ordered the control room cleared of all hands but Hulbert and me. When we were alone Larson said, "This is fantastic." Mac's face was tied into an amazed scowl, too, as he studied the feeble little patterns on his wave analyzer. "You said it," he breathed. "We've got ourselves a sweet little earth-type planet, if we can believe the spectro, and unless I'm stark space-happy, there's something or somebody down there beaming a broadcast smack in our direction, following us around like the string on a yo-yo." "How do you figure that?" Larson wanted to know. Mac replied, "At this distance the field strength is too strong for anything but a beamed transmission. Mister, _they have us bracketed_." Mac swung to the panel on his left and cut in the communication circuit. "It's strong enough to listen to, now. Let's see what kind of gibberish we can wring out of that carrier wave." He threw a couple of switches and hunted for the exact frequency. A whisper and a rustle of the carrier brushed the speaker. Mac centered in and turned up the volume. Then even I sucked air. A voice issued from the sound-cone. A man's voice: "--lcome to New Columbia. Welcome, _Albert E._ Come in, please. Welcome to New Columbia. Welcome, _Albert E._ Come in please." * * * * * It repeated over and over. Larson let his breath go first with a nervous snort. Mac and Larson both looked at me as if maybe I had something to do with it. Hands trembling, Mac picked up the microphone and reached for the transmitter switch. Larson grabbed the mike from his hand. "Not so fast, dammit!" "But they know we're up here," Mac protested. "They even know the name of our ship!" "And our language," I added. I wasn't bored any more. Larson nodded slowly. "What kind of devilish intelligence have we run into? I need time--to think." The way he said it sent a cold draught down my spine, and then my imagination started catching up to his. At our rate of approach to the star system, how could any living being have had time to sense our presence, pick our brains to learn our ship's name, our language, master our method of communication, contrive a transmitter and get on the air? The magnitude of the accomplishment sent the importance of our little triumph of space travel tumbling into a cocked limbo of insignificance. For a moment I considered the old curvature of space concept. Could we have somehow doubled back--completing a mystic circle? Was that old Sol up there burning through our green shield? What a laugh that would be! The mental giants of our times backtracking and circling like a tenderfoot lost in the woods on Lake Minnetonka. Mac cut off the transmitter reluctantly, but he said, "Yeah, I guess I see what you mean, skipper." Larson got to his feet and paced the crowded wedge of space, punching a fist into his other hand with meaty slaps. He stopped and listened to the soft muttering of the speaker and shook his head. "It makes no sense. It's impossible. Utterly impossible!" The man's voice from the planet implacably continued repeating the message--no trace of an accent, nothing to suggest an alien origin in its tone, pitch or enunciation. Perhaps that's what threw Larson so hard. If there had been the faintest taint of other worldliness about it, I think he'd have hauled stakes and gotten us out of there. But the song of the siren was too powerful--the irresistible mental image of a fellow human out here in the bottom of space was salt in the bleeding wounds of Larson's loneliness. He stared out where the planet must be, some million miles before us. Suddenly the tenseness relaxed from his face and he got the damndest expression of mixed incredulity, hopefulness and sorrow. Tears began welling from his eyes and streaming down the rugged contours of his cheeks. It didn't add. Nor could I reason a motive for his laconic command: "Intersection orbit, Mr. Hulbert. We'll take her down," he said quietly. That was all. He hunched over the control board and moved things according to Mac's computations. * * * * * Soon I could make out the planet. We came in from an obtuse angle with its sun, so it showed first as a crescent of pale, green silver. Then it filled the viewing dome, and Mac began working the homing equipment. "May I acknowledge their message now, skipper?" Larson shook his head with compressed lips. "But if we are going in anyway--" Mac argued. "No!" Larson exploded. Then his voice softened. "I think I know the mystery of the voice," he said. "It must be, it must be! But if it isn't--if I'm wrong--God alone knows. We must chance it. I don't want to know differently--until it's too late." This was just real great. Larson had some fantastic notion, and he wanted it to be true so damned badly that he was taking us into blind jeopardy when we had the means to probe it first. Real scientific, that. Humans! Men, and their so-called sense of reason! Larson was a crowning example of the sloppy-hearted thing I was fleeing when I embarked on this joy-ride, and now it would probably be my undoing. We were homing in on the transmission from "New Columbia", easing down into the atmosphere, and now clouds and land and water formations took shape. The beam led us to the sunlit rim of dawn, and suddenly we were hovering over a great forest, slit at intervals with streaks of glittering blue that looked like deep, wide rivers. Now Mac touched a switch, and the CW whistle gave us a tight audio beam to follow to the source of the signal. Larson switched to the micro landing controls to ride in like a jet liner on the Frisco-Shanghai run. We slanted gently down until the forest became trees, and the little blue-green splotches were lush, grassy meadows. And there was the tower, and the low buildings--and the spaceship! Something happened to me inside when I saw that. It was a kind of tremolo feeling, like a note in a new symphony, a note that springs free and alone, wavering uncertainly, and you don't know which way it will turn. In seconds that seemed like hours, we were on the ground, the ramp was jammed out and Larson was blundering down it crying like a baby. * * * * * I stood in the port breathing the warm air redolent with exotic new scents and yawped like an idiot, trying to make sense of the huge banner strung a hundred yards across one whole side of the little village. The banner read: WELCOME, HANS! WELCOME ALBERT E. WE KNEW YOU WERE COMING, SO-- And near the center of the banner was the largest chocolate cake, or facsimile thereof, in all creation. It must have been ten feet high and twenty feet in diameter. But Hans Larson wasn't amused by the cosmic gag. He galloped off that gang-plank like a love-sick gorilla. And I'm a comet's uncle if Tina wasn't there, racing out to meet him, Larson had guessed the truth, and no wonder he hadn't had the guts to test it beforehand! By the time I got down, out and over to where they were all wrapped up mingling tears, I had it pretty well doped out myself. I don't know why we had figured that all progress and improvement in interstellar flight would cease just because we had left earth. The eternal, colossal conceit of men, I guess. When our last signal back to earth had given the okay sign, sure, they started building bigger ships and recruiting another crew. But by the time that the _Albert E. II_, was ready to take off for a more extended expedition, the _Larson Drive_ was now the _Larson-McKendrick Drive_, with a velocity of a full half the speed of light, some five times our velocity. Somehow, Tina had managed to get herself in the party, as Hans had sensed she would. And the time-differential, as it worked out, wasn't serious at all. Tina had been only 32 when we left her on earth. Including the year and a half she had already been with the colony on New Columbia, she was still quite a bit younger than Hans, and just twice as pretty as the day of their separation. The tremolo note was rising now, the soft, mystic pitch of excitement inherent in the new world. I turned to Mac, who was grinning like to split his face. I said, "Looks like you were wrong, old boy--about the impossibility of colonizing." He nodded his head readily, but he wouldn't tear his eyes away from that monsterous, preposterous chocolate cake. The attraction, I discovered, was a little bevy of on-lookers who stood at its base. They were a dozen or more most attractive colonists in the younger age-bracket and unmistakably of the opposite sex. Mac said, "Yeah, I was wrong about colonizing prospects. Dead wrong. Aren't you glad?" And now the tremolo feeling split into a crescendo of sub-harmonics and overtones, a magnificent chord of attunement with life and humanity everywhere in the universe. And all at once I knew _I was glad_, happy as hell to see these people from the old hometown of earth. 
51508	----	THE CHASERS By DANIEL F. GALOUYE Illustrated by Harrington [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine February 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Civilizations must make sense somehow. But was this one the gaudy, impossible exception? As the dust drifted clear of the ship's landing skids, at least two things became obvious: One--although they had missed the city (if that's what it was) by miles, they had nevertheless managed to slam down near one of the numerous rural estates. Two--the landscape would be crawling with Zaortian Fuzzy Tails for a long while to come. They were still pouring out of hatches sprung open by the crunching impact. Kent Cassidy untangled himself from the control column and plucked one of the Fuzzy Tails from his neck. The creature scampered around until it found the ruptured hatch, then scurried through to join the squealing zoological exodus. "There goes ten thousand credits' worth of cargo," groaned Gene Mason. His stout form was slumped in dejection before the view port. Cassidy sniffed the refreshing air that was drifting into the ship. "Any idea where we are?" "After the directional stabilizer blew, we made three blind jumps, all in the direction of Galactic Center. We could be _anywhere_ between Zaort Seven and the Far Rim." "Hey, look," said Cassidy. From the hatchway, the sumptuous estate sprawled nearby, its many gabled manor closed off behind a high wire fence. Cassidy squinted, but failed to recognize the bold, flowing architectural style. A small, bent figure clung to the wire netting of the fence. He was shouting at the ship, but his excited words were no match for the decompression hisses of the auxiliary drive. "Humanoid?" Mason suggested. "Human, I'd say." Cassidy gestured toward the gear locker. "Better break out the translator." In baggy trousers and sagging blouse, the man raced back and forth behind the fence--the picture of frustrated anger. However, large, doleful eyes, complemented by a bald head and huge, pendulous ear lobes, belied his furious actions. Presently the squeals of the Fuzzy Tails trailed off in the distance and the auxiliary drive quieted with a final sigh. And now the native's shouts rang out distinct and loud: "Quick! From here get you! Shoo! Scram! Or out there I'll come and apart tear you!" "It's English!" Mason exclaimed. "Of a sort. Archaic, but understandable. And not at all friendly." Mason scratched his blunt chin. "Guess we're not too far off the beaten star paths, eh?" Cassidy could find no grounds for challenging this observation as they started down the ladder--not until he looked overhead and saw three suns shining in the same sky. As far as he knew, there were no settled trinary systems. Beyond the fence the native, a wisp of a man was still fuming. "The hell away from here get! You I'm warning--no closer come!" Mason displayed a half frown. "He's sure a sour cuss." "You stay with the ship," said Cassidy. "I'll see what's fouling his tubes." * * * * * Before Cassidy reached the fence, his pet Fuzzy Tail came scampering from behind a bush. It clambered up his trousers and wrapped itself around his neck. This encouraged the speculation that perhaps the shipment of Tails could be bartered for repairs to the stabilizer--_if_ there was a local space technology, and _if_ they could corral the animals. The native grew even more frenzied now as Cassidy drew up before him. "Trespasser! Back get! _My_ property this be! Scram! You I'll kill!" The Fuzzy Tail uncoiled itself from around Cassidy's neck. Perching on his shoulder, it fussed back at the native in chirping, excited tones. It not only acted at times as though it owned Cassidy, but it also exercised a personal responsibility for his welfare. "Quiet!" Cassidy snapped out. It caught both the Fuzzy Tail and the old man by surprise. The animal bounded for cover while the native rocked back on his heels. "Be you not just a--_little bit_ afraid?" His eyebrows mounted the wrinkled expanse of his forehead. The nearby hedge rustled and parted to let through a dark-haired girl whose tanned skin suggested accustomed exposure to the multiple sunlight. Wearing a belted tunic that lacked inches of reaching her knees, she confronted the old man calmly. "It's all about what, Papa?" she asked, with a trace of an amused smile. "Trespassers! On _our_ property, Riva! The alarm sound! Scat! To the woods take! Or a dead duck you be!" "Now, Papa," she chided. Then, through the fence, "Him you musn't mind. It's only his duty he's attending to." From the distance, Cassidy had suspected the man was of Terran descent. Now, with Riva in the picture, he was certain this world was stocked either by intent or accident with true humans. "We're from Terra," he said. She frowned. "Ter-ra?" "Earth. The original world--" Incomprehension flooded her even features. But her confusion was only temporary. "Let's play." It seemed like an altogether acceptable suggestion, Cassidy thought, eying the attractive girl. But he went on, "This is our ship and--" "Ship?" Then she chased away her puzzlement with a sudden smile. "Some nice games I know." There was no space technology on this planet, Cassidy decided. They'd be strictly on their own as far as repairing the directional stabilizer was concerned. By this time Papa, his eyes focused afar, had exploded again. "Charge!" he roared. "After him! Wa-hoo! Away don't let him get!" He was gripping the fence and straining toward the field. Cassidy turned and saw, in the distance, a skimmer vehicle floating along several feet off the ground. In full pursuit was a shouting youth who paused occasionally to seize a rock and hurl it at the craft. The old man turned toward his daughter. "A good chase that be. Bet he wins." "Not a chance." The girl frowned. "That be Nedal. Not so swift is he. Loses interest too quick, he does." She surveyed Cassidy. "Be you a chaser?" "No, but I could do with a couple of stiff shots." This drew Papa's attention back to the matter at hand. "Trespassers! The road hit! Scat! Some dust kick up!" "Quiet!" Cassidy shouted. "Will you listen a minute? I--" Two loyal Fuzzy Tails came charging up to the fence and added their raucous chatter to Papa's screeching diatribe, which had continued unchecked despite Cassidy's loud, desperate plea. In the next instant, though, it seemed that a dam had burst overhead. Materializing from nowhere, at least a ton of water poured down on the agile-tongued native, the two Fuzzy Tails, Riva and Cassidy himself, bringing an abrupt end to all the commotion. The animals streaked for the safety of the bushes while Papa and the girl dived back through the hedge. Bedraggled, Cassidy headed for the ship, wondering what sort of meteorological quirk he had encountered. * * * * * "No, sir," he said some time later as he attacked the directional selector with pliers and a screwdriver, "I don't like the setup. I don't like it worth a damn." Mason traced the power lead to the junction box beside the hatch. "Maybe they aren't _all_ like that." "In this sort of place, chances are that the first people you run into are typical. I'm afraid--" "Say!" Mason interrupted, staring outside. "Look at this!" Cassidy went over to the hatch and watched a dozen or so men sprinting across the field, their voices rising in excited waves. A lithe young woman was in full flight before them. But she was screaming in delight as she turned now and then to beckon them on. One overtook her and brought her down with a waist tackle. She rebounded to her feet, however, and took off again. Two of the pursuers collided and sprawled on the ground. They sprang up and tore into each other. Unconcerned with the personal dispute, the chase struck off in a new direction, heading toward the ship as it paralleled one of the nearby fenced-in estates. Behind the wire mesh, a burly young man came charging down the main steps of the manor and raced along with the others. "That be the way!" he yelled encouragement. "Her go get! It's gaining you are! Hurry!" He drew up in time to avoid crashing into the side fence, then stood there watching the chase recede in the distance. Within a hundred feet of the ship, one of the men fell out of the group, panting. He squinted at the vessel, then crept forward, circling to the right. Within arm's reach, he walked back and forth alongside the hull, giving it a close inspection. Finally he paused and fumbled with his clothes. Cassidy started. "Look what he's doing!" "Against the side of the ship, too!" said Mason. Hearing them, the native jerked his head up toward the hatch, then backed off for a better view. "Stinkers!" he yelled, shaking his fist. "Out here come and fight! Take you both on I can!" When they only gaped, he whirled and sped off to rejoin the chase. "You see?" said Cassidy. "Now what do you think?" "I think we'd better get that directional stabilizer working." * * * * * It took more than an hour to locate the trouble. "The rectifier circuit's shot," Cassidy said finally. "But maybe we can patch it up. Some of the amplifiers I suppose we can do without. But a hyper-oscillator we've got to have." "Say, you're doing it too," said Mason. "What?" "Talking like the natives." Cassidy looked up. "Guess it's something that grows on you. Well, what do we do now?" "Maybe the natives can help us." "If they don't even know where they're from, they probably left their volts and amps behind too. But that's only an assumption." "In that case," Mason said with a sigh, "there's only one thing left to do--take Riva up on her invitation to, ah, play." "Funny," Cassidy grunted, heading for the hatch. "I was only joking." "I'm not. If we can get in that house, we'll know for sure whether or not they've developed electronic devices." Halfway across the field, they were almost run down by the laughing girl and her retinue of galloping suitors, if that's what they were. She was a well-proportioned blonde whose wind-frothed tresses suggested a nymph in flight. At the fence, they were confronted by Riva, who smiled up at Cassidy and said, "You I was just going to come and get. Ready to play yet you are?" He looked away and cleared his throat. "Not quite, Riva. We'd like to visit your house." "It's some interesting games I know. Enjoying them you'd surely be." Her smile, revealing even teeth that contrasted ruddy cheeks, was as persistent as her intent on playing. Staring at the girl, Cassidy wrestled with a pang of wistful envy over the Olympian life he had witnessed thus far on this world. Maybe they were all irresponsible and childlike. But was that bad? * * * * * Mason pointed in alarm toward the meadow in front of the next estate. An ominous-looking, furry thing, supported on six or eight spindly legs, was racing across their field of vision. "Hurt you he won't," the girl assured them, noticing their apprehension. "Nothing to be afraid of there is." "_What_ is it?" Cassidy was still trying to determine whether it was an overgrown spider or a dry-land octopus. "Look!" Mason exclaimed. "It's on a leash!" And Cassidy noticed the thong that extended from the creature to the human who was running along behind it. "To Wolruf he belongs," the girl explained. "One of them I can get for you too--if you want." Her slender hand reached out through the fence and tugged at Cassidy's sleeve. "To chase me wouldn't you like?" she asked, pouting. Glancing behind her, Cassidy spotted the girl's father bearing down on them in a sprint that was nothing short of phenomenal for his age. He began shouting with the last few strides and was in full lung when he hurled himself at the fence. "Git! Out! Away! I'll--" Riva moved back and glanced overhead and Papa, seeing some hidden significance in her gesture, lowered his voice. "You I'll tear into and apart I'll rip!" he went on in a menacing whisper. "Your limbs I'll scatter like--" "Papa, it's not afraid of you they are." "They're _not_?" He was disappointed. "The house they want to come in and see." He began working up a rage again, but caught himself and looked up into his daughter's face. "Mean you--_my_ house they want to see?" When she nodded Papa seized the lowest strand of wire and lifted the fence high enough for Cassidy and Mason to crawl under. "Why, arranged it can be, I think." Its architectural prominences rendered shadowless in the tri-solar light, the manor was even more imposing close at hand. Of stone construction, it flaunted millwork and beams whose rich carvings would have been welcome on any mansion in the known Galaxy. Mounting the steps, Mason observed, "Nice little layout they've got here." Riva moved closer to Cassidy. "Inside is cozy," she said behind a coy smile. "Play we can _really_ in there." Papa had been at the door for some time, fumbling with the lock. In a burst of impatience, he drew off and gave it a solid kick. Then he went back and tried rattling the handle. After a while there was a click and it swung open. Cassidy followed him into a blaze of iridescent color and unfamiliar form. The huge, circular room was like a vast diorama and it was impossible to tell exactly where the solid objects blended in with the jumbled geometric pattern of the wall. He walked across a carpet of undulant fibers that reached well above his ankles. And he tripped across a padded, Z-shaped slab that protruded from the wall but slithered into a U and retracted as soon as it received the burden of his weight. Laughing, Riva helped him up and he paused for a closer visual inspection of his outlandish surroundings. Objects of weird shapes and unguessable purposes hung from the ceiling, some changing form and size as he watched. Scattered about were articles of furniture (he guessed) that resembled giant starfish supported at their centers and extremities by coiled springs. Only, each arm was shaped like a trough that ran into the bowl-like central depression of the piece. * * * * * A gleeful scream sounded behind them and Papa went tearing by. With a running leap, he landed on an arm of one of the starfish. Its supporting spring contracted under the weight, then catapulted him ceilingward. When he came down again, it was on an arm of another starfish, then another. The fourth collapsed, depositing him on the floor, and its spring went twanging across the room. Struggling to his feet, he staggered into something resembling a clothes tree, knocked it over and sprawled beside it. He roared with delight as he snapped the stem of the thing across his knee and hurled the pieces at the ceiling. They scored direct hits on one of the bulky objects suspended overhead and it came crashing down with a twinkling roar amid a shower of sparks. "Yow-ee!" he exuberated. "So much fun I never had!" Riva helped him up. "Papa, it's control yourself you must. The last time--remember?" But he only shook her off and went bounding through an archway. His hectic progress through the house was punctuated by sounds of crashing destruction. "Honestly," Riva said, spreading her hands, "what to do with him I don't know." Cassidy continued staring in the direction the old man had gone. "He's wrecking the place!" "That he is," she admitted sighing. "And such a nice joint it be, too." "He's just plain nuts!" said Mason. Riva smiled. "But it's _so_ much fun he has." Cassidy moved away to get a better view of a silvery gray screen set in the wall and flanked by twin rows of dials and knobs. "You got stereovision, Riva?" he asked. Mason went over and twisted several of the controls until a soft light began suffusing the screen. "Ster-eo-what?" the girl asked. "Video, television--pictures with sound." Her face brightened. "Pictures we got--sounds too. Right in that little window." Just then Papa, uninhibited as ever, came storming back into the room with a lusty "Ya-hoo!" He lost his footing and crashed against the screen. Sparks shot out and the picture that was beginning to take shape faded into obscurity. "It that settles, Papa!" Riva said, exasperated. "Outside I'm going and for what happens to you I'm not responsible!" At the door, she paused and smiled at Cassidy. "It'll have to be out there that we play, but no less fun will we have. Put on my best cavorting clothes I'm going to." Mason turned the knobs again, but produced nothing more than the smell of burning insulation and a few snickers from Papa. "At least," Cassidy observed, "they evidently do know something about electronics. All we have to do now is run down one of the technicians and we might get the parts we need for the stabilizer." * * * * * Outside Mason dropped down on the steps and sat with his shoulders slumping. "Damnedest thing I've ever seen," he mumbled. Cassidy paced to the edge of the porch and stared out over the field. A monstrous skimmer craft appeared in the distance, floating over toward what seemed to be a pile of trash in front of one of the estates. Twin beams of crimson light darted from the nose of the vehicle and played over the mound. In seconds, the heap had melted away and the skimmer floated on. Wolruf was still walking his octopus-spider pet. There were now two packs of youths out chasing girls. And another skimmer car was having no difficulty surviving the stone-throwing assault of not one, but two dedicated pursuers. Outside of that, Cassidy noted, things appeared quite normal. Mason slapped his thighs and rose. "You go see if Riva knows how we can contact the authorities. I'm going back and stay with the ship." Cassidy watched him crawl under the fence, then went around the side of the house. When he caught sight of the girl, she was just disappearing into a smaller structure that might have been a guest house or garage. Following, he knocked on the door and called out her name anxiously. "To play are you ready?" There was an eager note in her voice as it came through the panel. "In come on. It's all set I'll be in a jiffy." He turned the knob, stepped half into the room, lurched back outside and slammed the door behind him. "_Riva!_" The door started to open, then closed again as the girl laughed. "Oh, all right. Funny you be. It's to play you want, don't you?" He assured her that he did and added, "But there's something we have to talk about now, Riva." "Talk, talk, talk. And it gets you where? Only wastes time, it does." A moment later the door opened and she stood there smiling, with legs apart and hands on her hips. But he hardly had time to react to the skimpiness of her halter and skirt. "Now," she urged as she sprang up on her toes and kissed him full on the lips, "like a chaser make! To the races we're off!" With that, she whirled and went streaking through the next room. * * * * * He surveyed his surroundings. It was an ordinary bedroom with conventional furnishings--perhaps a bit crude even for a culture without any space technology. But, then, it didn't seem uncharacteristic, considering the circumstances. Recognizing the contrast between this guest house and the manor, he frowned as he started off in search of the girl. A worrisome suspicion dogged his thoughts--there had to be sense to Riva and her father and this sumptuous estate, natives who made sport of chasing skimmer craft and voluptuous women when they weren't otherwise indiscreetly occupied. But what? In the kitchen, he discovered Riva's shapely leg protruding from behind a cabinet. He suspected the exposure was not as accidental as she wanted him to believe. He was certain of that when, as he seized her ankle, she crawled out laughing. Now she stood before him, unsmiling and impatient, and her slender arms reached out for his shoulders. "Riva, this is serious!" He forced her hands down again. "I'm in trouble. I need help." "It's to help you I've been trying all along." "I've got to get in touch with the authorities--your government." She looked blank. He simplified it, "Your leaders." "Oh, it's easy that is. There be Aline and Clio and Leah and--but that Leah! It's the cake she takes! Thirty chasers she led on the best drag-out of all. Two whole days it lasted!" "No, Riva! Not _that_ kind of leader. I mean--well, someone who gets things done. The kind who gets behind things and--" "That be Leanc. Behind those floating cars he's getting all the time. And how he can throw so many rocks I'll never know!" He mussed his hair in frustration, then composed himself. "How do I get to the city?" "That crowded place with all the big houses?" When he nodded, she went on, "It's never been there I have. _Now_ we play?" He drew in a hopeless breath. "All right. Now we play. You go hide." She radiated a warm eagerness as she initiated the game all over again with a kiss and then went sprinting toward the front of the house. He watched her disappear through the next room, then went out the nearest door, heading for the fence and his ship beyond. It had required no small degree of restraint not to go racing off after her. At the corner of the manor he was bowled over by a shouting Papa who was in full flight as he shot out around a hedge, heading for the guest house. "All your fault it is!" he cried, recovering his balance and plunging on. "You it be who caused this! that I'll remember!" Cassidy sat up, arms resting on his updrawn knees, and stared after the old man. "Ow! Riva! Ouch!" Papa clutched his rear as he neared the cottage. "Help! Oh, my aching back!" * * * * * Cassidy found Mason frozen in the shadow of the ship, fascinated by another girl chase that was in progress nearby. The swirl of action swerved toward him and Mason tensed, shifting from one foot to the other. With the wind pressing her clothes in revealing tightness about her, the flaxen-haired sprite swept past and he lunged for her. "Mason!" Cassidy shouted. "Seemed like a good idea," Mason explained, checking himself. "Wonder what it takes to get in on that chase." Cassidy forced a fetching thought of Riva out of his mind. "What we ought to be wondering is how soon we can blast off." "But if we get spaceborne before the stabilizer's working, we'll only be floundering around again." Cassidy started for the ladder. "There's one thing we _can_ do--patch up the hatches and jump over to another spot on this planet. Maybe we'll find somebody who's normal, at least." But Mason caught his arm and pointed toward Riva's estate where a skimmer car was now parked on the side of the manor opposite the guest house. "Anybody who can drive one of those things," he suggested, "must know something about the city and how to get there. Maybe he'll even give us a lift." * * * * * Mason circled the skimmer craft. "It's a fine piece of workmanship," he said in admiration. "I'll say," Cassidy agreed. "If we can find out where that was made, I'm sure we'll--" His vision was suddenly cut off by a pair of hands that came around his head from behind and clamped themselves over his eyes. If he had any doubt as to the identity of their owner, it was soon cleared up by a soft voice next to his ear: "Not right this is. It's chasing _me_ you're supposed to be." "Riva," he said, facing her, "we'd like to meet the person who came here in that skimmer." "Excuses, excuses," she complained. "Always something more important than a chase it is." "Take us to the driver of that thing," Mason prompted. "We--" But he tensed and stared up in alarm toward the field. Cassidy followed his gaze to the skimmer vehicle that had earlier reduced a pile of trash to nothing. The craft was just now floating up to their ship. Its two beams of sizzling red light swept over the hull from stem to stern, again and again--until there was nothing left of their ship but incandescent molten metal. Mason displayed a sickened, then resigned expression, thrust his hands in his pockets and shuffled off toward the field. "Getting in on one of those chases I think I'll be," he said. But he paused outside the fence, turned to say something, then lurched back. "Cassidy! Watch out! There's one of those things!" The spider-octopus came into view from around the rear of the manor and crawled leisurely toward the guest house. Its body, covered with a multitude of eyes and an unkempt mat of fuzz, was like a coal-black knob perched atop hairy stilts. Evidently, Cassidy guessed as he dived behind a hedge and pulled the girl with him, the thing had gotten away from its master, for it was trailing its leash in the dust. "It's hurt you he won't," Riva assured, quite puzzled over his apprehension. "He belongs to--" But Cassidy clamped a hand over her mouth. The thing reached the guest house and made a queer noise in front of the door. Papa came outside on the double. The spider-octopus picked up the other end of the thong and clamped its braceletlike device around the old man's wrist. Grinning, Papa pulled toward the gate, straining at the leash. Eventually, Cassidy was aware of Riva's smiling, inquisitive face in front of his. "Play?" she invited. And, glancing back at the charred remains of his ship, he didn't see why not. 
60520	----	The MARRYING MAN BY JOSEPH FARRELL _Pete never heard of that old adage about "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander"...._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It wasn't that Pete Cooper didn't love his wives, or that he wanted to see them hurry on into the next world. He always felt real grief when he found himself a widower. But a man must be practical. They were all healthy young women, or at least middle aged when he married them, good insurance risks, and no insurance agent was turning down the business when Pete asked for a policy that big, especially when Pete was putting the cash on the line to pay up the policy when he bought it. That was the most sensible way for a man in the interstellar service to invest his money, Pete said. When he was out in space traveling at near light speed, and time slowed almost to a stop for him, the few months he spent on an expedition meant that nine years passed for a wife on Earth for a Centauri trip, and Sirius meant fifteen, and Altair twenty-five. So a man only saw his wife two or three times between trips, and maybe the last time he saw her he had to take her to the old ladies' home, and the next time he pulled into Earth the insurance company was waiting for him with a check. Safer than stocks, and there was always the possibility that the loving wife might come to an accidental end, which would sadden him, but it meant a double indemnity payment. That sort of satisfied a man's natural desire to have a little speculation attached to his investment. Sally was the seventh. Pete sat fingering the check, feeling genuine sadness at his bereavement. "Lovely girl," he told the insurance agent. "It makes a man feel empty to come home from the stars and find that his wife has gone to her reward." The insurance man disguised a cynical smirk behind his sympathetic mask. "Yes ... a wonderful woman. But it must happen to all of us." He patted Pete's shoulder gently. Pete rose, folded the check carelessly and put it into a pocket. He shook the insurance agent's hand. "You've been very kind. I'll take your card ... in case I ever need another policy...." * * * * * Pete expected to need another policy before he left for his next trip. He felt unhappy about Sally's being gone, but a man mustn't give in to morbid self pity. And hadn't he heard somebody say that a man without a wife was like a spaceship without a motor? He strolled about the city, unimpressed by the changes since his last visit. An interstellar man with as much service as Pete was beyond showing surprise at superficial differences. He was a little annoyed to find that the moving sidewalks were old-fashioned and had been torn out. People now wore little repulsor units on their belts. Walking was tiresome. He stopped at a corner and watched the pedestrians as they whizzed by a few inches off the ground. At least they were clothed; the nudity of the previous century had been somewhat unnerving even to the blasé eyes of a time man. And he was glad to see that the women were back to wearing long, well groomed hair. That period when fashion had called for smoothly shaven heads hadn't suited his taste at all. In fact, none of it seemed to appeal to him very much any more. That was sophistication, the price that must be paid by a man in the interstellar service, watching the centuries go by without belonging to any one of them. He watched a group of young people flit laughing by, felt an unreasoning irritation. They'd be gone and forgotten when he'd made a few more trips. One of the young girls noticed him. She broke from the group and approached. "You're an interstellar, aren't you? I hope you'll join me. I'm Nancy...." Pete straightened up and looked her over. A little young, maybe nineteen, but that meant a lower premium. Nice blond hair, big waves of it that stayed in place even when she was moving fast, and even when she was standing still she seemed to be moving. She was really alive, smiling and laughing and talking easily, and in a pleasant low voice. Really healthy--that slender but nicely rounded body was good for a hundred years. But then, money isn't everything. "A lovely name," he told her. "I like girls with old-fashioned names...." Nancy, it seemed, wanted to interview a time man in connection with a thesis, and in this particular age there was no taboo against a young girl introducing herself to a strange man. Pete didn't mind at all being interviewed and having dinner with her and seeing the town with her. And even when he had given her enough material for a dozen theses, she didn't seem in any hurry to break off their friendship. * * * * * Pete was spending half his waking hours with Nancy and the other half in the men's beauty parlor. Not that he was old--a little prematurely gray and somewhat wrinkled from the hard sun of space and the unkind atmospheres of alien planets. And he had his contact lenses changed--paper was scarce in this era and they were using finer print to stretch the supply. But he was still young. He studied the full length mirror and decided he'd pass for thirty-five. His actual age--that would be hard to guess. Someday he'd look into the company records and figure it out. But mentally, he told himself, I'm a young man, even though I walked through this city five hundred years ago. A young man in love. They knew in this era how to make it nice for young people in love, if you could afford one of the better places. Pete sat across the table from Nancy at a tiny table on a roof far above the city. The room was crowded, but some trick of design made it seem that they were alone together. There was real music played by real people. Some of the melodies were old ones that brought a mood of nostalgia to the time man, with memories of past loves. But then he looked across at Nancy, with her innocent laughing eyes, and the beauty of her brought a lump to his throat that drove out all the small loves of the past. This was it. This time he was really in love. "Pete," she said, "don't you ever get tired of it? Of jumping through the ages, coming back to find your old friends gone, being a stranger in a strange world? For instance, how about me? You'll be back from Sirius or Altair some day, a year or two older, and I'll be an old woman? How does it really feel?" Pete took her hands and stared earnestly into her eyes. She was more serious than he'd ever seen her as she gazed back at him. "It's not the right way to live, Nancy. A man doesn't really live, in the real meaning of life. A man needs a woman, a wife he can come home to." He squeezed her hands gently. "Nancy, will you marry me?" Her hands trembled in his grasp. "I will, Pete--oh, Pete, I've been so hoping--and so afraid. But, Pete, your job...?" He smiled reassuringly. "I'm signed up for a trip, but it's only a short one--that planet of Proxima Centauri they just discovered is on the list for a complete survey. But I'll be back in--seven, eight years. Then we can really settle down." She bent over the table and kissed him. "I'll wait, Pete." "No, Nancy. Now. We'll be married first; I'll still be here a couple of months, why waste them? I don't want to take any chances of losing you." "I wanted to hear that, Pete." Her eyes were shining with happiness. "About getting married now, I mean--there's no chance of your losing me." Pete was serious about settling down after the short trip to Proxima. At least he was serious about it now. But after that trip was over.... He didn't think about that sort of thing any more. He had tried to puzzle it out a few times, how he could tell a girl he was making one more trip, and mean it, and then one more and then one more until a happy young girl was suddenly a disillusioned embittered old woman. There was a paradox of conscience here that he had given up trying to resolve. When he said he was making one more trip, he meant it. But at the same time he knew that when he came back he'd sign up for another. If he meant what he said when he said it, even though he knew he'd change his mind later-- His conscience was clear. And of course a man must be practical. His earnings must be invested, and the future provided for. The honeymoon was still new when the insurance agent responded to Pete's call. "I've always believed in insurance," he told Nancy. "Of course, no amount of money could console me if I came back and found that something had happened to you. But people must prepare for the unpleasant things in life." "Of course," said Nancy, who never disagreed with her husband. "We have to be sensible about things. I might have an accident, and so might you. We have to face things like that." The insurance man was a little dazed. He'd never sold a policy nearly as big as the amount Pete had named. "Nobody's had an accident on an interstellar ship in hundreds of years," he assured Nancy. "The rate for your husband will be negligible--we expect him to be around for a real long time. Now, sir," he told Pete, "your best buy is our family special--the full value to be paid to the survivor. As I said, the cost for you is trivial, and for your wife...." He thumbed his rate book nervously. Pete wrote a check to pay the policy in full, and the insurance man walked out in a trance, spending his commission. And Nancy hadn't noticed that Pete's signature had gone on a guarantee that he wouldn't resign from the interstellar service for at least two hundred years, objective Earth time. * * * * * Pete felt a little sad when his leave began to run out. They sat around evenings adoring each other, not too late, because Pete was a man who needed plenty of sleep or he felt irritable the next day. Nancy never took his bad days seriously. The laughing happiness of youth was still in her eyes, but there was a firmness behind it now, the maturity of a girl who knows how to become a woman. He went down to the spaceport a few times to look over the ship he was signed up for, and took the routine physical. Doctors went over his mind and his body, probing with needles and tubes and questions that were pointless. "What do you think of the popular songs of today, Mr. Cooper?" "What do you remember of your mother, Mr. Cooper?" "Are you interested in girls, Mr. Cooper?" "Do you have a close friendship with any of the other men in the crew, Mr. Cooper...?" The routine this time seemed worse than ever. Actually he'd had worse ones, when the medical fashions of the time called for it, but somehow it seemed more annoying this time. "Five hundred years," he told the doctor. "Five hundred years I've been living this life and I know more about it than you ever will. Captain Drago told me on the trip to Altair--no, Sirius it was, that I was the most devoted man in the service. Pete, he said, when you're aboard, I never worry about the engines, I'd rather have you sitting on them than anybody else. That's the way he talked--sitting on the engines, he called it...." The doctor watched Pete thoughtfully and made notes on the paper before him. And the next day the mail brought the message that Peter Cooper, Master Engineman First Class, was retired from the service. There was a personal letter of congratulations from an undersecretary, and a notice that his pension would start the first of the following month. "It's a mistake!" Pete told his wife angrily. "Something's wrong! They didn't talk to Captain Drago like I told them, and--" Nancy's eyes were indignant. She sent him steaming back with fire in his eyes, but he couldn't change the decision. He did get as far as the office of the doctor who had asked him all the fool questions, and he saw a paper he wasn't meant to see. It stunned him into temporary silence. But it wasn't true! Positively not! Definite signs of senility, the notes read. Irritable reaction to questioning. Mind wanders, fixes on irrelevancies. Preoccupation with casual remarks of associates.... And more. He didn't tell Nancy this, nor did he show her the reply he received to his protest. "While a search of our records indicates a subjective--chronological age of approximately 48.6 years, physiological analysis puts the condition of your body at a much higher figure--it would be guesswork to try to name a figure. However, recent studies indicate that interstellar personnel with long terms of service tend to age at an increasingly rapid rate, due probably to psychological factors stemming from the knowledge of separation from the natal culture.... "We are sorry...." He kept his hair dark and the wrinkles smoothed out and forced the tiredness from his bones. Other things were harder to fake, but Nancy wasn't a demanding wife. She thought he was about thirty-five, and she thought the blow of being dropped from the service had taken the life from him. She took his part firmly. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, Pete. Not one person in a thousand could pass the examination for the interstellar service--they're really tough. And we're together." "What will we live on?" Pete demanded, knowing he was being too irritable, but unable to control it. He waved the pension check. "Can we live on that? A fine payment for my years of service." Nancy looked dubiously at the check. "I thought it was a lot ... but don't worry, Pete. You have a wife to stand by you." * * * * * When Pete found out how his wife had gone about standing by him, he was almost shocked speechless. Almost. "You signed up as my replacement on the Proxima expedition! But you can't! It's no job for a woman! And you're leaving me alone--for seven or eight years! They won't take you!" "They already did." She smiled bravely at him. "As the wife of a retired serviceman I had preference. We need the extra money, Pete. And it won't be for long. When I come back, we'll still be young enough to enjoy life, darling. And they pay well--a few years of sacrifice now will make so much difference in our future...." Pete closed his eyes and thought of how many times he had said the same words to starry eyed young women. It won't be long ... we'll still be young ... good pay.... Her loving lips tenderly brushed his dark hair. * * * * * On nice days, Pete sits in a rocking chair on the porch with the other old men. He doesn't bother to dye his hair any more and he reads now with a thick glass, complaining about the small type they use nowadays. The attendants laugh off his irritability, and some of the visitors who come to see the other old men don't mind listening to his stories about the interstellar service. When it gets toward dusk, he looks into the sky sometimes as the stars appear. Centaurus isn't really there, not here in the northern hemisphere, but he looks anyway. Out there in space, his wife is doing a man's job. Wonderful woman, Elsie. Not Elsie--Nancy. How could he have made that mistake. Nancy, a laughing young girl who had grown swiftly into a strong mature woman defending her man and her marriage vows. He leans back and rocks faster then, a smile on his face. Sometimes the visitors see him and shake their heads sympathetically, and sometimes he sees them doing it, but it doesn't matter. They don't know. They don't know about his nest egg, that insurance policy he's going to collect some day now, because he's going to straighten them out down at the interstellar bureau. Captain Drago will straighten them out, and then he's going back into space and support his wife as a man should. And sometimes the smile fades and a tear rolls down his cheeks when he thinks of Nancy growing old and passing away and the insurance man giving him a check and a few words of sympathy. But a man has to be practical about such things. 
58659	----	Ten miracles were arranged for the age-long flight. But they reckoned without---- RESURRECTION SEVEN By Stephen Marlowe [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The seventh tub shook gently, stimulating the hypothalamic region of Eric's brain for the first time in almost two centuries. After a time, his limbs trembled and his body began to shiver. The liquid in which he floated boiled off at a temperature still far below that which would permit his body to function. By the time all the liquid was gone he had uncurled and lay at the bottom of the tub. Now his heart pumped three hundred times a minute, generating warmth and activating his central nervous system. It took many hours for his heart to slow--not back to the one beat every two minutes it had known for a hundred-seventy-five years, but to the normal rate of about seventy per minute. By then his body temperature had climbed from below freezing to 98° F. Eric lay in stupor for a week, while fluids flowed into the tub and massaged his muscles, while fatty tissue slowly turned into strength. Finally, he climbed from his tub. * * * * * He found the locker which bore his name, and opened it. Six other lockers were open and empty, as were six tubs. He found that hard to believe. It had seemed only a night of deep and dreamless sleep, no more. But each empty tub stood for twenty-five years, each open locker meant a man had gone and lived his time with the new generations of the ship, perhaps had sired children, had died with old age. [Illustration: _At intervals of twenty-five years, they would arise to police the ship._] Eric found his clothing on a hook, took it down. Yesterday--he laughed mirthlessly when he realized that had been almost two hundred years ago--Clair had told him something about a note. He found it in the breast pocket of his jumper, stiff and yellow. He read: _Darling: I will be ashes in the void between the stars when you read this. That sounds silly, but it's the truth--unless I can give old Methuselah a run for his money; I sadden when I think that you will be gone tomorrow, the same as dead. But if they need ten and if you are one who can withstand suspension--what can we do? Know that my love goes with you across the ages, Eric._ _I just thought of something. You'll be the seventh of ten, with the last one coming out at planet-fall. If you live to be a real gray-beard, you might even see the landing on the Centaurian planet. I love you._ _Clair_-- If Clair had married, her great-grandchildren might be alive now. Her great-great-grandchildren would be Eric's age. Clair's progeny, not Clair--because Clair was dust now, a light year back in space-- He found a package of cigarettes in his jumper, took one out and lit it. He must not think of the past, not when it was only history now although he still felt very much a part of it. Today mattered, today and the new generations on the ship. It crossed his mind that they might regard him almost as a god, a man who had seen Earth, who had slept while generations lived and died, who came from his impossible sleep and would live with them now to see that everything was going according to plan. Three minutes after he started the mechanism, the door slid ponderously into the wall. It would open more simply from the other side, he knew, but then only Eric and the three who still slept could turn its complex tumblers. For a long while he stood there on the threshold and then he watched the door slide back into place. * * * * * The corridor glowed with soft white light, which meant it was daytime on the ship. Dimly in the distance, Eric heard voices, children at play. Would they know of him? Would their parents know? Was he expected? Eric came closer. Through a doorway he could see the children, three of them, although they had not yet seen him. A chubby, freckle-faced boy said: "Let's play Lazarus. I must be the Captain, and you, Janie, you can be the crew. George, you be Lazarus." George was a big ten-year-old with dark hair. "Like heck I will! It was your idea, you be Lazarus, smart guy." Eric stepped through the doorway. "Hello," he said. "Can you take me to your folks?" "Who're you, Mister?" "Hey, I don't know him! Where'd he come from?" The girl, Janie, said, "Lookit his clothes. Lookit. They're different." The children wore loose tunics, pastel-tinted, to their knees. Freckle-Face said: "You know what today is, doncha?" George frowned. "Yeah, holiday. We're off from school." "What holiday, stupid? Which one?" "I--I dunno." "Lazzy-day!" Janie cried. "That's what it is. Then he's--he's--" "Lazarus!" Freckle-Face told her, and, as if on one impulse, the three of them bolted away from Eric, disappeared through another doorway. He did not follow them. He stood there, waiting, and before long he heard footsteps returning. A man entered the room, tall, thin, middle-aged. "You are Eric Taine," he said, smiling. "I'm sorry no one was around to greet you, but the way we had it figured, you wouldn't come out till later this afternoon. History says that's how it worked with the six before you, about four P.M. It's just noon now. Will you follow me, please?" Then the man flushed faintly. "Excuse me, but it isn't often we meet strangers. Everyone knows everyone else, of course. My name is Lindquist, Mr. Taine. Roger Lindquist." Eric shook hands with him, stiffly, and he thought for a moment the man did not know the gesture. "Ah yes, handshaking," Lindquist laughed. "We simply show empty palms now, you know. But then, you don't know. I rather imagine you'll have a lot to learn." Eric nodded, asked Lindquist if he might be shown about the ship. There was a lot he had to see, to check, to change if change were needed. "Relax, my friend," Lindquist told him. "I'd--ah, like to suggest that we postpone your tour until you've met with our Council this afternoon. I'd very much like to suggest that." Eric shrugged, said: "You know more about this than I do, Mr. Lindquist. We'll wait for your Council meeting." * * * * * "Thus, Mr. Taine," said Captain Larkin, hours later, "tradition has it that you become a king. King Lazarus Seven--with six Lazaruses before you. The first one, the histories say, was a joke. But it's stuck ever since. The people like this idea of a king who comes to them every twenty five years--and they've dubbed him with the name Lazarus, well, because if he didn't come back from the dead, he came back from something a lot like it." Eric nodded. "What happened to Alan Bridges?" "Who?" This was Lindquist. "Alan Bridges, the man before me--your Lazarus Six." Captain Larkin cleared his throat. "He's dead, Mr. Taine." "Dead? He'd only be in his fifties now--" "I know. Sad. It was disease, hit him soon after he came to us. Lazarus Six had a very short reign. Didn't he, Mr. Lindquist?" "He certainly did," Lindquist agreed. "Let's hope that Lazarus Seven is here to step down for Eight--and to watch Nine come in, fifty years from now!" Cheers filled the room and Eric smiled briefly. That reminded him of Clair's note. Clair-- "So," said Captain Larkin, "you'll be crowned tomorrow. After that, your people will see you, King Lazarus Seven on his throne. Don't disappoint us, Mr. Taine. Their tradition means a lot to them." "It should," Eric said. "The planners made it that way. With nothing but space outside, and the confining walls of the ship, they needed something to bind them together." "Yes, that's true. But the people, as you'll see, have come up with some of their own traditions over the years." Captain Larkin ran a hand through his graying hair. "Like your kinghood, for example. You'll see, Mr. Taine--or should it be Lazarus now, eh?" He laughed. "If you'd like," Eric said. He did not relish the idea particularly, but then, it was their show. Still, he had everything to check--from astrogation to ethics--and he would not want to be delayed by pomp and ceremony. Well, there was time enough for that. Now he felt weary--and that made him chuckle, because he had just concluded a hundred-seventy-five year nap. They took him to his quarters, where the six before him had lived. There he ate in silence, food from the hydroponic gardens on a lower level of the ship. The line of light under his door had turned from white to a soft blue. It was night on the ship. Eric showered and got into bed, but although he was tired he could not fall asleep. He had expected to be an efficiency expert of sorts; that was his job; but they told him, matter-of-factly, that he would be a king. Well, you could expect change in nearly two hundred years, radical change. And if indeed their tradition were deep-rooted, he would not try to change it. The planners had counted on that to keep them going, because there could be no environmental challenge to goad them. Just an unreal past and an unreal Earth which Eric and their great-great-grandparents had seen, and an even more unreal future when, someday far far off, the ship reached the Centaurian System. Softly, someone knocked at his door. The sound had been there for many moments, a gentle tapping, but it had not registered on his consciousness. Now, when it did, he padded across the bare floor and opened the door. A girl stepped in from the corridor, pushing him before her with one hand, motioning him to silence with the other. She closed the door softly behind her, soundlessly almost, and turned to face him. She wore the knee-length tunic popular with this generation, and it covered a graceful feminine figure. * * * * * "Please," the girl said. "Please listen to me, Eric Taine. I may have only a few moments--listen!" "Sure," he smiled. "But why all the mystery?" "Shh! Let me talk. Have you a weapon?" "Yes, I carry a pistol. I don't fancy I'll need it, though." "Well, take it with you and go back where you came. If anyone tries to stop you, use your weapon. They have nothing like it. Then, when you get there--" Her voice came breathlessly, and it made Eric laugh. "Hold on, Miss. Why should I do that? Don't tell me there's a plot and someone wants to usurp the new king before he's crowned? No? What then?" "Stop making fun of me, Eric Taine. I'm trying to save your life." She said it so seriously, her eyes so big and round, that Eric half wanted to believe her. But that was fantastic. From what could she possibly be saving him? The words came out in a rush as the girl spoke again. "The ship is not on course. For twenty five years it has been off, heading back to Earth--" "To Earth! That's crazy." "Listen, please. They killed Lazarus Six. He was a scapegoat. They watched the old films of Earth and felt they had been cheated out of their birthright. Why should they live here, alone in space? they said. Why should their children's children face the hardships of a new world? They didn't ask for it. It was thrust upon them by the planners, by your generation. If they knew how to get into your room of tubs, they would have killed you. Now there is a mock ceremony, everything is blamed on the new Lazarus, and the people feel better when he is killed. I know, my mother told me. You can ask her----" The girl was about twenty, Eric thought. A wild-eyed thing now, who so wanted him to believe her impossible story. Her breath came quickly, in little gasps, and Eric tried to hide the smile on his face. "You're laughing at me! Stupid, stupid--please--And when you get back to your room of tubs, awaken your friends, the three who remain. You four can control the ship, put it back on course, teach the people--Ooo, stop laughing!" She pouted prettily. "All of us, we're not all like that. We who are not can help you." Eric chuckled softly. "You try to picture it," he told her. "I'm sorry, but everything's been sweetness and light, and you come in here with a wild notion--" "It isn't wild, it's the truth. Why don't you ask to check our course before they make you king?" He could do that, all right. But they'd be wondering what mad neurosis compelled his actions, and he did not want that, not when he might have so much to do. "Check it," she pleaded. And when he shook his head, she told him, "You're acting like a child, you know. The records say you are twenty-five, and you've slept for seven times that, but still. All you have to do is check. Please--" The door burst in upon them, and Lindquist stood there, with Captain Larkin and two others. Lindquist shook his head sadly. "I thought so," he said. Captain Larkin nodded. "A Cultist child. Shame, isn't it?" One of the other men strode forward, and the girl cowered behind Eric. "Don't believe them!" she wailed. "Lies--" "There are so many of them," Lindquist explained. "Apparently, we're in an area of high radiation now, Mr. Taine. So many of our people are deranged. I won't guess at the cause, except to say it's probably outside the ship." The man came around Eric, tch-tch'd when the girl jumped on the bed and stood trembling against the headboard. "Now, Laurie," the man coaxed. "Come on down, there's a good girl." Eric wanted to help her, but he checked the impulse. He only felt protective. There could be nothing in the girl's story. Best if they took her and treated her. "... a whole cult of them," Lindquist was saying. "All lacking something up here." He tapped his head. "They don't trust anyone, only members. Think we're doing all sorts of foolish things. I don't know, what would you call it in your day. Paranoia?" Eric said he didn't know, he was not a psychologist. He watched silently with Lindquist and Captain Larkin as the two other men took Laurie, struggling, out the door. She kicked, bit, and cried lustily. Once her dark eyes caught Eric's gaze, held it, and she whimpered, "I don't care if they kill you! I don't care--" They started down the corridor, after Lindquist said, "You've had a hard day. I think we'd better let you sleep." "She told you someone wanted to kill you?" Captain Larkin said, shaking his head slowly. "What can we do, Lindquist?" "Well, we just better hope whatever's causing this sort of thing is left behind in space soon. Goodnight Mr. Taine." "Goodnight, Lazarus," said Captain Larkin. * * * * * Eric recognized at once the great hall in which he had danced that last night with Clair. Now Clair was gone. The place was crowded--probably the ship's entire population. Lindquist led him through the crowd, and he could not tell what their faces showed. There were mumblings of "Lazarus" and "king"--but why did he get the faint suggestion of mockery? Oddly, what Laurie said had troubled him--he had had a bad night's sleep, and it left him irritable. Poor girl. He wondered how many more there were like her. Well, in time he could find out, after this nuisance of a coronation had become history. "Ah, Taine," Captain Larkin said as Lindquist brought him to the dais. "As you can see, all the people are ready. I hope you won't think the ceremony foolish. Are you ready?" Eric nodded, watched a man raise trumpet to lips, blow one clarion note. A hush fell over the hall. "I am honored to present King Lazarus Seven to you," Larkin proclaimed in a loud clear voice. "He has been sent, as you know, by the planners." Hoots from the crowd. Eric frowned. He had thought they would respect the planners, the men whose vision had sent Man--here in this ship--outward bound to the stars. Larkin's voice was honey now. "Don't judge our new king by those who sent him. Don't--" Laughter, and shouts of "Hail, Lazarus!" The people, Eric suddenly realized, were almost primitive. Larkin and Lindquist and a handful of others ran the ship, had somehow maintained the science of another generation. But the lack of conflict, of challenge, had sent the people down a rung or two on the ladder of civilization. Handpicked, their ancestors had been--but they were a common mob. Someone cried, "He's seen Earth. Ask him to tell us about Earth!" "Ask him!" Captain Larkin smiled. "Tell them, Taine. Tell your new subjects. You have so little time." "What do you mean, so little time?" "Tell them!" And Larkin turned away, laughing. They were primitive, these people, and as the girl Laurie had said, they needed a scapegoat. They didn't like it here on the ship. There had been a first generation which had known Earth and could savor its flavor through the long years like a delicate wine. And there would be a last which could get out on the Centaurian planet, stretch its legs, and build civilization anew. But these in between were in limbo. They lived and they died on the ship, and it wasn't their idea. They would breed so that the ship would still have a crew when it reached Centauri. That was their function. But they didn't like it. All this went through Eric's mind. Perhaps the girl had no psychosis, perhaps her warning had been sincere. He wondered if the long sleep had dulled his instincts, his reflexes. He told them of Earth, of its wonders, of the wide meadows he remembered, of the wind, brisk in spring, which brought the sweet-scented rain, of summer and the big harvest moon which followed, of a hundred other things. _Clair! Clair! Did you marry, have children? There was that Lou Somebody who you'd flirt with to make me jealous, but we both knew he loved you. I wonder._ He spoke of the planners, of the proud day when all the world had seen them off, the video jets flashing by, circling, to send their pictures to the waiting millions. The planners, he told them, had a vision. It was the same vision which had first taken man--an ape with a brain that held curious half-formed thoughts that gave him a headache--down from the trees. A vision which would carry him one day to the farthest stars and beyond. They shouted. They stamped on the floor. They laughed. "What about us? We didn't have any say, did we? Who wants to spend his whole life in this tin can?" "I don't know--" One of them at least was dubious, but the crowd stilled him. What of Laurie and her Cult? He did not see the girl anywhere in the great hall. "We've had enough, Captain. Too much, I'd say!" Larkin looked smug. Lindquist was grinning. No one did anything to stop them as the crowd surged forward, threatened. Watching them, only now beginning to realize the whole thing, Eric remembered history. Mock-kinghood was nothing new in the scheme of primitive cultures. In ancient Babylonia, in Assyria--elsewhere--the mock king ruled for a day and the people came to him with their troubles. The king, cowering on his throne-of-a-day could perhaps see his executioner waiting. The real king had nothing to lose: the pent up dissatisfaction of his people would drown the mock-ruler like a wave, and after it was all over the king would return to his throne with more power than before. * * * * * Rough hands reached up, grabbed at him. Fists shook, voices threatened. Someone pulled his boot, and Eric sat down on the dais, breathing heavily. He got up fast, before they could swarm all over him, yanked the gun from his jumper, poked it against Larkin's ribs. "You know what this is?" "Yes--a gun." "Well, call your friends off or I'll kill you. I'm not joking, Larkin. Call them off--" "I can't. Look at them, a mob. What can I do now?" "You'd better do something, because soon you won't have a chance to do anything. Now!" Larkin made a motion to the trumpeteer. He blew two loud notes this time, and uniformed men appeared, brandishing clubs. Evidently, they were on hand in case the crowd became too wild, threatened Larkin, Lindquist and the other nameless rulers. With their clubs they beat the mob back, slowly, held them off as Eric pushed Larkin before him. The crowd surged close, fought once or twice with the guards on their immediate flanks. Once Larkin tried to bolt away, but thereafter Eric held him firmly until they reached an exit. Together they sprinted down a corridor, Larkin puffing and staggering. "Beat it," Eric told him. "Go on, scram!" "You won't kill me as I run? I know that thing can kill over long distances--" "Don't give me any ideas," Eric said, but he felt a little sick as Larkin ran, whimpering, back toward the hall. This man was their ruler, their leader. He found the door, activated its mechanism, waited impatiently while he heard the sounds of pursuit. Something clanged against the door, and again. They were throwing things. Eric ducked, felt pain stab at his shoulder. He could see their faces in the corridor when the door began to slide clear. He slipped in, punched the levers that would close it again, saw a hand and a leg come through the crack, heard a scream. The limbs withdrew, and Eric watched grimly as it slid all the way shut. Lazaruses Eight, Nine, and Ten, he thought, as he went to the three remaining tubs. For a moment he gazed down through the pinkish liquid at the men curled up, sleeping their long sleep. He shook the tubs gently. All it would take was that--direct motion. Once that had started the cycle, each sleeper's hypothalamus took over, twenty-five, fifty, and seventy-five years ahead of schedule. He watched them twitch, shiver, slowly uncurl, watched the vapors rising from their tubs. He had plenty of time. In a week, he helped them from their tubs. They were ready to listen--smiling baby-faced Chambers, gaunt Striker, rotund Richardson. He explained, slowly. He told them everything. "My God," Striker said when he had finished. "Be thankful you could get back here, lad," Richardson told him. "What do we do now?" "What _can_ we do?" Chambers demanded. Then: "Will you look at that--a hundred seventy five years and I haven't even grown a beard!" They all laughed, and the tension was broken. "We go back," Eric said, "armed to the teeth. It won't be difficult. Some of them will die, but we can set the ship on its course again, teach them--I'd hate to see the disappointment on Earth if we went back after six generations." Striker frowned. "Have we the right to kill?" Eric said, "look--they might get back to Earth someday--their progeny a bunch of savages; the hope and dreams of the race reduced to--nothing. We can kill if we have to." It was agreed. Without saying anything, Striker himself activated the lock. * * * * * Two men with clubs rushed them in the corridor, howling "Lazarus" and "death." It was Striker who shot them where they stood, before they could use the clubs. After that, they fired shots into the air, and people ran screaming away from them. Their first rush carried them almost to the control room and briefly Eric remembered when he had looked out from there with Clair at the bright faraway stars. But he could not quite picture Clair's face. He tried to, but he saw the girl, Laurie.... A dozen uniformed men stood before the control room. They looked badly frightened, but they stood their ground, then advanced. "What do we do now?" Chambers asked. "We couldn't get them all, not before--" There was a rush behind them as a score of figures marched into the corridor. "We're trapped!" Striker cried. Eric grinned. "I don't think so." He had seen Laurie in the vanguard of the newcomers. They did not have to use their guns, not as they had been meant to be used. They fought with tooth and nail, using the guns as clubs. But mostly, they stood back and watched their allies tear into the guards. The girl Laurie cried: "I told you there were some who believed, Eric Taine. I told you!" They reached the control room door, battered at it. Half a dozen men came up with a great post of metal, heaved. The door shuddered. Again. Again. It crashed in. Lindquist and Larkin stood there, over a great pile of charts and books. "You won't take this ship on to Centauri," Larkin yelled. A little flame flickered at the end of the tube in his hand. He crouched. "If those are the astrogation charts--" said Striker. Eric dove, caught Larkin's midsection with his shoulder, threw the man back. They struggled on the floor, and dimly Eric was aware of others who held the writhing Lindquist. Larkin fought like a snake, twisting, turning, gouging. Eric, out of the corner of his eye, saw Lindquist breaking loose, watched him running with the brand to the pile of charts. A shot crashed through the room, echoing hollowly. Lindquist fell over his charts. Now Eric had Larkin down, was pinning him, felt the man's hands twisting, clawing at his stomach, saw them come away with his gun. They grappled, and Eric cursed himself for forgetting the gun. Larkin held it, laughed, squeezed the trigger as Eric pushed clear. Then the laughter faded as Larkin stared stupidly at the gun he had not known how to use. Larkin gasped once, held both hands to the growing red stain on his middle. * * * * * "Dead," Richardson said later. "They're both dead. You know, I think it's better this way. They would have been trouble. But now--now all we have to do is find the course again, turn the ship around--" "It'll mean two extra generations in space," Chambers said. "They've been heading back for Earth twenty-five years." With Eric, he studied the charts, assembled them, punched a few buttons on the computing machine. "Like this," Eric said. He twirled a few dials. "It takes a long time with the overdrive, but we'll be back on course in three years." For a while he gazed out the port, fascinated by the huge sweep of the Milky Way, clear and beautiful in the black sky. When he turned back and away from it, Laurie stood beside him. "Hello, Lazarus." "Very funny," he said. "Call me Taine--better still, call me Eric." "Eric, then. Hello, Eric." He grinned. "I guess you're not psychotic, after all." "Nope. Normal as can be. But take my great-great-grandmother, now. She was really neurotic. She married, all right, but they say she really carried a torch all her life." There was laughter in the girl's eyes as she spoke. Eric had seen other eyes like that. So familiar. So beautiful. "I am Laurie Simmons," the girl told him. "My great-great-grandfather's name was Lou Simmons. His wife was Clair. My mother has a book of hers, of poems she wrote to Eric." "Tell me about them, Laurie." A lovely girl; as pretty as her great-great-grandmother. No--prettier--and part of today. "Never mind, Laurie. Just tell me about yourself." He knew Clair would like it this way. 
40965	----	TIME and the WOMAN By Dewey, G. Gordon [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1 number 2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] [Sidenote: HER ONLY PASSION WAS BEAUTY--BEAUTY WHICH WOULD LAST FOREVER. AND FOR IT--SHE'D DO ANYTHING!] [Illustration ] Ninon stretched. And purred, almost. There was something lazily catlike in her flexing; languid, yet ferally alert. The silken softness of her couch yielded to her body as she rubbed against it in sensual delight. There was almost the litheness of youth in her movements. It was true that some of her joints seemed to have a hint of stiffness in them, but only _she_ knew it. And if some of the muscles beneath her polished skin did not respond with quite the resilience of the youth they once had, only _she_ knew that, too. _But they would again_, she told herself fiercely. She caught herself. She had let down her guard for an instant, and a frown had started. She banished it imperiously. Frowns--just one frown--could start a wrinkle! And nothing was as stubborn as a wrinkle. One soft, round, white, long-nailed finger touched here, and here, and there--the corners of her eyes, the corners of her mouth, smoothing them. Wrinkles acknowledged only one master, the bio-knife of the facial surgeons. But the bio-knife could not thrust deep enough to excise the stiffness in a joint; was not clever enough to remold the outlines of a figure where they were beginning to blur and--sag. No one else could see it--yet. But Ninon could! Again the frown almost came, and again she scourged it fiercely into the back of her mind. Time was her enemy. But she had had other enemies, and destroyed them, one way or another, cleverly or ruthlessly as circumstances demanded. Time, too, could be destroyed. Or enslaved. Ninon sorted through her meagre store of remembered reading. Some old philosopher had said, "If you can't whip 'em, join 'em!" Crude, but apt. Ninon wanted to smile. But smiles made wrinkles, too. She was content to feel that sureness of power in her grasp--the certain knowledge that she, first of all people, would turn Time on itself and destroy it. She would be youthful again. She would thread through the ages to come, like a silver needle drawing a golden filament through the layer on layer of the cloth of years that would engarment her eternal youth. Ninon knew how. Her shining, gray-green eyes strayed to the one door in her apartment through which no man had ever gone. There the exercising machines; the lotions; the unguents; the diets; the radioactive drugs; the records of endocrine transplantations, of blood transfusions. She dismissed them contemptuously. Toys! The mirages of a pseudo-youth. She would leave them here for someone else to use in masking the downhill years. There, on the floor beside her, was the answer she had sought so long. A book. "Time in Relation to Time." The name of the author, his academic record in theoretical physics, the cautious, scientific wording of his postulates, meant nothing to her. The one thing that had meaning for her was that Time could be manipulated. And she would manipulate it. For Ninon! The door chimes tinkled intimately. Ninon glanced at her watch--Robert was on time. She arose from the couch, made sure that the light was behind her at just the right angle so he could see the outlines of her figure through the sheerness of her gown, then went to the door and opened it. A young man stood there. Young, handsome, strong, his eyes aglow with the desire he felt, Ninon knew, when he saw her. He took one quick step forward to clasp her in his strong young arms. "Ninon, my darling," he whispered huskily. Ninon did not have to make her voice throaty any more, and that annoyed her too. Once she had had to do it deliberately. But now, through the years, it had deepened. "Not yet, Robert," she whispered. She let him feel the slight but firm resistance so nicely calculated to breach his own; watched the deepening flush of his cheeks with the clinical sureness that a thousand such experiences with men had given her. Then, "Come in, Robert," she said, moving back a step. "I've been waiting for you." She noted, approvingly, that Robert was in his spaceman's uniform, ready for the morrow's flight, as he went past her to the couch. She pushed the button which closed and locked the door, then seated herself beside the young spaceman on the silken couch. His hands rested on her shoulders and he turned her until they faced each other. "Ninon," he said, "you are so beautiful. Let me look at you for a long time--to carry your image with me through all of time and space." Again Ninon let him feel just a hint of resistance, and risked a tiny pout. "If you could just take me with you, Robert...." Robert's face clouded. "If I only could!" he said wistfully. "If there were only room. But this is an experimental flight--no more than two can go." Again his arms went around her and he leaned closer. "Wait!" Ninon said, pushing him back. "Wait? Wait for what?" Robert glanced at his watch. "Time is running out. I have to be at the spaceport by dawn--three hours from now." Ninon said, "But that's three hours, Robert." "But I haven't slept yet tonight. There's been so much to do. I should rest a little." "I'll be more than rest for you." "Yes, Ninon.... Oh, yes." "Not yet, darling." Again her hands were between them. "First, tell me about the flight tomorrow." The young spaceman's eyes were puzzled, hurt. "But Ninon, I've told you before ... there is so much of you that I want to remember ... so little time left ... and you'll be gone when I get back...." Ninon let her gray-green eyes narrow ever so slightly as she leaned away from him. But he blundered on. "... or very old, no longer the Ninon I know ... oh, all right. But you know all this already. We've had space flight for years, but only rocket-powered, restricting us to our own system. Now we have a new kind of drive. Theoretically we can travel faster than light--how many times faster we don't know yet. I'll start finding out tomorrow, with the first test flight of the ship in which the new drive is installed. If it works, the universe is ours--we can go anywhere." "Will it work?" Ninon could not keep the avid greediness out of her voice. Robert said, hesitantly, "We think it will. I'll know better by this time tomorrow." "What of you--of me--. What does this mean to us--to people?" Again the young spaceman hesitated. "We ... we don't know, yet. We think that time won't have the same meaning to everyone...." "... When you travel faster than light. Is that it?" "Well ... yes. Something like that." "And I'll be--old--or dead, when you get back? If you get back?" Robert leaned forward and buried his face in the silvery-blonde hair which swept down over Ninon's shoulders. "Don't say it, darling," he murmured. This time Ninon permitted herself a wrinkling smile. If she was right, and she knew she was, it could make no difference now. There would be no wrinkles--there would be only the soft flexible skin, naturally soft and flexible, of real youth. She reached behind her, over the end of the couch, and pushed three buttons. The light, already soft, dimmed slowly to the faintest of glows; a suave, perfumed dusk as precisely calculated as was the exact rate at which she let all resistance ebb from her body. Robert's voice was muffled through her hair. "What were those clicks?" he asked. Ninon's arms stole around his neck. "The lights," she whispered, "and a little automatic warning to tell you when it's time to go...." The boy did not seem to remember about the third click. Ninon was not quite ready to tell him, yet. But she would.... * * * * * Two hours later a golden-voiced bell chimed, softly, musically. The lights slowly brightened to no more than the lambent glow which was all that Ninon permitted. She ran her fingers through the young spaceman's tousled hair and shook him gently. "It's time to go, Robert," she said. Robert fought back from the stubborn grasp of sleep. "So soon?" he mumbled. "And I'm going with you," Ninon said. This brought him fully awake. "I'm sorry, Ninon. You can't!" He sat up and yawned, stretched, the healthy stretch of resilient youth. Then he reached for the jacket he had tossed over on a chair. Ninon watched him with envious eyes, waiting until he was fully alert. "Robert!" she said, and the youth paused at the sharpness of her voice. "How old are you?" "I've told you before, darling--twenty-four." "How old do you think I am?" He gazed at her in silent curiosity for a moment, then said, "Come to think of it, you've never told me. About twenty-two or -three, I'd say." "Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll be fifty-two." He stared at her in shocked amazement. Then, as his gaze went over the smooth lines of her body, the amazement gave way to disbelief, and he chuckled. "The way you said it, Ninon, almost had me believing you. You can't possibly be that old, or anywhere near it. You're joking." Ninon's voice was cold. She repeated it: "I am fifty-two years old. I knew your father, before you were born." This time she could see that he believed it. The horror he felt was easy to read on his face while he struggled to speak. "Then ... God help me ... I've been making love to ... an old woman!" His voice was low, bitter, accusing. Ninon slapped him. He swayed slightly, then his features froze as the red marks of her fingers traced across his left cheek. At last he bowed, mockingly, and said, "Your pardon, Madame. I forgot myself. My father taught me to be respectful to my elders." For that Ninon could have killed him. As he turned to leave, her hand sought the tiny, feather-light beta-gun cunningly concealed in the folds of her gown. But the driving force of her desire made her stay her hand. "Robert!" she said in peremptory tones. The youth paused at the door and glanced back, making no effort to conceal the loathing she had aroused in him. "What do you want?" Ninon said, "You'll never make that flight without me.... Watch!" Swiftly she pushed buttons again. The room darkened, as before. Curtains at one end divided and rustled back, and a glowing screen sprang to life on the wall revealed behind them. And there, in life and movement and color and sound and dimension, she--and Robert--projected themselves, together on the couch, beginning at the moment Ninon had pressed the three buttons earlier. Robert's arms were around her, his face buried in the hair falling over her shoulders.... The spaceman's voice was doubly bitter in the darkened room. "So that's it," he said. "A recording! Another one for your collection, I suppose. But of what use is it to you? I have neither money nor power. I'll be gone from this Earth in an hour. And you'll be gone from it, permanently--at your age--before I get back. I have nothing to lose, and you have nothing to gain." Venomous with triumph, Ninon's voice was harsh even to her ears. "On the contrary, my proud and impetuous young spaceman, I have much to gain, more than you could ever understand. When it was announced that you were to be trained to command this experimental flight I made it my business to find out everything possible about you. One other man is going. He too has had the same training, and could take over in your place. A third man has also been trained, to stand by in reserve. You are supposed to have rested and slept the entire night. If the Commandant of Space Research knew that you had not...." "I see. That's why you recorded my visit tonight. But I leave in less than an hour. You'd never be able to tell Commander Pritchard in time to make any difference, and he'd never come here to see...." Ninon laughed mirthlessly, and pressed buttons again. The screen changed, went blank for a moment, then figures appeared again. On the couch were she and a man, middle-aged, dignified in appearance, uniformed. Blane Pritchard, Commandant of Space Research. His arms were around her, and his face was buried in her hair. She let the recording run for a moment, then shut it off and turned up the lights. To Robert, she said, "I think Commander Pritchard would be here in five minutes if I called and told him that I have information which seriously affects the success of the flight." The young spaceman's face was white and stricken as he stared for long moments, wordless, at Ninon. Then in defeated tones he said, "You scheming witch! What do you want?" There was no time to gloat over her victory. That would come later. Right now minutes counted. She snatched up a cloak, pushed Robert out through the door and hurried him along the hall and out into the street where his car waited. "We must hurry," she said breathlessly. "We can get to the spaceship ahead of schedule, before your flight partner arrives, and be gone from Earth before anyone knows what is happening. I'll be with you, in his place." Robert did not offer to help her into the car, but got in first and waited until she closed the door behind her, then sped away from the curb and through the streets to the spaceport. Ninon said, "Tell me, Robert, isn't it true that if a clock recedes from Earth at the speed of light, and if we could watch it as it did so, it would still be running but it would never show later time?" The young man said gruffly, "Roughly so, according to theory." "And if the clock went away from Earth faster than the speed of light, wouldn't it run backwards?" The answer was curtly cautious. "It might appear to." "Then if people travel at the speed of light they won't get any older?" Robert flicked a curious glance at her. "If you could watch them from Earth they appear not to. But it's a matter of relativity...." Ninon rushed on. She had studied that book carefully. "And if people travel faster than light, a lot faster, they'll grow younger, won't they?" Robert said, "So that's what's in your mind." He busied himself with parking the car at the spaceport, then went on: "You want to go back in the past thirty years, and be a girl again. While I grow younger, too, into a boy, then a child, a baby, at last nothing...." "I'll try to be sorry for you, Robert." Ninon felt again for her beta-gun as he stared at her for a long minute, his gaze a curious mixture of amusement and pity. Then, "Come on," he said flatly, turning to lead the way to the gleaming space ship which poised, towering like a spire, in the center of the blast-off basin. And added, "I think I shall enjoy this trip, Madame, more than you will." The young man's words seemed to imply a secret knowledge that Ninon did not possess. A sudden chill of apprehension rippled through her, and almost she turned back. But no ... there was the ship! There was youth; and beauty; and the admiration of men, real admiration. Suppleness in her muscles and joints again. No more diets. No more transfusions. No more transplantations. No more the bio-knife. She could smile again, or frown again. And after a few years she could make the trip again ... and again.... * * * * * The space ship stood on fiery tiptoes and leaped from Earth, high into the heavens, and out and away. Past rusted Mars. Past the busy asteroids. Past the sleeping giants, Jupiter and Saturn. Past pale Uranus and Neptune; and frigid, shivering Pluto. Past a senseless, flaming comet rushing inward towards its rendezvous with the Sun. And on out of the System into the steely blackness of space where the stars were hard, burnished points of light, unwinking, motionless; eyes--eyes staring at the ship, staring through the ports at Ninon where she lay, stiff and bruised and sore, in the contoured acceleration sling. The yammering rockets cut off, and the ship seemed to poise on the ebon lip of a vast Stygian abyss. Joints creaking, muscles protesting, Ninon pushed herself up and out of the sling against the artificial gravity of the ship. Robert was already seated at the controls. "How fast are we going?" she asked; and her voice was rusty and harsh. "Barely crawling, astronomically," he said shortly. "About forty-six thousand miles a minute." "Is that as fast as the speed of light?" "Hardly, Madame," he said, with a condescending chuckle. "Then make it go faster!" she screamed. "And faster and faster--hurry! What are we waiting for?" The young spaceman swivelled about in his seat. He looked haggard and drawn from the strain of the long acceleration. Despite herself, Ninon could feel the sagging in her own face; the sunkenness of her eyes. She felt tired, hating herself for it--hating having this young man see her. He said, "The ship is on automatic control throughout. The course is plotted in advance; all operations are plotted. There is nothing we can do but wait. The light drive will cut in at the planned time." "Time! Wait! That's all I hear!" Ninon shrieked. "Do something!" Then she heard it. A low moan, starting from below the limit of audibility, then climbing, up and up and up and up, until it was a nerve-plucking whine that tore into her brain like a white-hot tuning fork. And still it climbed, up beyond the range of hearing, and up and up still more, till it could no longer be felt. But Ninon, as she stumbled back into the acceleration sling, sick and shaken, knew it was still there. The light drive! She watched through the ports. The motionless, silent stars were moving now, coming toward them, faster and faster, as the ship swept out of the galaxy, shooting into her face like blazing pebbles from a giant slingshot. She asked, "How fast are we going now?" Robert's voice sounded far off as he replied, "We are approaching the speed of light." "Make it go faster!" she cried. "Faster! Faster!" She looked out the ports again; looked back behind them--and saw shining specks of glittering blackness falling away to melt into the sootiness of space. She shuddered, and knew without asking that these were stars dropping behind at a rate greater than light speed. "Now how fast are we going?" she asked. She was sure that her voice was stronger; that strength was flowing back into her muscles and bones. "Nearly twice light speed." "Faster!" she cried. "We must go much faster! I must be young again. Youthful, and gay, and alive and happy.... Tell me, Robert, do you feel younger yet?" He did not answer. * * * * * Ninon lay in the acceleration sling, gaining strength, and--she knew--youth. Her lost youth, coming back, to be spent all over again. How wonderful! No woman in all of time and history had ever done it. She would be immortal; forever young and lovely. She hardly noticed the stiffness in her joints when she got to her feet again--it was just from lying in the sling so long. She made her voice light and gay. "Are we not going very, very fast, now, Robert?" He answered without turning. "Yes. Many times the speed of light." "I knew it ... I knew it! Already I feel much younger. Don't you feel it too?" He did not answer, and Ninon kept on talking. "How long have we been going, Robert?" He said, "I don't know ... depends on where you are." "It must be hours ... days ... weeks. I should be hungry. Yes, I think I am hungry. I'll need food, lots of food. Young people have good appetites, don't they, Robert?" He pointed to the provisions locker, and she got food out and made it ready. But she could eat but a few mouthfuls. _It's the excitement_, she told herself. After all, no other woman, ever, had gone back through the years to be young again.... * * * * * Long hours she rested in the sling, gaining more strength for the day when they would land back on Earth and she could step out in all the springy vitality of a girl of twenty. And then as she watched through the ingenious ports she saw the stars of the far galaxies beginning to wheel about through space, and she knew that the ship had reached the halfway point and was turning to speed back through space to Earth, uncounted light-years behind them--or before them. And she would still continue to grow younger and younger.... She gazed at the slightly-blurred figure of the young spaceman on the far side of the compartment, focussing her eyes with effort. "You are looking much younger, Robert," she said. "Yes, I think you are becoming quite boyish, almost childish, in appearance." He nodded slightly. "You may be right," he said. "I must have a mirror," she cried. "I must see for myself how much younger I have become. I'll hardly recognize myself...." "There is no mirror," he told her. "No mirror? But how can I see...." "Non-essentials were not included in the supplies on this ship. Mirrors are not essential--to men." The mocking gravity in his voice infuriated her. "Then you shall be my mirror," she said. "Tell me, Robert, am I not now much younger? Am I not becoming more and more beautiful? Am I not in truth the most desirable of women?... But I forget. After all, you are only a boy, by now." He said, "I'm afraid our scientists will have some new and interesting data on the effects of time in relation to time. Before long we'll begin to decelerate. It won't be easy or pleasant. I'll try to make you as comfortable as possible." Ninon felt her face go white and stiff with rage. "What do you mean?" Robert said, coldly brutal, "You're looking your age, Ninon. Every year of your fifty-two!" Ninon snatched out the little beta-gun, then, leveled it and fired. And watched without remorse as the hungry electrons streamed forth to strike the young spaceman, turning him into a motionless, glowing figure which rapidly became misty and wraith-like, at last to disappear, leaving only a swirl of sparkling haze where he had stood. This too disappeared as its separate particles drifted to the metallite walls of the space ship, discharged their energy and ceased to sparkle, leaving only a thin film of dust over all. * * * * * After a while Ninon got up again from the sling and made her way to the wall. She polished the dust away from a small area of it, trying to make the spot gleam enough so that she could use it for a mirror. She polished a long time, until at last she could see a ghostly reflection of her face in the rubbed spot. Yes, unquestionably she was younger, more beautiful. Unquestionably Time was being kind to her, giving her back her youth. She was not sorry that Robert was gone--there would be many young men, men her own age, when she got back to Earth. And that would be soon. She must rest more, and be ready. The light drive cut off, and the great ship slowly decelerated as it found its way back into the galaxy from which it had started. Found its way back into the System which had borne it. Ninon watched through the port as it slid in past the outer planets. Had they changed? No, she could not see that they had--only she had changed--until Saturn loomed up through the port, so close by, it looked, that she might touch it. But Saturn had no rings. Here was change. She puzzled over it a moment, frowning then forgot it when she recognized Jupiter again as Saturn fell behind. Next would be Mars.... But what was this? Not Mars! Not any planet she knew, or had seen before. Yet there, ahead, was Mars! A new planet, where the asteroids had been when she left! Was this the same system? Had there been a mistake in the calculations of the scientists and engineers who had plotted the course of the ship? Was something wrong? But no matter--she was still Ninon. She was young and beautiful. And wherever she landed there would be excitement and rushing about as she told her story. And men would flock to her. Young, handsome men! She tottered back to the sling, sank gratefully into the comfort of it, closed her eyes, and waited. * * * * * _The ship landed automatically, lowering itself to the land on a pillar of rushing flame, needing no help from its passenger. Then the flame died away--and the ship--and Ninon--rested, quietly, serenely, while the rocket tubes crackled and cooled. The people outside gathered at a safe distance from it, waiting until they could come closer and greet the brave passengers who had voyaged through space from no one knew where._ _There was shouting and laughing and talking, and much speculation._ _"The ship is from Maris, the red planet," someone said._ _And another: "No, no! It is not of this system. See how the hull is pitted--it has traveled from afar."_ _An old man cried: "It is a demon ship. It has come to destroy us all."_ _A murmur went through the crowd, and some moved farther back for safety, watching with alert curiosity._ _Then an engineer ventured close, and said, "The workmanship is similar to that in the space ship we are building, yet not the same. It is obviously not of our Aerth."_ _And a savant said, "Yes, not of this Aerth. But perhaps it is from a parallel time stream, where there is a system with planets and peoples like us."_ _Then a hatch opened in the towering flank of the ship, and a ramp slid forth and slanted to the ground. The mingled voices of the crowd attended it. The fearful ones backed farther away. Some stood their ground. And the braver ones moved closer._ _But no one appeared in the open hatch; no one came down the ramp. At last the crowd surged forward again._ _Among them were a youth and a girl who stood, hand in hand, at the foot of the ramp, gazing at it and the ship with shining eyes, then at each other._ _She said, "I wonder, Robin, what it would be like to travel through far space on such a ship as that."_ _He squeezed her hand and said, "We'll find out, Nina. Space travel will come, in our time, they've always said--and there is the proof of it."_ _The girl rested her head against the young man's shoulder. "You'll be one of the first, won't you, Robin? And you'll take me with you?"_ _He slipped an arm around her. "Of course. You know, Nina, our scientists say that if one could travel faster than the speed of light one could live in reverse. So when we get old we'll go out in space, very, very fast, and we'll grow young again, together!"_ _Then a shout went up from the two men who had gone up the ramp into the ship to greet whoever was aboard. They came hurrying down, and Robin and Nina crowded forward to hear what they had to report._ _They were puffing from the rush of their excitement. "There is no one alive on the ship," they cried. "Only an old, withered, white-haired lady, lying dead ... and alone. She must have fared long and far to have lived so long, to be so old in death. Space travel must be pleasant, indeed. It made her very happy, very, very happy--for there is a smile on her face."_ 
50981	----	Garrity's Annuities By DAVID MASON Illustrated by RAY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Every planet is badly in need of family men, naturally--but the same one on all of them? You might say Garrity brought it on himself. The way I put it, Garrity was the architect of his own disasters. It's a nicely put phrase, I think. Anyway, a lot of people tried to tell him what might happen. I did, for one, though I'd never have thought it would happen in just that way. What I would have predicted for Garrity would be trouble, but just ordinary trouble: jail, or getting his Space Engineer's ticket suspended, or something like that. Not the kind of trouble he's got. I remember distinctly the first time I heard Garrity explaining his theory. It wasn't a new theory, but the way Garrity talked about it, you'd think he'd invented it personally. We were sitting in the messroom in the _Aloha_--that was the old _Aloha_, the one that belonged to the Muller Space Lines. Talking about women--trip like that. Neither Garrity nor I had ever touched down on Seranis, which was where we'd be in another week or so. The other off-watch man, Gloster, had been there several times and liked the place. "A lot of Earthside Oriental in 'em," Gloster said. "They're little brown characters, real obliging. The girls especially. You just treat 'em polite and they'll treat you right back." "Uh-huh," I said, considering the idea. * * * * * Garrity curled his long lip. "It'll cost you just as much in the end. Women are always looking for something." "Not this kind on Seranis," Gloster said. "Best port I've ever been in. I'm staying on the _Aloha_ till I get to putting curtains on my cabin port." Garrity shook his head. He looked as cynical as he could, for his age, which was twenty-four. We were all of us fresh out of Lunar, with the ink hardly dry on our Engineer tickets. "I'll tell you," said Garrity. "I haven't seen a woman yet that wouldn't cost you more than she was worth in the long run." "Long run?" I asked him. "We don't spend more than a few days down on Seranis. Isn't going to _be_ any long run. If she runs, let her to catch her before takeoff time." Gloster chuckled, but Garrity just looked righteous. "You'll see what I mean," he told us. "Yeah," Gloster said. "I guess you and me will go downtown and pick up a couple girls and take in some high-priced amusements, like listening to records at the Spaceman's Union Lounge. After which we hurl our hard-earned cash away on a quart of pink arrack and we take the girls home with it. In the morning, we haven't got a credit left, so we blast off with nothing but a set of beautiful memories." Gloster crowed. "What's the matter, anyway, Garrity? The Union gets us the best wage scale in any space fleet and you still think girls cost too much? Even the Seranese?" Garrity kept on looking wise. "I'm not kidding. I've seen a lot of men come up to retirement without a credit put away. Half-pay and nothing else, all because they spent everything having a good time." "You can do without women, maybe?" I asked. "No," Garrity admitted. "I'm a normal man." "Yeah," said Gloster, very flat. Garrity looked peeved. "Well, I am. But I'm careful, too. I figured it all out a long time back. I aim to have everything you guys look for and not go to half the trouble and expense." "What did you figure out?" "I'm going to get married." Gloster and I just sat there, looking at each other. After a while, Gloster finished his coffee in silence. He got up, looked at Garrity, shook his head sadly, and went out. * * * * * It took me a while to finish looking Garrity over, myself. When I managed to get my voice under control, I asked him what he was talking about. "I saw what happened to my old man," Garrity told me. "When he came up for retirement, he was broke. He doesn't complain, but he never has anything left out of his retirement pay. Spends his time loafing around and writing his memoirs. It was women, mostly; after he lost my mother--she died when I was born--he went off to space again. Sent back enough to keep me, spent the rest in one port or another." I didn't say anything, but it was beginning to add up. I don't know anything about psychology, but I thought there might be something like a reason in what Garrity was telling me for the way Garrity was. Somewhere he'd got the idea that his old man wasn't happy. I doubted it, because I've seen and talked to lots of old retired hands. Most of them had a good life behind them and they were still enjoying the taste of it. But I didn't argue with Garrity about it. I've got more sense. When a man's got a pet notion, leave it alone. You won't pry him off it and you might get him mad at you. A spaceship's too small to make enemies in. "Suppose you get married," I asked him. "So you have a place to go, and a girl in it, in one port. How about all the others? Going to take a permanent port watch instead of seeing a little fun?" "Easy," Garrity said. "I'll just get married in all of them." "_All_ of them?" "Well, the ones I'm in most often. Terra City, Chafanor, some other places. I'm thinking of homesteading on one line as soon as I pad on a little seniority." The notion did have a certain cold practicality about it. I didn't like it, but as far as getting away with it went, he could. Garrity went on to explain a bit more; his system seemed to have been worked out to the last detail. He'd set up two, three, maybe four or five happy little households, spend his end-of-run leave in each, dividing up his time nice and even. All of them together wouldn't cost him what a night or two on the town might. To add to that, he'd pick out his wives with care. They'd all be different in a lot of ways, for the sake of variety, but they'd all be affectionate, home-loving girls, and careful with money. They'd save his credits for him. And when he retired, he could keep active and happy visiting them and his various families, which he expected to include a real lot of kids and grandchildren. "I don't believe in small families," he explained. * * * * * At the time, I never thought he'd try to carry it through. I've heard wild ideas in messrooms before, particularly halfway through a long trip. They usually fade out when a man gets his feet down on gravity again. This one didn't. But it might have worked out, at that. It was just Garrity's luck that he signed on the _Brooklyn_. The _Brooklyn_ carried ore from Serco to Terra, and Terran machinery back to Serco, a regular, steady run. When I bumped into Garrity in the hiring hall, he told me he'd just signed on her, and I told him I had, too. Naturally, I asked him how the Garrity old-age-insurance system was working out. "Well," he confessed, "I'm not married yet. But I've got a likely girl here in Terra City. All I've got to do is ask her. Now if I can line one up in Serco--" "In Serco?" I turned a little pale, I think. "Listen, Garrity, have you ever been in Serco?" "No. Why? Aren't they humanoids?" "Oh, sure." I was trying to think just how you'd describe Serco and its peculiar people. "Only different." "How're they different?" Looking at that stubborn mug of his, I knew I wasn't going to be able to explain this in a million years. It was just no use. Garrity had everything all figured out. But I took one try. "They've never been much of a mechanical culture; they buy all their stuff from outside, in exchange for ore and timber. But they're one of the oldest civilizations in the Galaxy. They've spent a million years learning about minds and thoughts, all that philosophy sort of thing. I don't mean they aren't perfectly all right. They're human, but they know a lot. It wouldn't pay to fool around with them." Garrity laughed. "Maybe they might read my mind?" I knew it was no use. I just shrugged, bought Garrity a beer to celebrate, and we headed for the spaceport. No, the Sercoans don't read minds. At least, I don't think they do, though there are times when they're that clever at adding you up that you'd think they _were_ looking at your thoughts. Garrity didn't get caught that way. He got caught because he couldn't keep from telling the rest of us about his great idea. One of the navigators, a man named Lane, was the one who told Katha about it. * * * * * Lane was in love with Katha, naturally. Everybody was. She worked in the port medical office and she was one of the reasons why it took a high-seniority card to sign on a ship for Serco. There were a lot of men who'd take an extra set of immune shots just to have Katha give it to them. And it isn't a bit easy to figure out why. She wasn't any beauty. Good-looking, sort of, but not especially so; a tallish girl, with gray eyes and a long, narrow, sensitive face. Browny-red hair that always looked a little carelessly cut. As I said, nothing at all special. It was just something about her. She could have had her pick and she picked Garrity. And only Lane broke the rules and told her. Trouble is, he told her a couple of weeks too late. It was because Lane had never thought that Katha would fall for Garrity that he hadn't told her before. But when he touched down at Serco port and heard that Katha and Garrity had gotten married the week before, he didn't waste any more time. He called Katha up from the spaceport, and told her all about the Garrity plan, and how she was only the first, but definitely not the last. Lane told me afterward what Katha had said. "I am not jealous," she'd answered. "If he had wanted others when he was away, he could have done as he wished, as a man might. But he has spoken to you as a child, not a man. I do not like that." She didn't sound terribly angry. It was the way she phrased it that bothered Lane. "But he is not a bad man," she said thoughtfully to Lane. "And he is a good lover and makes a fine husband. I will not hurt him, but I think I will give him something which will teach him, if he wants to learn. And when he has learned, I will take it away again and he may be as free as he can ... as free as any of you of the outside ever are." I can't tell you what it was she did. Neither can Garrity. Hell, he didn't even know she'd done anything! He kissed her good-by at the port gates and went on his way, and she went back to work in the port medical office. As far as any of us could see, the Garrity plan was well under way. * * * * * It wasn't six months before I saw the thing starting off. That was when I was invited to Garrity's second wedding. It was in Terra City, and when he asked me to come down with him for a witness, I assumed it would be the girl he had been busily courting before he went to Serco. But when I walked into the marriage registry office and took a look at the girl, I got a clear, horrific idea of just what Katha had done to Garrity. He didn't think anything had been done to him. He was all smiles. He brought the girl toward me, proud and possessive, grinning all over his face. "This is Mary Collins," he told me, and I kept on looking, not saying anything. She smiled, and shook hands, and I could tell by her expression that she knew exactly what I was thinking. Unfortunately, I couldn't say a word about it to Garrity. There was always the faint possibility that I might be wrong, in which case I could make a lot of trouble by saying a few words. The words were there, though, straining to get out. When he said, "Mary Collins," what I wanted to say was, "No, it isn't. It's Katha." Because it was. After I watched the girl long enough, all the way through the marriage ceremony, then down in the elevator and out into the street, I became dead certain. There was a brown mole on Katha's arm. Mary had it, too. And there was a look about the eyes--well, there could only be one Katha. What I could not understand was why Garrity didn't see it. After all, he'd been _married_ to Katha. But when I tried to say something to him, he brushed it off. "Sure, Mary looks a little like Katha," he agreed with me. "But there are all kinds of small differences. Things a man finds out as he goes along. Look, I'm very fond of both of them. I know the difference. You're just confused by the slight resemblance." The clincher was the problem of how Katha had reached Terra City ahead of Garrity, to begin with, and whether there was still a Katha in Serco. I asked a man off a ship fresh from Serco and he told me Katha hadn't been there for some time. No one knew where she'd gone, but she had said she'd be back. So Mary _could_ be Katha, given a fast passenger ship. And Arnel could be Katha, too. Arnel had a mole in the right place. So did Lillian. And Ruth. And Virginia. * * * * * Yes, Garrity married every one of them. Six girls, six planets. It took him a while, and by the time he got as far as Ruth, he was going to a lot of trouble to arrange his shipping runs so he could make the full circuit. But every so often I'd hear from him, or run into him, and there would always be a new one. The Garrity plan was going fine, but it lacked that one ingredient he had counted on--variety. Every one of those girls was Katha. _He_ didn't think so. He could call off the differences between them by the hour. To listen to him, if you hadn't actually seen them, you'd have believed every word he said. Each one of them gets a share of Garrity's pay--a big share, from the looks of it. Each one of them keeps a nice place for Garrity and, when he comes into port, he eats and sleeps as well as any honest groundwalker. And each one of them has a small fat baby boy, of whose exact age Garrity never seems to be quite sure. Two or three of the kids seem extremely advanced for their ages and they were all born fairly close together, which was enough to make Garrity as proud as a rooster. And Garrity seems to be the only one who can't tell. Thinking about it might make a man want to rush off to Serco and find a girl like Katha ... and Serco is full of them. I'd _like_ having a girl like Katha. I'd like having _six_ Kathas even better. But I'm not going to. I won't drive myself batty trying to figure out how she'd be keeping me fooled. And especially _why_. 
59438	----	AVOIDANCE SITUATION BY JAMES MC CONNELL _What can a man do when he alone must decide the fate of Earth and all its people--and when the choices offered him are slavery and death...._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Captain Allen Hawkins stood quietly in the observation room of the _Sunward_ looking out at subspace. He was a medium-sized man with a trim squareness to him that suggested he had been in the military most of his life. He had a good deal of gold on his sleeve and a good deal of silver in his hair, and he had discovered in his many years in the Space Navy that the two usually went hand in hand. In the background he could hear the noise and ordered confusion of the ship's bridge. But at the moment he paid it little attention, concentrating instead on the observation window. It was not the first time that he had stood thus, gazing at whatever lay beyond the shell of the ship. Almost every time he had put the _Sunward_ through the dark shadow of subspace, he had deserted the bridge for at least a few moments to come and stare out the window. "God," he said out loud, repressing a shiver that wanted to crawl down his spine. "Perhaps 'God forsaken' would be a better description," came a voice from behind him. The voice belonged to Dr. J. L. Broussard, the _Sunward's_ senior psychologist. And although the two men were on more than casually friendly terms, Hawkins didn't turn to greet him. The fascination of the observation port seemed to obviate the normal requirements of courtesy. "At times like this I think you're right. 'God forsaken.' That's just what it is," Hawkins said. "Completely black, completely empty. You know, it frightens me every time we make the jump through it." A voice from the bridge called out, "Twelve minutes until zero. No noticeable deviations, Captain." "Very well," Hawkins said loudly enough to be heard on the bridge. "Perhaps it frightens all of us just a little," said Broussard. He leaned his oversized body against the observation room wall. His big, mild face had a relaxed look to it. "I wonder why it affects us that way," he added almost as if it were a casual afterthought, but his eyes had a too-shrewd look to them. "You're the psychologist. You tell me why," Hawkins said. He paused for just a moment, expecting Broussard to reply. But after a few seconds when the man gave him no conversational support, Hawkins continued. "For my part, I guess it frightens me because--well, because a man seems to get lost out there. In normal space there are always stars around, no matter how distant they may be, and you feel that you've got direction and location. In subspace, all you've got is nothing--and one hell of a lot of that." He pushed his cap back until it perched comfortably on the rear of his head. "It's incredible when you stop to think about it. An area--an opening as big as the whole of our universe, big enough to pack every galaxy we've ever seen in it and still have lots of room left over. All that space--and not a single atom of matter in it anywhere." Captain Hawkins shook his grayed head in wonder. "At least," he went on. "Not a single atom in it until we came barging in to use it as a short cut across our own universe." The man on the bridge called out, "Ten minutes until zero. No noticeable deviations, Captain." "Very well," Hawkins answered. Broussard shifted his considerable weight into a more comfortable position. "You feel rather strongly about this, don't you?" "That I do," said Hawkins. As much as he enjoyed an occasional conversation with the psychologist, Broussard's questions often got on his nerves. "Don't you think it's better we discovered subspace than if we were still back trying to beat the speed of light in our own universe?" Broussard asked him. "Oh, stop looking for a dangling neurosis somewhere, Broussard," Hawkins said, managing a smile. "You know quite well that I've got absolutely nothing at all against the use of subspace for 'rapid transportation,' so to speak. It's just that I'm the sort of man who likes to know where he's going _all_ the time. And out here, in this stuff, you lose your sense of direction. There's no up, no down, no in between. It took spacemen a long time to get accustomed to the wild freedom they found out in the middle of normal space. But at least there you could always head for a star if you got lost. Out here ..." He gestured futilely towards the blackness staring in at them from the window. They stood silently contemplating it for several moments. "Eight minutes until zero. No noticeable deviations, Captain," came the voice from the bridge again. "Very well," Captain Hawkins replied, breaking the brief silence between the two men. Then he went on, "Broussard, have you ever been out there in that stuff? Oh, I don't mean like now, in a ship or a rescue craft. I mean in a spacesuit, all by yourself." The psychologist shook his head. "No, I never have." He paused for just a second, then added, "What's it really like?" There were times, Hawkins thought, when even the phrasing of a simple question on Broussard's part carried a slight sting. But like the brief pain that accompanies the probing point of a hypodermic needle, the tiny barbs contained in the man's questions were soon forgotten. Hawkins smiled. "It's my own private guess of what hell will turn out to be. 'God forsaken,' did we say? That's just about it. We stopped to repair a ship once, and some of us had to go outside to work on it. I guess I was out there for less than three hours--no more than that. And yet I was almost a madman by the time they hauled me back inside. I can't explain why." His voice trailed off into nothingness. "I guess it was just the blackness that did it." "Six minutes until zero. No noticeable deviations, Captain." "Very well." For the first time Hawkins turned to face the psychologist. "During my training at the Academy they locked me up in a closet once, just as a joke. I was without light for hours, but it was nothing like that out there. You should know, Broussard. Why does it look so much blacker in that window now than any other black I've ever seen?" Broussard looked the man over carefully before answering, wondering just exactly what sort of reply might be called for. "I think the reason is that you've got close to optimum conditions for it here in the observatory," he said momentarily. "You always get the blackest shade of black inside a ring of white light. Look at the window." Hawkins turned to do as directed. "There you've got a white frame surrounding the complete absence of light. That's just about as good as you can get. No wonder it looks so black to you." Hawkins shook his head, not so much in disbelief as in wonder. "As a matter of fact," the psychologist continued almost in a hurry. "If you stayed out in subspace all by yourself, with no ship near you and no light of your own, after a while it wouldn't seem black to you at all. You'd get cortical adaptation, and things would just look gray. And not too long after that, you'd stop 'seeing' entirely, as we think of seeing. Or, as a friend of mine once said, under those conditions you'd 'see' as much with your elbows as you would with your eyes. Funny, isn't it? We usually think of black as being the absence of light. And yet, in order to 'see' black, we've got to have at least a little light around every once in a while." The watchman on the bridge droned out the time again. "Four minutes until zero. No noticeable deviations, Captain." Allen Hawkins gave a large sigh, then readjusted the cap on his head. He had the feeling that Broussard's little lecture on science, while factually accurate, was delivered more to obscure the facts than to illuminate. "I'd better get to the bridge now, Broussard. Not that they really need me, but ..." He left the sentence dangling, then turned and walked briskly out of the observation room. * * * * * Once in the control room, he gave the dials and the illuminated screens a rapid, practiced glance and then sat down in his chair to one side of the operations panel. There was actually no known danger to this shifting back and forth from one space to another. No ship had ever encountered any difficulties whatsoever in doing so; there had never been an accident of any kind during transition. The whole thing was as completely automatic as man could make it, and apparently entirely safe. But still Hawkins had never made the shift one way or another without feeling a telltale tightening of muscles deep inside him, and without wondering just what would happen if they got _stuck_ in all that darkness. "One minute, Captain," the watch officer reminded him. Hawkins nodded in reply, his face illuminated by the flashing lights on the control panel in front of him. He watched their changing signals calmly with knowing eyes. "Thirty seconds ... all drives off," sang out a voice. The hands on the clock crept slowly around the dial. "Zero...." There was no sound, no feeling, no jerk nor jar, no noise to mark the transition--nothing at all different from the moment before except a slight increase in the total light flux in the room. _Stars._ Captain Allen Hawkins smiled softly to himself. Stars ... something to cling to, he whispered under his breath. "Bridge from Navigation," came a voice close to his ear. "Go ahead, Navigation," he said after pressing the communications button. "Looks like we hit it right on the nose, Captain," the Navigator told him. "Can't tell just yet, of course, until I feed the positions of the nearest stars into Betsy and she decides where we are. But it looks good from here, and if I'm right, the one we're hunting for is about eight o'clock high from the nose of the ship as she sits now. I'll plot a course there right now. Do you want to wait until Betsy decides that's the one, or shall we take a chance and head for it first?" The Navigator always asked the question, but he knew what the answer would be. "We'll start just as soon as you can give us the course," Hawkins replied. "Aye, aye, Captain," the Navigator replied. Hawkins turned to the officer on duty. "Mr. Smith, you will remain as you are until you receive the course from the Navigator. Once you have it, you will get underway immediately." "Aye, aye, Captain," Smith replied. "I'll be in my cabin if you want me," Hawkins said as he left the bridge. He was rather tired and he meant to go straight to bed, but somehow he found himself stopping by the observation room en route. Broussard was still there, looking out of the window at the stars. "Lovely, aren't they, Broussard?" Hawkins said. "So you feel the stars are lovely?" the psychologist answered slowly. "Yes, I do. They give us light, and hope for the future, and more than that, a frame of reference when we fly through the dark reaches of our universe. They're more than beautiful--they're necessary." As he turned to leave, Hawkins chuckled to himself. Just let the head-shrinker try to read a neurosis into that! * * * * * It took them three weeks from the day they arrived back in normal space to make sure that they had found a sun with planets, and another three weeks from then to make landfall on the second of the four satellites this particular solar system had to offer. Almost from the very beginning they were elated with their luck, for the planet seemed to be a first class find. The _Sunward_ and her crew had been exploring this section of space for more than six years, and out of the thirty-eight systems they had investigated, this was the first that offered any promise of eventual human habitation. Man had been in space less then one hundred years. At first he had thrown himself towards the stars with crude rocket-driven craft. A few years later he had invented a type of atomic drive which allowed him to approach the speed of light. But it was the discovery of the subspace technique of travel which had theoretically given him the whole universe to live in. There were drawbacks, however, and they were important ones. To tear himself from the matrix of normal space he still needed huge machines, and probably always would. This meant the building of exceedingly large space vessels, like the _Sunward_, which could contain not only the equipment necessary to propel him into the blackness of subspace, but which also could be equipped with the mammoth control mechanisms necessary to regulate the change-over. The switch to subspace could never be made near the surface of a planet, for the field forces generated during the change had far-flung effects and were quite capable, even under tightest control, of tearing loose a huge chunk of a planet and dropping it into subspace with the ship. Big ships meant big money, and even now there were fewer than a thousand of the large exploration craft in operation. Each ship could average fewer than ten new worlds a year. So while man had taken a lease on the universe, it seemed that at his present rate of exploration a great many centuries would pass before he finished the charting of even the stars in his own back yard. But if at times he became discouraged at the immensity of the task, there were always moments of great joy which helped to spur a man on. The men of the _Sunward_ named the new star Clarion, and the habitable planet they called Trellis. It was the second of three large and one very small planets which circled Clarion. The _Sunward_ spent more than two weeks circling over Trellis, making maps and checking the atmosphere. Then the council of scientists on board picked a landing site and Captain Hawkins brought the ship down on the spot they had chosen. Exactly twenty-seven days from the hour they landed, the council voted unanimously that Trellis was safe for human habitation, and Allen Hawkins gave the orders to have the hatches opened to the Trellian air. The Captain, as was customary, was the first man to set foot on the soil. He led the brief ceremonies that claimed the world as Earth's own and then planted the Terran flag. He also took the customary measure of declaring it a ship's holiday, and even threw out the first baseball when the inevitable game started up later in the afternoon. But he didn't stay to watch, preferring to stroll around the landscape by himself for a little while. He had been walking for a little more than an hour, traveling in a wide circle around the ship, when he came upon Dr. Broussard, sitting quietly under a shady tree, a book in one hand and a container of beer in the other. The beer looked good and cold, and the shade looked comfortable. "Mind if I join you?" Hawkins asked, and since he was Captain of the ship, scarcely waited for an invitation before he sat down and opened himself a beer. It tasted as good as it had looked, and Hawkins soon found himself in an expansive mood. "Tell me, Broussard," he said good-naturedly. "How come you aren't out snooping around, making sure that the crew's libidos aren't acting up or something." Cocking an ear towards the distant ball field, rife with the excited noise that always accompanies such a game, Broussard replied, "It sounds to me as if the crew is getting about as much libidinal discharge as I could hope for under the circumstances. That being the case, I saw no reason why the ship's alienist shouldn't have a little time off." Hawkins leaned back comfortably against the tree. "Alienist. That's a pretty strange word these days, Broussard. Used to be what they called psychiatrists in England back in the old days, right?" Hawkins was of vaguely English descent and felt it behooved him to know such things. "That's right. They revived the term briefly a hundred years ago when we first got out into space, because they thought that psychologists might be needed for the first contacts with alien cultures." A slight frown came over the man's face. "The word's fallen into disuse again of late, however," he continued. Captain Hawkins grunted in assent. "No aliens, eh?" "That's right. No aliens. Thousands of new worlds, thousands upon thousands of new species, but not one of them intelligent enough to hold a candle to our earthside chimpanzee. But still they go on outfitting each of the exploration vessels with psychologists, and outfitting all of the psychologists for the double task of soothing the crew's _psyches_ and making contact with mythical intelligent races that so far we've only dreamed about." Broussard emptied his container of beer and with a single vicious movement threw it as far away from him as he could. "I must say, however, that of late they've been spending more time training us to be mind doctors than to be official greeters to unknown cultures." Suddenly Broussard straightened up. "But why should you twit me about deserting my work today. I saw you throw out the first baseball. How come you didn't stay for the game? Surely that falls under the province of a Captain's job." Allen Hawkins smiled. "I learned long ago, Broussard, that there are times when the presence of the Commanding Officer has an undesired influence on the spirits of the crew. After all, as Captain of the _Sunward_, I can't very well take part in the game itself. Who'd dare to strike me out when I came to bat?" He stopped to think about that for a moment. "Or, maybe I should have said, I don't _think_ anybody would dare to strike me out." "Ah, yes, the Father Figure," Broussard said laughing. "That's right. So I can't play. Nor can I umpire, for half the fun of baseball is arguing with the umpire and I couldn't allow any of that. And if I just watched without playing the game itself, a lot of the crew might think that I felt myself too high and mighty to take part in their proletarian type of recreation. So I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. So what did I do...?" "You left the field," Broussard answered, lighting up a cigarette after offering the other man one. "That's right, I left the baseball field and went walking." "That's not quite what I meant when I said 'you left the field,'" Broussard went on. "It's a psychological term, first used by Lewin many centuries ago. Any time a man is in a conflict situation, faced with two or more alternatives that he finds it difficult to choose among, he may solve his problem by choosing none of them." Hawkins stretched his legs out restfully on the grass in front of him. As he thought about it, there had been few times in the past when he had given the psychologist his head and let the man talk. Probably, Hawkins thought to himself, Broussard spends most of his time listening to the petty confessions of all of us and never gets the opportunity to unload a bit himself. He caught himself wondering just who on Earth confesses the Pope.... And so he uttered the magical words, "I don't think I quite understand...." Broussard scarcely needed the encouragement to continue. "Lewin liked to think of psychological situations as approximating physical situations. He spoke in terms of valences and attractions, of vectors and forces operating through psychological distances. For example, let's consider the case of a child put into a long hallway. At one end of the hall is a large, fierce dog. At the other end is an ugly man with a big switch. We tell the child that he has to go to one end of the hall or the other. This becomes an 'avoidance-avoidance' situation in the Lewinian terminology. Both the man with the switch and the fierce dog carry negative valences--that means that the child actually doesn't want to approach either of them--and the closer the child comes to one of them, the more powerfully it repels him. Just as with magnets--the closer you bring one negative charge to another negative charge, the more powerful is the force of repulsion." Captain Hawkins smiled. It wasn't going to be as bad as he had feared. "What does all this have to do with baseball?" "We'll get back to home plate in just a moment. But first, let's continue with the child. We put him in the hallway, tell him to go to one end or the other, and then we just sit back and watch. At first he stands about as close to the center of the hall as he can, assuming that the two negative valences are about of equal strength. He's undecided--can't make up his mind which is worse, the man or the dog. So we prompt him to action--shock him or tell him that he has to keep moving. Then he begins to move back and forth, vacillating between the two undesirable objects. So we apply more and more pressure to try to force him to a decision. But the closer he moves to the dog, for example, the more distasteful _it_ becomes, and the less dangerous does the _man_ seem to be. So the child turns around and starts towards the man. But here the situation is repeated. It's a beautiful example of a conflict situation." Giving vent to a well-disciplined snort, Captain Hawkins said, "And eventually the child either gets well switched or badly bitten, eh?" "No, that's where you're wrong. Eventually the child tries to escape from the hallway altogether. Sometimes he'll try to climb the walls, or break down a door, or anything like that which will release him from what has become an impossible psychological environment." "So," said Hawkins. "I think you left me stranded on first base." Broussard laughed. "Pardon the sermon, Captain. What I was trying to point out was that the baseball game represented just about the same sort of thing to you as the hallway did to the child. Any time a human being is faced with two impossible decisions like that, he usually ends up by 'leaving the field' of conflict altogether. Nowadays we can even predict the exact field forces necessary to bring on this type of behavior." "And what do you predict I'm going to do right now?" Hawkins asked with a bit of a laugh in his voice. "That's an easy one. I predict you're going to ask for another beer--and that I'll give it to you. No conflict there." He opened a container that chilled itself automatically as he handed it to his superior officer. Hawkins blew the foam from it and then took a long, satisfying swallow. "There are times when I'm glad I'm just an uncomplicated space officer," he said presently. Broussard grinned. "Sorry if I seemed to be giving you a lecture, Captain. I'm afraid you would have enjoyed a good, healthy discussion of Freud much more. My own particular problem is that I'm much more interested in thinking about the remote possibilities of man's encountering new types of intelligences than I am in playing father confessor to a bunch of space rats. Back on Earth the social psychologists felt that Lewin's work offered a fruitful means of analyzing the motivational components in any alien society we might encounter. I guess my trotting out the vector charts was just a neat example of wishful thinking." Captain Allen Hawkins didn't bother to answer the remark for some time. He was too busy watching something move slowly towards them across the grassy plain. Finally he half-whispered to his companion, "Don't put those charts away too soon, Broussard. You finally may have a chance to use them." * * * * * Bells clanged loudly. Red and yellow lights flashed insistently in front of the man, demanding his attention. The clattering noise of a computer working at high speed added to the unholy din of the small spaceship's control room. Surveyor Lan Sur ran his deft fingers rapidly over the studs on the control panel in front of him. He scarcely looked at the controls as he manipulated them, concentrating instead on the screens before him--screens which showed the attack patterns of the seven large warships that surrounded him. One of the attacking enemy ships loomed incredibly large directly ahead of him. Lan Sur's fingers hesitated, and then, at precisely the proper second, pressed the firing studs. The scout ship seemed to dance lightly upward as it passed high above the larger, slower enemy craft. Lan Sur whirled his ship around just in time to witness the total disintegration of the enemy. "One down," he thought, but took no particular pride in his accomplishment. There were still six left. The enemy regrouped, spreading out into a cone-like formation. He knew the trick well, and aimed his ship to make its next pass high above the open mouth of this formation. But the enemy opened up the top of the cone as fast as Lan Sur tried to avoid it. He fired a warning salvo and tucked his defensive screens in tight around him. But the uppermost enemy ship incredibly picked up more speed, sliding off into an extremely intricate maneuver. Lan Sur knew that if it could hold to this path, it would pass several miles above him, neatly sandwiching him between the enemy vessels below. He could have turned aside at once, but that would have been an admission of possible defeat, and he could never admit defeat. If he could beat the other ship to the topping maneuver, he would destroy not only it, but the ships at the small end of the cone as well when he came crashing down on them from above. For just a moment he felt certain that he could succeed. The scout ship vibrated tensely as it hurled itself forward. The red lights on the control panel doubled in number, then tripled. The computer roared instructions so rapidly that he could hardly keep up with them. The warning bells went mad with ringing. "I think I can make it," he told himself. But he refused to become excited. He had come this close to victory before, and had still failed. Now he saw he was gaining on the enemy ship, but it was a thin margin of safety indeed. The computer screamed with danger signals as the huge craft came closer and closer. Lan Sur leaned forward slightly in his seat, a little strain showing on his usually relaxed face. To his surprise, he found himself saying aloud, "Yes, I think I can." But he did not. Suddenly the enemy craft shot by above him and belched forth a thick burst of light. The huge black warships immediately beneath him echoed the call, catching his smaller, fleeter ship in a double barrage. And it was all over. The red lights on the control panel blinked out quickly, one by one. The warning bells ceased their claxons, the computer settled down to a quiet hum. The screens went blank. A thin piece of tape spewed forth from the computer. It read, "This scout ship utterly annihilated. End of problem." * * * * * Lan Sur looked the tape over sourly. "Damn," he said, leaning back in his seat. He tore the tape into little pieces and deposited them angrily in the reclaim box. Reluctantly he pressed the "Analysis" button on the computer. The machine would issue him a complete dissection of the whole mock war game, pointing out with deadly accuracy the mistakes he had made. "Damn," he said again, thinking over the past battle. He got up from the control panel and walked over to his relaxation chair. Sitting down, he took a small bit of food from a container and began chewing on it viciously. It wasn't really so bad that he lost the engagement, he told himself. The pre-battle odds were greatly against him. And as often as he had tried it, he had never been able to take on seven enemy ships and still survive. Sometimes it seemed an almost impossible task to him. However, he had a deep desire to solve the problem, because the computer told him it might be solvable if he took the proper course of action. Evidently, it would take a lot more work, a great deal more study on his part before he found the solution. "But time is something I have plenty of," he said aloud, stretching out comfortably in the chair. For several hours he puzzled over the thing, taking time out to digest the taped analysis of his mistakes, and then attacked the problem afresh. Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion, he slipped off into a deep, restful sleep, quite confident that the next time he tried the seven-ship problem, or at most the time following that.... * * * * * Lan Sur awoke to quietness. He stretched his lean, lithe legs, slowly, returning to normal awareness as he did so. Once he was completely awake, he sat down in front of the control panel again. A single amber light beamed from the board. While he had been asleep, the scout ship had come out of its C^{2} drive and had slowed to a stop. They had reached their immediate destination, and since he was asleep, the computer had simply turned on the protective screens around the ship and had begun a survey of the sun system they had arrived at. He pressed a button on the computer and then leaned back to digest the information that the machine began feeding him at once. The sun was of the A/34.79Lu type, just as had been forecast before his voyage. It had three large inner planets and a tiny fourth much too far away from the solar furnace and much too small to be of any practical value. Lan Sur read the report carefully, noting with pleasure certain of the facts presented him. He was in the midst of an interesting section concerning the chemical composition of the atmosphere on the second of the planets when a small bell on the computer rang and the machine became silent for just a second or two, then began pouring out material at a furious rate. Lan Sur, who had been yards of tape behind in his reading, dropped the atmosphere discussion and began to read the new information being spewed forth. A frown crossed his face as he read the first few words, "Alien contact established...." He hoped this new development would not take him away from his games for too long a time. The computer had detected the emanation of modulated energy waves coming from the second planet. Immediately it had withdrawn its wide-flung detector beams and had concentrated fully upon the source of the waves. Lan Sur reset the computer so that only a very small part of the huge machine would carry on the routine work of new investigation, while the greater part would be put to work in an attempt to decode what was obviously a language being broadcast in some obsolete manner. He noted with pride that the aliens, whoever they might be, had not at the moment reached the point of development where C^{2} communication was available to them, but were still limited to the raw speed of light for the transmission of messages, and hence, he felt sure, for the transmission of space ships too. This meant, he knew, that he had probably stumbled onto a race of beings still new to the reaches of space who would be helpless in the face of even his own lightly armed scout ship. However, according to patrol instructions, he activated a switch that relayed all pertinent information by means of a sealed C^{2} beam back to the nearest Dakn Patrol base, and put in a formal call for the presence of Patrol battleships. One way or another, they would be needed.... * * * * * It took the computer less than a day and a half, as Lan Sur figured time, to break the language of the aliens discovered on the second planet. The Surveyor spent this time working feverishly on a new idea he had for the solution of the seven-ship problem, and was quite upset when the computer finished its problem of decoding the new tongue before Lan Sur had worked out all the details of his latest attack on the mock war games. Reluctantly he put himself into a light trance, during which the machine taught him the new language. He did not actually learn to think in the new tongue, for that would have imposed limiting strictures on his mental processes. Rather, his mind was turned into a kind of translating factory. He had the freedom to think in the terms and in the concepts that he was accustomed to, and his mind simply expressed these thoughts as best it could in the newly-learned way of speaking. The computer had also arrived at an incredibly clear knowledge of the socio-politico-psychological structure of the new civilization, but aside from a brief glance at some of the more intriguing points, Lan Sur ignored this information and simply relayed it along to the Galactic base where social scientists could pore over it in their own bemused leisure. For his tasks Lan Sur hardly felt that he needed it. Once Lan Sur had memorized the language, he put his scout ship under a screen of complete invisibility and landed it some few miles away from the space ship the aliens were using as their permanent base. He let the computer drink up what additional information it required to make sure both that the planetary conditions were suitable to his own particular chemical make-up, and that the aliens were indeed as impotent as his previous estimates had seemed to indicate. Once the computer gave him its blessing, he walked out into the bright planetary sunlight. * * * * * Psychologist J. L. Broussard sat up puzzled. "What do you mean, don't put away my Lewinian vector charts too soon? I may have a chance to use them on _whom_?" Captain Allen Hawkins simply stared straight ahead of him, his lips forming unanswerable questions. Broussard took his cue from the man's head and stared too. And then he understood. The alien, for from its dress alone it obviously _was_ an alien, was still quite a distance away from them. It came walking towards them with a kind of protective sparkle about it--and even from that distance they could sense a feeling of power about the man. "Man?" Broussard caught himself thinking. Yes, it did seem very much like a man--not only like a human, but like a masculine human. But immediately Broussard told himself that this might not be the case. True, humanoid it was, but because it displayed a certain lack of the more obvious female sexual characteristics it did not follow that it was _male_. "Why, they could even have _ten_ different sexes for all we know," Broussard thought to himself. "I think it's coming towards _us_," Hawkins said quietly. Broussard watched the alien move a few more yards and then agreed. Hawkins activated a small radio that he carried in one of his shirt pockets. "Hello, Communications," he spoke rapidly into the microphone. "This is Hawkins. Put me through to the Bridge at once. And make sure you record every word that I say." The words "Aye, aye, Captain," were forthcoming immediately from the tiny loudspeaker. The Captain rated a special communications channel that was guarded by the radio shack at all times, and it came as no surprise to Hawkins that the reply was prompt. He had expected it to be. "Bridge here, go ahead." "This is Captain Hawkins, Bridge. Who's the Duty Officer?" Hawkins knew who the man was, but asked to give the man a chance to realize fully that the Captain was aware with whom he was speaking. "Lieutenant Medboe, Captain, ready for instructions." Hawkins thought for just a moment and then answered. "Mr. Medboe, the information that I am about to pass along to you is not to leave the Bridge under any circumstances. As soon as I finish, you will contact the radio shack and make certain that what I have said, if it has been monitored, is not passed along from that particular point either. Do you understand me." Medboe's voice sounded a little puzzled, "Of course, Captain. Your instructions will be followed to the letter." "Now then," Hawkins continued. "You might as well know at once that I think we've made contact with an alien race. I don't know what this means to you personally, but to the human race it means a great deal and we can under no circumstances risk the occurrence of any incident. You will therefore send someone to find Commander Petri and inform him that as Executive Officer, he will be in charge of the ship until I return to it. And while you are doing that, you will summon all the men to return to the ship at once. You may not give them the real reason--tell them that there is a bad storm coming and that I have ordered them all inside. It is imperative that none of them realizes the true reason. Do you understand?" Medboe's voice sounded almost hurt. "Aye, aye, Captain," he said. "Good. Once everyone is back inside the ship, have Petri summon all officers not on watch and all scientists to the large meeting hall. They will be given a chance to observe and listen to the contact as it is made. Which reminds me--have the communications department set up a long range television camera on me at once, and pipe the image down into the hall. You will have them record both sight and sound for later use. You will also inform Petri that a state of emergency exists as of this moment by my personal order, and that if necessary he is to blast off from the planet without making any attempt either to protect or rescue me. And once it has been established that we are in fact dealing with an alien culture, Navy Headquarters must be informed immediately via subspace radio." Hawkins wanted to make sure that in the event the entire ship was captured, Earth would know that an alien contact had been made and could take steps to protect itself. He only wished, now that he thought of it, that he could have taken more adequate steps to protect the men and the ship. But for the moment the _Sunward_ and her crew would have to remain where they were and as they were. And if the alien had not attacked them up to that point, perhaps no attack would be made at all. Hawkins wanted to tell Medboe a thousand other things--simple, obvious things that surely both Medboe and Petri would be cognizant of. But, as always, the man who had to delegate responsibility simply had to depend on the perspicacity of the men to whom he gave the power. "Any questions?" Hawkins asked after a brief pause. "I don't believe so, Captain," Medboe answered. Hawkins could tell from the sound of the man's voice that he had hundreds of things he would have liked to ask, but none of them were of the type that he could have expected his superior officer to answer. "Good," Hawkins replied formally. "One more thing. You will under no circumstances attempt to contact me on this radio set--there's no need in letting the alien know any more about us or our abilities than we absolutely have to." "Right, Captain," came the obedient answer. Hawkins turned the switch to the "Sustained Talk" position and informed the Officer of the Deck of his actions. Then he turned to Broussard. "Anything you have to add to all that?" he asked. The psychologist indicated a negative by a shake of his head. "Very well, Mr. Medboe. You may carry out your orders," Hawkins said with a sigh. Then he turned to Broussard again. "Well, Louie. I guess it's up to you from here on out. You're the alienist." And with that, Hawkins reluctantly relinquished completely his normal command of the situation. * * * * * During the time that Captain Hawkins had been giving his orders, Broussard had been deep in thought, paying only scant attention to the instructions that the other man had passed along. The psychologist's mind had been racing over the possibilities of this first contact, and more than once during the brief period of time, it had dwelt on his own particular fears that he would not be up to the encounter. "I think you had better give the radio to me," Broussard said. "I'll probably be closer to the alien during the first stages of contact at least, and certainly I should be doing most of the talking." The statement made sense to Hawkins, and he passed the device over without comment. Broussard tucked it away in one of his pockets. "I don't think we should bother walking towards him," Broussard said a moment later, answering an unspoken question. "He's obviously coming toward us and it would seem better if we weren't too eager." Broussard felt no need to describe the alien over the radio since by this time the communications division back on board the _Sunward_ would have set up their long range television cameras. Captain Hawkins shifted about on his feet a bit like a boxer doing warm-up footwork prior to a battle. "I wonder where he's put his space ship," Broussard said. Hawkins looked puzzled. "How do you know he's got one?" he asked. "Well, it's just a hunch. But unless I miss my guess, that shining air the--the--" Broussard groped for the right noun, then fell back again on a sheer perceptual analysis. "The shining air the _man_ coming towards us has is a defensive screen of some sort. And we've certainly found no evidence on Trellis of any civilization at all, much less one so advanced that it could dream up gadgets like that. I figure he must be from somewhere else. Maybe he's just a visitor here too, like us." Hawkins inwardly admitted the logic of the reasoning. As the alien came closer, they could both see why they had instinctively felt from the first that it was of the male gender. The creature's hair was cut a little longer than men wore theirs back on Earth, but this was almost the only difference. The alien was a bit taller than either of them, but not beyond the limits produceable by the human race. His shoulders were the widest part of his body, and formed the broad top of the inverted triangular shape that most human men admired. His clothes were of some peculiar, clinging material, but the bottom half of his body was fitted out in a close approximation of Earthside trousers. The man was handsome even by their own standards of masculine beauty. "Well," said Hawkins. "This is it. Man is no longer 'alone.'" Broussard realized suddenly that the other man was just as nervous as he himself was. "No, man is no longer alone," Broussard replied. And then he added, "But neither is _he_." The alien was less than one hundred yards away when Broussard said quietly, "I don't think we'd better talk any more. Let's just stand here and wait for him to make the first move." * * * * * Lan Sur walked towards the two aliens at a comfortable rate of speed. When he was still some distance off the computer back on his scout ship informed him of the first of the messages going back and forth from one of the men to the ship, and then of the gradual withdrawal of the rest of the ship's crew to the sanctuary of the _Sunward_. It was with no surprise at all that he listened to the computer, as it did a remote physical and chemical analysis of the aliens. Eons ago the Dakn people had come to the conclusion, first in theory and then in fact, that intelligent life capable of reaching the stars had to fall within the humanoid pattern. The aliens confronting him were well within the theoretical tolerance limits on every count. But still it amused him to see the slight obesity of one of the men and the thick body hair of the other. These were two minor points of difference between the races. At exactly the right psychological distance from the two aliens, Lan Sur stopped. He was quite close enough to be heard and understood, but not so close that his physical presence suggested too much of a threat. He waited just long enough before speaking. "It is customary in your culture to begin with introductions," he said in a strong voice. "I am Lan Sur, possessed of the rank of Senior Surveyor in the Galactic Patrol of the Dakn Empire. I welcome you officially to the communion of the stars." Lan Sur could almost feel the sinking sensation inside the larger of the two aliens when he began to speak to them in their own tongue. It amused him to think that these two had probably expected to begin by drawing pictures in the dirt. Well, they would learn. "You should know at once that the Dakn Empire comprises some 700 quadrillion people of the same general humanoid characteristics as obtain in your race. We populate planets on some hundred thousand suns, most of which lie much further toward the opposite end of the galaxy than does the system in which we find ourselves at the moment. We have explored great reaches of the universe, but this is the first time we have penetrated as far into this particular district as this star you call Clarion. That explains why our races have never before come into contact." The two aliens leaned forward a little on their feet, as caught up in his words as children might be when told a new and fascinating story. "The Dakn Empire is the only other political system that exists in this entire galaxy, as far as we know." Lan Sur paused for a moment, to let the significance of his words sink in. "There have been others, of course, but they soon passed under our control. Just as your civilization will now pass under our control." He read the sudden, stark fear that appeared in their eyes correctly without needing the affirming echo from the computer. "The Dakn Empire has learned that whenever it discovers a new civilization, it must absorb this new culture immediately. There is no other choice. And your race must follow the pattern of the thousands we have encountered in the past. There is no choice. As of this moment, you and your people are, from our point of view, just as much a part of our Empire as our own home planets. This does not appeal to you, I know. But there is no other way." The computer informed him that the _Sunward_ had brought all of its gun turrets to bear on him, but Lan Sur ignored the fact as being irrelevant. He continued. "No, you do not have a choice about becoming a part of our system. But you do have a choice about the method by which this action will be taken." The involuntary sigh that one of the aliens gave briefly amused him. The alien would find that the sigh of relief was a short one. "The choice is this--either you will join with us peacefully, in which case the whole period of transition will take less than one of your years. Or...." He let the word dangle momentarily before his booming voice continued. "Or, if you choose to oppose us, the transition time will take even less than that. We will simply destroy you and all of your worlds. "You have no alternatives." The alien's voice grew louder. "You will want to know what absorption into our system will mean to you. By now you will surely have realized how far superior we are to you in every way, and I include specifically the factor of intelligence in this statement. My analysis of your potential intellectual and rational powers shows me that you are not capable of contesting on an equal basis with any of the other races that comprise our Empire. You are the lowest of the low, and as such, your race will be put into a slave category. We always have room for more slaves." The two aliens in front of him seemed in a state of shock. Lan Sur felt he might as well finish the thing off and get it over with. "If you choose to come with us peacefully, what will happen is this: We will take over all of your worlds at once, evacuating your people from them in less than a month. Your race will be spread out over our Empire, sent to the places where they are needed the most. "Of course you will not be allowed to retain either your own personalities or your memories. As slaves you would scarcely need them. So they will be stripped from you en route to your new homes, and suitable new slave personalities will be implanted in your minds. You find this thought distasteful I know, but it is the only logical action we can take. You will be born again, so to speak, knowing our language, feeling at home in our way of life and not retaining even a shred of your old patterns of culture. This is the simplest, most efficient way in which your race can become a part of our much larger scheme of things. "If you do _not_ choose to come peacefully ..." again Lan Sur stopped for dramatic effect, "the warships I have already summoned, coming at the square of the speed of light, will search out every planet, every world in this whole sector, and will utterly annihilate every solar system you have contaminated. We have, in the past, met obstinate races who tried to resist our rule. The results were rather spectacular from an astronomical point of view. Perhaps your scientists have wondered what caused the nova of stars, or even the explosions of whole regions of space. Now you have the answer. We would hate to destroy your race, but if you resist us, we have no choice." A strange, intense smile came over Lan Sur's face. "Our history relates of one race that tried to avoid its destiny. These peoples scattered to the four winds in millions of ships in their attempt to hide from us." Fire lighted the alien's eyes. "It took more than a thousand of your years to track them all down, and we covered more than half the galaxy in doing so. It was a glorious thing. Now they are dead. All of them." Slowly the smile died away. Lan Sur looked back at the two Earthlings before him. "You will see the necessity for all of this when you have exhausted your emotional reactions to this information and are capable of thinking logically again. In the long run it matters little to any of us which action we are forced to take. But because I realize that a race as untutored as yours is, cannot be expected to control its emotions in such a situation, I will not demand an immediate answer from you. I will give you more than ample time in which to think the problem through. "You have exactly twenty-four hours in which to make up your minds." * * * * * In his younger days at the Academy, Captain Allen Hawkins had been a boxer, and a good one. Most of his fights he had won easily and decisively. The few that he lost had been close matches and split decisions. Then had come the day when he had persuaded himself to fight outside his own weight and experience classifications, and he had matched himself against a classmate much larger than himself. Hawkins still remembered that fight at times. After the first round he had been completely dazed, scarcely conscious of his surroundings. Again and again he found himself lying stretched out on the canvas and had to force himself back to his feet to re-enter the fray. The fight terminated rather suddenly in the third round when Hawkins went down to the canvas for a full count. All of this had happened years before, but the emotions that gripped the man now, as he stood facing the incredible alien from the center of the galaxy--these emotions reminded him of that fight. He felt now as he had felt when he regained consciousness in the dressing room--a little out of his senses, the wind still knocked out of him, and emotionally completely stunned. The fact that Lan Sur had spoken perfect English had been the first blow. Every sentence that the alien had spoken was like a sharp jab, a sudden punch to a vital area. As in his boxing days, after a few brief moments of listening, Hawkins had stopped thinking with his brain--and had begun thinking with his stomach. But he was completely open and unguarded for the Sunday punch. "You have exactly twenty-four hours in which to make up your minds." * * * * * The three men stood facing each other for at least a full minute, none of them speaking. Broussard recovered his voice before Hawkins could and said feebly, "You can't mean it." Lan Sur's face gave no expression of emotion. "I realized that you would be incapable of comprehending what I have said so soon after I had said it. This is why I am giving you a length of time in which to make your decision. But you might as well realize that this high emotional index rating of your race is one of the main reasons you rate so low. It is a trait that we will have to breed out of your race." Hawkins came to life suddenly, reacting violently, his emotional control shattered. He almost shouted at the alien, "If we're in such bad shape, why can't you just go off and leave us alone? You've got all the rest of the universe. Why can't you just leave us alone in our little corner of it?" "If you were not so emotionally aroused at the moment, you would understand why we cannot 'leave you alone,' as you put it," the alien told him calmly. "It is completely impossible for two differing cultures to exist in this galaxy, as large as it is. Eventually the two cultures would have to come into contact, and this would cause friction. We do not care for friction, and we always seek to avoid it. By forcing you to join us now--or by destroying you if you refuse--we make absolutely sure that your race will never be the cause of any friction to us in the future." "Friction?" asked Broussard slowly. "If we allowed you to go your own way, your population would expand and you would be forced to take over more and more of this area of the universe. We have our own plans for this part of the galaxy which do not include fighting constant wars with you for the possession of each new planetary system that one of us sees fit to colonize." The alien spoke to them as he might have spoken to children. Hawkins refused to abandon the train of thought. "But we could promise to give up all our worlds except our own home planet. You could have all the rest." Lan Sur shook his head. "At the present moment, you will promise anything to rid yourself of the painful necessity of making the decision that I have demanded of you. You might even be quite willing to live up to your promise of retiring to your home planet, never to voyage forth again. But your children and their children would grow discontent and restless. Eventually, either a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand years from now, you would come forth to challenge us again." Lan Sur's face grew a trifle grim. "And next time you would be better equipped and stronger. You would be able to put up a better fight than you can at the moment." Then he smiled. "Oh, of course, the Dakn Empire would win eventually. We always do. But we would be back at exactly the same point that we are at right now. We would be forced to absorb you into our Empire, or to destroy you utterly. And, in the meantime, we would, of necessity, be forced to keep a careful watch on everything you did." He shook his head. "No, you must realize that we cannot tolerate anything but absolute surrender. You have my terms. You must make your decision. There is nothing more to say." Hawkins felt the numbing hand of deep fear within him. Like a losing boxer, he fought for any advantage that he might be able to take. "But, good Lord, man," he said quickly. "You don't understand the situation at all. Twenty-four hours isn't nearly enough time to make a decision that will affect our entire population. We can't even inform our home base of what's going on in that length of time, much less get a message _back_ from them. And this is the sort of thing that would have to be submitted to our population as a whole, for them to decide. We're just a very, very small part of our race. Why, we ... we don't have the authority to make a decision that would affect the people back home. You _must_ give us more time." "Your complete lack of insight amazes me, even though I expected it," the alien said. "Surely you must understand that the more time I give you, the more time you have to prepare your physical defenses. I am just as aware as you are that, lacking the C^{2} communications methods, it is impossible for you to contact your home planet in the time that I have allowed you. But the war ships that I have already summoned will be here shortly, and even before they arrive, there is much that I must do to ready you and your people for the change if you decide to come with us. If you do not decide to come with us, then I must begin the search for your home planet, so that it may be destroyed. In either event, the sooner your choice is made, the better it is for me. Already I have allowed you more time than is actually necessary for you to overcome your emotion and to think the problem through logically." "But I simply haven't got the _authority_ to make such a choice!" Hawkins found himself shouting. "Can't you understand that?" Lan Sur paused a moment to let the other man regain some of his composure. Then he said simply but firmly, "I am in control here now. I have the authority, and I delegate it to you. _You_ must decide for everyone." Broussard's reactions were perhaps a little less emotionally tinged than might have been thought from his facial reactions. He had held back what he felt to be a highly pertinent question until he felt that the alien was preparing to conclude the interview. He asked it now. "You seem to know a great many things about us, Lan Sur. And we seem to know very little about you. In a sense, this is strong evidence of your race's superiority. And yet you cannot really expect us to capitulate our entire culture to yours without giving us very conclusive proof that you are able to carry out your threats. After all, we are a large ship full of fighting men, and you seem to be one man all by yourself. What is to keep us from...." Deliberately the psychologist let the question hang uncompleted. Lan Sur smiled. "At least you respond in a semi-logical fashion. The point is well taken, and if you had not brought it up now, I would have had to do so myself at a later time. I am therefore prepared to demonstrate to you the strength of our technology. You two will return to your ship, and I will remain here. You will then, for the next two hours, have the opportunity to attack me by any means you see fit. I will simply defend myself, without endangering you or your ship in any fashion. When you have discovered that even as undefended as I appear to be at the moment, all of your weapons are powerless to harm me, perhaps you will understand that I can carry out my threats if I so choose to." The alien gestured with his hand. "And now, you must return to your ship. During the two hours at which I place myself at your mercy, you may naturally maneuver your vessel as you desire. But at the end of the two hours, you must have returned to your landing place here--or to whatever other spot on this planet that I may choose to indicate to you by radio. Any attempt on your part to escape either now, or during the period following, or any attack you attempt on me except during these first two hours, or any effort to summon additional help, will mean the instant destruction of your ship--and of your race. I hope that you will both understand what I have said and will believe that I have the power to achieve my ends." Surveyor Lan Sur crossed his arms. "This interview is at an end." After a few seconds of stunned silence, the two men turned and walked the long and lonesome way back to the _Sunward_. * * * * * All of the scientists aboard the _Sunward_ and most of the ship's officers were assembled in the central meeting hall when Broussard and Hawkins arrived. Hawkins walked directly to the central podium and turned to face the group. "Gentlemen," he began slowly, his features a mask of repressed emotion. "I know that I do not have to give you any fuller explanations than you have already received. We have been given a challenge that seems to be insoluble. But we must face the situation, as the alien Lan Sur has suggested, with a minimum of emotionality and with a maximum of good, hard logic. I would welcome any comments, suggestions you might have to offer." There was a general shuffling of feet and clearing of throats among the crowd. It seemed to Hawkins as if each member present was waiting for someone else to speak first. Finally the Communications Officer broke the silence. "Captain, it has occurred to me that if the alien's powers are as great as he claims, he may well be able to monitor every word any of us speaks, even here. I think we must take that into consideration." The crowd murmured an assent, feeling, Hawkins was sure, that it gave them an excellent excuse for not being able to propose any solution to the problem. "I think you are quite right," Hawkins answered. "However, I feel that for the moment we must operate as if he couldn't monitor us. In the meantime, the communications department must take what precautions it can to assure us that our future conversations are held in complete privacy." A touch of bitter defeat crept into his voice. "And I would imagine that even if he _is_ listening right now, he'll gain precious little in the way of useful information." The group shuffled its feet again, embarrassed at its own impotence. "Are there any further comments?" Hawkins asked. There seemed to be none, until the Gunnery Officer spoke up. "Captain," he said, a slight smile on his broad face. "I'd sort of like to see just how much punishment the bastard can take." Hawkins laughed, breaking the tension. "I think we all agree with you. Suppose we put off any further discussion until after we've put the alien through his paces. It will give us an opportunity to test his strength--and to test our own. "Many of you--" Hawkins indicated with a wave of his hand the officers in the room "--are familiar with the offensive strength of this vessel. She is one of the most powerfully armed ships that Earth has. What I intend to do, then, is this: We'll give our friend out there just as much hell as the _Sunward_ can dish out. But while we're doing it, I want photographs of every attack we make, fast photos that will give us, perhaps, an inkling of how he overcomes all of our weapons, if he does. I think this is extremely important." He looked the crowd over. "We'll begin the attack just as soon as all of you have indicated to me that your departments are ready. That is all, gentlemen." * * * * * Half an hour later the _Sunward_ rose from her landing site and floated gently into the atmosphere. She came to a halt about ten thousand feet up and drifted into an optimum firing position. Every gun and camera the ship possessed was trained on the now scarcely visible figure of the alien almost two miles beneath her. Hawkins was on the battle bridge, his experienced hand controlling the ship firmly, belying the nervousness he felt. "Gunnery all ready, Sir!" came the report. "Fire!" shouted Hawkins a little louder than he meant to. He strained forward in his seat to watch the scene on the screen in front of him. The heat guns opened up first. In less than a second the area of maximum temperature was less than two feet away from the alien's body. A space of ground 300 yards in diameter suddenly went up in smoke at the intensity of the rays. Slim shreds of fire licked at the edge of the ring, and in the center all was fierce flame and smoke as the heat actually melted the earth. For a full five minutes the guns remained firing at maximum intensity. No organic substance known to man could withstand such violence. "Cease firing," Hawkins called. He leaned back slowly in his chair. It would take a few minutes for the smoke to clear, but he knew in his heart what they would see once it had. And even before the wind had blown enough of the smoke away to make things visible, they saw the figure of the alien come walking briskly out of the hellish ring of destruction and wave his arm to them. "God," said Hawkins quietly. After a moment he threw open a communications switch that connected him to the Gunnery Officer. "Well, what's next?" he asked quietly. Next came a huge ball of electricity that spat sparks as it hurtled through space and shattered itself into a million bolts of lightning at the very feet of the alien. The resulting burst of light was painful to the eyes, but when vision cleared, they saw the alien again, still standing erect and still waving. They tried launching a dozen space torpedoes at once, filled with the highest chemical explosives known to man. They crashed in criss-cross fashion about the alien, ripping the very air asunder with their fantastic devastation. They left a crater almost a mile wide, and standing in the middle of it, still untouched, the enemy. Then the ship bombarded the small figure below with every wavelength known to man, still without effect. Finally the Gunnery Officer called Hawkins on the intercom. "I'm sorry, Captain, but we did our best. I guess there's only one thing left to do." "I guess you're right," Hawkins admitted reluctantly. And turning to his helmsman he said, "Take her up." The _Sunward_ was almost fifty miles from the alien when she unleashed her final weapon. She had dropped tattle-tale robots behind to feed her information both before and after the blast. And then she aimed the mightiest atomic weapon man had created straight at Lan Sur. The very planet shook at its detonation, so powerful was the bomb. The fire and clouds rose miles into the sky, and the _Sunward's_ delicate instruments indicated the presence of a radiation so intense that it was certain an area hundreds of miles in size was completely destroyed. It took several minutes before enough of the aftermath of the explosion had cleared away for them to find him, but they located the alien sitting calmly in a crater at the very center of the affected area, obviously still unharmed. Hawkins contemplated the situation for several minutes, and then wearily stretched out his hand and turned on the radio. After a moment he said simply, "All right, Lan Sur, you win. Where do you want us to land?" Lan Sur answered immediately. "You will place your vessel in an area almost directly beneath your present position which I have caused to be marked in red. Any attempt to move the vessel without my permission will result in your immediate destruction. If, during the waiting time, you have any further questions to ask of me, I will be available. However, if you have not come to any conclusion by the end of that time, I shall be forced to destroy you without further hesitation. You have exactly twenty-two hours and nine minutes left." * * * * * When the ship had landed, Hawkins returned to the conference room. Most of the executive personnel were there, although some of the scientists were absent, ostensibly still analyzing the results of the futile attack on the alien. Hawkins strode briskly to the podium and faced the group. "Gentlemen," he said, "you saw what happened. Perhaps some of you refused to believe that the alien could enforce his demands on us--and I'm sure that all of us hoped that this would be the case. But now we must accept the fact that the choice we were told to make will _have_ to be made, unless we can come up with some means of destroying this creature or of escaping his wrath. "I want you to know that although it might well be within my province as Captain of the _Sunward_ to decide which of the alternatives we will take, I will not do so. What is decided here will affect all of Earth's peoples everywhere. Neither one man nor one small group can make this choice. Therefore, exactly one hour before the deadline, we will hold a plebiscite. Every person aboard the _Sunward_ will have exactly one vote, and the majority decision will hold. I will refrain from voting and will decide the issue in the event of a tie. "In the meantime, I want you to think. To think not only of a means of escape from our dilemma, if this be possible, but also how you will vote. If any of you have any ideas, or if you simply wish to talk about something, you will find me available at any hour. "I do not know how each of you will react to this situation. Perhaps the alien is right. Perhaps man is far too emotional an animal to merit more than slave status in the councils of the stars. But I hope that our actions will prove otherwise--and that this, man's darkest hour, will also become his finest." Hawkins turned from the group and walked quietly from the room. He knew that his speech had been anything but an example of clear logic devoid of emotional context, and he had no idea why he had let himself be so carried away. But with the inborn and well-trained sense he had of men and situations, he knew that he could not have spoken otherwise. The men on board the _Sunward_ faced the crisis in various fashions. A few of the scientists worked with erratic bursts of speed to finish up their analyses of the data they had gathered during the bombardment of the alien. Some of the crew wrote letters home. The communications department was swamped with personal messages to be relayed back to Earth. The Chaplain gave up his attempt at private counseling and held hourly open services. The routine jobs were still performed, albeit in a perfunctory manner. But mostly the men just gathered around in small groups and talked, usually in low voices. A few of the luckier ones got drunk. Captain Hawkins remained in his room, completely isolated from the rest of the ship, for almost four hours. During that time he simply sat in his easy chair and thought. At the beginning of the fifth hour he broke a precedent and opened a bottle of whiskey. At the beginning of the sixth hour he broke still another precedent and sent for Broussard. Hawkins was neither too drunk nor too sober when the psychologist arrived. He told the scientist to sit down and offered him a drink. "I know it's unethical for me to take you away from the men when they need your help more than ever before," Hawkins began slowly, choosing to stare moodily at the table instead of directly at the man he was talking to. "But for once I am exercising a Captain's perogatives. "You must have realized some of the problems that face anyone in a position of command. Usually we have to operate on pretty rigid rules, but things always go better if it seems as though we aren't quite as rigid as we really must be. The men under you always feel better if they think they have some free choice about things. In any military set-up you can't allow much of this free will at all. The best commander is the one who decides what it is his men must do in a given situation, and then finds some way of making the men want to do it." Again he paused, then looked up, facing Broussard squarely. "I have decided what the result of the balloting must be--and I want you, as a psychologist, to help me make sure that I get that result without anyone else being aware that we've rigged things." He got up from the table and began nervously pacing the floor. After a few moments he stopped and turned to face the psychologist, both his fists clenched tightly on the back of his easy chair. He said nothing. After several moments of silence, Broussard cleared his throat and asked, "And which choice have you decided it must be?" Hawkins collapsed into the chair. Finally his mouth opened, his lips trembled, and he said, "Slavery, of course. It's the only choice. "You're the psychologist, perhaps you can understand the fierce pride I'd take in knowing that the men would have the ... the _guts_ to want to end it all instead of bowing down to that bastard out there who holds us in the very palm of his hands." Hawkins paused in this outburst, blinked his eyes briefly, and then continued. "But that's just the emotion showing through. From the logical point of view, our race must continue. If we choose slavery we'll live and breathe and die just as we always have. We'll do all of these things on alien planets, having forgotten the Earth we sprang from and all our past history, as sorry as some of that has been. We'll have forgotten who _we_ are. We will have lost ourselves." He banged a fist down on the table. "But we _will_ exist! The protection of the race comes first, and we've got to make sure that it is protected, that the _Sunward_ makes the logical decision. I'll steer things as best I can, but I'll need help." He turned to Broussard. "I'm not a psychologist. I won't tell you how to go about it. I don't care what you do. All I want are the results." For a space of several seconds the two men sat without speaking. Then Hawkins said, "And I guess that unless you have something to add, that's all for now. Let me know what you're doing, if you have time to tell me. But more important than that, let me know if you think you're going to fail. We may have to rig the ballots if you do." Broussard gave a deep sigh and rose to leave. He could understand the torment the Captain was going through, but there was little that he could do for the man at the moment. He was almost at the door when Hawkins stopped him. "Broussard!" Hawkins shouted. "What in God's name makes a man's personality so dear to him? Why has it always been just about the last thing that a man will give up? You're the psychologist. You must know the answer. Even a man with a diseased mind who knows that he's sick and wants help badly will fight back tooth and nail when you try to change even one small part of his personality make-up. Didn't you once tell me that? Didn't you?" The Captain's voice grew louder and louder. "That's why therapy is so hard, isn't it? That's why constructive education is so difficult, isn't it? That's why politicians who appeal to existing fears and hates and loves get elected instead of those men who try to shift public opinion for the better. "Oh, why in God's name are we so proud of this tiny, puny, weak, insignificant, miserable thing inside each of us we call the real _me_!" He picked up the whiskey bottle and hurled it with full force against the wall. It shattered in a thousand pieces. The dark liquor inside ran down the wall leaving long thin fingers of stain behind it. Captain Hawkins' personal steward came rushing into the room at the sound of the crash, and looked, horrified, at the mess on the wall. "Oh, get out! Get out, both of you, and leave me alone!" Hawkins shouted. * * * * * After they were gone, Hawkins threw himself on his bunk and buried his face in his pillow. The mood of fierce hot anger passed rapidly, leaving only the warm sting of shame. Although he had made the decision to capitulate to the alien, at least at an intellectual level, he could not really bring himself to believe that there was no means of escape. His head ached from his emotional outburst and every effort toward constructive thinking seemed to end in a blind alley. He had been tossing restlessly for perhaps two hours when the Communications Officer brought him a message from Earth that had just been received. Hawkins reached for the message blank eagerly at first, his befuddled mind thinking for just an instant that here were instructions from home telling him how to meet the crisis, telling him of a means of escape, or just taking the awful responsibility of the decision from him. But then he remembered that communications, even when they passed through subspace, took several days to get from Earth to here. Earth was still unaware of the crisis on Trellis, and this message that had just been received had begun its journey long before they were made so painfully aware of the existence of the alien. The radiogram was of a semi-routine nature, but one that, in normal circumstances, would have demanded an immediate answer. "Shall we bother replying to it?" the Communications Officer asked. "Of course not," Hawkins said angrily. "It wouldn't be necessary, even if we dared break radio silence to reply." The Communications Officer's eyes opened wide in a startled fashion. "Radio silence?" he said feebly. "But, Captain, we've ... we've...." Hawkins sat bolt upright in his bunk. "Good Lord, man, do you mean to say that you've been sending messages to Earth right along?" The Communications Officer nodded. "We started relaying from the moment you contacted the alien. We've sent out all the talks, speeches, reports, everything. Just as you ordered." The man was cringing in fright. "But didn't you hear the alien tell us to make no attempt to contact our home base or he'd destroy us at once?" Hawkins demanded. The other officer felt like crawling out of the room without bothering to open the door. "I'm sorry, Captain," he managed to stutter. "But I must have missed that ... that part of what he said. I ... I was called out of the office during part of the contact when something went wrong with one of our main transmitters." The man had turned a very pale shade of white. "But I'll stop transmission at once," he said, turning nervously towards the door. Hawkins looked at his watch. "If he hasn't blasted us for it by now, I don't guess he ever will. But all the same, you'd better stop sending immediately." As the Communications Officer left the room, Hawkins cursed mildly under his breath. After all of his plans and sweat and pains, it would take something like this to bring the whole house of cards crashing about him, some little insignificant something that he had overlooked. "For want of a nail...." he said aloud, reminding himself of the age-old parable. "But if he meant what he said about not notifying Earth, why hasn't he already destroyed us?" Hawkins asked himself. Perhaps Lan Sur wasn't as cruelly logical and unfeeling as they had thought. Hawkins pushed the thought from his mind, knowing that it would lead him to too much false hope if he pursued it further. It would be too easy to hope that simply because Lan Sur had not acted upon one of his threats, he might not act on the rest of them. As he thought, Hawkins found himself pacing the floor of his room anxiously--first to one wall, then a stop, an about face, and back to the opposite side of the room. He stopped his walking and slumped down into his chair. "Back and forth," he said out loud. "From one side to another. I'm just like the child in Broussard's story. Only instead of a man with a stick at one end of the hall and a dog at the other, I've got Lan Sur at both ends. Death, or a kind of slavery which is just about as bad. A real 'avoidance situation' if ever one existed." He laughed bitterly. "The closer I come to one choice, the worse it seems and the better the other choice appears." He shrugged his shoulders sadly. "But eventually I'll have to realize that there's no escape. Unfortunately, unlike the child in Broussard's example, I can't...." Hawkins stopped suddenly as something occurred to him. "Good God," he said after a moment. He sat upright in the chair. "It couldn't be. It just _couldn't_," he told himself. "And yet, I bet, I bet it is!" He got up from the chair and walked quickly to the wall communicator. "Hello, Bridge?" he demanded. "Inform all officers not on watch and all the scientific personnel that I want to see them in the council chamber in thirty minutes. Exactly thirty minutes, do you understand?" There was a broad smile on his face as he marched out of his stateroom to talk with some of the officers and scientists before the meeting. * * * * * After all of the men had crowded into the meeting hall, they closed and locked the doors. The group kept up a low but excited chatter while they waited for Captain Hawkins to begin. "Gentlemen," he said finally, calling the meeting to order. "I am informed by the electronics specialists aboard that they have made this meeting room as 'spy-proof' as is humanly possible, but I think we've learned not to trust the power of human technology too much these past few hours. Therefore, I'm going to tell you just as little of my plans as I possibly can, on the theory that the best-kept secret is the one that the fewest people know about." The crowd seemed anxious, and a little apprehensive, but still hopeful. "Within the past hour, I have made what I think are several remarkable discoveries. I shall not tell you what they are, but I think I have discovered a way out of the dilemma that we are facing." The crowd breathed a unanimous sigh of relief. Smiles broke out on several faces. "I cannot tell you just at the moment what this mode of escape is. But I have discussed it with a few of you--the fewest number possible--and all of them agree that there is an excellent chance that it will work. If it does, we of Earth will still face a great many problems. But we shall, at least, be free, and that is the important thing. If we fail...." Hawkins let his voice trail off for a moment. "If we fail, we can expect instant destruction not only for us, but for all of mankind." He waited for the meaning to sink in, his face set in a firm frown. And then, purposefully, he let his facial muscles relax into a broad smile. "But I do not think that we will fail. I think we will win. And I have come to ask your permission to risk all our lives on the venture. I cannot give you any more information. I can only ask for your confidence--and for your votes of approval." He looked around the room deliberately, pausing for just the right length of time. And then he said, "Will all of you who have sufficient faith in me and my judgment please rise in assent?" Broussard had given him the trick of mass decision--had told him that if you make people commit themselves openly, the decision has a better chance of unanimity. Hawkins smiled to see how well the device worked. Every man in the room was on his feet, most of them cheering. He waited for the shouting to die down and then said simply, "Thank you. And now to battle stations." * * * * * Captain Allen Hawkins sat in his control seat on the _Sunward's_ bridge, staring at the button that turned on his radio set. "The purpose of a position of responsibility is to make decisions," he told himself. A green light burst into life on the control panel, indicating that all of the preparations he had asked for were in readiness. Such signals would be his only means of communications during the entire maneuver, for he had given orders that no one was to utter one word aloud during the entire operation. He was taking no chances. Hawkins grinned. "And the devil take the hindmost," he told himself. Pressing down on the radio button, he said aloud, "This is Captain Allen Hawkins of the _Sunward_ calling Surveyor Lan Sur of the Dakn Empire." Almost at once he heard a voice answering, "You may go ahead." "I think we have finally reached our decision," Hawkins said soberly. "But before we announce it, we have one request to make, and I do not think you will find it an unreasonable one. As you yourself pointed out, ours is an incredibly emotional race. Had we not been so, we could have given you our answer much sooner." The alien's voice came booming into the control room. "I will listen to your request, but you surely realize that none of the terms that I have given you can be changed." "Yes, we realize that, and our request is along slightly different lines," said Hawkins. "As I said, we are an emotion-ridden race. But you must have realized that we aboard the _Sunward_ are probably much more stable than are the majority of our peoples back on our home planets. It is always so with explorers and scientists. Therefore, we were able to reach a logical decision, and we will be able to hold to it. "Unfortunately, we anticipate a little more trouble than this with 'the folks back home,' if you understand that term. And to make things much easier, not only for us, but also for you, we have a request to make." "I understand the semantic import of the term and will give you my decision on the request if you will but come to the point," came the alien's voice. "We are wasting valuable time, and I have other things to do." Hawkins was beginning to sweat a little. He was purposefully needling the alien, and he had no idea of how far he dared to go. "Well, we of the _Sunward_ are convinced that you can carry out your threats if we attempt any rebellion. We have seen you stand untouched by all the power this ship could muster. But defense against our meager weapons is one thing. The ability to destroy a star is another.... "The folks back home would accept our decision without hesitation, and would never dream of giving you or your people any trouble, if we could show them authentic pictures of how powerful you are offensively. We request, therefore, that you unleash your weapons and turn this entire solar system into a nova while we photograph the procedure." Lan Sur's answering voice sounded frighteningly loud to Hawkins. "What you request is impossible for several reasons. First, the Dakn Empire has no desire to destroy potentially valuable property simply to demonstrate its powers. Second, the procedure would occupy too much time, for while my small ship could outrace the enveloping flames of the nova, your larger ship, unequipped as it is with the C^{2} drive, would be caught in the destruction and you would perish. I recognize that from the emotionality index of your race, such a demonstration would probably aid in the peaceful absorption of your culture into ours, but it is impossible." Hawkins allowed himself the luxury of a quick smile. His analysis of the situation had been absolutely correct. "Well, look," he said in reply. "According to our survey, the outer planet in this system is pretty small and of little use to anybody. Could you possibly destroy it instead?" He paused for just the smallest fraction of a second, but then hurried on before the alien could reply. "Of course, if you can't do it without destroying all the rest of the planets too, why, we'll understand. But it would help...." The alien's voice boomed back, interrupting the man. "You obviously still underestimate the technological level of the Dakn Empire." The alien paused, as if checking something. "According to my analysis of this system, the fourth and outer planet is of no value whatsoever to my people. Therefore, I accede to your request. The planet will be destroyed at once." "Hey, wait a minute," Hawkins cried in a startled tone of voice. "You need not worry," came the alien's flat response. "I fully realize that your visual recording equipment cannot function at such a distance. Therefore, you will raise ship at once and locate yourself to take advantage of the best recording angles." Hawkins had to hold himself in his chair to keep from dancing a jig. He had set a trap for the alien, and somehow, some incredible how, it had worked. At least he dared hope that it had.... * * * * * The _Sunward_ came to a full stop just inside the orbit of the third planet. The alien ship danced on ahead of them towards the tiny outer world. "You can come closer than that," Lan Sur informed Hawkins, noting that the _Sunward_ had stopped sooner than expected. "No, thank you," Hawkins replied. "We can get excellent pictures from this distance, and you must remember that we haven't the protective devices that you have." Hawkins noted that Lan Sur's voice carried with it an almost petulant, disdainful note. "There is a great deal of difference between the destruction of one small planet and the creation of a nova. However, if you feel safer there, you may remain where you are." A few moments later, the alien added, "Are your recording devices in readiness?" Hawkins indicated to the alien that they were. "Then watch," Lan Sur said. It took perhaps three minutes for the first burst of light to reach their position. The tiny planet, scarcely 500 miles in diameter, began to glow slightly, then suddenly came alive with fire. Bursts of flame danced up hundreds of miles above its surface, then fell back, exhausted, into the boiling cauldron the planet had become. For almost ten minutes the small world seethed in agonized torment, and then, all at once, it seemed to shake apart at the seams. There was no sound, but those watching on board the _Sunward_ mentally supplied the missing component to the greatest explosion they had ever witnessed. The cameras recorded the scene noiselessly. A few minutes later, after most of the fragments of the once-world had disintegrated in flaming splendor, Lan Sur's voice broke the silence. "I used only one of many possible means of destruction. However, it promised to be, under the circumstances, the most spectacular. And so you have seen the offensive might of the Dakn Empire. Are you ready to give me your decision?" The control board in front of Hawkins displayed all green signals. "Yes," he said. "I think we're finally ready. Here is our answer to the choice you gave us." His finger pressed firmly on a single red key. * * * * * The _Sunward_ had been hurling itself back towards Earth for almost an hour when Broussard discovered Captain Hawkins, standing by himself in the observation room, staring out into the black of subspace. "Well," the psychologist said. "I don't suppose it looks quite so bleak to you now as it did on the trip out." Hawkins turned and smiled at the man. "No, I don't guess it does. Funny what the presence of one small pinpoint of light does to the blackness of a field, eh?" Broussard nodded in assent. "I wonder what our alien friend thought when suddenly Clarion, Trellis, the two other planets, and us too, just up and disappeared and left him behind?" Hawkins laughed. "You're the alienist. You tell me." "I'd rather ask you something. How did you know it would work?" "You might say I became an expert in psychology over night," Hawkins replied. "Oh, not the scientific kind that you practice--but the every day kind that most people mean when they use the word. I discovered, for example, that because of a misunderstanding on the part of the communications people, we continued to send messages home after the alien had specifically warned us not to do so. At first I thought he might be ignoring this infraction of his rules, but then I began to wonder if it didn't mean that he just wasn't aware of what we were doing. I remembered that he talked a great deal about a C^{2} drive system which he claimed was so much better than the type we used. But when I asked the Navigator to do a little figuring, I discovered that by using subspace, we can actually get places much faster than his race does. "It all added up to the fact that his race had never stumbled onto the use of subspace. I know that sounds incredible, but when I checked with one of the top physicists, I found out that we happened onto it by sheer accident--and an impossibly stupid one at that--and not through any high-level theorizing. The theory came later, after the process had been demonstrated in a laboratory. "For a while I still couldn't believe it. But when we discovered that his space ship was a very small one--too small to utilize the subspace drive--I knew my guess had been correct. So I tricked him into letting us get into position where we could activate the drive--and had the engineers increase the effective radius so that we could pull Clarion and her three planets into subspace with us." Hawkins paused for a few seconds as he turned back to the observation window. "We'll need every sun and every planet we can lay our hands on." Broussard leaned comfortably back against the door. "I think you were wise to take the pictures of the destruction of that fourth planet. We may need them to convince 'the folks back home' that this was the only solution to the problem." Hawkins agreed with him. "They won't like giving up all the universe they've come to be used to, just to run away and hide in subspace. And you know, I think the poets and the sailors and the young people in love will hate us most of all." "How do you mean?" asked Broussard. "No more heaven full of stars to write poems about, to sail true courses by, and to sing love songs under. I guess a lot of us will be lonely for all the stars." "Do you think they'll ever find us?" Broussard asked, changing the subject. "From the look on Lan Sur's face when he told about that other world, I suspect they'll move heaven and earth to find out where we've run to." "Find us? The Dakn Empire? I just don't know. We've got a thousand ships equipped with the subspace drive. That's a thousand or so solar systems we can pull through into subspace before they can catch up with us--I hope. But we'll have to be careful. If one of our ships is ever caught, and they discover the drive, we're all done for. I doubt that they'll show us much mercy. "A thousand suns--and only a handful of usable worlds in the whole lot of them. Not much for a race that's grown as fast as ours has. And to some of us, I guess, subspace will never be quite the same as the one we grew up in--and came to know and love." Hawkins shook his head sadly. "But _if_ they find us?" Broussard insisted. "Well, at least we'll have had time to prepare. Perhaps a year, perhaps ten, perhaps a thousand. But we beat them this time, and maybe we can do it again." For a long time he continued to stare quietly into the blackness. "I just don't know...." 
60655	----	STAR OF REBIRTH BY BERNARD WALL _Atanta knew the red star was the home of his people after death.... And for months now it had been growing brighter._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Everyone should have known. They should have known as surely as though it were written in the curved palm of the wind. They should have known when they looked up at the empty sky; they should have known when they looked down at the hungry children. Yet somehow they did not know that their last migratory hunt was almost over. The straggling band had woven its slow trail among the mountains for forty days of vanishing hopes and shrinking stomachs. Ahead of the main party, the scouts had crawled until their knees and palms were raw; but still there was no track of game, and the only scent was that of the pungent air that rose from the ragged peaks of ice. At last they halted, only a few footsteps from The Cave of the Fallen Sun, the farthest western reach of their frozen domain. In the rear of the column the women threatened the children into silence and the scouts went first to the mouth of the cave to look for signs of an animal having entered. Presently the scouts stood up with their massive shoulders drooping, turned to the rest and made a hopeless gesture. Atanta, who stood alone and motionless between the scouts and the rest of his band, knew that all were waiting for him to use his magic to make a great leopard appear in the empty cave. "A _very_ great leopard," he thought sarcastically. Enough to feed them all for a hundred days. A leopard so huge it would whine pitifully while they killed it. A leopard so gigantic that it would not leave its footprints in the snow. Indeed, Atanta was sure, the leopard his people wanted would be much too large to fit into the cave. Well, perhaps there would be a bird. He held himself very tall and straight so that his dejection might not show to either his people or his gods. But after forty days of the trackless hunt, Atanta felt with certainty that the gods were deaf or dead ... or at least very far away. The sun was hot and the gods were gone, and he would not keep his people waiting with false hopes. He closed his eyes and took up the crude bone cross that hung from his waist, and he cursed the gods with silent venom. And when his chastisement of the delinquent gods was done, he dropped the cross to dangle at his waist again. Two hunters moved stealthily forward, their spears disappearing before them into the cave. It was somehow pathetic, Atanta felt, the way they moved so courageously into the empty darkness. How many caves had there been, Atanta wondered, since they left the mouth of the river? Fully a dozen, always empty, except for the scattered bones of bears and men. Perhaps he should have kept his people at the river. No, he told himself. He had done the only thing he could do. The season had been bad and their meager catch of fish carefully stored. But the already heavy ice thickened with the approach of winter and made fishing almost impossible. When their supplies were almost gone, he had done as so many had done before him. He had led his people on the futile hunt, hoping for the miracle of a dozen sleeping bears or a great white leopard. Such miracles had happened in the past. Once he had gone with his father on such a winter hunt. But miracles without footprints were quite another matter. That was the way his people lived: just existing when the catch was good, starving when it was not. Presently the two hunters stepped out of the darkness with the blunt ends of their spears dragging behind them, and their countenances told the others that the cave was indeed empty. Children began to cry. Women picked up their packs and slung them across their shoulders. The men mumbled inaudible words that turned into whisps of smoke in the icy air. At Atanta's signal, everyone entered the ice-floored cave, thankful at least to be out of the blinding brightness of the sun and snow, and into the soothing dark where they could rest. Atanta stood while his people stretched their furry bodies out over the frozen ground. He looked down at his woman who lay before him, watching him with her black eyes large and warm. It made his stomach clutch itself into an angry knot, to see her young face so drawn with exhaustion and hunger. There were lines in her face he had never seen before; the fur of her head and body had lost its sheen and was now brittle and dry. She patted the ice and motioned him to lie down beside her; but he turned his eyes away from her, because he knew that he must tell the others before he could rest. "Listen to me," he said, and his voice rang through the ice-sheeted cave. The tired eyes of the men and women opened and everyone sat up. How should he tell them? They were waiting now. Should he simply say it swiftly and have done with it? Tell them that they had followed an impotent god until now they were to die? Surely he should prepare them somehow. Prepare them for the importance of what he was to say. "Listen, for I tell you of the end of the empty caves." He stood silent for a moment watching hope filter into their faces, hope that made their dull eyes shine in the semi-darkness. "Do not let joy curl your lips until you have listened, for it would be a false joy." The lines of tiredness and worry returned to the faces about him. Atanta did not look down at his woman's face, for she knew him very well and she would know what he had to do. * * * * * "We are told of a time long ago, when the cave of man was filled with food as the night is filled with stars, and the caves and the men covered the five corners of the world. But these were not the caves that we know now. They were magic caves, and these were magic men. The men of that long-ago world created the very mountains into which they dug their caves. The mountains they created raised their peaks through the highest clouds, and every mountain held countless caves ... caves stuffed with bear and fish and captive winter winds. These were magic times when every man was a priest. Every man could make fire blossom from nowhere and every man could fly through the air like a bird. "All this was long ago when the world was young, and the world was hot, and our people could live in the heat. But Nuomo the God of Night became jealous of these magic men, for he had seen them fly into the night itself in search of the stars. And so Nuomo wrapped his black wings around the world and shook it for ten tens of days. The world cracked and burst with flame that sprouted up into the darkened sky. The people ran in terror and their mountain-caves were sucked down into the earth or burned into ash by the flame. At the end of the ten tens of days, Nuomo thought that all were dead and so he rolled a sheet of ice across the earth to cool it. "Only one man was able to escape the wrath of that ancient god. He was an old man with only little magic and he felt himself on the edge of death. He look from his body a rib which he fashioned into a son. But he made the son in such a way that he could live upon the ice itself, as we do now. "The son knew that the old man was about to die, and so he said: 'Father, use your magic to make a woman to keep me from being lonely.' "'Woman!' the old man cried. 'I should think you would want me to teach you the use of magic.' "'Yes, father,' the son answered, 'if you can.' "'No,' the old man told him. 'I am so near to death there is no time. A woman will have to do.' "And so the old man drew from his chest another rib which he fashioned into a woman. This being done, he turned to his son and said: 'My son, the time has come for me to die. Do not mourn for me, for when each evening comes you will see my home--the red star which travels quickly in the night. For many ten tens of years, I have been preparing it to become a suitable place to be born again. When your time comes, you too will be welcome there.' "Thus saying, the old man placed his hands upon the shoulders of his son. Then he wrapped his cloak about him and rose up into the heavens to the star of rebirth. "Only when the old man had gone to the star of rebirth, did the son turn to his woman. Only then did he see that she had not been made in his image, for she was hairless and delicate and not made to live upon the ice. She was a Hotland woman. But the son, whose name was Dectar, took his woman whose name was Sontia, shielded her from the icy winds and comforted her as best he could. Some of their children had hair and loved the cold; some were weak and hairless and did not. In those days the hunting was good and the strong sheltered the weak, fed them, carried them on the long hunts. But Sontia was a jealous woman. Jealous of her strong husband and their offspring of his kind. She prayed to Ram, God of the Sun, and begged him to melt the ice. And so the ice began to melt, leaving the Hotlands a paradise for weak selfish creatures. Sontia deserted Dectar, taking with her those of their children who were hairless and weak like herself. "When the ice began to melt, we sons of Dectar were forced to hunt farther northward year by year. The game became not so plentiful as it had been. Our people learned to fish and hunt as we do now--to fish in the summer, to hunt when the ice becomes thick. "But the jealous sons of Sontia who swarm in the Hotlands were not content to see us perish year by year. Even to this day, if we should wander down to the edge of their domain to beg for a few scraps of food, they would answer our plea with death. And even in death they would allow us no dignity, but would strip us of our hides and wear them in mockery. "I tell you of this now, because when a man comes on a long hunt which ends in an empty cave, it is well to remember and be proud of the successful hunts of other years." Atanta took the white bone cross carefully from about his waist. "It was I who first saw this god go across the sky." He held up the cross for all to see. "It went slowly like a bird from horizon to horizon and I knew that it was not a bird for it did not flap its wings, but kept them still and outstretched. I believed it to be the god who would fill our hunting trails with game, but now I know that this god is impotent. At worst it is a foolish god, lying somewhere on the white floating ice of heaven, wallowing in idleness while my people starve." He dropped the cross to the smooth ice floor, knelt and smashed the cross into pieces with one swift blow of his hammerstone. When he looked up the people were silent and unmoving. Perhaps he had been a fool. Perhaps he had told them nothing they didn't know. Perhaps they had already given up and knew that they would die here in the cave and that he could produce no magic to help them. "Will you take another god?" one of the scouts asked. "I see no other god to take." "Then do you think we can be delivered without a god?" Wasn't it evident? Surely they must know. Should he tell them there was no deliverance, with or without a god? "I don't know," he lied. "I don't know." Ark's woman drew a strip of leather from the mouth of a sleeping child and put it in her own mouth. "Then you'll have to deliver us yourself," she said and lay down to go to sleep. A sudden rage burned in Atanta's brain. The muscles in his square jaw trembled as he glared at the sprawling furry figures, who would lie there and die while they waited like children for him to provide for the future. Abruptly he turned and left the cave, and walked out under the yellow sun that made the ice-covered mountains shimmer. He felt that he must get away from them. He did not want to die with fools. * * * * * The sun blazed hot upon the hair of his head and back as he traveled rapidly downward and away from his people in the cave. He traveled too quickly to think of anything else but where his next footstep should be, and within an hour he was at the edge of a great ice field that stretched itself out before him like the footprint of a giant. There could be no more swift traveling now. Cautiously, he started out over the empty plain, prodding the ice before him with his spear. It was not that they were children. He knew that he had been wrong to judge them so. There was nothing they could do. They had walked their lives away on the long hunt that ended now without a sign or scent of prey. And he, Atanta, had led them. They were strong and loyal people, too, for if he ordered them up and back along the trail that they had come, each man would go without a word and hope that there was some magic Atanta had yet to use. But the animals were gone and the gods were gone, and there was but one thing left. He would go down below this range where the Hotlanders were known to be. Probably he would simply die in the sun. If not, the Hotlanders would kill him on the spot, as they were usually so quick to do. The Hotlanders had good magic. Not as good as his ancestors', Atanta was sure. But still, they could kill a man from a great distance, simply by pointing a magic charm and making a certain noise. Perhaps the Hotlanders wouldn't see him and perhaps he would not die in the sun. Perhaps he would find some game by the edge of the Hotlands. Perhaps.... The sun had tucked itself behind a white western peak when Atanta at last came to the end of the ice field. Tired now, he crouched for a moment like a bird with his bottom sitting squarely upon his heels. Presently his tiredness became true exhaustion, so he dug himself a little space in a shadowed snow bank and then covered himself with a mound of snow. While Atanta slept, a great lost bird came on the last feeble rays of light, flapping its black wings because there was no wind to glide upon and there was no footing but the frozen ground. When above Atanta, the bird caught a slight scent in the air, held its wings stiff and tilted itself to glide in slow circles that became smaller and smaller and ever lower until at last the bird's tired feet sank deep into the snow beside the mound where Atanta lay. The bird folded its wings about itself and pecked at the mound, its beak digging cautious holes in the snow. Atanta stirred slightly at this intrusion, and the bird drew its beak away and flapped its wings against the windless air and flew away. When Atanta woke, the night wind had curled itself with a scream about the mountains and brought with it a fresh snow. He dug himself from his bed and smiled with his eyes closed at the night that sent the wind and snow to caress his hair. When he opened his eyes, his face was tilted upward to the sky, and he smiled at the lonely stars. The moon was full and heavy tonight, and it hung low in the western sky. Atanta wished his woman could be here beside him, nestling close to him in the soft snow, her delicate hands caressing the hair on his cheek. He thought of her hands rubbed raw from the straps of the heavy pack. Perhaps it was better that he had left without saying goodbye. He felt rested enough to go on, and was about to hoist himself to his feet when the red star caught his attention. For months now it had been growing brighter with every night that passed, as if heralding some important event. This was the red star of rebirth, and he wished he could believe that he and his people would someday go to live there; but he no longer believed in anything. It was then that Atanta saw the god. It was a great and fearful god that turned the black night yellow and screamed louder than the wind. In an instant it fell out of the sky; then the yellow light was gone and the voice of the god was gone, and the dark night returned and the voice of the wind returned. Atanta fell to his knees and his trembling hand etched out the sign of the cross in the snow. Surely this must be a sign. The god had come out of the sky and fallen in the path before him--forbidding him to go into the lowlands. He knew he must pray and ask forgiveness but for many moments he was too frightened to pray, and when the fear subsided, he was too proud. Why should he pray to a god who would let his people starve? He raised his eyes, and saw the very head of the god peering up above the next rise. He stood up with a semblance of dignity on his unsteady legs. When the god did not move from behind the rise for many minutes, Atanta's courage overbalanced his fear and he kicked the snow with his foot and obliterated the sign of the cross. He waited for the god to strike him dead, but nothing happened. The head of the god was motionless. Atanta set out with cautious steps. Presently he hid behind a little ice dune where he could see the god in its awesome entirety. Now he was close enough to hurl his spear at it if the god suddenly struck in anger; and he gripped the spear in readiness. Suddenly he was filled with a new awe, for he realized that this was not the god of the cross! There were no stiff wings at its side. It was like a huge shining spear with its dull end stuck in the snow and its point stretching up to the sky. But how could this be a god? Perhaps he should not yet pray. Time had shown there were many false gods. Presently a black mouth appeared magically in the side of the great still thing. The mouth sucked in the icy air for a moment and then extended a long jagged tongue down to the fresh snow. Atanta saw something move in the blackness of the gaping mouth and then a figure stepped out onto the tongue and looked about at the falling snow and the white jagged mountains in the darkness. It was the figure of a man. At least it was in a man's shape, but it did not look like a man of the mountains nor did it look like the man-creatures of the Hotlands. It walked slowly and laboriously down the tongue, and it seemed to be made of the same shiny stuff as the tongue and the flying wingless god itself. For a moment, Atanta wondered which was the god. The great huge thing with the mouth and the tongue, or the man-thing? The stranger stepped off the tongue into the snow where he knelt and scooped up the snow in his arms, tossed it into the wind which hurled it to the ground again. Then he stood and clutched his head. For a moment Atanta thought he had taken his own head off, but then he could tell that he had taken a covering off his head which he tossed into the snow. Then it seemed that the man had been entirely covered, like the men of the Hotlands who wore furs. Presently the man had taken off all his covering, and stretched his furry arms up to feel the sweetness of the wind. Atanta leaped up, shouting his surprise. For this was a true man. For a moment the man was startled and then his face filled with joy. Showing his empty palms, he began to walk slowly toward Atanta. Atanta moved to meet him, the dark fur of his shoulders glistening in the moonlight. He spoke, but the man did not understand. Then he pointed up to the sky, then to the man, and tilted his head questioningly. The man smiled and nodded his head. He pointed to the sky, but not straight up. He pointed to a spot low in the west. He pointed to the star of rebirth. While Atanta watched in unbelieving awe, the man touched his own chest, then stooped to lay his palms on the snow at his feet. Then he pointed once more to the red star and made a rapid upward gesture. Then he laid his closed hands beside his head and pretended to be asleep. His fingers opened and closed, again and again. "Many sleeps," said Atanta, understanding. "Tens of ten sleeps." Smiling, the man straightened and made a rapid downward gesture, ending with his palms again on the snow. Then he stepped forward, placing one hand on his chest, the other on Atanta's. The two furry men stood as tall and straight as their dignity could make them, and their faces were bright with joy. Then Atanta took the hammerstone out of the binding about his waist, and tossed it into the snow. The man nodded. Stepping back, he lifted his hand in an arc across the sky, and offered Atanta the stars. 
19141	----	Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss 1898 Chapter I. It is impossible that the stupendous events which followed the disastrous invasion of the earth by the Martians should go without record, and circumstances having placed the facts at my disposal, I deem it a duty, both to posterity and to those who were witnesses of and participants in the avenging counterstroke that the earth dealt back at its ruthless enemy in the heavens, to write down the story in a connected form. The Martians had nearly all perished, not through our puny efforts, but in consequence of disease, and the few survivors fled in one of their projectile cars, inflicting their cruelest blow in the act of departure. Their Mysterious Explosive. They possessed a mysterious explosive, of unimaginable puissance, with whose aid they set their car in motion for Mars from a point in Bergen County, N. J., just back of the Palisades. The force of the explosion may be imagined when it is recollected that they had to give the car a velocity of more than seven miles per second in order to overcome the attraction of the earth and the resistance of the atmosphere. The shock destroyed all of New York that had not already fallen a prey, and all the buildings yet standing in the surrounding towns and cities fell in one far-circling ruin. The Palisades tumbled in vast sheets, starting a tidal wave in the Hudson that drowned the opposite shore. Thousands of Victims. The victims of this ferocious explosion were numbered by tens of thousands, and the shock, transmitted through the rocky frame of the globe, was recorded by seismographic pendulums in England and on the Continent of Europe. The terrible results achieved by the invaders had produced everywhere a mingled feeling of consternation and hopelessness. The devastation was widespread. The death-dealing engines which the Martians had brought with them had proved irresistible and the inhabitants of the earth possessed nothing capable of contending against them. There had been no protection for the great cities; no protection even for the open country. Everything had gone down before the savage onslaught of those merciless invaders from space. Savage ruins covered the sites of many formerly flourishing towns and villages, and the broken walls of great cities stared at the heavens like the exhumed skeletons of Pompeii. The awful agencies had extirpated pastures and meadows and dried up the very springs of fertility in the earth where they had touched it. In some parts of the devastated lands pestilence broke out; elsewhere there was famine. Despondency black as night brooded over some of the fairest portions of the globe. All Not Yet Destroyed. Yet all had not been destroyed, because all had not been reached by the withering hand of the destroyer. The Martians had not had time to complete their work before they themselves fell a prey to the diseases that carried them off at the very culmination of their triumph. From those lands which had, fortunately, escaped invasion, relief was sent to the sufferers. The outburst of pity and of charity exceeded anything that the world had known. Differences of race and religion were swallowed up in the universal sympathy which was felt for those who had suffered so terribly from an evil that was as unexpected as it was unimaginable in its enormity. But the worst was not yet. More dreadful than the actual suffering and the scenes of death and devastation which overspread the afflicted lands was the profound mental and moral depression that followed. This was shared even by those who had not seen the Martians and had not witnessed the destructive effects of the frightful engines of war that they had imported for the conquest of the earth. All mankind was sunk deep in this universal despair, and it became tenfold blacker when the astronomers announced from their observatories that strange lights were visible, moving and flashing upon the red surface of the Planet of War. These mysterious appearances could only be interpreted in the light of past experience to mean that the Martians were preparing for another invasion of the earth, and who could doubt that with the invincible powers of destruction at their command they would this time make their work complete and final? A Startling Announcement. This startling announcement was the more pitiable in its effects because it served to unnerve and discourage those few of stouter hearts and more hopeful temperaments who had already begun the labor of restoration and reconstruction amid the embers of their desolated homes. In New York this feeling of hope and confidence, this determination to rise against disaster and to wipe out the evidences of its dreadful presence as quickly as possible, had especially manifested itself. Already a company had been formed and a large amount of capital subscribed for the reconstruction of the destroyed bridges over the East River. Already architects were busily at work planning new twenty-story hotels and apartment houses; new churches and new cathedrals on a grander scale than before. The Martians Returning. Amid this stir of renewed life came the fatal news that Mars was undoubtedly preparing to deal us a death blow. The sudden revulsion of feeling flitted like the shadow of an eclipse over the earth. The scenes that followed were indescribable. Men lost their reason. The faint-hearted ended the suspense with self-destruction, the stout-hearted remained steadfast, but without hope and knowing not what to do. But there was a gleam of hope of which the general public as yet knew nothing. It was due to a few dauntless men of science, conspicuous among whom were Lord Kelvin, the great English savant; Herr Roentgen, the discoverer of the famous X ray, and especially Thomas A. Edison, the American genius of science. These men and a few others had examined with the utmost care the engines of war, the flying machines, the generators of mysterious destructive forces that the Martians had produced, with the object of discovering, if possible, the sources of their power. Suddenly from Mr. Edison's laboratory at Orange flashed the startling intelligence that he had not only discovered the manner in which the invaders had been able to produce the mighty energies which they employed with such terrible effect, but that, going further, he had found a way to overcome them. The glad news was quickly circulated throughout the civilized world. Luckily the Atlantic cables had not been destroyed by the Martians, so that communication between the Eastern and Western continents was uninterrupted. It was a proud day for America. Even while the Martians had been upon the earth, carrying everything before them, demonstrating to the confusion of the most optimistic that there was no possibility of standing against them, a feeling--a confidence had manifested itself in France, to a minor extent in England, and particularly in Russia, that the Americans might discover means to meet and master the invaders. Now, it seemed, this hope and expectation were to be realized. Too late, it is true, in a certain sense, but not too late to meet the new invasion which the astronomers had announced was impending. The effect was as wonderful and indescribable as that of the despondency which but a little while before had overspread the world. One could almost hear the universal sigh of relief which went up from humanity. To relief succeeded confidence--so quickly does the human spirit recover like an elastic spring, when pressure is released. "We Are Ready for Them!" "Let them come," was the almost joyous cry. "We shall be ready for them now. The Americans have solved the problem. Edison has placed the means of victory within our power." Looking back upon that time now, I recall, with a thrill, the pride that stirred me at the thought that, after all, the inhabitants of the Earth were a match for those terrible men from Mars, despite all the advantage which they had gained from their millions of years of prior civilization and science. As good fortunes, like bad, never come singly, the news of Mr. Edison's discovery was quickly followed by additional glad tidings from that laboratory of marvels in the lap of the Orange mountains. During their career of conquest the Martians had astonished the inhabitants of the earth no less with their flying machines--which navigated our atmosphere as easily as they had that of their native planet--than with their more destructive inventions. These flying machines in themselves had given them an enormous advantage in the contest. High above the desolation that they had caused to reign on the surface of the earth, and, out of the range of our guns, they had hung safe in the upper air. From the clouds they had dropped death upon the earth. Edison's Flying Machine. Now, rumor declared that Mr. Edison had invented and perfected a flying machine much more complete and manageable than those of the Martians had been. Wonderful stories quickly found their way into the newspapers concerning what Mr. Edison had already accomplished with the aid of his model electrical balloon. His laboratory was carefully guarded against the invasion of the curious, because he rightly felt that a premature announcement, which should promise more than could be actually fulfilled, would, at this critical juncture, plunge mankind back again into the gulf of despair, out of which it had just begun to emerge. Nevertheless, inklings of the truth leaked out. The flying machine had been seen by many persons hovering by night high above the Orange hills and disappearing in the faint starlight as if it had gone away into the depths of space, out of which it would re-emerge before the morning light had streaked the east, and be seen settling down again within the walls that surrounded the laboratory of the great inventor. At length the rumor, gradually deepening into a conviction, spread that Edison himself, accompanied by a few scientific friends, had made an experimental trip to the moon. At a time when the spirit of mankind was less profoundly stirred, such a story would have been received with complete incredulity, but now, rising on the wings of the new hope that was buoying up the earth, this extraordinary rumor became a day star of truth to the nations. A Trip to the Moon. And it was true. I had myself been one of the occupants of the car of the flying Ship of Space on that night when it silently left the earth, and rising out of the great shadow of the globe, sped on to the moon. We had landed upon the scarred and desolate face of the earth's satellite, and but that there are greater and more interesting events, the telling of which must not be delayed, I should undertake to describe the particulars of this first visit of men to another world. But, as I have already intimated, this was only an experimental trip. By visiting this little nearby island in the ocean of space, Mr. Edison simply wished to demonstrate the practicability of his invention, and to convince, first of all, himself and his scientific friends that it was possible for men--mortal men--to quit and to revisit the earth at their will. That aim this experimental trip triumphantly attained. It would carry me into technical details that would hardly interest the reader to describe the mechanism of Mr. Edison's flying machine. Let it suffice to say that it depended upon the principal of electrical attraction and repulsion. By means of a most ingenious and complicated construction he had mastered the problem of how to produce, in a limited space, electricity of any desired potential and of any polarity, and that without danger to the experimenter or to the material experimented upon. It is gravitation, as everybody knows, that makes man a prisoner on the earth. If he could overcome, or neutralize, gravitation he could float away a free creature of interstellar space. Mr. Edison in his invention had pitted electricity against gravitation. Nature, in fact, had done the same thing long before. Every astronomer knew it, but none had been able to imitate or to reproduce this miracle of nature. When a comet approaches the sun, the orbit in which it travels indicates that it is moving under the impulse of the sun's gravitation. It is in reality falling in a great parabolic or elliptical curve through space. But, while a comet approaches the sun it begins to display--stretching out for millions, and sometimes hundreds of millions of miles on the side away from the sun--an immense luminous train called its tail. This train extends back into that part of space from which the comet is moving. Thus the sun at one and the same time is drawing the comet toward itself and driving off from the comet in an opposite direction minute particles or atoms which, instead of obeying the gravitational force, are plainly compelled to disobey it. That this energy, which the sun exercises against its own gravitation, is electrical in its nature, hardly anybody will doubt. The head of the comet being comparatively heavy and massive, falls on toward the sun, despite the electrical repulsion. But the atoms which form the tail, being almost without weight, yield to the electrical rather than to the gravitational influence, and so fly away from the sun. Gravity Overcome. Now, what Mr. Edison had done was, in effect, to create an electrified particle which might be compared to one of the atoms composing the tail of a comet, although in reality it was a kind of car, of metal, weighing some hundreds of pounds and capable of bearing some thousands of pounds with it in its flight. By producing, with the aid of the electrical generator contained in this car, an enormous charge of electricity, Mr. Edison was able to counterbalance, and a trifle more than counterbalance, the attraction of the earth, and thus cause the car to fly off from the earth as an electrified pith ball flies from the prime conductor. As we sat in the brilliantly lighted chamber that formed the interior of the car, and where stores of compressed air had been provided together with chemical apparatus, by means of which fresh supplies of oxygen and nitrogen might be obtained for our consumption during the flight through space, Mr. Edison touched a polished button, thus causing the generation of the required electrical charge on the exterior of the car, and immediately we began to rise. The moment and direction of our flight had been so timed and prearranged, that the original impulse would carry us straight toward the moon. A Triumphant Test. When we fell within the sphere of attraction of that orb it only became necessary to so manipulate the electrical charge upon our car as nearly, but not quite, to counterbalance the effect of the moon's attraction in order that we might gradually approach it and with an easy motion, settle, without shock, upon its surface. We did not remain to examine the wonders of the moon, although we could not fail to observe many curious things therein. Having demonstrated the fact that we could not only leave the earth, but could journey through space and safely land upon the surface of another planet, Mr. Edison's immediate purpose was fulfilled, and we hastened back to the earth, employing in leaving the moon and landing again upon our own planet the same means of control over the electrical attraction and repulsion between the respective planets and our car which I have already described. Telegraphing the News. When actual experiment had thus demonstrated the practicability of the invention, Mr. Edison no longer withheld the news of what he had been doing from the world. The telegraph lines and the ocean cables labored with the messages that in endless succession, and burdened with an infinity of detail, were sent all over the earth. Everywhere the utmost enthusiasm was aroused. "Let the Martians come," was the cry. "If necessary, we can quit the earth as the Athenians fled from Athens before the advancing host of Xerxes, and like them, take refuge upon our ships--these new ships of space, with which American inventiveness has furnished us." And then, like a flash, some genius struck out an idea that fired the world. "Why should we wait? Why should we run the risk of having our cities destroyed and our lands desolated a second time? Let us go to Mars. We have the means. Let us beard the lion in his den. Let us ourselves turn conquerors and take possession of that detestable planet, and if necessary, destroy it in order to relieve the earth of this perpetual threat which now hangs over us like the sword of Damocles." Chapter II. This enthusiasm would have had but little justification had Mr. Edison done nothing more than invent a machine which could navigate the atmosphere and the regions of interplanetary space. He had, however, and this fact was generally known, although the details had not yet leaked out--invented also machines of war intended to meet the utmost that the Martians could do for either offence or defence in the struggle which was now about to ensue. A Wonderful Instrument. Acting upon the hint which had been conveyed from various investigations in the domain of physics, and concentrating upon the problem all those unmatched powers of intellect which distinguished him, the great inventor had succeeded in producing a little implement which one could carry in his hand, but which was more powerful than any battleship that ever floated. The details of its mechanism could not be easily explained, without the use of tedious technicalities and the employment of terms, diagrams and mathematical statements, all of which would lie outside the scope of this narrative. But the principle of the thing was simple enough. It was upon the great scientific doctrine, which we have since seen so completely and brilliantly developed, of the law of harmonic vibrations, extending from atoms and molecules at one end of the series up to worlds and suns at the other end, that Mr. Edison based his invention. Every kind of substance has its own vibratory rhythm. That of iron differs from that of pine wood. The atoms of gold do not vibrate in the same time or through the same range as those of lead, and so on for all known substances, and all the chemical elements. So, on a larger scale, every massive body has its period of vibration. A great suspension bridge vibrates, under the impulse of forces that are applied to it, in long periods. No company of soldiers ever crosses such a bridge without breaking step. If they tramped together, and were followed by other companies keeping the same time with their feet, after a while the vibrations of the bridge would become so great and destructive that it would fall in pieces. So any structure, if its vibration rate is known, could easily be destroyed by a force applied to it in such a way that it should simply increase the swing of those vibrations up to the point of destruction. Now Mr. Edison had been able to ascertain the vibratory swing of many well-known substances, and to produce, by means of the instrument which he had contrived, pulsations in the ether which were completely under his control, and which could be made long or short, quick or slow, at his will. He could run through the whole gamut from the slow vibrations of sound in air up to the four hundred and twenty-five millions of millions of vibrations per second of the ultra red rays. Having obtained an instrument of such power, it only remained to concentrate its energy upon a given object in order that the atoms composing that object should be set into violent undulation, sufficient to burst it asunder and to scatter its molecules broadcast. This the inventor effected by the simplest means in the world--simply a parabolic reflector by which the destructive waves could be sent like a beam of light, but invisible, in any direction and focused upon any desired point. Testing the "Disintegrator." I had the good fortune to be present when this powerful engine of destruction was submitted to its first test. We had gone upon the roof of Mr. Edison's laboratory and the inventor held the little instrument, with its attached mirror, in his hand. We looked about for some object on which to try its powers. On a bare limb of a tree not far away, for it was late in the Fall, sat a disconsolate crow. "Good," said Mr. Edison, "that will do." He touched a button at the side of the instrument and a soft, whirring noise was heard. "Feathers," said Mr. Edison, "have a vibration period of three hundred and eighty-six million per second." He adjusted the index as he spoke. Then, through a sighting tube, he aimed at the bird. "Now watch," he said. The Crow's Fate. Another soft whirr in the instrument, a momentary flash of light close around it, and, behold, the crow had turned from black to white! "Its feathers are gone," said the inventor; "they have been dissipated into their constituent atoms. Now, we will finish the crow." Instantly there was another adjustment of the index, another outshooting of vibratory force, a rapid up and down motion of the index to include a certain range of vibrations, and the crow itself was gone--vanished in empty space! There was the bare twig on which a moment before it had stood. Behind, in the sky, was the white cloud against which its black form had been sharply outlined, but there was no more crow. Bad for the Martians. "That looks bad for the Martians, doesn't it?" said the Wizard. "I have ascertained the vibration rate of all the materials of which their war engines whose remains we have collected together are composed. They can be shattered into nothingness in the fraction of a second. Even if the vibration period were not known, it could quickly be hit upon by simply running through the gamut." "Hurrah!" cried one of the onlookers. "We have met the Martians and they are ours." Such in brief was the first of the contrivances which Mr. Edison invented for the approaching war with Mars. And these facts had become widely known. Additional experiments had completed the demonstration of the inventor's ability, with the aid of his wonderful instrument, to destroy any given object, or any part of an object, provided that that part differed in its atomic constitution, and consequently in its vibratory period, from the other parts. A most impressive public exhibition of the powers of the little disintegrator was given amid the ruins of New York. On lower Broadway a part of the walls of one of the gigantic buildings, which had been destroyed by the Martians, impended in such a manner that it threatened at any moment to fall upon the heads of the passers-by. The Fire Department did not dare touch it. To blow it up seemed a dangerous expedient, because already new buildings had been erected in its neighborhood, and their safety would be imperiled by the flying fragments. The fact happened to come to my knowledge. "Here is an opportunity," I said to Mr. Edison, "to try the powers of your machine on a large scale." "Capital!" he instantly replied. "I shall go at once." Disintegrating a Building. For the work now in hand it was necessary to employ a battery of disintegrators, since the field of destruction covered by each was comparatively limited. All of the impending portions of the wall must be destroyed at once and together, for otherwise the danger would rather be accentuated than annihilated. The disintegrators were placed upon the roof of a neighboring building, so adjusted that their fields of destruction overlapped one another upon the wall. Their indexes were all set to correspond with the vibration period of the peculiar kind of brick of which the wall consisted. Then the energy was turned on, and a shout of wonder arose from the multitudes which had assembled at a safe distance to witness the experiment. Only a Cloud Remained. The wall did not fall; it did not break asunder; no fragments shot this way and that and high in the air; there was no explosion; no shock or noise disturbed the still atmosphere--only a soft whirr, that seemed to pervade everything and to tingle in the nerves of the spectators; and--what had been was not! The wall was gone! But high above and all around the place where it had hung over the street with its threat of death there appeared, swiftly billowing outward in every direction, a faint, bluish cloud. It was the scattered atoms of the destroyed wall. And now the cry "On to Mars!" was heard on all sides. But for such an enterprise funds were needed--millions upon millions. Yet some of the fairest and richest portions of the earth had been impoverished by the frightful ravages of those enemies who had dropped down upon them from the skies. Still, the money must be had. The salvation of the planet, as everybody was now convinced, depended upon the successful negotiation of a gigantic war fund, in comparison with which all the expenditures in all of the wars that had been waged by the nations for 2,000 years would be insignificant. The electrical ships and the vibration engines must be constructed by scores and thousands. Only Mr. Edison's immense resources and unrivaled equipment had enabled him to make the models whose powers had been so satisfactorily shown. But to multiply these upon a war scale was not only beyond the resources of any individual--hardly a nation on the globe in the period of its greatest prosperity could have undertaken such a work. All the nations, then, must now conjoin. They must unite their resources, and, if necessary, exhaust all their hoards, in order to raise the needed sum. The Yankees Lead. Negotiations were at once begun. The United States naturally took the lead, and their leadership was never for a moment questioned abroad. Washington was selected as the place of meeting for a great congress of the nations. Washington, luckily, had been one of the places which had not been touched by the Martians. But if Washington had been a city composed of hotels alone, and every hotel so great as to be a little city in itself, it would have been utterly insufficient for the accommodation of the innumerable throngs which now flocked to the banks of the Potomac. But when was American enterprise unequal to a crisis? The necessary hotels, lodging houses and restaurants were constructed with astounding rapidity. One could see the city growing and expanding day by day and week after week. It flowed over Georgetown Heights; it leaped the Potomac; it spread east and west, south and north; square mile after square mile of territory was buried under the advancing buildings, until the gigantic city, which had thus grown up like a mushroom in a night, was fully capable of accommodating all its expected guests. At first it had been intended that the heads of the various governments should in person attend this universal congress, but as the enterprise went on, as the enthusiasm spread, as the necessity for haste became more apparent through the warning notes which were constantly sounded from the observatories where the astronomers were nightly beholding new evidences of threatening preparations in Mars, the kings and queens of the old world felt that they could not remain at home; that their proper place was at the new focus and centre of the whole world--the city of Washington. Without concerted action, without interchange of suggestion, this impulse seemed to seize all the old world monarchs at once. Suddenly cablegrams flashed to the Government at Washington, announcing that Queen Victoria, the Emperor William, the Czar Nicholas, Alphonso of Spain, with his mother, Maria Christina; the old Emperor Francis Joseph and the Empress Elizabeth, of Austria; King Oscar and Queen Sophia, of Sweden and Norway; King Humbert and Queen Margherita, of Italy; King George and Queen Olga, of Greece; Abdul Hamid, of Turkey; Tsait'ien, Emperor of China; Mutsuhito, the Japanese Mikado, with his beautiful Princess Haruko; the President of France, the President of Switzerland, the First Syndic of the little republic of Andorra, perched on the crest of the Pyrenees, and the heads of all the Central and South American republics, were coming to Washington to take part in the deliberations, which, it was felt, were to settle the fate of earth and Mars. One day, after this announcement had been received, and the additional news had come that nearly all the visiting monarchs had set out, attended by brilliant suites and convoyed by fleets of warships, for their destination, some coming across the Atlantic to the port of New York, others across the Pacific to San Francisco, Mr. Edison said to me: "This will be a fine spectacle. Would you like to watch it?" "Certainly," I replied. A Grand Spectacle. The Ship of Space was immediately at our disposal. I think I have not yet mentioned the fact that the inventor's control over the electrical generator carried in the car was so perfect that by varying the potential or changing the polarity he could cause it slowly or swiftly, as might be desired, to approach or recede from any object. The only practical difficulty was presented when the polarity of the electrical charge upon an object in the neighborhood of the car was unknown to those in the car, and happened to be opposite to that of the charge which the car, at that particular moment, was bearing. In such a case, of course, the car would fly toward the object, whatever it might be, like a pith ball or a feather, attracted to the knob of an electrical machine. In this way, considerable danger was occasionally encountered, and a few accidents could not be avoided. Fortunately, however, such cases were rare. It was only now and then that, owing to some local cause, electrical polarities unknown to or unexpected by the navigators, endangered the safety of the car. As I shall have occasion to relate, however, in the course of the narrative, this danger became more acute and assumed at times a most formidable phase, when we had ventured outside the sphere of the earth and were moving through the unexplored regions beyond. On this occasion, having embarked, we rose rapidly to a height of some thousands of feet and directed our course over the Atlantic. When half way to Ireland, we beheld, in the distance, steaming westward, the smoke of several fleets. As we drew nearer a marvellous spectacle unfolded itself to our eyes. From the northeast, their great guns flashing in the sunlight and their huge funnels belching black volumes that rested like thunder clouds upon the sea, came the mighty warships of England, with her meteor flag streaming red in the breeze, while the royal insignia, indicating the presence of the ruler of the British Empire, was conspicuously displayed upon the flagship of the squadron. Following a course more directly westward appeared, under another black cloud of smoke, the hulls and guns and burgeons of another great fleet, carrying the tri-color of France, and bearing in its midst the head of the magnificent republic of western Europe. Further south, beating up against the northerly winds, came a third fleet with the gold and red of Spain fluttering from its masthead. This, too, was carrying its King westward, where now, indeed, the star of empire had taken its way. Universal Brotherhood. Rising a little higher, so as to extend our horizon, we saw coming down the English channel, behind the British fleet, the black ships of Russia. Side by side, or following one another's lead, these war fleets were on a peaceful voyage that belied their threatening appearance. There had been no thought of danger to or from the forts and ports of rival nations which they had passed. There was no enmity, and no fear between them when the throats of their ponderous guns yawned at one another across the waves. They were now, in spirit, all one fleet, having one object, bearing against one enemy, ready to defend but one country, and that country was the entire earth. It was some time before we caught sight of the Emperor William's fleet. It seems that the Kaiser, although at first consenting to the arrangement by which Washington had been selected as the assembling place for the nations, afterwards objected to it. Kaiser Wilhelm's Jealousy. "I ought to do this thing myself," he had said. "My glorious ancestors would never have consented to allow these upstart Republicans to lead in a warlike enterprise of this kind. What would my grandfather have said to it? I suspect that it is some scheme aimed at the divine right of kings." But the good sense of the German people would not suffer their ruler to place them in a position so false and so untenable. And swept along by their enthusiasm the Kaiser had at last consented to embark on his flagship at Kiel, and now he was following the other fleets on their great mission to the Western Continent. Why did they bring their warships when their intentions were peaceable, do you ask? Well, it was partly the effect of ancient habit, and partly due to the fact that such multitudes of officials and members of ruling families wished to embark for Washington that the ordinary means of ocean communications would have been utterly inadequate to convey them. After we had feasted our eyes on this strange sight, Mr. Edison suddenly exclaimed: "Now let us see the fellows from the rising sun." Over the Mississippi. The car was immediately directed toward the west. We rapidly approached the American coast, and as we sailed over the Alleghany Mountains and the broad plains of the Ohio and the Mississippi, we saw crawling beneath us from west, south and north, an endless succession of railway trains bearing their multitudes on to Washington. With marvellous speed we rushed westward, rising high to skim over the snow-topped peaks of the Rocky Mountains and then the glittering rim of the Pacific was before us. Half way between the American coast and Hawaii we met the fleets coming from China and Japan. Side by side they were ploughing the main, having forgotten, or laid aside, all the animosities of their former wars. I well remember how my heart was stirred at this impressive exhibition of the boundless influence which my country had come to exercise over all the people of the world, and I turned to look at the man to whose genius this uprising of the earth was due. But Mr. Edison, after his wont, appeared totally unconscious of the fact that he was personally responsible for what was going on. His mind, seemingly, was entirely absorbed in considering problems, the solution of which might be essential to our success in the terrific struggle which was soon to begin. Back to Washington. "Well, have you seen enough?" he asked. "Then let us go back to Washington." As we speeded back across the continent we beheld beneath us again the burdened express trains rushing toward the Atlantic, and hundreds of thousands of upturned eyes watched our swift progress, and volleys of cheers reached our ears, for every one knew that this was Edison's electrical warship, on which the hope of the nation, and the hopes of all the nations, depended. These scenes were repeated again and again until the car hovered over the still expanding capital on the Potomac, where the unceasing ring of hammers rose to the clouds. Chapter III. The day appointed for the assembling of the nations in Washington opened bright and beautiful. Arrangements had been made for the reception of the distinguished guests at the Capitol. No time was to be wasted, and, having assembled in the Senate Chamber, the business that had called them together was to be immediately begun. The scene in Pennsylvania avenue, when the procession of dignitaries and royalties passed up toward the Capitol, was one never to be forgotten. Bands were playing, magnificent equipages flashed in the morning sunlight, the flags of every nation on the earth fluttered in the breeze. Queen Victoria, with the Prince of Wales escorting her, and riding in an open carriage, was greeted with roars of cheers; the Emperor William, following in another carriage with Empress Victoria at his side, condescended to bow and smile in response to the greetings of a free people. Each of the other monarchs was received in a similar manner. The Czar of Russia proved to be an especial favorite with the multitude on account of the ancient friendship of his house for America. But the greatest applause of all came when the President of France, followed by the President of Switzerland and the First Syndic of the little Republic of Andorra, made their appearance. Equally warm were the greetings extended to the representatives of Mexico and the South American States. The Sultan of Turkey. The crowd apparently hardly knew at first how to receive the Sultan of Turkey, but the universal good feeling was in his favor, and finally rounds of hand clapping and cheers greeted his progress along the splendid avenue. A happy idea had apparently occurred to the Emperor of China and the Mikado of Japan, for, attended by their intermingled suites, they rode together in a single carriage. This object lesson in the unity of international feeling immensely pleased the spectators. An Unparallelled Scene. The scene in the Senate Chamber stirred every one profoundly. That it was brilliant and magnificent goes without saying, but there was a seriousness, an intense feeling of expectancy, pervading both those who looked on and those who were to do the work for which these magnates of the earth had assembled, which produced an ineradicable impression. The President of the United States, of course, presided. Representatives of the greater powers occupied the front seats, and some of them were honored with special chairs near the President. No time was wasted in preliminaries. The President made a brief speech. "We have come together," he said, "to consider a question that equally interests the whole earth. I need not remind you that unexpectedly and without provocation on our part the people--the monsters, I should rather say--of Mars, recently came down upon the earth, attacked us in our homes and spread desolation around them. Having the advantage of ages of evolution, which for us are yet in the future, they brought with them engines of death and of destruction against which we found it impossible to contend. It is within the memory of every one in reach of my voice that it was through the entirely unexpected succor which Providence sent us that we were suddenly and effectually freed from the invaders. By our own efforts we could have done nothing." McKinley's Tribute. "But, as you all know, the first feeling of relief which followed the death of our foes was quickly succeeded by the fearful news which came to us from the observatories, that the Martians were undoubtedly preparing for a second invasion of our planet. Against this we should have had no recourse and no hope but for the genius of one of my countrymen, who, as you are all aware, has perfected means which may enable us not only to withstand the attack of those awful enemies, but to meet them, and, let us hope, to conquer them on their own ground." "Mr. Edison is here to explain to you what those means are. But we have also another object. Whether we send a fleet of interplanetary ships to invade Mars or whether we simply confine our attention to works of defence, in either case it will be necessary to raise a very large sum of money. None of us has yet recovered from the effects of the recent invasion. The earth is poor to-day compared to its position a few years ago; yet we cannot allow our poverty to stand in the way. The money, the means, must be had. It will be part of our business here to raise a gigantic war fund by the aid of which we can construct the equipment and machinery that we shall require. This, I think, is all I need to say. Let us proceed to business." "Where is Mr. Edison?" cried a voice. "Will Mr. Edison please step forward?" said the President. There was a stir in the assembly, and the iron-gray head of the great inventor was seen moving through the crowd. In his hand he carried one of his marvellous disintegrators. He was requested to explain and illustrate its operation. Mr. Edison smiled. Edison to the Rescue. "I can explain its details," he said, "to Lord Kelvin, for instance, but if Their Majesties will excuse me, I doubt whether I can make it plain to the crowned heads." The Emperor William smiled superciliously. Apparently he thought that another assault had been committed upon the divine right of kings. But the Czar Nicholas appeared to be amused, and the Emperor of China, who had been studying English, laughed in his sleeve, as if he suspected that a joke had been perpetrated. "I think," said one of the deputies, "that a simple exhibition of the powers of the instrument, without a technical explanation of its method of working, will suffice for our purpose." This suggestion was immediately approved. In response to it, Mr. Edison, by a few simple experiments, showed how he could quickly and certainly shatter into its constituent atoms any object upon which the vibratory force of the disintegrator should be directed. In this manner he caused an inkstand to disappear under the very nose of the Emperor William without a spot of ink being scattered upon his sacred person, but evidently the odor of the disunited atoms was not agreeable to the nostrils of the Kaiser. Mr. Edison also explained in general terms the principle on which the instrument worked. He was greeted with round after round of applause, and the spirit of the assembly rose high. Next the workings of the electrical ship were explained, and it was announced that after the meeting had adjourned an exhibition of the flying powers of the ship would be given in the open air. These experiments, together with the accompanying explanations, added to what had already been disseminated through the public press, were quite sufficient to convince all the representatives who had assembled in Washington that the problem of how to conquer the Martians had been solved. The means were plainly at hand. It only remained to apply them. For this purpose, as the President had pointed out, it would be necessary to raise a very large sum of money. "How much will be needed?" asked one of the English representatives. "At least ten thousand millions of dollars," replied the President. "It would be safer," said a Senator from the Pacific Coast, "to make it twenty-five thousand millions." "I suggest," said the King of Italy, "that the nations be called in alphabetical order, and that the representatives of each name a sum which it is ready and able to contribute." "We want the cash or its equivalent," shouted the Pacific Coast Senator. "I shall not follow the alphabet strictly," said the President, "but shall begin with the larger nations first. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it is proper that the United States should lead the way. Mr. Secretary," he continued, turning to the Secretary of the Treasury, "how much can we stand?" An Enormous Sum. "At least a thousand millions," replied the Secretary of the Treasury. A roar of applause that shook the room burst from the assembly. Even some of the monarchs threw up their hats. The Emperor Tsait'ten smiled from ear to ear. One of the Roko Tuis, or native chiefs, from Fiji, sprang up and brandished a war club. The President then proceeded to call the other nations, beginning with Austria-Hungary and ending with Zanzibar, whose Sultan, Hamoud bin Mahomed, had come to the congress in the escort of Queen Victoria. Each contributed liberally. Germany coming in alphabetical order just before Great Britain, had named, through its Chancellor, the sum of $500,000,000, but when the First Lord of the British Treasury, not wishing to be behind the United States, named double that sum as the contribution of the British Empire, the Emperor William looked displeased. He spoke a word in the ear of the Chancellor, who immediately raised his hand. A Thousand Million Dollars. "We will give a thousand million dollars," said the Chancellor. Queen Victoria seemed surprised, though not displeased. The First Lord of the Treasury met her eye, and then, rising in his place, said: "Make it fifteen hundred million for Great Britain." Emperor William consulted again with his Chancellor, but evidently concluded not to increase his bid. But, at any rate, the fund had benefited to the amount of a thousand millions by this little outburst of imperial rivalry. The greatest surprise of all, however, came when the King of Siam was called upon for his contribution. He had not been given a foremost place in the Congress, but when the name of his country was pronounced he rose by his chair, dressed in a gorgeous specimen of the peculiar attire of his country, then slowly pushed his way to the front, stepped up to the President's desk and deposited upon it a small box. "This is our contribution," he said, in broken English. The cover was lifted, and there darted, shimmering in the half gloom of the Chamber, a burst of iridescence from the box. The Long Lost Treasure. "My friends of the Western world," continued the King of Siam, "will be interested in seeing this gem. Only once before has the eye of a European been blessed with the sight of it. Your books will tell you that in the seventeenth century a traveler, Tavernier, saw in India an unmatched diamond which afterward disappeared like a meteor, and was thought to have been lost from the earth. You all know the name of that diamond and its history. It is the Great Mogul, and it lies before you. How it came into my possession I shall not explain. At any rate, it is honestly mine, and I freely contribute it here to aid in protecting my native planet against those enemies who appear determined to destroy it." When the excitement which the appearance of this long lost treasure, that had been the subject of so many romances and of such long and fruitless search, had subsided, the President continued calling the list, until he had completed it. Upon taking the sum of the contributions (the Great Mogul was reckoned at three millions) it was found to be still one thousand millions short of the required amount. The Secretary of the Treasury was instantly on his feet. "Mr. President," he said, "I think we can stand that addition. Let it be added to the contribution of the United States of America." When the cheers that greeted the conclusion of the business were over, the President announced that the next affair of the Congress was to select a director who should have entire charge of the preparations for the war. It was the universal sentiment that no man could be so well suited for this post as Mr. Edison himself. He was accordingly selected by the unanimous and enthusiastic choice of the great assembly. "How long a time do you require to put everything in readiness?" asked the President. "Give me carte blanche," replied Mr. Edison, "and I believe I can have a hundred electric ships and three thousand disintegrators ready within six months." A tremendous cheer greeted this announcement. "Your powers are unlimited," said the President, "draw on the fund for as much money as you need," whereupon the Treasurer of the United States was made the disbursing officer of the fund, and the meeting adjourned. Not less than 5,000,000 people had assembled at Washington from all parts of the world. Every one of this immense multitude had been able to listen to the speeches and the cheers in the Senate chamber, although not personally present there. Wires had been run all over the city, and hundreds of improved telephonic receivers provided, so that every one could hear. Even those who were unable to visit Washington, people living in Baltimore, New York, Boston, and as far away as New Orleans, St. Louis and Chicago, had also listened to the proceedings with the aid of these receivers. Upon the whole, probably not less than 50,000,000 people had heard the deliberations of the great congress of the nations. The Excitement in Washington. The telegraph and the cable had sent the news across the oceans to all the capitols of the earth. The exultation was so great that the people seemed mad with joy. The promised exhibition of the electrical ship took place the next day. Enormous multitudes witnessed the experiment, and there was a struggle for places in the car. Even Queen Victoria, accompanied by the Prince of Wales, ventured to take a ride in it, and they enjoyed it so much that Mr. Edison prolonged the journey as far as Boston and the Bunker Hill monument. Most of the other monarchs also took a high ride, but when the turn of the Emperor of China came he repeated a fable which he said had come down from the time of Confucius: A Chinese Legend. "Once upon a time there was a Chinaman living in the valley of the Hoang-Ho River, who was accustomed frequently to lie on his back, gazing at, and envying, the birds that he saw flying away in the sky. One day he saw a black speck which rapidly grew larger and larger, until as it got near he perceived that it was an enormous bird, which overshadowed the earth with its wings. It was the elephant of birds, the roc. 'Come with me,' said the roc, 'and I will show you the wonders of the kingdom of the birds.' The man caught hold of its claw and nestled among its feathers, and they rapidly rose high in the air, and sailed away to the Kuen-Lun Mountains. Here, as they passed near the top of the peaks, another roc made its appearance. The wings of the two great birds brushed together, and immediately they fell to fighting. In the midst of the melee the man lost his hold and tumbled into the top of a tree, where his pigtail caught on a branch, and he remained suspended. There the unfortunate man hung helpless, until a rat, which had its home in the rocks at the foot of the tree, took compassion upon him, and, climbing up, gnawed off the branch. As the man slowly and painfully wended his weary way homeward, he said: 'This teaches me that creatures to whom nature has given neither feathers nor wings should leave the kingdom of the birds to those who are fitted to inhabit it.'" Having told this story, Tsait'ien turned his back on the electrical ship. The Grand Ball. After the exhibition was finished, and amid the fresh outburst of enthusiasm that followed, it was suggested that a proper way to wind up the Congress and give suitable expression to the festive mood which now possessed mankind would be to have a grand ball. This suggestion met with immediate and universal approval. But for so gigantic an affair it was, of course, necessary to make special preparations. A convenient place was selected on the Virginia side of the Potomac; a space of ten acres was carefully levelled and covered with a polished floor, rows of columns one hundred feet apart were run across it in every direction, and these were decorated with electric lights, displaying every color of the spectrum. Unsurpassed Fireworks. Above this immense space, rising in the centre to a height of more than a thousand feet, was anchored a vast number of balloons, all aglow with lights, and forming a tremendous dome, in which brilliant lamps were arranged in such a manner as to exhibit, in an endless succession of combinations, all the national colors, ensigns and insignia of the various countries represented at the Congress. Blazing eagles, lions, unicorns, dragons and other imaginary creatures that the different nations had chosen for their symbols appeared to hover high above the dancers, shedding a brilliant light upon the scene. Circles of magnificent thrones were placed upon the floor in convenient locations for seeing. A thousand bands of music played, and tens of thousands of couples, gayly dressed and flashing with gems, whirled together upon the polished floor. Queen Victoria Dances. The Queen of England led the dance, on the arm of the President of the United States. The Prince of Wales led forth the fair daughter of the President, universally admired as the most beautiful woman upon the great ballroom floor. The Emperor William, in his military dress, danced with the beauteous Princess Masaco, the daughter of the Mikado, who wore for the occasion the ancient costume of the women of her country, sparkling with jewels, and glowing with quaint combinations of color like a gorgeous butterfly. The Chinese Emperor, with his pigtail flying high as he spun, danced with the Empress of Russia. The King of Siam essayed a waltz with the Queen Ranavalona, of Madagascar, while the Sultan of Turkey basked in the smiles of a Chicago heiress to a hundred millions. The Czar choose for his partner a dark-eyed beauty from Peru, but King Malietoa, of Samoa, was suspicious of civilized charmers and, avoiding all of their allurements, expressed his joy and gave vent to his enthusiasm in a pas seul. In this he was quickly joined by a band of Sioux Indian chiefs, whose whoops and yells so startled the leader of a German band on their part of the floor that he dropped his baton and, followed by the musicians, took to his heels. This incident amused the good-natured Emperor of China more than anything else that had occurred. "Make muchee noisee," he said, indicating the fleeing musicians with his thumb. "Allee same muchee flaid noisee," and then his round face dimpled into another laugh. The scene from the outside was even more imposing than that which greeted the eye within the brilliantly lighted enclosure. Far away in the night, rising high among the stars, the vast dome of illuminated balloons seemed like some supernatural creation, too grand and glorious to have been constructed by the inhabitants of the earth. All around it, and from some of the balloons themselves, rose jets and fountains of fire, ceaselessly playing, and blotting out the constellations of the heavens by their splendor. The Prince of Wales's Toast. The dance was followed by a grand banquet, at which the Prince of Wales proposed a toast to Mr. Edison: "It gives me much pleasure," he said, "to offer, in the name of the nations of the Old World, this tribute of our admiration for, and our confidence in, the genius of the New World. Perhaps on such an occasion as this, when all racial differences and prejudices ought to be, and are, buried and forgotten, I should not recall anything that might revive them; yet I cannot refrain from expressing my happiness in knowing that the champion who is to achieve the salvation of the earth has come forth from the bosom of the Anglo-Saxon race." Several of the great potentates looked grave upon hearing the Prince of Wales's words, and the Czar and the Kaiser exchanged glances; but there was no interruption to the cheers that followed. Mr. Edison, whose modesty and dislike to display and to speechmaking were well known, simply said: "I think we have got the machine that can whip them. But we ought not to be wasting any time. Probably they are not dancing on Mars, but are getting ready to make us dance." Haste to Embark. These words instantly turned the current of feeling in the vast assembly. There was no longer any disposition to expend time in vain boastings and rejoicings. Everywhere the cry now became, "Let us make haste! Let us get ready at once! Who knows but the Martians have already embarked, and are now on their way to destroy us?" Under the impulse of this new feeling, which, it must be admitted, was very largely inspired by terror, the vast ballroom was quickly deserted. The lights were suddenly put out in the great dome of balloons, for someone had whispered: "Suppose they should see that from Mars? Would they not guess what we were about, and redouble their preparations to finish us?" Upon the suggestion of the President of the United States, an executive committee, representing all the principal nations, was appointed, and without delay a meeting of this committee was assembled at the White House. Mr. Edison was summoned before it, and asked to sketch briefly the plan upon which he proposed to work. Thousands of Men for Mars. I need not enter into the details of what was done at this meeting. Let it suffice to say that when it broke up, in the small hours of the morning, it had been unanimously resolved that as many thousands of men as Mr. Edison might require should be immediately placed at his disposal; that as far as possible all the great manufacturing establishments of the country should be instantly transformed into factories where electrical ships and disintegrators could be built, and upon the suggestion of Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, the celebrated English electrical expert, seconded by Lord Kelvin, it was resolved that all the leading men of science in the world should place their services at the disposal of Mr. Edison in any capacity in which, in his judgment, they might be useful to him. The members of this committee were disposed to congratulate one another on the good work which they had so promptly accomplished, when at the moment of their adjournment, a telegraphic dispatch was handed to the President from Professor George E. Hale, the director of the great Yerkes Observatory, in Wisconsin. The telegram read: What's Happening on Mars? "Professor Barnard, watching Mars to-night with the forty-inch telescope, saw a sudden outburst of reddish light, which we think indicates that something has been shot from the planet. Spectroscopic observations of this moving light indicated that it was coming earthward, while visible, at the rate of not less than one hundred miles a second." Hardly had the excitement caused by the reading of this dispatch subsided, when others of a similar import came from the Lick Observatory, in California; from the branch of the Harvard Observatory at Arequipa, in Peru, and from the Royal Observatory, at Potsdam. When the telegram from this last-named place was read the Emperor William turned to his Chancellor and said: "I want to go home. If I am to die I prefer to leave my bones among those of my Imperial ancestors, and not in this vulgar country, where no king has ever ruled. I don't like this atmosphere. It makes me feel limp." And now, whipped on by the lash of alternate hope and fear, the earth sprang to its work of preparation. Chapter IV. It is not necessary for me to describe the manner in which Mr. Edison performed his tremendous task. He was as good as his word, and within six months from the first stroke of the hammer, a hundred electrical ships, each provided with a full battery of disintegrators, were floating in the air above the harbor and the partially rebuilt city of New York. It was a wonderful scene. The polished sides of the huge floating cars sparkled in the sunlight, and, as they slowly rose and fell, and swung this way and that, upon the tides of the air, as if held by invisible cables, the brilliant pennons streaming from their peaks waved up and down like the wings of an assemblage of gigantic humming birds. Not knowing whether the atmosphere of Mars would prove suitable to be breathed by inhabitants of the earth, Mr. Edison had made provision, by means of an abundance of glass-protected openings, to permit the inmates of the electrical ships to survey their surroundings without quitting the interior. It was possible by properly selecting the rate of undulation, to pass the vibratory impulse from the disintegrators through the glass windows of a car, without damage to the glass itself. The windows were so arranged that the disintegrators could sweep around the car on all sides, and could also be directed above or below, as necessity might dictate. To overcome the destructive forces employed by the Martians no satisfactory plan had yet been devised, because there was no means to experiment with them. The production of those forces was still the secret of our enemies. But Mr. Edison had no doubt that if we could not resist their effects we might at least be able to avoid them by the rapidity of our motions. As he pointed out, the war machines which the Martians had employed in their invasion of the earth, were really very awkward and unmanageable affairs. Mr. Edison's electrical ships, on the other hand, were marvels of speed and of manageability. They could dart about, turn, reverse their course, rise, fall, with the quickness and ease of a fish in the water. Mr. Edison calculated that even if mysterious bolts should fall upon our ships we could diminish their power to cause injury by our rapid evolutions. We might be deceived in our expectations, and might have overestimated our powers, but at any rate we must take our chances and try. Watching the Martians. A multitude, exceeding even that which had assembled during the great congress at Washington, now thronged New York and its neighborhood to witness the mustering and the departure of the ships bound for Mars. Nothing further had been heard of the mysterious phenomenon reported from the observatories six months before, and which at the time was believed to indicate the departure of another expedition from Mars for the invasion of the earth. If the Martians had set out to attack us they had evidently gone astray; or, perhaps, it was some other world that they were aiming at this time. The expedition had, of course, profoundly stirred the interest of the scientific world, and representatives of every branch of science, from all the civilized nations, urged their claims to places in the ships. Mr. Edison was compelled, from lack of room, to refuse transportation to more than one in a thousand of those who now, on the plea that they might be able to bring back something of advantage to science, wished to embark for Mars. As the Great Napoleon Did. On the model of the celebrated corps of literary and scientific men which Napoleon carried with him in his invasion of Egypt, Mr. Edison selected a company of the foremost astronomers, archaeologists, anthropologists, botanists, bacteriologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, mechanicians, meteorologists and experts in mining, metallurgy and every other branch of practical science, as well as artists and photographers. It was but reasonable to believe that in another world, and a world so much older than the earth as Mars was, these men would be able to gather materials in comparison with which the discoveries made among the ruins of ancient empires in Egypt and Babylonia would be insignificant indeed. To Conquer Another World. It was a wonderful undertaking and a strange spectacle. There was a feeling of uncertainty which awed the vast multitude whose eyes were upturned to the ships. The expedition was not large, considering the gigantic character of the undertaking. Each of the electrical ships carried about twenty men, together with an abundant supply of compressed provisions, compressed air, scientific apparatus and so on. In all, there were about 2,000 men, who were going to conquer, if they could, another world! But though few in numbers, they represented the flower of the earth, the culmination of the genius of the planet. The greatest leaders in science, both theoretical and practical, were there. It was the evolution of the earth against the evolution of Mars. It was a planet in the heyday of its strength matched against an aged and decrepit world which, nevertheless, in consequence of its long ages of existence, had acquired an experience which made it a most dangerous foe. On both sides there was desperation. The earth was desperate because it foresaw destruction unless it could first destroy its enemy. Mars was desperate because nature was gradually depriving it of the means of supporting life, and its teeming population was compelled to swarm like the inmates of an overcrowded hive of bees, and find new homes elsewhere. In this respect the situation on Mars, as we were well aware, resembled what had already been known upon the earth, where the older nations overflowing with population had sought new lands in which to settle, and for that purpose had driven out the native inhabitants, whenever those natives had proven unable to resist the invasion. No man could foresee the issue of what we were about to undertake, but the tremendous powers which the disintegrators had exhibited and the marvellous efficiency of the electrical ships bred almost universal confidence that we should be successful. Master Minds of the World. The car in which Mr. Edison travelled was, of course, the flagship of the squadron, and I had the good fortune to be included among its inmates. Here, besides several leading men of science from our own country, were Lord Kelvin, Lord Rayleigh, Professor Roentgen, Dr. Moissan--the man who first made artificial diamonds--and several others whose fame had encircled the world. Each of these men cherished hopes of wonderful discoveries, along his line of investigation, to be made in Mars. An elaborate system of signals had, of course, to be devised for the control of the squadron. These signals consisted of brilliant electric lights displayed at night and so controlled that by their means long sentences and directions could be easily and quickly transmitted. A Novel Signal System. The day signals consisted partly of brightly colored pennons and flags, which were to serve only when, shadowed by clouds or other obstructions, the full sunlight should not fall upon the ships. This could naturally only occur near the surface of the earth or of another planet. Once out of the shadow of the earth we should have no more clouds and no more night until we arrived at Mars. In open space the sun would be continually shining. It would be perpetual day for us, except as, by artificial means, we furnished ourselves with darkness for the purpose of promoting sleep. In this region of perpetual day, then, the signals were also to be transmitted by flashes of light from mirrors reflecting the rays of the sun. Perpetual Night! Yet this perpetual day would be also, in one sense, a perpetual night. There would be no more blue sky for us, because without an atmosphere the sunlight could not be diffused. Objects would be illuminated only on the side toward the sun. Anything that screened off the direct rays of sunlight would produce absolute darkness behind it. There would be no graduation of shadow. The sky would be as black as ink on all sides. While it was the intention to remain as much as possible within the cars, yet since it was probable that necessity would arise for occasionally quitting the interior of the electrical ships, Mr. Edison had provided for this emergency by inventing an air-tight dress constructed somewhat after the manner of a diver's suit, but of much lighter material. Each ship was provided with several of these suits, by wearing which one could venture outside the car even when it was beyond the atmosphere of the earth. Terrific Cold Anticipated. Provision had been made to meet the terrific cold which we knew would be encountered the moment we had passed beyond the atmosphere--that awful absolute zero which men had measured by anticipation, but never yet experienced--by a simple system of producing within the air-tight suits a temperature sufficiently elevated to counteract the effects of the frigidity without. By means of long, flexible tubes, air could be continually supplied to the wearers of the suits, and by an ingenious contrivance a store of compressed air sufficient to last for several hours was provided for each suit, so that in case of necessity the wearer could throw off the tubes connecting him with the air tanks in the car. Another object which had been kept in view in the preparation of these suits was the possible exploration of an airless planet, such as the moon. The necessity of some contrivance by means of which we should be enabled to converse with one another when on the outside of the cars in open space, or when in an airless world, like the moon, where there would be no medium by which the waves of sound could be conveyed as they are in the atmosphere of the earth, had been foreseen by our great inventor, and he had not found it difficult to contrive suitable devices for meeting the emergency. Inside the headpiece of each of the electrical suits was the mouthpiece of a telephone. This was connected with a wire which, when not in use, could be conveniently coiled upon the arm of the wearer. Near the ears, similarly connected with wires, were telephonic receivers. An Aerial Telegraph. When two persons wearing the air-tight dresses wished to converse with one another it was only necessary for them to connect themselves by the wires, and conversation could then be easily carried on. Careful calculations of the precise distance of Mars from the earth at the time when the expedition was to start had been made by a large number of experts in mathematical astronomy. But it was not Mr. Edison's intention to go direct to Mars. With the exception of the first electrical ship, which he had completed, none had yet been tried in a long voyage. It was desirable that the qualities of each of the ships should first be carefully tested, and for this reason the leader of the expedition determined that the moon should be the first port of space at which the squadron would call. It chanced that the moon was so situated at this time as to be nearly in a line between the earth and Mars, which latter was in opposition to the sun, and consequently as favorably situated as possible for the purposes of the voyage. What would be, then, for 99 out of the 100 ships of the squadron, a trial trip would at the same time be a step of a quarter of a million of miles gained in the direction of our journey, and so no time would be wasted. The departure from the earth was arranged to occur precisely at midnight. The moon near the full was hanging high over head, and a marvellous spectacle was presented to the eyes of those below as the great squadron of floating ships, with their signal lights ablaze, cast loose and began slowly to move away on their adventurous and unprecedented expedition into the great unknown. A tremendous cheer, billowing up from the throats of millions of excited men and women, seemed to rend the curtain of the night, and made the airships tremble with the atmospheric vibrations that were set in motion. Magnificent Fireworks. Instantly magnificent fireworks were displayed in honor of our departure. Rockets by hundreds of thousands shot heaven-ward, and then burst in constellations of fiery drops. The sudden illumination thus produced, overspreading hundreds of square miles of the surface of the earth with a light almost like that of day, must certainly have been visible to the inhabitants of Mars, if they were watching us at the time. They might, or might not, correctly interpret its significance; but, at any rate, we did not care. We were off, and were confident that we could meet our enemy on his own ground before he could attack us again. And the Earth Was Like a Globe. And now, as we slowly rose higher, a marvellous scene was disclosed. At first the earth beneath us, buried as it was in night, resembled the hollow of a vast cup of ebony blackness, in the centre of which, like the molten lava run together at the bottom of a volcanic crater, shone the light of the illuminations around New York. But when we got beyond the atmosphere, and the earth still continued to recede below us, its aspect changed. The cup-shaped appearance was gone, and it began to round out beneath our eyes in the form of a vast globe--an enormous ball mysteriously suspended under us, glimmering over most of its surface, with the faint illumination of the moon, and showing toward its eastern edge the oncoming light of the rising sun. When we were still further away, having slightly varied our course so that the sun was once more entirely hidden behind the centre of the earth, we saw its atmosphere completely illuminated, all around it, with prismatic lights, like a gigantic rainbow in the form of a ring. Another shift in our course rapidly carried us out of the shadow of the earth and into the all pervading sunshine. Then the great planet beneath us hung unspeakable in its beauty. The outlines of several of the continents were clearly discernible on its surface, streaked and spotted with delicate shades of varying color, and the sunlight flashed and glowed in long lanes across the convex surface of the oceans. Parallel with the Equator and along the regions of the ever blowing trade winds, were vast belts of clouds, gorgeous with crimson and purple as the sunlight fell upon them. Immense expanses of snow and ice lay like a glittering garment upon both land and sea around the North Pole. Farewell To This Terrestrial Sphere. As we gazed upon this magnificent spectacle, our hearts bounded within us. This was our earth--this was the planet we were going to defend--our home in the trackless wilderness of space. And it seemed to us indeed a home for which we might gladly expend our last breath. A new determination to conquer or die sprung up in our hearts, and I saw Lord Kelvin, after gazing at the beauteous scene which the earth presented through his eyeglass, turn about and peer in the direction in which we knew that Mars lay, with a sudden frown that caused the glass to lose its grip and fall dangling from its string upon his breast. Even Mr. Edison seemed moved. "I am glad I thought of the disintegrator," he said. "I shouldn't like to see that world down there laid waste again." "And it won't be," said Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, gripping the handle of an electric machine, "not if we can help it." Chapter V. To prevent accidents, it had been arranged that the ships should keep a considerable distance apart. Some of them gradually drifted away, until, on account of the neutral tint of their sides, they were swallowed up in the abyss of space. Still it was possible to know where every member of the squadron was through the constant interchange of signals. These, as I have explained, were effected by means of mirrors flashing back the light of the sun. But, although it was now unceasing day for us, yet, there being no atmosphere to diffuse the sun's light, the stars were visible to us just as at night upon the earth, and they shone with extraordinary splendor against the intense black background of the firmament. The lights of some of the more distant ships of our squadron were not brighter than the stars in whose neighborhood they seemed to be. In some cases it was only possible to distinguish between the light of a ship and that of a star by the fact that the former was continually flashing while the star was steady in its radiance. An Uncanny Effect. The most uncanny effect was produced by the absence of atmosphere around us. Inside the car, where there was air, the sunlight, streaming through one or more of the windows, was diffused and produced ordinary daylight. But when we ventured outside we could only see things by halves. The side of the car that the sun's rays touched was visible, the other side was invisible, the light from the stars not making it bright enough to affect the eye in contrast with the sun-illumined half. As I held up my arm before my eyes, half of it seemed to be shaved off lengthwise; a companion on the deck of the ship looked like half a man. So the other electrical ships near us appeared as half ships, only the illuminated sides being visible. We had now got so far away that the earth had taken on the appearance of a heavenly body like the moon. Its colors had become all blended into a golden-reddish hue, which overspread nearly its entire surface, except at the poles, where there were broad patches of white. It was marvellous to look at this huge orb behind us, while far beyond it shone the blazing sun like an enormous star in the blackest of nights. In the opposite direction appeared the silver orb of the moon, and scattered all around were millions of brilliant stars, amid which, like fireflies, flashed and sparkled the signal lights of the squadron. Danger Manifests Itself. A danger that might easily have been anticipated, that perhaps had been anticipated, but against which it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to provide, presently manifested itself. Looking out of a window toward the right, I suddenly noticed the lights of a distant ship darting about in a curious curve. Instantly afterward another member of the squadron, nearer by, behaved in the same inexplicable manner. Then two or three of the floating cars seemed to be violently drawn from their courses and hurried rapidly in the direction of the flagship. Immediately I perceived a small object, luridly flaming, which seemed to move with immense speed in our direction. The truth instantly flashed upon my mind, and I shouted to the other occupants of the car: Struck By A Meteor! "A meteor!" And such indeed it was. We had met this mysterious wanderer in space at a moment when we were moving in a direction at right angles to the path it was pursuing around the sun. Small as it was, and its diameter probably did not exceed a single foot, it was yet an independent little world, and as such a member of the solar system. Its distance from the sun being so near that of the earth, I knew that its velocity, assuming it to be travelling in a nearly circular orbit, must be about eighteen miles in a second. With this velocity, then, it plunged like a projectile shot by some mysterious enemy in space directly through our squadron. It had come and was gone before one could utter a sentence of three words. Its appearance, and the effect it had produced upon the ships in whose neighborhood it passed, indicated that it bore an intense and tremendous charge of electricity. How it had become thus charged I cannot pretend to say. I simply record the fact. And this charge, it was evident, was opposite in polarity to that which the ships of the squadron bore. It therefore exerted an attractive influence upon them and thus drew them after it. I had just time to think how lucky it was that the meteor did not strike any of us, when, glancing at a ship just ahead, I perceived that an accident had occurred. The ship swayed violently from its course, dazzling flashes played around it, and two or three of the men forming its crew appeared for an instant on its exterior, wildly gesticulating, but almost instantly falling prone. It was evident at a glance that the car had been struck by the meteor. How serious the damage might be we could not instantly determine. The course of our ship was immediately altered, the electric polarity was changed, and we rapidly approached the disabled car. The men who had fallen lay upon its surface. One of the heavy circular glasses covering a window had been smashed to atoms. Through this the meteor had passed, killing two or three men who stood in its course. Then it had crashed through the opposite side of the car, and, passing on, disappeared into space. The store of air contained in the car had immediately rushed out through the openings, and when two or three of us, having donned our air-tight suits as quickly as possible, entered the wrecked car we found all its inmates stretched upon the floor in a condition of asphyxiation. They, as well as those who lay upon the exterior, were immediately removed to the flagship, restoratives were applied, and, fortunately, our aid had come so promptly that the lives of all of them were saved. But life had fled from the mangled bodies of those who had stood directly in the path of the fearful projectile. This strange accident had been witnessed by several of the members of the fleet, and they quickly drew together, in order to inquire for the particulars. As the flagship was now overcrowded by the addition of so many men to its crew, Mr. Edison had them distributed among the other cars. Fortunately it happened that the disintegrators contained in the wrecked car were not injured. Mr. Edison thought that it would be possible to repair the car itself, and for that purpose he had it attached to the flagship in order that it might be carried on as far as the moon. The bodies of the dead were transported with it, as it was determined, instead of committing them to the fearful deep of space, where they would have wandered forever, or else have fallen like meteors upon the earth, to give them interment in the lunar soil. Nearing the Moon. As we now rapidly approached the moon the change which the appearance of its surface underwent was no less wonderful than that which the surface of the earth had presented in the reverse order while we were receding from it. From a pale silver orb, shining with comparative faintness among the stars, it slowly assumed the appearance of a vast mountainous desert. As we drew nearer its colors became more pronounced; the great flat regions appeared darker; the mountain peaks shone more brilliantly. The huge chasms seemed bottomless and blacker than midnight. Gradually separate mountains appeared. What seemed like expanses of snow and immense glaciers streaming down their sides sparkled with great brilliancy in the perpendicular rays of the sun. Our motion had now assumed the aspect of falling. We seemed to be dropping from an immeasurable height and with an inconceivable velocity, straight down upon those giant peaks. The Mountains of Luna. Here and there curious lights glowed upon the mysterious surface of the moon. Where the edge of the moon cut the sky behind it, it was broken and jagged with mountain masses. Vast crater rings overspread its surface, and in some of these I imagined I could perceive a lurid illumination coming out of their deepest cavities, and the curling of mephitic vapors around their terrible jaws. We were approaching that part of the moon which is known to astronomers as the Bay of Rainbows. Here a huge semi-circular region, as smooth almost as the surface of a prairie, lay beneath our eyes, stretching southward into a vast ocean-like expanse, while on the north it was enclosed by an enormous range of mountain cliffs, rising perpendicularly to a height of many thousands of feet, and rent and gashed in every direction by forces which seemed at some remote period to have labored at tearing this little world in pieces. A Dead And Mangled World. The Moon's Strange and Ghastly Surface in Full View of Man. It was a fearful spectacle; a dead and mangled world, too dreadful to look upon. The idea of the death of the moon was, of course, not a new one to many of us. We had long been aware that the earth's satellite was a body which had passed beyond the stage of life, if indeed it had ever been a life supporting globe; but none of us were prepared for the terrible spectacle which now smote our eyes. At each end of the semi-circular ridge that encloses the Bay of Rainbows there is a lofty promontory. That at the north-western extremity had long been known to astronomers under the name of Cape Laplace. The other promontory, at the southeastern termination, is called Cape Heraclides. It was toward the latter that we were approaching, and by interchange of signals all the members of the squadron had been informed that Cape Heraclides was to be our rendezvous upon the moon. I may say that I had been somewhat familiar with the scenery of this part of the lunar world, for I had often studied it from the earth with a telescope, and I had thought that if there was any part of the moon where one might, with fair expectation of success, look for inhabitants, or if not for inhabitants, at least for relics of life no longer existent there, this would surely be the place. It was, therefore, with no small degree of curiosity, notwithstanding the unexpectedly frightful and repulsive appearance that the surface of the moon presented, that I now saw myself rapidly approaching the region concerning whose secrets my imagination had so often busied itself. When Mr. Edison and I had paid our previous visit to the moon on the first experimental trip of the electrical ship, we had landed at a point on its surface remote from this, and, as I have before explained, we then made no effort to investigate its secrets. But now it was to be different, and we were at length to see something of the wonders of the moon. Like a Human Face. I had often on the earth drawn a smile from my friends by showing them Cape Heraclides with a telescope, and calling their attention to the fact that the outline of the peak terminating the cape was such as to present a remarkable resemblance to a human face, unmistakably a feminine countenance, seen in profile, and possessing no small degree of beauty. To my astonishment, this curious human semblance still remained when we had approached so close to the moon that the mountains forming the cape filled nearly the whole field of view of the window from which I was watching it. The resemblance, indeed, was most startling. The Resemblance Disappears. "Can this indeed be Diana herself?" I said half aloud, but instantly afterward I was laughing at my fancy, for Mr. Edison had overheard me and exclaimed, "Where is she?" "Who?" "Diana." "Why, there," I said, pointing to the moon. But lo! the appearance was gone even while I spoke. A swift change had taken place in the line of sight by which we were viewing it, and the likeness had disappeared in consequence. A few moments later my astonishment was revived, but the cause this time was a very different one. We had been dropping rapidly toward the mountains, and the electrician in charge of the car was swiftly and constantly changing his potential, and, like a pilot who feels his way into an unknown harbor, endeavoring to approach the moon in such a manner that no hidden peril should surprise us. As we thus approached I suddenly perceived, crowning the very apex of the lofty peak near the termination of the cape, the ruins of what appeared to be an ancient watch tower. It was evidently composed of Cyclopean blocks larger than any that I had ever seen even among the ruins of Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor. The Moon Was Inhabited. Here, then, was visible proof that the moon had been inhabited, although probably it was not inhabited now. I cannot describe the exultant feeling which took possession of me at this discovery. It settled so much that learned men had been disputing about for centuries. "What will they say," I exclaimed, "when I show them a photograph of that?" Below the peak, stretching far to right and left, lay a barren beach which had evidently once been washed by sea waves, because it was marked by long curved ridges such as the advancing and retiring tide leaves upon the shore of the ocean. This beach sloped rapidly outward and downward toward a profound abyss, which had once, evidently, been the bed of a sea, but which now appeared to us simply as the empty, yawning shell of an ocean that had long vanished. It was with no small difficulty, and only after the expenditure of considerable time, that all the floating ships of the squadron were gradually brought to rest on this lone mountain top of the moon. In accordance with my request, Mr. Edison had the flagship moored in the interior of the great ruined watch tower that I have described. The other ships rested upon the slope of the mountain around us. Although time pressed, for we knew that the safety of the earth depended upon our promptness in attacking Mars, yet it was determined to remain here at least two or three days in order that the wrecked car might be repaired. It was found also that the passage of the highly electrified meteor had disarranged the electrical machinery in some of the other cars, so that there were many repairs to be made besides those needed to restore the wreck. Burying the Dead. Moreover, we must bury our unfortunate companions who had been killed by the meteor. This, in fact, was the first work that we performed. Strange was the sight, and stranger our feelings, as here on the surface of a world distant from the earth, and on soil which had never before been pressed by the foot of man, we performed that last ceremony of respect which mortals pay to mortality. In the ancient beach at the foot of the peak we made a deep opening, and there covered forever the faces of our friends, leaving them to sleep among the ruins of empires, and among the graves of races which had vanished probably ages before Adam and Eve appeared in Paradise. While the repairs were being made several scientific expeditions were sent out in various directions across the moon. One went westward to investigate the great ring plain of Plato, and the lunar Alps. Another crossed the ancient Sea of Showers toward the lunar Apennines. One started to explore the immense crater of Copernicus, which, yawning fifty miles across, presents a wonderful appearance even from the distance of the earth. The ship in which I, myself, had the good fortune to embark, was bound for the mysterious lunar mountain Aristarchus. Before these expeditions started, a careful exploration had been made in the neighborhood of Cape Heraclides. But, except that the broken walls of the watch tower on the peak, composed of blocks of enormous size, had evidently been the work of creatures endowed with human intelligence, no remains were found indicating the former presence of inhabitants upon this part of the moon. A Gigantic Human Footprint. But along the shore of the old sea, just where the so-called Bay of Rainbows separates itself from the abyss of the Sea of Showers, there were found some stratified rocks in which the fascinated eyes of the explorer beheld the clear imprint of a gigantic human foot, measuring five feet in length from toe to heel. Detailing the Marvellous Adventures of the Earth's Warriors in Unknown Worlds. The most minute search failed to reveal another trace of the presence of the ancient giant, who had left the impress of his foot in the wet sands of the beach here so many millions of years ago that even the imagination of the geologists shrank from the task of attempting to fix the precise period. The Great Footprint. Around this gigantic footprint gathered most of the scientific members of the expedition, wearing their oddly shaped air-tight suits, connected with telephonic wires, and the spectacle, but for the impressiveness of the discovery, would have been laughable in the extreme. Bending over the mark in the rock, nodding their heads together, pointing with their awkwardly accoutred arms, they looked like an assemblage of antediluvian monsters collected around their prey. Their disappointment over the fact that no other marks of anything resembling human habitation could be discovered was very great. Still this footprint in itself was quite sufficient, as they all declared, to settle the question of the former inhabitation of the moon, and it would serve for the production of many a learned volume after their return to the earth, even if no further discoveries should be made in other parts of the lunar world. Expeditions Over the Moon. It was the hope of making such other discoveries that led to the dispatch of the other various expeditions which I have already named. I had chosen to accompany the car that was going to Aristarchus, because, as every one who had viewed the moon from the earth was aware, there was something very mysterious about that mountain. I knew that it was a crater nearly thirty miles in diameter and very deep, although its floor was plainly visible. The Glowing Mountains. What rendered it remarkable was the fact that the floor and the walls of the crater, particularly on the inner side, glowed with a marvellous brightness which rendered them almost blinding when viewed with a powerful telescope. So bright were they, indeed, that the eye was unable to see many of the details which the telescope would have made visible but for the flood of light which poured from the mountains. Sir William Herschel had been so completely misled by this appearance that he supposed he was watching a lunar volcano in eruption. It had always been a difficult question what caused the extraordinary luminosity of Aristarchus. No end of hypotheses had been invented to account for it. Now I was to assist in settling these questions forever. From Cape Heraclides to Aristarchus the distance in an air line was something over 300 miles. Our course lay across the north-eastern part of the Sea of Showers, with enormous cliffs, mountain masses and peaks shining on the right, while in the other direction the view was bounded by the distant range of the lunar Apennines, some of whose towering peaks, when viewed from our immense elevation, appeared as sharp as the Swiss Matterhorn. When we had arrived within about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, fairly blazing in the sunshine. A Gigantic String Of Diamonds. It seemed as if a gigantic string of diamonds, every one as great as a mountain peak, had been cast down upon the barren surface of the moon and left to waste their brilliance upon the desert air of this abandoned world. As we rapidly approached, the dazzling splendor of the mountain became almost unbearable to our eyes, and we were compelled to resort to the device, practiced by all climbers of lofty mountains, where the glare of sunlight upon snow surfaces is liable to cause temporary blindness, of protecting our eyes with neutral-tinted glasses. Professor Moissan, the great French chemist and maker of artificial diamonds, fairly danced with delight. "Voila! Voila! Voila!" was all that he could say. A Mountain of Crystals. When we were comparatively near, the mountain no longer seemed to glow with a uniform radiance, evenly distributed over its entire surface, but now innumerable points of light, all as bright as so many little suns, blazed away at us. It was evident that we had before us a mountain composed of, or at least covered with, crystals. Without stopping to alight on the outer slopes of the great ring-shaped range of peaks which composed Aristarchus, we sailed over their rim and looked down into the interior. Here the splendor of the crystals was greater than on the outer slopes, and the broad floor of the crater, thousands of feet beneath us, shone and sparkled with overwhelming radiance, as if it were an immense bin of diamonds, while a peak in the centre flamed like a stupendous tiara incrusted with selected gems. Eager to see what these crystals were, the car was now allowed rapidly to drop into the interior of the crater. With great caution we brought it to rest upon the blazing ground, for the sharp edges of the crystals would certainly have torn the metallic sides of the car if it had come into violent contact with them. Donning our air-tight suits and stepping carefully out upon this wonderful footing we attempted to detach some of the crystals. Many of them were firmly fastened, but a few--some of astonishing size--were readily loosened. A Wealth of Gems. A moment's inspection showed that we had stumbled upon the most marvellous work of the forces of crystallization that human eyes had ever rested upon. Some time in the past history of the moon there had been an enormous outflow of molten material from the crater. This had overspread the walls and partially filled up the interior, and later its surface had flowered into gems, as thick as blossoms in a bed of pansies. The whole mass flashed prismatic rays of indescribable beauty and intensity. We gazed at first speechless with amazement. "It cannot be, surely it cannot be," said Professor Moissan at length. "But it is," said another member of the party. "Are these diamonds?" asked a third. "I cannot yet tell," replied the Professor. "They have the brilliancy of diamonds, but they may be something else." "Moon jewels," suggested a third. "And worth untold millions, whatever they are," remarked another. Jewels from the Moon. These magnificent crystals, some of which appeared to be almost flawless, varied in size from the dimensions of a hazelnut to geometrical solids several inches in diameter. We carefully selected as many as it was convenient to carry and placed them in the car for future examination. We had solved another long standing lunar problem and had, perhaps, opened up an inexhaustible mine of wealth which might eventually go far toward reimbursing the earth for the damage which it had suffered from the invasion of the Martians. On returning to Cape Heraclides we found that the other expeditions had arrived at the rendezvous ahead of us. Their members had wonderful stories to tell of what they had seen, but nothing caused quite so much astonishment as that which we had to tell and to show. The party which had gone to visit Plato and the lunar Alps brought back, however, information which, in a scientific sense, was no less interesting than what we had been able to gather. They had found within this curious ring of Plato, which is a circle of mountains sixty miles in diameter, enclosing a level plain remarkably smooth over most of its surface, unmistakable evidences of former inhabitation. A gigantic city had evidently at one time existed near the centre of this great plain. The outlines of its walls and the foundation marks of some of its immense buildings were plainly made out, and elaborate plans of this vanished capital of the moon were prepared by several members of the party. More Evidences of Habitation. One of them was fortunate enough to discover an even more precious relic of the ancient lunarians. It was a piece of petrified skullbone, representing but a small portion of the head to which it had belonged, but yet sufficient to enable the anthropologists, who immediately fell to examining it, to draw ideal representations of the head as it must have been in life--the head of a giant of enormous size, which, if it had possessed a highly organized brain, of proportionate magnitude, must have given to its possessor intellectual powers immensely greater than any of the descendants of Adam have ever been endowed with. Giants in Size. Indeed, one of the professors was certain that some little concretions found on the interior of the piece of skull were petrified portions of the brain matter itself, and he set to work with the microscope to examine its organic quality. In the mean time, the repairs to the electrical ships had been completed, and, although these discoveries upon the moon had created a most profound sensation among the members of the expedition, and aroused an almost irresistible desire to continue the explorations thus happily begun, yet everybody knew that these things were aside from the main purpose in view, and that we should be false to our duty in wasting a moment more upon the moon than was absolutely necessary to put the ships in proper condition to proceed on their warlike voyage. Departing from the Moon. Everything being prepared then, we left the moon with great regret, just forty-eight hours after we had landed upon its surface, carrying with us a determination to revisit it and to learn more of its wonderful secrets in case we should survive the dangers which we were now going to face. Chapter VI. A day or two after leaving the moon we had another adventure with a wandering inhabitant of space which brought us into far greater peril than had our encounter with the meteor. The airships had been partitioned off so that a portion of the interior could be darkened in order to serve as a sleeping chamber, wherein, according to the regulations prescribed by the commander of the squadron each member of the expedition in his turn passed eight out of every twenty-four hours--sleeping if he could, if not, meditating, in a more or less dazed way, upon the wonderful things that he was seeing and doing--things far more incredible than the creations of a dream. One morning, if I may call by the name morning the time of my periodical emergence from the darkened chamber, glancing from one of the windows, I was startled to see in the black sky a brilliant comet. The Adventure With The Comet. A Thrilling Story of an Encounter that Nearly Ended the Great Expedition. No periodical comet, as I knew, was at this time approaching the neighborhood of the sun, and no stranger of that kind had been detected from the observatories making its way sunward before we left the earth. Here, however, was unmistakably a comet rushing toward the sun, flinging out a great gleaming tail behind it and so close to us that I wondered to see it remaining almost motionless in the sky. This phenomenon was soon explained to me, and the explanation was of a most disquieting character. The stranger had already been perceived, not only from the flagship, but from the other members of the squadron, and, as I now learned, efforts had been made to get out of the neighborhood, but for some reason the electrical apparatus did not work perfectly--some mysterious disturbing force acting upon it--and so it had been found impossible to avoid an encounter with the comet, not an actual coming into contact with it, but a falling into the sphere of its influence. In the Wake of the Comet. In fact, I was informed that for several hours the squadron had been dragging along in the wake of a comet, very much as boats are sometimes towed off by a wounded whale. Every effort had been made to so adjust the electric charge upon the ships that they would be repelled from the cometic mass, but, owing apparently to eccentric changes continually going on in the electric charge affecting the clashing mass of meteoric bodies which constituted the head of the comet, we found it impossible to escape from its influence. At one instant the ships would be repelled; immediately afterward they would be attracted again, and thus they were dragged hither and thither, but never able to break from the invisible leash which the comet had cast upon them. The latter was moving with enormous velocity toward the sun, and, consequently, we were being carried back again, away from the object of our expedition, with a fair prospect of being dissipated in blazing vapors when the comet had dragged us, unwilling prisoners, into the immediate neighborhood of the solar furnace. Even the most cool-headed lost his self-control in this terrible emergency. Every kind of device that experience or the imagination could suggest was tried, but nothing would do. Still on we rushed with the electrified atoms composing the tail of the comet sweeping to and fro over the members of the squadron, as they shifted their position, like the plume of smoke from a gigantic steamer, drifting over the sea birds that follow in its course. Is This the End? Was this to end it all, then? Was this the fate that Providence had in store for us? Were the hopes of the earth thus to perish? Was the expedition to be wrecked and its fate to remain forever unknown to the planet from which it had set forth? And was our beloved globe, which had seemed so fair to us when we last looked upon it near by, and in whose defence we had resolved to spend our last breath, to be left helpless and at the mercy of its implacable foe in the sky? At length we gave ourselves up for lost. There seemed to be no possible way to free ourselves from the baleful grip of this terrible and unlooked-for enemy. Giving Up All Hope. As the comet approached the sun its electric energy rapidly increased, and watching it with telescopes, for we could not withdraw our fascinated eyes from it, we could clearly behold the fearful things that went on in its nucleus. This consisted of an immense number of separate meteors of no very great size individually, but which were in constant motion among one another, darting to and fro, clashing and smashing together, while fountains of blazing metallic particles and hot mineral vapors poured out in every direction. A Flying Hell. As I watched it, unable to withdraw my eyes, I saw imaginary forms revealing themselves amid the flaming meteors. They seemed like creatures in agony, tossing their arms, bewailing in their attitudes the awful fate that had overtaken them, and fairly chilling my blood with the pantomime of torture which they exhibited. I thought of an old superstition which I had often heard about the earth, and exclaimed: "Yes, surely, this is a flying hell!" As the electric activity of the comet increased, its continued changes of potential and polarity became more frequent, and the electrical ships darted about with even greater confusion than before. Occasionally one of them, seized with a sudden impulse, would spring forward toward the nucleus of the comet with a sudden access of velocity that would fling every one of its crew from his feet, and all would lie sprawling on the floor of the car while it rushed, as it seemed, to inevitable and instant destruction. Saved on Ruin's Brink. Then, either through the frantic efforts of the electrician struggling with the controller or through another change in the polarity of the comet, the ship would be saved on the very brink of ruin and stagger away out of immediate danger. Thus the captured squadron was swept, swaying and darting hither and thither, but never able to get sufficiently far from the comet to break the bond of its fatal attraction. The Earth Again! So great was our excitement and so complete our absorption in the fearful peril that we had not noticed the precise direction in which the comet was carrying us. It was enough to know that the goal of the journey was the furnace of the sun. But presently someone in the flagship recalled us to a more accurate sense of our situation in space by exclaiming: "Why, there is the earth!" Thrilling Adventures Crowd Each Other In the Great War Upon Mars. And there, indeed, it was, its great globe rolling under our eyes, with the contrasted colors of the continents and clouds and the watery gleam of the ocean spread beneath us. "We are going to strike it!" exclaimed somebody. "The comet is going to dash into the earth." Such a collision at first seemed inevitable, but presently it was noticed that the direction of the comet's motion was such that while it might graze the earth it would not actually strike it. And so, like a swarm of giant insects circling about an electric light from whose magic influence they cannot escape, our ships went on, to be whipped against the earth in passing and then to continue their swift journey to destruction. Unexpected Aid. "Thank God, this saves us," suddenly cried Mr. Edison. "What--what?" "Why, the earth, of course. Do you not see that as the comet sweeps close to the great planet the superior attraction of the latter will snatch us from its grasp, and that thus we shall be able to escape?" And it was indeed as Mr. Edison had predicted. In a blaze of falling meteors the comet swept the outer limits of the earth's atmosphere and passed on, while the swaying ships, having been instructed by signals what to do, desperately applied their electrical machinery to reverse the attraction and threw themselves into the arms of their mother earth. Over the Atlantic. In another instant we were all free, settling down through the quiet atmosphere with the Atlantic Ocean sparkling in the morning sun far below. We looked at one another in amazement. So this was the end of our voyage! This was the completion of our warlike enterprise. We had started out to conquer a world, and we had come back ignominiously dragged in the train of a comet. The earth which we were going to defend and protect had herself turned protector, and reaching out her strong arm had snatched her foolish children from the destruction which they had invited. It would be impossible to describe the chagrin of every member of the expedition. A Feeling of Shame. The electric ships rapidly assembled and hovered high in the air, while their commanders consulted about what should be done. A universal feeling of shame almost drove them to a decision not to land upon the surface of the planet, and if possible not to let its inhabitants know what had occurred. But it was too late for that. Looking carefully beneath us, we saw that fate had brought us back to our very starting point, and signals displayed in the neighborhood of New York indicated that we had already been recognized. There was nothing for us then but to drop down and explain the situation. I shall not delay my narrative by undertaking to describe the astonishment and the disappointment of the inhabitants of the earth when, within a fortnight from our departure, they saw us back again, with no laurels of victory crowning our brows. At first they had hoped that we were returning in triumph, and we were overwhelmed with questions the moment we had dropped within speaking distance. "Have you whipped them?" "How many are lost?" "Is there any more danger?" "Faix, have ye got one of thim men from Mars?" But their rejoicings and their facetiousness were turned into wailing when the truth was imparted. A Short Stay on the Earth. We made a short story of it, for we had not the heart to go into details. We told of our unfortunate comrades whom we had buried on the moon, and there was one gleam of satisfaction when we exhibited the wonderful crystals we had collected in the crater of Aristarchus. Mr. Edison determined to stop only long enough to test the electrical machinery of the cars, which had been more or less seriously deranged during our wild chase after the comet, and then to start straight back for Mars--this time on a through trip. Mysterious Lights on Mars. The astronomers, who had been watching Mars, since our departure, with their telescopes, reported that mysterious lights continued to be visible, but that nothing indicating the starting of another expedition for the earth had been seen. Within twenty-four hours we were ready for our second start. The moon was now no longer in a position to help us on our way. It had moved out of the line between Mars and the earth. High above us, in the centre of the heavens, glowed the red planet which was the goal of our journey. The needed computations of velocity and direction of flight having been repeated, and the ships being all in readiness, we started direct for Mars. Greater Preparations Made. An enormous charge of electricity was imparted to each member of the squadron, in order that as soon as we had reached the upper limits of the atmosphere, where the ships could move swiftly, without danger of being consumed by the heat developed by the friction of their passage through the air, a very great initial velocity could be imparted. Once started off by this tremendous electrical kick, and with no atmosphere to resist our motion, we should be able to retain the same velocity, barring incidental encounters, until we arrived near the surface of Mars. When we were free of the atmosphere, and the ships were moving away from the earth, with the highest velocity which we were able to impart to them, observations on the stars were made in order to determine the rate of our speed. Ten Miles A Second! This was found to be ten miles in a second, or 864,000 miles in a day, a very much greater speed than that with which we had travelled on starting to touch at the moon. Supposing this velocity to remain uniform, and, with no known resistance, it might reasonably be expected to do so, we should arrive at Mars in a little less than forty-two days, the distance of the planet from the earth being, at this time, about thirty-six million miles. Nothing occurred for many days to interrupt our journey. We became accustomed to our strange surroundings, and many entertainments were provided to while away the time. The astronomers in the expedition found plenty of occupation in studying the aspects of the stars and the other heavenly bodies from their new point of view. Drawing Near to Mars. At the expiration of about thirty-five days we had drawn so near to Mars that with our telescopes, which, though small, were of immense power, we could discern upon its surface features and details which no one had been able to glimpse from the earth. As the surface of this world, that we were approaching as a tiger hunter draws near the jungle, gradually unfolded itself to our inspection, there was hardly one of us willing to devote to sleep or idleness the prescribed eight hours that had been fixed as the time during which each member of the expedition must remain in the darkened chamber. We were too eager to watch for every new revelation upon Mars. But something was in store that we had not expected. We were to meet the Martians before arriving at the world they dwelt in. Among the stars which shone in that quarter of the heavens where Mars appeared as the master orb, there was one, lying directly in our path, which, to our astonishment, as we continued on, altered from the aspect of a star, underwent a gradual magnification, and soon presented itself in the form of a little planet. The Asteroid. "It is an asteroid," said somebody. "Yes, evidently; but how does it come inside the orbit of Mars?" "Oh, there are several asteroids," said one of the astronomers, "which travel inside the orbit of Mars, along a part of their course, and, for aught we can tell, there may be many which have not yet been caught sight of from the earth, that are nearer to the sun than Mars is." "This must be one of them." "Manifestly so." As we drew nearer the mysterious little planet revealed itself to us as a perfectly formed globe not more than five miles in diameter. "What is that upon it?" asked Lord Kelvin, squinting intently at the little world through his glass. "As I live, it moves." A Martian Appears! The First Glimpse of the Horrible Inhabitants of the Red Planet. "Yes, yes!" exclaimed several others, "there are inhabitants upon it, but what giants!" "What monsters!" "Don't you see?" exclaimed an excited savant. "They are the Martians!" The startling truth burst upon the minds of all. Here upon this little planetoid were several of the gigantic inhabitants of the world that we were going to attack. There was more than one man in the flagship who recognized them well, and who shuddered at the recognition, instinctively recalling the recent terrible experience of the earth. Was this an outpost of the warlike Mars? Around these monstrous enemies we saw several of their engines of war. Some of these appeared to have been wrecked, but at least one, as far as we could see, was still in a proper condition for use. How had these creatures got there? "Why, that is easy enough to account for," I said, as a sudden recollection flashed into my mind. "Don't you remember the report of the astronomers more than six months ago, at the end of the conference in Washington, that something would seem to indicate the departure of a new expedition from Mars had been noticed by them? We have heard nothing of that expedition since. We know that it did not reach the earth. It must have fallen foul of this asteroid, run upon this rock in the ocean of space and been wrecked here." "We've got 'em, then," shouted our electric steersman, who had been a workman in Mr. Edison's laboratory and had unlimited confidence in his chief. Preparing to Land. The electrical ships were immediately instructed by signal to slow down, an operation that was easily affected through the electrical repulsion of the asteroid. The nearer we got the more terrifying was the appearance of the gigantic creatures who were riding upon the little world before us like castaway sailors upon a block of ice. Like men, and yet not like men, combining the human and the beast in their appearance, it required a steady nerve to look at them. If we had not known their malignity and their power to work evil, it would have been different, but in our eyes their moral character shone through their physical aspect and thus rendered them more terrible than they would otherwise have been. The Martians Recognize Us. When we first saw them their appearance was most forlorn, and their attitudes indicated only despair and desperation, but as they caught sight of us their malign power of intellect instantly penetrated the mystery, and they recognized us for what we were. Their despair immediately gave place to reawakened malevolence. On the instant they were astir, with such heart-chilling movements as those that characterize a venomous serpent preparing to strike. Not imagining that they would be in a position to make serious resistance, we had been somewhat incautious in approaching. The Awful Heat Ray. Suddenly there was a quicker movement than usual among the Martians, a swift adjustment of that one of their engines of war which, as already noticed, seemed to be practically uninjured, and then there darted from it and alighted upon one of the foremost ships a dazzling lightning stroke a mile in length, at whose touch the metallic sides of the car curled and withered and, licked for a moment by what seemed lambent flames, collapsed into a mere cinder. Another Ship Destroyed. The Death-Dealing Martians Strike a Fearful Blow at the Earth's Warriors. For an instant not a word was spoken, so sudden and unexpected was the blow. We knew that every soul in the stricken car had perished. "Back! Back!" was the signal instantaneously flashed from the flagship, and reversing their polarities the members of the squadron sprang away from the little planet as rapidly as the electrical impulse could drive them. But before we were out of reach a second flaming tongue of death shot from the fearful engine, and another of our ships, with all its crew, was destroyed. A Discouraging Beginning. It was an inauspicious beginning for us. Two of our electrical ships, with their entire crews, had been wiped out of existence, and this appalling blow had been dealt by a few stranded and disabled enemies floating on an asteroid. What hope would there be for us when we came to encounter the millions of Mars itself on their own ground and prepared for war? However, it would not do to despond. We had been incautious, and we should take good care not to commit the same fault again. Vengeance the First Thing! The first thing to do was to avenge the death of our comrades. The question whether we were able to meet these Martians and overcome them might as well be settled right here and now. They had proved what they could do, even when disabled and at a disadvantage. Now it was our turn. Chapter VII. The squadron had been rapidly withdrawn to a very considerable distance from the asteroid. The range of the mysterious artillery employed by the Martians was unknown to us. We did not even know the limit of the effective range of our own disintegrators. If it should prove that the Martians were able to deal their strokes at a distance greater than any we could reach, then they would of course have an insuperable advantage. On the other hand, if it should turn out that our range was greater than theirs, the advantage would be on our side. Or--which was perhaps most probable--there might be practically no difference in the effective range of the engines. Anyhow, we were going to find out how the case stood, and that without delay. Ready with the Disintegrator. Everything being in readiness, the disintegrators all in working order, and the men who were able to handle them, most of whom were experienced marksmen, chosen from among the officers of the regular army of the United States, and accustomed to the straight shooting and the sure hits of the West, standing at their posts, the squadron again advanced. In order to distract the attention of the Martians, the electrical ships had been distributed over a wide space. Some dropped straight down toward the asteroid; others approached it by flank attack, from this side and that. The flagship moved straight in toward the point where the first disaster occurred. Its intrepid commander felt that his post should be that of the greatest danger, and where the severest blows would be given and received. A Strategic Advance. The approach of the ships was made with great caution. Watching the Martians with our telescopes we could clearly see that they were disconcerted by the scattered order of our attack. Even if all of their engines of war had been in proper condition for use it would have been impossible for them to meet the simultaneous assault of so many enemies dropping down upon them from the sky. But they were made of fighting metal, as we knew from old experience. It was no question of surrender. They did not know how to surrender, and we did not know how to demand a surrender. Besides, the destruction of the two electrical ships with the forty men, many of whom bore names widely known upon the earth, had excited a kind of fury among the members of the squadron which called for vengeance. Another Attack. Suddenly a repetition of the quick movement by the Martians, which had been the forerunner of the former coup, was observed; again a blinding flash burst from their war engine and instantaneously a shiver ran through the frame of the flagship; the air within quivered with strange pulsations and seemed suddenly to have assumed the temperature of a blast furnace. We all gasped for breath. Our throats and lungs seemed scorched in the act of breathing. Some fell unconscious upon the floor. The marksmen, carrying the disintegrators ready for use, staggered, and one of them dropped his instrument. But we had not been destroyed like our comrades before us. In a moment the wave of heat passed; those who had fallen recovered from their momentary stupor and staggered to their feet. The electrical steersman stood hesitating at his post. "Move on," said Mr. Edison sternly, his features set with determination and his eyes afire. "We are still beyond their effective range. Let us get closer in order to make sure work when we strike." The ship moved on. One could hear the heartbeats of its inmates. The other members of the squadron, thinking for the moment that disaster had overtaken the flagship, had paused and seemed to be meditating flight. "Signal them to move on," said Mr. Edison. The Battle Commences. The signal was given, and the circle of electrical ships closed in upon the asteroid. In the meantime Mr. Edison had been donning his air-tight suit. Before we could clearly comprehend his intention he had passed through the double-trapped door which gave access to the exterior of the car without permitting the loss of air, and was standing upon what served as the deck of the ship. In his hand he carried a disintegrator. With a quick motion he sighted it. As quickly as possible I sprang to his side. I was just in time to note the familiar blue gleam about the instrument, which indicated that its terrific energies were at work. The whirring sound was absent, because here, in open space, where there was no atmosphere, there could be no sound. The Disintegrator's Power. My eyes were fixed upon the Martians' engine, which had just dealt us a staggering, but not fatal, blow, and particularly I noticed a polished knob projecting from it, which seemed to have been the focus from which its destructive bolt emanated. A moment later the knob disappeared. The irresistible vibrations darted from the electrical disintegrator and had fallen upon it and instantaneously shattered it into atoms. "That fixes them," said Mr. Edison, turning to me with a smile. And indeed it did fix them. We had most effectually spiked their gun. It would deal no more death blows. The doings of the flagship had been closely watched throughout the squadron. The effect of its blow had been evident to all, and a moment later we saw, on some of the nearer ships, men dressed in their air suits, appearing upon the deck, swinging their arms and sending forth noiseless cheers into empty space. A Telling Stroke. The stroke that we had dealt was taken by several of the electrical ships as a signal for a common assault, and we saw two of the Martians fall beside the ruin of their engine, their heads having been blown from their bodies. "Signal them to stop firing," commanded Mr. Edison. "We have got them down, and we are not going to murder them without necessity." "Besides," he added, "I want to capture some of them alive." The signal was given as he had ordered. The flagship then alone dropped slowly toward the place on the asteroid where the prostrate Martians were. A Terrible Scene. As we got near them a terrible scene unfolded itself to our eyes. There had evidently been not more than half a dozen of the monsters in the beginning. Two of these were stretched headless upon the ground. Three others had suffered horrible injuries where the invisible vibratory beams from the disintegrators had grazed them, and they could not long survive. One only remained apparently uninjured. The Gigantic Martian. It is impossible for me to describe the appearance of this creature in terms that would be readily understood. Was he like a man? Yes and no. He possessed many human characteristics, but they were exaggerated and monstrous in scale and in detail. His head was of enormous size, and his huge projecting eyes gleamed with a strange fire of intelligence. His face was like a caricature, but not one to make the beholder laugh. Drawing himself up, he towered to a height of at least fifteen feet. But let the reader not suppose from this inadequate description that the Martians stirred in the beholder precisely the sensation that would be caused by the sight of a gorilla, or other repulsive inhabitant of one of our terrestrial jungles, suddenly confronting him in its native wilds. With all his horrible characteristics, and all his suggestions of beast and monster, nevertheless the Martian produced the impression of being a person and not a mere animal. His Frightened Aspect. I have already referred to the enormous size of his head, and to the fact that his countenance bore considerable resemblance to that of a man. There was something in this face that sent a shiver through the soul of the beholder. One could feel in looking upon it that here was intellect, intelligence developed to the highest degree, but in the direction of evil instead of good. The sensations of one who had stood face to face with Satan, when he was driven from the battlements of heaven by the swords of his fellow archangels, and had beheld him transformed from Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, into the Prince of Night and Hell, might not have been unlike those which we now experienced as we gazed upon this dreadful personage, who seemed to combine the intellectual powers of a man, raised to their highest pitch, with some of the physical features of a beast, and all the moral depravity of a fiend. The Martian's Rage. The appearance of the Martian was indeed so threatening and repellent that we paused at the height of fifty feet above the ground, hesitating to approach nearer. A grin of rage and hate overspread his face. If he had been a man I should say he shook his fist at us. What he did was to express in even more telling pantomime his hatred and defiance, and his determination to grind us to shreds if he could once get us within his clutches. Mr. Edison and I still stood upon the deck of the ship, where several others had gathered around us. The atmosphere of the little asteroid was so rare that it practically amounted to nothing, and we could not possibly have survived if we had not continued to wear our air-tight suits. How the Martians contrived to live here was a mystery to us. It was another of their secrets which we were yet to learn. Mr. Edison retained his disintegrator in his hand. "Kill him," said someone. "He is too horrible to live." "If we do not kill him we shall never be able to land upon the asteroid," said another. Shall We Kill Him? "No," said Mr. Edison, "I shall not kill him. We have got another use for him. Tom," he continued, turning to one of his assistants, whom he had brought from his laboratory, "bring me the anaesthetizer." This was something entirely new to nearly all the members of the expedition. Mr. Edison, however, had confided to me before we left the earth the fact that he had invented a little instrument by means of which a bubble, strongly charged with a powerful anaesthetic agent, could be driven to a considerable distance into the face of an enemy, where, exploding without other damage, it would instantly put him to sleep. When Tom had placed the instrument in his hands Mr. Edison ordered the electrical ship to forge slightly ahead and drop a little lower toward the Martian, who, with watchful eyes and threatening gestures, noted our approach in the attitude of a wild beast on the spring. Suddenly Mr. Edison discharged from the instrument in his hand a little gaseous globe, which glittered like a ball of tangled rainbows in the sunshine, and darted with astonishing velocity straight into the upturned face of the Martian. It burst as it touched and the monster fell back senseless upon the ground. One of the Bellicose Martians Falls Into the Hands of the Worldians. "You have killed him!" exclaimed all. "No," said Mr. Edison, "he is not dead, only asleep. Now we shall drop down and bind him tight before he can awake." When we came to bind our prisoner with strong ropes we were more than ever impressed with his gigantic stature and strength. Evidently in single combat with equal weapons he would have been a match for twenty of us. All that I had read of giants had failed to produce upon my mind the impression of enormous size and tremendous physical energy which the sleeping body of this immense Martian produced. He had fallen on his back, and was in a most profound slumber. All his features were relaxed, and yet even in that condition there was a devilishness about him that made the beholders instinctively shudder. The Unconscious Martian. So powerful was the effect of the anaesthetic which Mr. Edison had discharged into his face that he remained perfectly unconscious while we turned him half over in order the more securely to bind his muscular limbs. In the meantime the other electrical ships approached, and several of them made a landing upon the asteroid. Everybody was eager to see this wonderful little world, which, as I have already remarked, was only five miles in diameter. Exploring the Planet. Several of us from the flagship started out hastily to explore the miniature planet. And now our attention was recalled to an intensely interesting phenomenon which had engaged our thoughts not only when we were upon the moon, but during our flight through space. This was the almost entire absence of weight. On the moon, where the force of gravitation is one-sixth as great as upon the earth, we had found ourselves astonishingly light. Five-sixths of our own weight, and of the weight of the air-tight suits in which we were incased, had magically dropped from us. It was therefore comparatively easy for us, encumbered as we were, to make our way about on the moon. But when we were far from both the earth and the moon, the loss of weight was more astonishing still--not astonishing because we had not known that it would be so, but nevertheless a surprising phenomenon in contrast with our lifelong experience on the earth. Men Without Weight. In open space we were practically without weight. Only the mass of the electrical car in which we were enclosed attracted us, and inside that we could place ourselves in any position without falling. We could float in the air. There were no up and no down, no top and no bottom for us. Stepping outside the car, it would have been easy for us to spring away from it and leave it forever. One of the most startling experiences that I have ever had was one day when we were navigating space about half way between the earth and Mars. I had stepped outside the car with Lord Kelvin, both of us, of course, wearing our air-tight suits. We were perfectly well aware what would be the consequence of detaching ourselves from the car as we moved along. We should still retain the forward motion of the car, and of course accompany it in its flight. There would be no falling one way or the other. The car would have a tendency to draw us back again by its attraction, but this tendency would be very slight, and practically inappreciable at a distance. Stepping Into Space. "I am going to step off," I suddenly said to Lord Kelvin. "Of course I shall keep right along with the car, and step aboard again when I am ready." "Quite right on general principles, young man," replied the great savant, "but beware in what manner you step off. Remember, if you give your body an impulse sufficient to carry it away from the car to any considerable distance, you will be unable to get back again, unless we can catch you with a boathook or a fishline. Out there in empty space you will have nothing to kick against, and you will be unable to propel yourself in the direction of the car, and its attraction is so feeble that we should probably arrive at Mars before it had drawn you back again." All this was, of course, perfectly self-evident, yet I believe that but for the warning word of Lord Kelvin, I should have been rash enough to step out into empty space with sufficient force to have separated myself hopelessly from the electrical ship. A Reckless Experiment. As it was, I took good care to retain a hold upon a projecting portion of the car. Occasionally cautiously releasing my grip, I experienced for a few minutes the delicious, indescribable pleasure of being a little planet swinging through space, with nothing to hold me up and nothing to interfere with my motion. Mr. Edison, happening to come upon the deck of the ship at this time, and seeing what we were about, at once said: "I must provide against this danger. If I do not, there is a chance that we shall arrive at Mars with the ships half empty and the crews floating helplessly around us." Edison Always Prepared. Mr. Edison's way of guarding against the danger was by contriving a little apparatus, modeled after that which was the governing force of the electrical ships themselves, and which, being enclosed in the air-tight suits, enabled their wearers to manipulate the electrical charge upon them in such a way that they could make excursions from the cars into open space like steam launches from a ship, going and returning at their will. These little machines being rapidly manufactured, for Mr. Edison had a miniature laboratory aboard, were distributed about the squadron, and henceforth we had the pleasure of paying and receiving visits among the various members of the fleet. But to return from this digression to our experience of the asteroid. The latter being a body of some mass was, of course, able to impart to us a measurable degree of weight. Being five miles in diameter, on the assumption that its mean density was the same as that of the earth, the weight of bodies on its surface should have borne the same ratio to their weight upon the earth that the radius of the asteroid bore to the radius of the earth; in other words, as 1 to 1,600. Having made this mental calculation, I knew that my weight, being 150 pounds on the earth, should on this asteroid be an ounce and a half. Curious to see whether fact would bear out theory, I had myself weighed with a spring balance. Mr. Edison, Lord Kelvin and the other distinguished scientists stood by watching the operation with great interest. To our complete surprise, my weight, instead of coming out an ounce and a half, as it should have done, on the supposition that the mean density of the asteroid resembled that of the earth--a very liberal supposition on the side of the asteroid, by the way--actually came out five ounces and a quarter! "What in the world makes me so heavy?" I asked. "Yes, indeed, what an elephant you have become," said Mr. Edison. Lord Kelvin screwed his eyeglass in his eye, and carefully inspected the balance. Weight, Five and a Quarter Ounces. "It's quite right," he said. "You do indeed weigh five ounces and a quarter. Too much; altogether too much," he added. "You shouldn't do it, you know." "Perhaps the fault is in the asteroid," suggested Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson. "Quite so," exclaimed Lord Kelvin, a look of sudden comprehension overspreading his features. "No doubt it is the internal constitution of the asteroid which is the cause of the anomaly. We must look into that. Let me see? This gentleman's weight is three and one-half times as great as it ought to be. What element is there whose density exceeds the mean density of the earth in about that proportion?" "Gold," exclaimed one of the party. The Golden Asteroid! For a moment we were startled beyond expression. The truth had flashed upon us. This must be a golden planet--this little asteroid. If it were not composed internally of gold it could never have made me weigh three times more than I ought to weigh. "But where is the gold?" cried one. "Covered up, of course," said Lord Kelvin. "Buried in star dust. This asteroid could not have continued to travel for millions of years through regions of space strewn with meteoric particles without becoming covered with the inevitable dust and grime of such a journey. We must dig down, and then doubtless we shall find the metal." This hint was instantly acted upon. Something that would serve for a spade was seized by one of the men, and in a few minutes a hole had been dug in the comparatively light soil of the asteroid. The Precious Metal Discovered. I shall never forget the sight, nor the exclamations of wonder that broke forth from all of us standing around, when the yellow gleam of the precious metal appeared under the "star dust." Collected in huge masses it reflected the light of the sun from its hiding place. Evidently the planet was not a solid ball of gold, formed like a bullet run in a mould, but was composed of nuggets of various sizes, which had come together here under the influence of their mutual gravitation, and formed a little metallic planet. Judging by the test of weight which we had already tried, and which had led to the discovery of the gold, the composition of the asteroid must be the same to its very centre. An Incredible Phenomenon. In an assemblage of famous scientific men such as this the discovery of course immediately led to questions as to the origin of this incredible phenomenon. How did these masses of gold come together? How did it chance that, with the exception of the thin crust of the asteroid, nearly all its substance was composed of the precious metal? One asserted that it was quite impossible that there should be so much gold at so great a distance from the sun. "It is the general law," he said, "that the planets increase in density toward the sun. There is every reason to think that the inner planets possess the greater amount of dense elements, while the outer ones are comparatively light." Whence Came the Treasure? But another referred to the old theory that there was once in this part of the solar system a planet which had been burst in pieces by some mysterious explosion, the fragments forming what we know as the asteroids. In his opinion, this planet might have contained a large quantity of gold, and in the course of ages the gold, having, in consequence of its superior atomic weight, not being so widely scattered by the explosion as some of the other elements of the planet, had collected itself together in this body. But I observed that Lord Kelvin and the other more distinguished men of science said nothing during this discussion. The truly learned man is the truly wise man. They were not going to set up theories without sufficient facts to sustain them. The one fact that the gold was here was all they had at present. Until they could learn more they were not prepared to theorize as to how the gold got there. And in truth, it must be confessed, the greater number of us really cared less for the explanation of the wonderful fact than we did for the fact itself. Gold is a thing which may make its appearance anywhere and at any time without offering any excuses or explanations. Visions of Mighty Fortunes. "Phew! Won't we be rich?" exclaimed a voice. "How are we going to dig it and get it back to earth?" asked another. "Carry it in your pockets," said one. "No need of staking claims here," remarked another. "There is enough for everybody." Mr. Edison suddenly turned the current of talk. "What do you suppose those Martians were doing here?" "Why, they were wrecked here." "Not a bit of it," said Mr. Edison. "According to your own showing they could not have been wrecked here. This planet hasn't gravitation enough to wreck them by a fall, and besides I have been looking at their machines and I know there has been a fight." "A fight?" exclaimed several, pricking up their ears. "Yes," said Mr. Edison; "those machines bear the marks of the lightning of the Martians. They have been disabled, but they are made of some metal or some alloy of metals unknown to me, and consequently they have withstood the destructive force applied to them, as our electric ships were unable to withstand it. It is perfectly plain to me that they have been disabled in a battle. The Martians must have been fighting among themselves." A Martian Civil War! "About the gold!" exclaimed one. "Of course. What else was there to fight about?" At this instant one of our men came running from a considerable distance, waving his arms excitedly, but unable to give voice to his story, in the inappreciable atmosphere of the asteroid, until he had come up and made telephonic connection with us. "There is a lot of dead Martians over there," he said. "They've been cleaning one another out." "That's it," said Mr. Edison. "I knew it when I saw the condition of those machines." "Then this is not a wrecked expedition, directed against the earth?" "Not at all." "This must be the great gold mine of Mars," said the president of an Australian mining company, opening both his eyes and his mouth as he spoke. "Yes, evidently that's it. Here's where they come to get their wealth." "And this," I said, "must be their harvest time. You notice that this asteroid, being several million miles nearer to the sun than Mars is, must have an appreciably shorter period of revolution. When it is in conjunction with Mars, or nearly so, as it is at present, the distance between the two is not very great, whereas when it is in the opposite part of its orbit they are separated by an enormous gap of space and the sun is between them." "Manifestly in the latter case it would be perilous if not entirely impossible for the Martians to visit the golden asteroid, but when it is near Mars, as it is at present, and as it must be periodically for several years at a time, then is their opportunity." "With their projectile cars sent forth with the aid of the mysterious explosives which they possess, it is easy for them under such circumstances, to make visits to the asteroid." "Having obtained all the gold they need, or all that they can carry, a comparatively slight impulse given to their car, the direction of which is carefully calculated, will carry them back again to Mars." "If that's so," exclaimed a voice, "we had better look out for ourselves! We have got into a very hornet's nest! If this is the place where the Martians come to dig gold, and if this is the height of their season, as you say, they are not likely to leave us here long undisturbed." "These fellows must have been pirates that they had the fight with," said another. "But what's become of the regulars, then?" "Gone back to Mars for help, probably, and they'll be here again pretty quick, I am afraid!" Considerable alarm was caused by this view of the case, and orders were sent to several of the electrical ships to cruise out to a safe distance in the direction of Mars and keep a sharp outlook for the approach of enemies. Discovery That the Asteroid is a Solid Mass of Gold. Meanwhile our prisoner awoke. He turned his eyes upon those standing about him, without any appearance of fear, but rather with a look of contempt, like that which Gulliver must have felt for the Lilliputians who had bound him under similar circumstances. There were both hatred and defiance in his glance. He attempted to free himself, and the ropes strained with the tremendous pressure that he put upon them, but he could not break loose. The Martian Safely Bound. Satisfied that the Martian was safely bound, we left him where he lay, and, while awaiting news from the ships which had been sent to reconnoitre, continued the exploration of the little planet. At a point nearly opposite to that where we had landed we came upon the mine which the Martians had been working. They had removed the thin coating of soil, laying bare the rich stores of gold beneath, and large quantities of the latter had been removed. Some of it was so solidly packed that the strokes of the instruments by means of which they had detached it were visible like the streaks left by a knife cutting cheese. Reason for Astonishment. The more we saw of this golden planet the greater became our astonishment. What the Martians had removed was a mere nothing in comparison with the entire bulk of the asteroid. Had the celestial mine been easier to reach, perhaps they would have removed more, or, possibly, their political economists perfectly understood the necessity of properly controlling the amount of precious metal in circulation. Very likely, we thought, the mining operations were under government control in Mars and it might be that the majority of the people there knew nothing of this store of wealth floating in the firmament. That would account for the battle with the supposed pirates, who, no doubt, had organized a secret expedition to the asteroid and been caught red-handed at the mine. Richer Than the Klondike. There were many detached masses of gold scattered about, and some of the men, on picking them up, exclaimed with astonishment at their lack of weight, forgetting for the moment that the same law which caused their own bodies to weigh so little must necessarily affect everything else in like degree. A mass of gold that on the earth no man would have been able to lift could here be tossed about like a hollow rubber ball. While we were examining the mine, one of the men left to guard the Martian came running to inform us that the latter evidently wished to make some communication. Mr. Edison and others hurried to the side of the prisoner. He still lay on his back, from which position he was not able to move, notwithstanding all his efforts. But by the motion of his eyes, aided by a pantomime with his fingers, he made us understand that there was something in a metallic box fastened at his side which he wished to reach. The Martian's Treasure Box. With some difficulty we succeeded in opening the box and in it there appeared a number of bright red pellets, as large as an ordinary egg. When the Martian saw these in our hands he gave us to understand by the motion of his lips that he wished to swallow one of them. A pellet was accordingly placed in his mouth, and he instantly and with great eagerness swallowed it. The Mysterious Pellets. While trying to communicate his wishes to us, the prisoner had seemed to be in no little distress. He exhibited spasmodic movements which led some of the bystanders to think that he was on the point of dying, but within a few seconds after he had swallowed the pellet he appeared to be completely restored. All evidences of distress vanished, and a look of content came over his ugly face. "It must be a powerful medicine," said one of the bystanders. "I wonder what it is." "I will explain to you my notion," said Professor Moissan, the great French chemist. "I think it was a pill of the air, which he has taken." "What do you mean by that?" Artificial Atmosphere. "My meaning is," said Professor Moissan, "that the Martian must have, for that he may live, the nitrogen and the oxygen. These can he not obtain here, where there is not the atmosphere. Therefore must he get them in some other manner. This has he managed to do by combining in these pills the oxygen and the nitrogen in the proportions which make atmospheric air. Doubtless upon Mars there are the very great chemists. They have discovered how this may be done. When the Martian has swallowed his little pill, the oxygen and the nitrogen are rendered to his blood as if he had breathed them, and so he can live with that air which has been distributed to him with the aid of his stomach in the place of his lungs." If Monsieur Moissan's explanation was not correct, at any rate it seemed the only one that would fit the facts before us. Certainly the Martian could not breathe where there was practically no air, yet just as certainly after he had swallowed his pill he seemed as comfortable as any of us. Signals from a Ship. Suddenly, while we were gathered around the prisoner, and interested in this fresh evidence of the wonderful ingenuity of the Martians, and of their control over the processes of nature, one of the electrical ships that had been sent off in the direction of Mars was seen rapidly returning and displaying signals. The Martians Are Coming. It reported that the Martians were coming! Chapter VIII. The alarm was spread instantly among those upon the planet and through the remainder of the fleet. One of the men from the returning electrical ship dropped down upon the asteroid and gave a more detailed account of what they had seen. His ship had been the one which had gone to the greatest distance in the direction of Mars. While cruising there, with all eyes intent, they had suddenly perceived a glittering object moving from the direction of the ruddy planet, and manifestly approaching them. A little inspection with the telescope had shown that it was one of the projectile cars used by the Martians. Our ship had ventured so far from the asteroid that for a moment it seemed doubtful whether it would be able to return in time to give warning, because the electrical influence of the asteroid was comparatively slight at such a distance, and, after they had reversed their polarity, and applied their intensifier, so as to make that influence effective, their motion was at first exceedingly slow. Fortunately after a time they got under way with sufficient velocity to bring them back to us before the approaching Martians could overtake them. The latter were not moving with great velocity, having evidently projected themselves from Mars with only just sufficient force to throw them within the feeble sphere of gravitation of the asteroid, so that they should very gently land upon its surface. Indeed, looking out behind the electrical ship which had brought us the warning, we immediately saw the projectile of the Martians approaching. It sparkled like a star in the black sky as the sunlight fell upon it. Ready for the Enemy. The ships of the squadron whose crews had not landed upon the planet were signalled to prepare for action, while those who were upon the asteroid made ready for battle there. A number of disintegrators were trained upon the approaching Martians, but Mr. Edison gave strict orders that no attempt should be made to discharge the vibratory force at random. "They do not know that we are here," he said, "and I am convinced that they are unable to control their motions as we can do with our electrical ships. They depend simply upon the force of gravitation. Having passed the limit of the attraction of Mars, they have now fallen within the attraction of the asteroid, and they must slowly sink to its surface." The Martians Cannot Stop. "Having, as I am convinced, no means of producing or controlling electrical attraction and repulsion, they cannot stop themselves, but must come down upon the asteroid. Having got here they could never get away again, except as we know the survivors got away from earth, by propelling their projectile against gravitation with the aid of an explosive." "Therefore, to a certain extent they will be at our mercy. Let us allow them quietly to land upon the planet, and then I think, if it becomes necessary, we can master them." Notwithstanding Mr. Edison's reassuring words and manner, the company upon the asteroid experienced a dreadful suspense while the projectile which seemed very formidable as it drew near, sank with a slow and graceful motion toward the surface of the ground. Evidently it was about to land very near the spot where we stood awaiting it. Its inmates had apparently just caught sight of us. They evinced signs of astonishment, and seemed at a loss exactly what to do. We could see projecting from the fore part of their car at least two of the polished knobs, whose fearful use and power we well comprehended. Several of our men cried out to Mr. Edison in an extremity of terror: "Why do you not destroy them? Be quick, or we shall all perish." "No," said Mr. Edison, "there is no danger. You can see that they are not prepared. They will not attempt to attack us until they have made their landing." The Martians Land. And Mr. Edison was right. With gradually accelerated velocity, and yet very, very slowly in comparison with the speed they would have exhibited in falling upon such a planet as the earth, the Martians and their car came down to the ground. We stood at a distance of perhaps three hundred feet from the point where they touched the asteroid. Instantly a dozen of the giants sprang from the car and gazed about for a moment with a look of intense surprise. At first it was doubtful whether they meant to attack us at all. We stood on our guard, several carrying disintegrators in our hands, while a score more of these terrible engines were turned upon the Martians from the electrical ships which hovered near. A Speech from Their Leader. Suddenly he who seemed to be the leader of the Martians began to speak to them in pantomime, using his fingers after the manner in which they are used for conversation by deaf and dumb people. Of course, we did not know what he was saying, but his meaning became perfectly evident a minute later. Clearly they did not comprehend the powers of the insignificant-looking strangers with whom they had to deal. Instead of turning their destructive engines upon us, they advanced on a run, with the evident purpose of making us prisoners or crushing us by main force. Awed by the Disintegrator. The soft whirr of the disintegrator in the hands of Mr. Edison standing near me came to my ears through the telephonic wire. He quickly swept the concentrating mirror a little up and down, and instantly the foremost Martian vanished! Part of some metallic dress that he wore fell upon the ground where he had stood, its vibratory rate not having been included in the range imparted to the disintegrator. His followers paused for a moment, amazed, stared about as if looking for their leader, and then hurried back to their projectile and disappeared within it. "Now we've got business on our hands," said Mr. Edison. "Look out for yourselves." As he spoke, I saw the death-dealing knob of the war engine contained in the car of the Martians moving around toward us. In another instant it would have launched its destroying bolt. Before that could occur, however, it had been dissipated into space by a vibratory stream from a disintegrator. But we were not to get the victory quite so easily. There was another of the war engines in the car, and before we could concentrate our fire upon it, its awful flash shot forth, and a dozen of our comrades perished before our eyes. "Quick! Quick!" shouted Mr. Edison to one of his electrical experts standing near. "There is something the matter with this disintegrator, and I cannot make it work. Aim at the knob, and don't miss it." Martians and Terrestrians Fight a Terrible Battle. But the aim was not well taken, and the vibratory force fell upon a portion of the car at a considerable distance from the knob, making a great breach, but leaving the engine uninjured. A section of the side of the car had been destroyed, and the vibratory energy had spread no further. To have attempted to sweep the car from end to end would have been futile, because the period of action of the disintegrators during each discharge did not exceed one second, and distributing the energy over so great a space would have seriously weakened its power to shatter apart the atoms of the resisting substance. The disintegrators were like firearms, in that after each discharge they must be readjusted before they could be used again. The Martians Are Desperate. Through the breach we saw the Martians inside making desperate efforts to train their engine upon us, for after their first disastrous stroke we had rapidly shifted our position. Swiftly the polished knob, which gleamed like an evil eye, moved round to sweep over us. Instinctively, though incautiously, we had collected in a group. A single discharge would sweep us all into eternity. A Ticklish Position. "Will no one fire upon them?" exclaimed Mr. Edison, struggling with the disintegrator in his hands, which still refused to work. At this fearful moment I glanced around upon our company, and was astonished at the spectacle. In the presence of the danger many of them had lost all self-command. A half dozen had dropped their disintegrators upon the ground. Others stood as if frozen fast in their tracks. The expert electrician, whose poor aim had had such disastrous results, held in his hand an instrument which was in perfect condition, yet with mouth agape, he stood trembling like a captured bird. The Electricians Lose Their Heads. It was a disgraceful exhibition. Mr. Edison, however, had not lost his head. Again and again he sighted at the dreadful knob with his disintegrator, but the vibratory force refused to respond. The means of safety were in our hands, and yet through a combination of ill luck and paralyzing terror we seemed unable to use them. In a second more it would be all over with us. The suspense in reality lasted only during the twinkling of an eye, though it seemed ages long. Unable to endure it, I sharply struck the shoulder of the paralyzed electrician. To have attempted to seize the disintegrator from his hands would have been a fatal waste of time. Luckily the blow either roused him from his stupor or caused an instinctive movement of his hand that set the little engine in operation. I am sure he took no aim, but providentially the vibratory force fell upon the desired point, and the knob disappeared. Saved! We were saved! Instantly half a dozen rushed toward the car of the Martians. We bitterly repented their haste; they did not live to repent. Unknown to us the Martians carried hand engines, capable of launching bolts of death of the same character as those which emanated from the knobs of their larger machines. With these they fired, so to speak, through the breach in their car, and four of our men who were rushing upon them fell in heaps of cinders. The effect of the terrible fire was like that which the most powerful strokes of lightning occasionally produce on earth. The destruction of the threatening knob had instantaneously relieved the pressure upon the terror-stricken nerves of our company, and they had all regained their composure and self-command. But this new and unexpected disaster, following so close upon the fear which had recently overpowered them, produced a second panic, the effect of which was not to stiffen them in their tracks as before, but to send them scurrying in every direction in search of hiding places. A Curious Effect. And now a most curious effect of the smallness of the planet we were on began to play a conspicuous part in our adventures. Standing on a globe only five miles in diameter was like being on the summit of a mountain whose sides sloped rapidly off in every direction, disappearing in the black sky on all sides, as if it were some stupendous peak rising out of an unfathomable abyss. In consequence of the quick rounding off of the sides of this globe, the line of the horizon was close at hand, and by running a distance of less than 250 yards the fugitives disappeared down the sides of the asteroid, and behind the horizon, even from the elevation of about fifteen feet from which the Martians were able to watch them. From our sight they disappeared much sooner. The slight attraction of the planet and their consequent almost entire lack of weight enabled the men to run with immense speed. The result, as I subsequently learned, was that after they had disappeared from our view they quitted the planet entirely, the force being sufficient to partially free them from its gravitation, so that they sailed out into space, whirling helplessly end over end, until the elliptical orbits in which they travelled eventually brought them back again to the planet on the side nearly opposite to that from which they had departed. Hunting for the Enemy. But several of us, with Mr. Edison, stood fast, watching for an opportunity to get the Martians within range of the disintegrators. Luckily we were enabled, by shifting our position a little to the left, to get out of the line of sight of our enemies concealed in the car. "If we cannot catch sight of them," said Mr. Edison, "we shall have to riddle the car on the chance of hitting them." "It will be like firing into a bush to kill a hidden bear," said one of the party. But help came from a quarter which was unexpected to us, although it should not have been so. Several of the electric ships had been hovering above us during the fight, their commanders being apparently uncertain how to act--fearful, perhaps, of injuring us in the attempt to smite our enemy. But now the situation apparently lightened for them. They saw that we were at an immense disadvantage, and several of them immediately turned their batteries upon the car of the Martians. They riddled it far more quickly and effectively than we could have done. Every stroke of the vibratory emanation made a gap in the side of the car, and we could perceive from the commotion within that our enemies were being rapidly massacred in their fortification. So overwhelming was the force and the advantage of the ships that in a little while it was all over. Mr. Edison signalled them to stop firing because it was plain that all resistance had ceased and probably not one of the Martians remained alive. We now approached the car, which had been transpierced in every direction, and whose remaining portions were glowing with heat in consequence of the spreading of the atomic vibrations. Immediately we discovered that all our anticipations were correct and that all of our enemies had perished. The effect of the disintegrators upon them had been awful--too repulsive, indeed, to be described in detail. Some of the bodies had evidently entirely vanished; only certain metal articles which they had worn remaining, as in the case of the first Martian killed, to indicate that such beings had ever existed. The nature of the metal composing these articles was unknown to us. Evidently its vibratory rhythm did not correspond with any included in the ordinary range of the disintegrators. The Disintegrators' Awful Effect. Some of the giants had been only partially destroyed, the vibratory current having grazed them, in such a manner that the shattering undulations had not acted upon the entire body. One thing that lends a peculiar horror to a terrestrial battlefield was absent; there was no bloodshed. The vibratory energy, not only completely destroyed whatever it fell upon but it seared the veins and arteries of the dismembered bodies so that there was no sanguinary exhibition connected with its murderous work. All this time the shackled Martian had lain on his back where we had left him bound. What his feeling must have been may be imagined. At times, I caught a glimpse of his eyes, wildly rolling and exhibiting, when he saw that the victory was in our hands, the first indications of fear and terror shaking his soul that had yet appeared. "That fellow is afraid at last," I said to Mr. Edison. "Well, I should think he ought to be afraid," was the reply. "So he ought, but if I am not mistaken this fear of his may be the beginning of a new discovery for us." "How so?" asked Mr. Edison. "In this way. When once he fears our power, and perceives that there would be no hope of contending against us, even if he were at liberty, he will respect us. This change in his mental attitude may tend to make him communicative. I do not see why we should despair of learning his language from him, and having done that, he will serve as our guide and interpreter, and will be of incalculable advantage to us when we have arrived at Mars." "Capital! Capital!" said Mr. Edison. "We must concentrate the linguistic genius of our company upon that problem at once." The Deserter's Return. In the meantime some of the skulkers whose flight I have referred to began to return, chapfallen, but rejoicing in the disappearance of the danger. Several of them, I am ashamed to say, had been army officers. Yet possibly some excuse could be made for the terror by which they had been overcome. No man has a right to hold his fellow beings to account for the line of conduct they may pursue under circumstances which are not only entirely unexampled in their experience, but almost beyond the power of the imagination to picture. Paralyzing terror had evidently seized them with the sudden comprehension of the unprecedented singularity of their situation. Millions of miles away from the earth, confronted on an asteroid by these diabolical monsters from a maleficient planet, who were on the point of destroying them with a strange torment of death--perhaps it was really more than human nature, deprived of the support of human surroundings, could have been expected to bear. Those who, as already described, had run with so great a speed that they were projected, all unwilling, into space, rising in elliptical orbits from the surface of the planet, describing great curves in what might be denominated its sky, and then coming back again to the little globe on another side, were so filled with the wonders of their remarkable adventure that they had almost forgotten the terror which had inspired it. There was nothing surprising in what had occurred to them the moment one considered the laws of gravitation on the asteroid, but their stories aroused an intense interest among all who listened to them. Lord Kelvin was particularly interested, and while Mr. Edison was hastening preparations to quit the asteroid and resume our voyage to Mars, Lord Kelvin and a number of other scientific men instituted a series of remarkable experiments. Jumping Into Empty Space. It was one of the most laughable things imaginable to see Lord Kelvin, dressed in his air-tight suit, making tremendous jumps into empty space. It reminded me forcibly of what Lord Kelvin, then plain William Thompson, and Professor Blackburn had done when spending a Summer vacation at the seaside, while they were undergraduates of Cambridge University. They had spent all their time, to the surprise of onlookers, in spinning rounded stones on the beach, their object being to obtain a practical solution of the mathematical problem of "precession." Immediately Lord Kelvin was imitated by a dozen others. With what seemed very slight effort they projected themselves straight upward, rising to a height of four hundred feet or more, and then slowly settling back again to the surface of the asteroid. The time of rise and fall combined was between three and four minutes. On this little planet the acceleration of gravity or the velocity acquired by a falling body in one second was only four-fifths of an inch. A body required an entire minute to fall a distance of only 120 feet. Consequently, it was more like gradually settling than falling. The figures of these men of science, rising and sinking in this manner, appeared like so many gigantic marionettes bobbing up and down in a pneumatic bottle. "Let us try that," said Mr. Edison, very much interested in the experiments. A Delightful Experience. Both of us jumped together. At first, with great swiftness, but gradually losing speed, we rose to an immense height straight from the ground. When we had reached the utmost limit of our flight we seemed to come to rest for a moment, and then began slowly, but with accelerated velocity, to sink back again to the planet. It was not only a peculiar but a delicious sensation, and but for strict orders which were issued that the electrical ships should be immediately prepared for departure, our entire company might have remained for an indefinite period enjoying this new kind of athletic exercise in a world where gravitation had become so humble that it could be trifled with. While the final preparations for departure were being made, Lord Kelvin instituted other experiments that were no less unique in their results. The experience of those who had taken unpremeditated flights in elliptical orbits when they had run from the vicinity of the Martians suggested the throwing of solid objects in various directions from the surface of the planet in order to determine the distance that they would go and the curves they would describe in returning. Mars, the Death-Dealing Planet, at Length at Hand! For these experiments there was nothing more convenient or abundant than chunks of gold from the Martians' mine. These, accordingly, were hurled in various directions, and with every degree of velocity. A little calculation had shown that an initial velocity of thirty feet per second imparted to one of these chunks, moving at right angles to the radius of the asteroid, would, if the resistance of an almost inappreciable atmosphere were neglected, suffice to turn the piece of gold into a little satellite that would describe an orbit around the asteroid, and continue to do so forever, or at least until the slight atmospheric resistance should eventually bring it down to the surface. But a less velocity than thirty feet per second would cause the golden missile to fly only part way around, while a greater velocity would give it an elliptical instead of a circular orbit, and in this ellipse it would continue to revolve around the asteroid in the character of a satellite. If the direction of the original impulse were at more than a right angle to the radius of the asteroid, then the flying body would pass out to a greater or less distance in space in an elliptical orbit, eventually coming back again and falling upon the asteroid, but not at the same spot from which it had departed. Interesting Experiments. So many took part in these singular experiments, which assumed rather the appearance of outdoor sports than of scientific demonstrations, that in a short time we had provided the asteroid with a very large number of little moons, or satellites, of gold, which revolved around it in orbits of various degrees of ellipticity, taking, on the average, about three-quarters of an hour to complete a circuit. Since, on completing a revolution, they must necessarily pass through the point from which they started, they kept us constantly on the qui vive to avoid being knocked over by them as they swept around in their orbits. Finally the signal was given for all to embark, and with great regret the savants quitted their scientific games and prepared to return to the electric ships. Just on the moment of departure, the fact was announced by one, who had been making a little calculation on a bit of paper, that the velocity with which a body must be thrown in order to escape forever the attraction of the asteroid, and to pass on to an infinite distance in any direction, was only about forty-two feet in a second. Manifestly it would be quite easy to impart such a speed as that to the chunks of gold that we held in our hands. A Message to the Earth. "Hurrah!" exclaimed one. "Let's send some of this back to the earth." "Where is the earth?" asked another. Being appealed to, several astronomers turned their eyes in the direction of the sun, where the black firmament was ablaze with stars, and in a moment recognized the earth-star shining there, with the moon attending close at hand. "There," said one, "is the earth. Can you throw straight enough to hit it?" "We'll try," was the reply, and immediately several threw huge golden nuggets in the direction of our far-away world, endeavoring to impart to them at least the required velocity of forty-two feet in a second, which would insure their passing beyond the attraction of the asteroid, and if there should be no disturbance on the way, and the aim were accurate, their eventual arrival upon the earth. "Here's for you, Old Earth," said one of the throwers, "good luck, and more gold to you!" If these precious missiles ever reached the earth we knew that they would plunge into the atmosphere like meteors and that probably the heat developed by their passage would melt and dissipate them in golden vapors before they could touch the ground. Yet, there was a chance that some of them--if the aim were true--might survive the fiery passage through the atmosphere and fall upon the surface of our planet where, perhaps, they would afterward be picked up by a prospector and lead him to believe that he had struck a new bonanza. But until we returned to the earth it would be impossible for us to tell what had become of the golden gifts which we had launched into space for our mother planet. Chapter IX. All Aboard for Mars! "All aboard!" was the signal, and the squadron having assembled under the lead of the flagship, we started again for Mars. This time, as it proved, there was to be no further interruption, and when next we paused it was in the presence of the world inhabited by our enemies, and facing their frowning batteries. Difficulty in Starting. We did not find it so easy to start from the asteroid as it had been to start from the earth; that is to say, we could not so readily generate a very high velocity. In consequence of the comparatively small size of the asteroid, its electric influence was very much less than that of the earth, and notwithstanding the appliances which we possessed for intensifying the electrical effect, it was not possible to produce a sufficient repulsion to start us off for Mars with anything like the impulse which we had received from the earth on our original departure. The utmost velocity that we could generate did not exceed three miles in a second, and to get this required our utmost efforts. In fact, it had not seemed possible that we should attain even so great a speed as that. It was far more than we could have expected, and even Mr. Edison was surprised, as well as greatly gratified, when he found that we were moving with the velocity that I have named. Mars 6,000,000 Miles Away. We were still about 6,000,000 miles from Mars, so that, travelling three miles in a second, we should require at least twenty-three days to reach the immediate neighborhood of the planet. Meanwhile we had a plenty of occupation to make the time pass quickly. Our prisoner was transported along with us, and we now began our attempts to ascertain what his language was, and, if possible, to master it ourselves. Before quitting the asteroid we had found that it was necessary for him to swallow one of his "air pills," as Prof. Moissan called them, at least three times in the course of every twenty-four hours. One of us supplied him regularly and I thought that I could detect evidences of a certain degree of gratitude in his expression. This was encouraging, because it gave additional promise of the possibility of our being able to communicate with him in some more effective way than by mere signs. But once inside the car, where we had a supply of air kept at the ordinary pressure experienced on the earth, he could breathe like the rest of us. Learning the Martians' Language. The best linguists in the expedition, as Mr. Edison had suggested, were now assembled in the flagship, where the prisoner was, and they set to work to devise some means of ascertaining the manner in which he was accustomed to express his thoughts. We had not heard him speak, because until we carried him into our car there was no atmosphere capable of conveying any sounds he might attempt to utter. It seemed a fair assumption that the language of the Martians would be scientific in its structure. We had so much evidence of the practical bent of their minds, and of the immense progress which they had made in the direction of the scientific conquest of nature, that it was not to be supposed their medium of communication with one another would be lacking in clearness, or would possess any of the puzzling and unnecessary ambiguities that characterized the languages spoken on the earth. "We shall not find them making he's and she's of stones, sticks and other inanimate objects," said one of the American linguists. "They must certainly have gotten rid of all that nonsense long ago." "Ah," said a French professor from the Sorbonne, one of the makers of the never-to-be-finished dictionary. "It will be like the language of my country. Transparent, similar to the diamond, and sparkling as is the fountain." The Volapuk of Mars. "I think," said a German enthusiast, "that it will be a universal language, the Volapuk of Mars, spoken by all the inhabitants of that planet." "But all these speculations," broke in Mr. Edison, "do not help you much. Why not begin in a practical manner by finding out what the Martian calls himself, for instance." This seemed a good suggestion, and accordingly several of the bystanders began an expressive pantomime, intended to indicate to the giant, who was following all their motions with his eyes, that they wished to know by what name he called himself. Pointing their fingers to their own breasts they repeated, one after the other, the word "man." If our prisoner had been a stupid savage, of course any such attempt as this to make him understand would have been idle. But it must be remembered that we were dealing with a personage who had presumably inherited from hundreds of generations the results of a civilization, and an intellectual advance, measured by the constant progress of millions of years. Accordingly we were not very much astonished, when, after a few repetitions of the experiment, the Martian--one of whose arms had been partially released from its bonds in order to give him a little freedom of motion--imitated the action of his interrogators by pressing his finger over his heart. The Martian Speaks. Then, opening his mouth, he gave utterance to a sound which shook the air of the car like the hoarse roar of a lion. He seemed himself surprised by the noise he made, for he had not been used to speak in so dense an atmosphere. Our ears were deafened and confused, and we recoiled in astonishment, not to say, half in terror. With an ugly grin distorting his face as if he enjoyed our discomfiture, the Martian repeated the motion and the sound. "R-r-r-r-r-r-h!" It was not articulate to our ears, and not to be represented by any combination of letters. "Faith," exclaimed a Dublin University professor, "if that's what they call themselves, how shall we ever translate their names when we come to write the history of the conquest?" "Whist, mon," replied a professor from the University of Aberdeen, "let us whip the gillravaging villains first, and then we can describe than by any intitulation that may suit our deesposition." The beginning of our linguistic conquest was certainly not promising, at least if measured by our acquirement of words, but from another point of view it was very gratifying, inasmuch as it was plain that the Martian understood what we were trying to do, and was, for the present, at least, disposed to aid us. These efforts to learn the language of Mars were renewed and repeated every few hours, all the experience, learning and genius of the squadron being concentrated upon the work, and the result was that in the course of a few days we had actually succeeded in learning a dozen or more of the Martian's words and were able to make him understand us when we pronounced them, as well as to understand him when our ears had become accustomed to the growling of his voice. Finally, one day the prisoner, who seemed to be in an unusually cheerful frame of mind, indicated that he carried in his breast some object which he wished us to see. The Martian's Book. With our assistance he pulled out a book! Actually, it was a book, not very unlike the books which we have upon the earth, but printed, of course, in characters that were entirely strange and unknown to us. Yet these characters evidently gave expression to a highly intellectual language. All those who were standing by at the moment uttered a shout of wonder and of delight, and the cry of "A book! a book!" ran around the circle, and the good news was even promptly communicated to some of the neighboring electric ships of the squadron. Several other learned men were summoned in haste from them to examine our new treasure. The Martian, whose good nature had manifestly been growing day after day, watched our inspection of his book with evidences of great interest, not unmingled with amusement. Finally he beckoned the holder of the book to his side, and placing his broad finger upon one of the huge letters--if letters they were, for they more nearly resembled the characters employed by the Chinese printer--he uttered a sound which we, of course, took to be a word, but which was different from any we had yet heard. Then he pointed to one after another of us standing around. "Ah," explained everybody, the truth being apparent, "that is the word by which the Martians designate us. They have a name, then, for the inhabitants of the earth." "Or, perhaps, it is rather the name for the earth itself," said one. But this could not, of course, be at once determined. Anyhow, the word, whatever its precise meaning might be, had now been added to our vocabulary, although as yet our organs of speech proved unable to reproduce it in a recognizable form. This promising and unexpected discovery of the Martian's book lent added enthusiasm to those who were engaged in the work of trying to master the language of our prisoner, and the progress that they made in the course of the next few days was truly astonishing. If the prisoner had been unwilling to aid them, of course, it would have been impossible to proceed, but, fortunately for us, he seemed more and more to enter into the spirit of the undertaking, and actually to enjoy it himself. So bright and quick was his understanding that he was even able to indicate to us methods of mastering his language that would otherwise, probably, never have occurred to our minds. The Prisoner Teaches. In fact, in a very short time he had turned teacher and all these learned men, pressing around him with eager attention, had become his pupils. I cannot undertake to say precisely how much of the Martian language had been acquired by the chief linguists of the expedition before the time when we arrived so near to Mars that it became necessary for most of us to abandon our studies in order to make ready for the more serious business which now confronted us. But, at any rate, the acquisition was so considerable as to allow of the interchange of ordinary ideas with our prisoner, and there was no longer any doubt that he would be able to give us much information when we landed on his native planet. At the end of twenty-three days as measured by terrestrial time, since our departure from the asteroid, we arrived in the sky of Mars. For a long time the ruddy planet had been growing larger and more formidable, gradually turning from a huge star into a great red moon, and then expanding more and more until it began to shut out from sight the constellations behind it. The curious markings on its surface, which from the earth can only be dimly glimpsed with a powerful telescope, began to reveal themselves clearly to our naked eyes. I have related how even before we had reached the asteroid, Mars began to present a most imposing appearance as we saw it with our telescopes. Now, however, that it was close at hand, the naked eye view of the planet was more wonderful than anything we had been able to see with telescopes when at a greater distance. Mars in Sight. We were approaching the southern hemisphere of Mars in about latitude 45 degrees south. It was near the time of the vernal equinox in that hemisphere of the planet, and under the stimulating influence of the Spring sun, rising higher and higher every day, some such awakening of life and activity upon its surface as occurs on the earth under similar circumstances was evidently going on. Around the South Pole were spread immense fields of snow and ice, gleaming with great brilliance. Cutting deep into the borders of these ice fields, we could see broad channels of open water, indicating the rapid breaking of the grip of the frost. Almost directly beneath us was a broad oval region, light red in color, to which terrestrial astronomers had given the name of Hellas. Toward the south, between Hellas and the borders of the polar ice, was a great belt of darkness that astronomers had always been inclined to regard as a sea. Looking toward the north, we could perceive the immense red expanses of the continents of Mars, with the long curved line of the Syrtis Major, or "The Hour Glass Sea," sweeping through the midst of them toward the north until it disappeared under the horizon. Crossing and recrossing the red continents, in every direction, were the canals of Schiaparelli. Mars Reached at Last--Thrilling Adventures. Plentifully sprinkled over the surface we could see brilliant points, some of dazzling brightness, outshining the daylight. There was also an astonishing variety in the colors of the broad expanses beneath us. Activity, vivacity and beauty, such as we were utterly unprepared to behold, expressed their presence on all sides. The excitement on the flagship and among the other members of the squadron was immense. It was certainly a thrilling scene. Here, right under our feet, lay the world we had come to do battle with. Its appearances, while recalling in some of their broader aspects those which it had presented when viewed from our observatories, were far more strange, complex and wonderful than any astronomer had ever dreamed of. Suppose all of our anticipations about Mars should prove to have been wrong, after all? There could be no longer any question that it was a world which, if not absolutely teeming with inhabitants, like a gigantic ant-hill, at any rate bore on every side the marks of their presence and of their incredible undertakings and achievements. Here and there clouds of smoke arose and spread slowly through the atmosphere beneath us. Floating higher above the surface of the planet were clouds of vapor, assuming the familiar forms of stratus and cumulus with which we were acquainted upon the earth. Dense Clouds Appear. These clouds, however, seemed upon the whole to be much less dense than those to which we were accustomed at home. They had, too, a peculiar iridescent beauty as if there was something in their composition or their texture which split up the chromatic elements of the sunlight and thus produced internal rainbow effects that caused some of the heavier cloud masses to resemble immense collections of opals, alive with the play of ever-changing colors and magically suspended above the planet. As we continued to study the phenomena that was gradually unfolded beneath us we thought that we could detect in many places evidences of the existence of strong fortifications. The planet of war appeared to be prepared for the attacks of enemies. Since, as our own experience had shown, it sometimes waged war with distant planets, it was but natural that it should be found prepared to resist foes who might be disposed to revenge themselves for injuries suffered at its hands. As had been expected, our prisoner now proved to be of very great assistance to us. Apparently he took a certain pride in exhibiting to strangers from a distant world the beauties and wonders of his own planet. The Martian Is Understood. We could not understand by any means all that he said, but we could readily comprehend, from his gestures, and from the manner in which his features lighted up at the recognition of familiar scenes and objects, what his sentiments in regard to them were, and, in a general way, what part they played in the life of the planet. He confirmed our opinion that certain of the works which we saw beneath us were fortifications, intended for the protection of the planet against invaders from outer space. A cunning and almost diabolical look came into his eyes as he pointed to one of these strongholds. Cause for Anxiety. His confidence and his mocking looks were not reassuring to us. He knew what his planet was capable of, and we did not. He had seen, on the asteroid, the extent of our power, and while its display served to intimidate him there, yet now that he and we together were facing the world of his birth, his fear had evidently fallen from him, and he had the manner of one who feels that the shield of an all-powerful protector had been extended over him. But it could not be long now before we should ascertain, by the irrevocable test of actual experience, whether the Martians possessed the power to annihilate us or not. How shall I describe our feelings as we gazed at the scene spread beneath us? They were not quite the same as those of the discoverer of new lands upon the earth. This was a whole new world that we had discovered, and it was filled, as we could see, with inhabitants. But that was not all. We had not come with peaceful intentions. We were to make war on this new world. Deducting our losses we had not more than 940 men left. With these we were to undertake the conquest of a world containing we could not say how many millions! A Hard Task Ahead. Our enemies, instead of being below us in the scale of intelligence were, we had every reason to believe, greatly our superiors. They had proved that they possessed a command over the powers of nature such as we, up to the time when Mr. Edison made his inventions, had not even dreamed that it was possible for us to obtain. It was true that at present we appeared to have the advantage, both in our electrical ships and in our means of offence. The disintegrator was at least as powerful an engine of destruction as any that the Martians had yet shown that they possessed. It did not seem that in that respect they could possibly excel us. During the brief war with the Martians upon the earth it had been gunpowder against a mysterious force as much stronger than gunpowder as the latter was superior to the bows and arrows that preceded it. There had been no comparison whatever between the offensive means employed by the two parties in the struggle on the earth. But the genius of one man had suddenly put us on the level of our enemies in regard to fighting capacity. Then, too, our electrical ships were far more effective for their purpose than the projectile cars used by the Martians. In fact, the principle upon which they were based was, at bottom, so simple that it seemed astonishing the Martians had not hit upon it. Mr. Edison himself was never tired of saying in reference to this matter: The Martians a Mystery. "I cannot understand why the Martians did not invent these things. They have given ample proof that they understand electricity better than we do. Why should they have resorted to the comparatively awkward and bungling means of getting from one planet to another that they have employed when they might have ridden through the solar system in such conveyances as ours with perfect ease?" "And besides," Mr. Edison would add, "I cannot understand why they did not employ the principle of harmonic vibrations in the construction of their engines of war. The lightning-like strokes that they deal from their machines are no doubt equally powerful, but I think the range of destruction covered by the disintegrators is greater." However, these questions must remain open until we could effect a landing on Mars, and learn something of the condition of things there. The thing that gave us the most uneasiness was the fact that we did not yet know what powers the Martians might have in reserve. It was but natural to suppose that here, on their own ground, they would possess means of defence even more effective than the offensive engines they had employed in attacking enemies so many millions of miles from home. It was important that we should waste no time, and it was equally important that we should select the most vulnerable point for attack. It was self-evident, therefore, that our first duty would be to reconnoitre the surface of the planet and determine its weakest point of defence. At first Mr. Edison contemplated sending the various ships in different directions around the planet in order that the work of exploration might be quickly accomplished. But upon second thought it seemed wiser to keep the squadron together, thus diminishing the chance of disaster. Besides, the commander wished to see with his own eyes the exact situation of the various parts of the planet, where it might appear advisable for us to begin our assault. Thus far we had remained suspended at so great a height above the planet that we had hardly entered into the perceptible limits of its atmosphere and there was no evidence that we had been seen by the inhabitants of Mars; but before starting on our voyage of exploration it was determined to drop down closer to the surface in order that we might the more certainly identify the localities over which we passed. This manoeuvre nearly got us into serious trouble. A Huge Airship. When we had arrived within a distance of three miles from the surface of Mars we suddenly perceived approaching from the eastward a large airship which was navigating the Martian atmosphere at a height of perhaps half a mile above the ground. More Stirring Adventures of Our Warriors Against Mars. This airship moved rapidly on to a point nearly beneath us, when it suddenly paused, reversed its course, and evidently made signals, the purpose of which was not at first evident to us. But in a short time their meaning became perfectly plain, when we found ourselves surrounded by at least twenty similar aerostats approaching swiftly from different sides. It was a great mystery to us where so many airships had been concealed previous to their sudden appearance in answer to the signals. But the mystery was quickly solved when we saw detaching itself from the surface of the planet beneath us, where, while it remained immovable, its color had blended with that of the soil so as to render it invisible, another of the mysterious ships. Then our startled eyes beheld on all sides these formidable-looking enemies rising from the ground beneath us like so many gigantic insects, disturbed by a sudden alarm. In a short time the atmosphere a mile or two below us, and to a distance of perhaps twenty miles around in every direction, was alive with airships of various sizes, and some of most extraordinary forms, exchanging signals, rushing to and fro, but all finally concentrating beneath the place where our squadron was suspended. We had poked the hornet's nest with a vengeance! As yet there had been no sting, but we might quickly expect to feel it if we did not get out of range. Escaping Danger. Quickly instructions were flashed throughout the squadron to instantly reverse polarities and rise as swiftly as possible to a great height. It was evident that this manoeuvre would save us from danger if it were quickly effected, because the airships of the Martians were simply airships and nothing more. They could only float in the atmosphere, and had no means of rising above it, or of navigating empty space. To have turned our disintegrators upon them, and to have begun a battle then and there, would have been folly. They overwhelmingly outnumbered us, the majority of them were yet at a considerable distance and we could not have done battle, even with our entire squadron acting together, with more than one-quarter of them simultaneously. In the meantime the others would have surrounded and might have destroyed us. We must first get some idea of the planet's means of defence before we ventured to assail it. Having risen rapidly to a height of twenty-five or thirty miles, so that we could feel confident that our ships had vanished at least from the naked eye view of our enemies beneath, a brief consultation was held. It was determined to adhere to our original programme and to circumnavigate Mars in every direction before proceeding to open the war. Intimidated by the Enemy. The overwhelming forces shown by the enemy had intimidated even some of the most courageous of our men, but still it was universally felt that it would not do to retreat without a blow struck. The more we saw of the power of the Martians, the more we became convinced that there would be no hope for the earth, if these enemies ever again effected a landing upon its surface, the more especially since our squadron contained nearly all of the earth's force that would be effective in such a contest. With Mr. Edison and the other men of science away, they would not be able at home to construct such engines as we possessed, or to manage them even if they were constructed. Our planet had staked everything on a single throw. These considerations again steeled our hearts, and made us bear up as bravely as possible in the face of the terrible odds that confronted us. Turning the noses of our electrical ships toward the west, we began our circumnavigation. Chapter X. At first we rose to a still greater height, in order more effectually to escape the watchful eyes of our enemies, and then, after having moved rapidly several hundred miles toward the west, we dropped down again within easy eyeshot of the surface of the planet, and commenced our inspection. When we originally reached Mars, as I have related, it was at a point in its southern hemisphere, in latitude 45 degrees south, and longitude 75 degrees east, that we first closely approached its surface. Underneath us was the land called "Hellas," and it was over this land of Hellas that the Martian air fleet had suddenly made its appearance. Our westward motion, while at a great height above the planet, had brought us over another oval-shaped land called "Noachia," surrounded by the dark ocean, the "Mare Erytraeum." Now approaching nearer the surface our course was changed so as to carry us toward the equator of Mars. We passed over the curious, half-drowned continent known to terrestrial astronomers as the Region of Deucalion, then across another sea, or gulf, until we found ourselves floating, at a height of perhaps five miles, above a great continental land, at least three thousand miles broad from east to west, and which I immediately recognized as that to which astronomers had given the various names of "Aeria," "Edom," "Arabia," and "Eden." Here the spectacle became of breathless interest. "Wonderful! Wonderful!" "Who could have believed it!" Such were the exclamations heard on all sides. When at first we were suspended above Hellas, looking toward the north, the northeast and the northwest, we had seen at a distance some of these great red regions, and had perceived the curious network of canals by which they were intersected. But that was a far-off and imperfect view. Now, when we were near at hand and straight above one of these singular lands, the magnificence of the panorama surpassed belief. From the earth about a dozen of the principal canals crossing the continent beneath us had been perceived, but we saw hundreds, nay, thousands of them! It was a double system, intended both for irrigation and for protection, and far more marvellous in its completeness than the boldest speculative minds among our astronomers had ever dared to imagine. "Ha! that's what I always said," exclaimed a veteran from one of our great observatories. "Mars is red because its soil and vegetation are red." And certainly appearances indicated that he was right. There were no green trees, and there was no green grass. Both were red, not of a uniform red tint, but presenting an immense variety of shades which produced a most brilliant effect, fairly dazzling our eyes. But what trees! And what grass! And what flowers! Gigantic Vegetation. Our telescopes showed that even the smaller trees must be 200 or 300 feet in height, and there were forests of giants, whose average height was evidently at least 1,000 feet. "That's all right," exclaimed the enthusiast I have just quoted. "I knew it would be so. The trees are big, for the same reason that the men are, because the planet is small, and they can grow big without becoming too heavy to stand." Flashing in the sun on all sides were the roofs of metallic buildings, which were evidently the only kind of edifices that Mars possessed. At any rate, if stone or wood were employed in their construction both were completely covered with metallic plates. This added immensely to the warlike aspect of the planet. For warlike it was. Everywhere we recognized fortified stations, glittering with an array of the polished knobs of the lightning machines, such as we had seen in the land of Hellas. From the land of Edom, directly over the equator of the planet, we turned our faces westward, and, skirting the Mare Erytraeum, arrived above the place where the broad canal known as the Indus empties into the sea. Before us, and stretching away toward the northwest, now lay the continent of Chryse, a vast red land, oval in outline, and surrounded and crossed by innumerable canals. Chryse was not less than 1,600 miles across, and it, too, evidently swarmed with giant inhabitants. But the shadow of night lay upon the greater portion of the land of Chryse. In our rapid motion westward we had out-stripped the sun and had now arrived at a point where day and night met upon the surface of the planet beneath us. Behind all was brilliant with sunshine, but before us the face of Mars gradually disappeared in the deepening gloom. Through the darkness, far away, we could behold magnificent beams of electric light darting across the curtain of night, and evidently serving to illuminate towns and cities that lay beneath. We pushed on into the night for two or three hundred miles over that part of the continent of Chryse whose inhabitants were doubtless enjoying the deep sleep that accompanies the dark hours immediately preceding the dawn. Still everywhere splendid clusters of light lay like fallen constellations upon the ground, indicating the sites of great towns, which, like those of the earth, never sleep. But this scene, although weird and beautiful, could give us little of the kind of information we were in search of. Accordingly it was resolved to turn back eastward until we had arrived in the twilight space separating day and night, and then hover over the planet at that point, allowing it to turn beneath us so that, as we looked down, we should see in succession the entire circuit of the globe of Mars while it rolled under our eyes. The rotation of Mars on its axis is performed in a period very little longer than that of the earth's rotation, so that the length of the day and night in the world of Mars is only some forty minutes longer than their length upon the earth. In thus remaining suspended over the planet, on the line of daybreak, so to speak, we believed that we should be peculiarly safe from detection by the eyes of the inhabitants. Even astronomers are not likely to be wide awake just at the peep of dawn. Almost all of the inhabitants, we confidently believed, would still be sound asleep upon that part of the planet passing directly beneath us, and those who were awake would not be likely to watch for unexpected appearances in the sky. Besides, our height was so great that notwithstanding the numbers of the squadron, we could not easily be seen from the surface of the planet, and if seen at all we might be mistaken for high-flying birds. Mars Passes Below Us. Here we remained then through the entire course of twenty-four hours and saw in succession as they passed from night into day beneath our feet the land of Chryse, the great continent of Tharsis, the curious region of intersecting canals which puzzled astronomers on the earth had named the "Gordian Knot," the continental lands of Memnonia, Amazonia and Aeolia, the mysterious centre where hundreds of vast canals came together from every direction, called the Trivium Charontis; the vast circle of Elysium, a thousand miles across, and completely surrounded by a broad green canal; the continent of Libya, which, as I remembered, had been half covered by a tremendous inundation whose effects were visible from the earth in the year 1889, and finally the long, dark sea of the Syrtis Major, lying directly south of the land of Hellas. The excitement and interest which we all experienced were so great that not one of us took a wink of sleep during the entire twenty-four hours of our marvellous watch. There are one or two things of special interest amid the multitude of wonderful observations that we made which I must mention here on account of their connection with the important events that followed soon after. Just west of the land of Chryse we saw the smaller land of Ophir, in the midst of which is a singular spot called the Juventae Fons, and this Fountain of Youth, as our astronomers, by a sort of prophetic inspiration, had named it, proved later to be one of the most incredible marvels on the planet Mars. Further to the west, and north from the great continent of Tharsis, we beheld the immense oval-shaped land of Thaumasia containing in its centre the celebrated "Lake of the Sun," a circular body of water not less than 500 miles in diameter, with dozens of great canals running away from it like the spokes of a wheel in every direction, thus connecting it with the ocean which surrounds it on the south and east, and with the still larger canals that encircle it toward the north and west. This Lake of the Sun came to play a great part in our subsequent adventures. It was evident to us from the beginning that it was the chief centre of population on the planet. It lies in latitude 25 degrees South and longitude about 90 degrees west. Completing the Circuit. Having completed the circuit of the Martian globe, we were moved by the same feeling which every discoverer of new lands experiences, and immediately returned to our original place above the land of Hellas, because since that was the first part of Mars that we had seen, we felt a greater degree of familiarity with it than with any other portion of the planet, and there, in a certain sense, we felt "at home." But, as it proved, our enemies were on the watch for us there. We had almost forgotten them, so absorbed were we by the great spectacles that had been unrolling themselves beneath our feet. We ought, of course, to have been a little more cautious in approaching the place where they first caught sight of us, since we might have known that they would remain on the watch near that spot. But at any rate they had seen us, and it was now too late to think of taking them again by surprise. They on their part had a surprise in store for us, which was greater than any we had yet experienced. We saw their ships assembling once more far down in the atmosphere beneath us, and we thought we could detect evidences of something unusual going on upon the surface of the planet. Suddenly from the ships, and from various points on the ground beneath, there rose high in the air, and carried by invisible currents in every direction, immense volumes of black smoke, or vapor, which blotted out of sight everything below them! South, north, west and east, the curtain of blackness rapidly spread, until the whole face of the planet as far as our eyes could reach, and the airships thronging under us, were all concealed from sight! Mars had played the game of the cuttlefish, which, when pursued by its enemies, darkens the water behind it by a sudden outgush of inky fluid, and thus escapes the eye of its foe. The Great Smoke Cloud. Our Warriors Find the Martians to Be Foes Worth Fearing. The eyes of man had never beheld such a spectacle! Where a few minutes before the sunny face of a beautiful and populous planet had been shining beneath us, there was now to be seen nothing but black, billowing clouds, swelling up everywhere like the mouse-colored smoke that pours from a great transatlantic liner when fresh coal has just been heaped upon her fires. In some places the smoke spouted upward in huge jets to the height of several miles; elsewhere it eddied in vast whirlpools of inky blackness. Not a glimpse of the hidden world beneath was anywhere to be seen. Mars Wears Its War Mask. Mars had put on its war mask, and fearful indeed was the aspect of it! After the first pause of surprise the squadron quickly backed away into the sky, rising rapidly, because, from one of the swirling eddies beneath us the smoke began suddenly to pile itself up in an enormous aerial mountain, whose peaks shot higher and higher, with apparently increasing velocity, until they seemed about to engulf us with their tumbling ebon masses. Unaware what the nature of this mysterious smoke might be, and fearing it was something more than a shield for the planet, and might be destructive to life, we fled before it, as before the onward sweep of a pestilence. Directly underneath the flagship, one of the aspiring smoke peaks grew with most portentous swiftness, and, notwithstanding all our efforts, in a little while it had enveloped us. The Stifling Smoke. Several of us were standing on the deck of the electrical ship. We were almost stifled by the smoke, and were compelled to take refuge within the car, where, until the electric lights had been turned on, darkness so black that it oppressed the strained eyeballs prevailed. But in this brief experience, terrifying though it was, we had learned one thing. The smoke would kill by strangulation, but evidently there was nothing especially poisonous in its nature. This fact might be of use to us in our subsequent proceedings. "This spoils our plans," said the commander. "There is no use of remaining here for the present; let us see how far this thing extends." At first we rose straight away to a height of 200 or 300 miles, thus passing entirely beyond the sensible limits of the atmosphere, and far above the highest point that the smoke could reach. From this commanding point of view our line of sight extended to an immense distance over the surface of Mars in all directions. Everywhere the same appearance; the whole planet was evidently covered with the smoke. A Wonderful System. A complete telegraphic system evidently connected all the strategic points upon Mars, so that, at a signal from the central station, the wonderful curtain could be instantaneously drawn over the entire face of the planet. In order to make certain that no part of Mars remained uncovered, we dropped down again nearer to the upper level of the smoke clouds, and then completely circumnavigated the planet. It was thought possible that on the night side no smoke would be found and that it would be practicable for us to make a descent there. But when we had arrived on that side of Mars which was turned away from the sun, we no longer saw beneath us, as we had done on our previous visit to the night hemisphere of the planet, brilliant groups and clusters of electric lights beneath us. All was dark. In fact, so completely did the great shell of smoke conceal the planet that the place occupied by the latter seemed to be simply a vast black hole in the firmament. The sun was hidden behind it, and so dense was the smoke that even the solar rays were unable to penetrate it, and consequently there was no atmospheric halo visible around the concealed planet. All the sky around was filled with stars, but their countless host suddenly disappeared when our eyes turned in the direction of Mars. The great black globe blotted them out without being visible itself. Attempts to Attack Baffled. "Apparently we can do nothing here," said Mr. Edison. "Let us return to the daylight side." When we had arrived near the point where we had been when the wonderful phenomenon first made its appearance, we paused, and then, at the suggestion of one of the chemists, dropped close to the surface of the smoke curtain which had now settled down into comparative quiescence, in order that we might examine it a little more critically. The flagship was driven into the smoke cloud so deeply that for a minute we were again enveloped in night. A quantity of the smoke was entrapped in a glass jar. Examining the Smoke. Rising again into the sunlight, the chemists began an examination of the constitution of the smoke. They were unable to determine its precise character, but they found that its density was astonishingly slight. This accounted for the rapidity with which it had risen, and the great height which it had attained in the comparatively light atmosphere of Mars. "It is evident," said one of the chemists, "that this smoke does not extend down to the surface of the planet. From what the astronomers say as to the density of the air on Mars, it is probable that a clear space of at least a mile in height exists between the surface of Mars and the lower limit of the smoke curtain. Just how deep the latter is we can only determine by experiment, but it would not be surprising if the thickness of this great blanket which Mars has thrown around itself should prove to be a quarter or half a mile." "Anyhow," said one of the United States army officers, "they have dodged out of sight, and I don't see why we should not dodge in and get at them. If there is clear air under the smoke, as you think, why couldn't the ships dart down through the curtain and come to a close tackle with the Martians?" "It would not do at all," said the commander. "We might simply run ourselves into an ambush. No; we must stay outside, and if possible fight them from here." Strategic Measures Employed. "They can't keep this thing up forever," said the officer. "Perhaps the smoke will clear off after a while, and then we will have a chance." "Not much hope of that, I am afraid," said the chemist who had originally spoken. "This smoke could remain floating in the atmosphere for weeks, and the only wonder to me is how they ever expect to get rid of it, when they think their enemies have gone and they want some sunshine again." "All that is mere speculation," said Mr. Edison; "let us get at something practical. We must do one of two things: either attack them shielded as they are, or wait until the smoke has cleared away. The only other alternative, that of plunging blindly down through the curtain, is at present not to be thought of." "I am afraid we couldn't stand a very long siege ourselves," suddenly remarked the chief commissary of the expedition, who was one of the members of the flagship's company. "What do you mean by that?" asked Mr. Edison sharply, turning to him. "Well, sir, you see," said the commissary, stammering, "our provisions wouldn't hold out." "Wouldn't hold out?" exclaimed Mr. Edison, in astonishment, "why, we have compressed and prepared provisions enough to last this squadron for three years." "We had, sir, when we left the earth," said the commissary, in apparent distress, "but I am sorry to say that something has happened." "Something has happened! Explain yourself!" Accident to the Stores. "I don't know what it is, but on inspecting some of the compressed stores, a short time ago, I found that a large number of them were destroyed, whether through leakage of air, or what, I am unable to say. I sent to inquire as to the condition of the stores in the other ships in the squadron and I found that a similar condition of things prevailed there." "The fact is," continued the commissary, "we have only provisions enough, in proper condition, for about ten days' consumption." "After that we shall have to forage on the country, then," said the army officer. "Why did you not report this before?" demanded Mr. Edison. "Because, sir," was the reply, "the discovery was not made until after we arrived close to Mars, and since then there has been so much excitement that I have hardly had time to make an investigation and find out what the precise condition of affairs is; besides, I thought we should land upon the planet and then we would be able to renew our supplies." I closely watched Mr. Edison's expression in order to see how this most alarming news would affect him. Although he fully comprehended its fearful significance, he did not lose his self-command. We Must Act Quickly. "Well, well," he said, "then it will become necessary for us to act quickly. Evidently we cannot wait for the smoke to clear off, even if there were any hope of its clearing. We must get down on Mars now, having conquered it first if possible, but anyway we must get down there, in order to avoid starvation." "It is very lucky," he continued, "that we have ten days' supply left. A great deal can be done in ten days." A few hours after this the commander called me aside, and said: "I have thought it all out. I am going to reconstruct some of our disintegrators, so as to increase their range and their power. Then I am going to have some of the astronomers of the expedition locate for me the most vulnerable points upon the planet, where the population is densest and a hard blow would have the most effect, and I am going to pound away at them, through the smoke, and see whether we cannot draw them out of their shell." A Plan Arranged. With his expert assistants Mr. Edison set to work at once to transform a number of the disintegrators into still more formidable engines of the same description. One of these new weapons having been distributed to each of the members of the squadron, the next problem was to decide where to strike. When we first examined the surface of the planet it will be remembered that we had regarded the Lake of the Sun and its environs as being the very focus of the planet. While it might also be a strong point of defence, yet an effective blow struck there would go to the enemy's heart and be more likely to bring the Martians promptly to terms than anything else. The first thing, then, was to locate the Lake of the Sun on the smoke-hidden surface of the planet beneath us. This was a problem that the astronomers could readily solve. Fortunately, in the flagship itself there was one of the star-gazing gentlemen who had made a specialty of the study of Mars. That planet, as I have already explained, was now in opposition to the earth. The astronomer had records in his pocket which enabled him, by a brief calculation, to say just when the Lake of the Sun would be on the meridian of Mars as seen from the earth. Our chronometers still kept terrestrial time; we knew the exact number of days and hours that had elapsed since we had departed, and so it was possible by placing ourselves in a line between the earth and Mars to be practically in the situation of an astronomer in his observatory at home. Then it was only necessary to wait for the hour when the Lake of the Sun would be upon the meridian of Mars in order to be certain what the true direction of the latter from the flagship was. Having thus located the heart of our foe behind its shield of darkness, we prepared to strike. The Smoke Must Be Shattered. "I have ascertained," said Mr. Edison, "the vibration period of the smoke, so that it will be easy for us to shatter it into invisible atoms. You will see that every stroke of the disintegrators will open a hole through the black curtain. If their field of destruction could be made wide enough, we might in that manner clear away the entire covering of smoke, but all that we shall really be able to do will be to puncture it with holes, which will, perhaps, enable us to catch glimpses of the surface beneath. In that manner we may be able more effectually to concentrate our fire upon the most vulnerable points." The Blow--And Its Effect. Everything being prepared, and the entire squadron having assembled to watch the effect of the opening blow and be ready to follow it up, Mr. Edison himself poised one of the new disintegrators, which was too large to be carried in the hand, and, following the direction indicated by the calculations of the astronomers, launched the vibratory discharge into the ocean of blackness beneath. A Terrible Encounter. The Martians and Our Warriors Fight a Battle to the Death. Instantly there opened beneath us a huge well-shaped hole, from which the black clouds rolled violently back in every direction. Through this opening we saw the gleam of brilliant lights beneath. We had made a hit. "It is the Lake of the Sun!" shouted the astronomer who furnished the calculation by means of which its position had been discovered. And, indeed, it was the Lake of the Sun. While the opening in the clouds made by the discharge was not wide, yet it sufficed to give us a view of a portion of the curving shore of the lake, which was ablaze with electric lights. Whether our shot had done any damage, beyond making the circular opening in the cloud curtain, we could not tell, for almost immediately the surrounding black smoke masses billowed in to fill up the hole. But in the brief glimpse we had caught sight of two or three large air ships hovering in space above that part of the Lake of the Sun and its bordering city which we had beheld. It seemed to me in the brief glance I had that one ship had been touched by the discharge and was wandering in an erratic manner. But the clouds closed in so rapidly that I not be certain. Penetrating the Cloud. Anyhow, we had demonstrated one thing, and that was that we could penetrate the cloud shield and reach the Martians in their hiding place. It had been prearranged that the first discharge from the flagship should be a signal for the concentration of the fire of all the other ships upon the same spot. A little hesitation, however, occurred, and a half a minute had elapsed before the disintegrators from the other members of the squadron were got into play. The Martians' Artificial Day. Then, suddenly we saw an immense commotion in the cloud beneath us. It seemed to be beaten and hurled in every direction and punctured like a sieve with nearly a hundred great circular holes. Through these gaps we could see clearly a large region of the planet's surface, with many airships floating above it, and the blaze of innumerable electric lights illuminating it. The Martians had created an artificial day under the curtain. This time there was no question that the blow had been effective. Four or five of the airships, partially destroyed, tumbled headlong toward the ground, while even from our great distance there was unmistakable evidence that fearful execution had been done among the crowded structures along the shore of the Lake. As each of our ships possessed but one of the new disintegrators, and since a minute or so was required to adjust them for a fresh discharge, we remained for a little while inactive after delivering the blow. Meanwhile the cloud curtain, though rent to shreds by the concentrated discharge of the disintegrators, quickly became a uniform black sheet again, hiding everything. We had just had time to congratulate ourselves on the successful opening of our bombardment, and the disintegrator of the flagship was poised for another discharge, when suddenly out of the black expanse beneath, quivered immense electric beams, clear cut and straight as bars of steel, but dazzling our eyes with unendurable brilliance. It was the reply of the Martians to our attack. Devastating Our Army. Three or four of the electrical ships were seriously damaged, and one, close beside the flagship, changed color, withered and collapsed, with the same sickening phenomena that had made our hearts shudder when the first disaster of this kind occurred during our brief battle over the asteroid. Another score of our comrades were gone, and yet we had hardly begun the fight. Glancing at the other ships, which had been injured, I saw that the damage to them was not so serious, although they were evidently hors de combat for the present. Our fighting blood was now boiling and we did not stop long to count our losses. "Into the smoke!" was the signal, and the ninety and more electric ships which still remained in condition for action immediately shot downward. Chapter XI. A Dash Into the Smoke. It was a wild plunge. We kept off the decks while rushing through the blinding smoke, but the instant we emerged below, where we found ourselves still a mile above the ground, we were out again, ready to strike. I have simply a confused recollection of flashing lights beneath, and a great, dark arch of clouds above, out of which our ships seemed dropping on all sides, and then the fray burst upon and around us, and no man could see or notice anything except by half-comprehended glances. Almost in an instant, it seemed, a swarm of airships surrounded us, while from what, for lack of a more descriptive name, I shall call the forts about the Lake of the Sun, leaped tongues of electric fire, before which some of our ships were driven like bits of flaming paper in a high wind, gleaming for a moment, then curling up and gone forever! Never Was Such a Conflict. It was an awful sight; but the battle fever was raging in us, and we, on our part, were not idle. Every man carried a disintegrator, and these hand instruments, together with those of heavier calibre on the ships poured their resistless vibrations in every direction through the quivering air. The airships of the Martians were destroyed by the score, but yet they flocked upon us thicker and faster. We dropped lower and our blows fell upon the forts, and upon the widespread city bordering the Lake of the Sun. We almost entirely silenced the fire of one of the forts; but there were forty more in full action within reach of our eyes! Some of the metallic buildings were partly unroofed by the disintegrators and some had their walls riddled and fell with thundering crashes, whose sound rose to our ears above the hellish din of battle. I caught glimpses of giant forms struggling in the ruins and rushing wildly through the streets, but there was no time to see anything clearly. The Flagship Charmed! Our flagship seemed charmed. A crowd of airships hung upon it like a swarm of angry bees, and, at times, one could not see for the lightning strokes--yet we escaped destruction, while ourselves dealing death on every hand. It was a glorious fight, but it was not war; no, it was not war. We really had no more chance of ultimate success amid that multitude of enemies than a prisoner running the gauntlet in a crowd of savages has of escape. A conviction of the hopelessness of the contest finally forced itself upon our minds, and the shattered squadron, which had kept well together amid the storm of death, was signalled to retreat. Shaking off their pursuers, as a hunted bear shakes off the dogs, sixty of the electrical ships rose up through the clouds where more than ninety had gone down! Madly we rushed upward through the vast curtain and continued our flight to a great elevation, far beyond the reach of the awful artillery of the enemy. Forced to Retreat. Looking back it seemed the very mouth of hell that we had escaped from. The Martians did not for an instant cease their fire, even when we were far beyond their reach. With furious persistence they blazed away through the cloud curtains, and the vivid spikes of lightning shuddered so swiftly on one another's track that they were like a flaming halo of electric lances around the frowning helmet of the War Planet. But after a while they stopped their terrific sparring, and once more the immense globe assumed the appearance of a vast ball of black smoke, still wildly agitated by the recent disturbance, but exhibiting no opening through which we could discern what was going on beneath. Evidently the Martians believed they had finished us. Despair Seizes Us. At no time since the beginning of our adventure had it appeared to me quite so hopeless, reckless and mad as it seemed at present. We had suffered fearful losses, and yet what had we accomplished? We had won two fights on the asteroid, it is true, but then we had overwhelming numbers on our side. Now we were facing millions on their own ground, and our very first assault had resulted in a disastrous repulse, with the loss of at least thirty electric ships and 600 men! Evidently we could not endure this sort of thing. We must find some other means of assailing Mars or else give up the attempt. But the latter was not to be thought of. It was no mere question of self-pride, however, and no consideration of the tremendous interests at stake, which would compel us to continue our apparently vain attempt. No Hope in Sight. Our provisions could last only a few days longer. The supply would not carry us one-quarter of the way back to the earth, and we must therefore remain here and literally conquer or die. In this extremity a consultation of the principal officers was called upon the deck of the flagship. Here the suggestion was made that we should attempt to effect by strategy what we had failed to do by force. An old army officer who had served in many wars against the cunning Indians of the West, Colonel Alonzo Jefferson Smith, was the author of this suggestion. "Let us circumvent them," he said. "We can do it in this way. The chances are that all of the available fighting force of the planet Mars is now concentrated on this side and in the neighborhood of the Lake of the Sun." Formulating a "Last Hope." "Possibly, by some kind of X-ray business, they can only see us dimly through the clouds, and if we get a little further away they will not be able to see us at all." "Now, I suggest that a certain number of the electrical ships be withdrawn from the squadron to a great distance, while the remainder stay here; or, better still, approach to a point just beyond the reach of those streaks of lightning, and begin a bombardment of the clouds without paying any attention to whether the strokes reach through the clouds and do any damage or not." "This will induce the Martians to believe that we are determined to press our attack at this point." "In the meantime, while these ships are raising a hullabaloo on this side of the planet, and drawing their fire, as much as possible, without running into any actual danger, let the others which have been selected for the purpose, sail rapidly around to the other side of Mars and take them in the rear." It was not perfectly clear what Colonel Smith intended to do after the landing had been effected in the rear of the Martians, but still there seemed a good deal to be said for his suggestion, and it would, at any rate, if carried out, enable us to learn something about the condition of things on the planet, and perhaps furnish us with a hint as to how we could best proceed in the further prosecution of the siege. Accordingly it was resolved that about twenty ships should be told off for this movement, and Colonel Smith himself was placed in command. At my desire I accompanied the new commander in his flagship. Flank Movements. Rising to a considerable elevation in order that there might be no risk of being seen, we began our flank movement while the remaining ships, in accordance with the understanding, dropped nearer the curtain of cloud and commenced a bombardment with the disintegrators, which caused a tremendous commotion in the clouds, opening vast gaps in them, and occasionally revealing a glimpse of the electric lights on the planet, although it was evident that the vibratory currents did not reach the ground. The Martians immediately replied to this renewed attack, and again the cloud-covered globe bristled with lightning, which flashed so fiercely out of the blackness below that the stoutest hearts among us quailed, although we were situated well beyond the danger. But this sublime spectacle rapidly vanished from our eyes when, having attained a proper elevation, we began our course toward the opposite hemisphere of the planet. We guided our flight by the stars, and from our knowledge of the rotation period of Mars, and the position which the principal points on its surface must occupy at certain hours, we were able to tell what part of the planet lay beneath us. Having completed our semi-circuit, we found ourselves on the night side of Mars, and determined to lose no time in executing our coup. But it was deemed best that an exploration should first be made by a single electrical ship, and Colonel Smith naturally wished to undertake the adventure with his own vessel. Dropping to the Planet. We dropped rapidly through the black cloud curtain, which proved to be at least half a mile in thickness, and then suddenly emerged, as if suspended at the apex of an enormous dome, arching above the surface of the planet a mile beneath us, which sparkled on all sides with innumerable lights. These lights were so numerous and so brilliant as to produce a faint imitation of daylight, even at our immense height above the ground, and the dome of cloud out of which we had emerged assumed a soft fawn color that produced an indescribably beautiful effect. For a moment we recoiled from our undertaking, and arrested the motion of the electric ship. But on closely examining the surface beneath us we found that there was a broad region, where comparatively few bright lights were to be seen. From my knowledge of the geography of Mars I knew that this was a part of the Land of Ausonia, situated a few hundred miles northeast of Hellas, where we had first seen the planet. Evidently it was not so thickly populated as some of the other parts of Mars, and its comparative darkness was an attraction to us. We determined to approach within a few hundred feet of the ground with the electric ship, and then, in case no enemies appeared, to visit the soil itself. "Perhaps we shall see or hear something that will be of use to us," said Colonel Smith, "and for the purposes of this first reconnaissance it is better that we should be few in number. The other ships will await our return, and at any rate we shall not be gone long." As our car approached the ground we found ourselves near the tops of some lofty trees. "This will do," said Colonel Smith, to the electrical steersman. "Stay right here." He and I then lowered ourselves into the branches of the trees, each carrying a small disintegrator, and cautiously clambered down to the ground. Landing On Mars. We believed we were the first of the descendants of Adam to set foot on the planet of Mars. An Experience On Mars. The Great Planet Exhibits Its Wonders to Our Warriors. At first we suffered somewhat from the effects of the rare atmosphere. It was so lacking in density that it resembled the air on the summits of the loftiest terrestrial mountains. Having reached the foot of the tree in safety, we lay down for a moment on the ground to recover ourselves and to become accustomed to our new surroundings. A thrill, born half of wonder, half of incredulity, ran through me at the touch of the soil of Mars. Here was I, actually on that planet, which had seemed so far away, so inaccessible, and so full of mysteries when viewed from the earth. And yet, surrounding me, were things--gigantic, it is true--but still resembling and recalling the familiar sights of my own world. After a little while our lungs became accustomed to the rarity of the atmosphere and we experienced a certain stimulation in breathing. Starting on our Travels. We then got upon our feet and stepped out from under the shadow of the gigantic tree. High above we could faintly see our electrical ship, gently swaying in the air close to the treetop. There were no electric lights in our immediate neighborhood, but we noticed that the whole surface of the planet around us was gleaming with them, producing an effect like the glow of a great city seen from a distance at night. The glare was faintly reflected from the vast dome of clouds above, producing the general impression of a moonlight night upon the earth. It was a wonderfully quiet and beautiful spot where we had come down. The air had a delicate feel and a bracing temperature, while a soft breeze soughed through the leaves of the tree above our heads. Not far away was the bank of a canal, bordered by a magnificent avenue shaded by a double row of immense umbrageous trees. We approached the canal, and, getting upon the road, turned to the left to make an exploration in that direction. The shadow of the trees falling upon the roadway produced a dense gloom, in the midst of which we felt that we should be safe, unless the Martians had eyes like those of cats. An Alarming Encounter. As we pushed along, our hearts, I confess, beating a little quickly, a shadow stirred in front of us. Something darker than the night itself approached. As it drew near it assumed the appearance of an enormous dog, as tall as an ox, which ran swiftly our way with a threatening motion of its head. But before it could even utter a snarl the whirr of Colonel Smith's disintegrator was heard and the creature vanished in the shadow. "Gracious, did you ever see such a beast?" said the Colonel. "Why, he was as big as a grizzly." "The people he belonged to must be near by," I said. "Very likely he was a watch on guard." "But I see no signs of a habitation." "True, but you observe there is a thick hedge on the side of the road opposite the canal. If we get through that perhaps we shall catch sight of something." A Palace in View. Cautiously we pushed our way through the hedge, which was composed of shrubs as large as small trees, and very thick at the bottom, and, having traversed it, found ourselves in a great meadow-like expanse which might have been a lawn. At a considerable distance, in the midst of a clump of trees, a large building towered skyward, its walls of some red metal, gleaming like polished copper in the soft light that fell from the cloud dome. There were no lights around the building itself, and we saw nothing corresponding to windows on that side which faced us, but toward the right a door was evidently open, and out of this streamed a brilliant shaft of illumination, which lay bright upon the lawn, then crossed the highway through an opening in the hedge, and gleamed on the water of the canal beyond. Where we stood the ground had evidently been recently cleared, and there was no obstruction, but as we crept closer to the house--for our curiosity had now become irresistible--we found ourselves crawling through grass so tall that if we had stood erect it would have risen well above our heads. Taking Precautions. "This affords good protection," said Colonel Smith, recalling his adventures on the Western plains. "We can get close in to the Indians--I beg pardon, I mean the Martians--without being seen." Heavens, what an adventure was this! To be crawling about in the night on the face of another world and venturing, perhaps, into the jaws of a danger which human experience could not measure! But on we went, and in a little while we had emerged from the tall grass and were somewhat startled by the discovery that we had got close to the wall of the building. Carefully we crept around toward the open door. As we neared it we suddenly stopped as if we had been stricken with instantaneous paralysis. Out of the door floated, on the soft night air, the sweetest music I have ever listened to. A Monstrous Surprise. It carried me back in an instant to my own world. It was the music of the earth. It was the melodious expression of a human soul. It thrilled us both to the heart's core. "My God!" exclaimed Colonel Smith. "What can that be? Are we dreaming, or where in heaven's name are we?" Still the enchanting harmony floated out upon the air. What the instrument was I could not tell; but the sound seemed more nearly to resemble that of a violin than of anything else I could think of. Magnificent Music. When we first heard it the strains were gentle, sweet, caressing and full of an infinite depth of feeling, but in a little while its tone changed, and it became a magnificent march, throbbing upon the air in stirring notes that set our hearts beating in unison with its stride and inspiring in us a courage that we had not felt before. Then it drifted into a wild fantasia, still inexpressibly sweet, and from that changed again into a requiem or lament, whose mellifluous tide of harmony swept our thoughts back again to the earth. "I can endure this no longer," I said. "I must see who it is that makes that music. It is the product of a human heart and must come from the touch of human fingers." We carefully shifted our position until we stood in the blaze of light that poured out of the door. The doorway was an immense arched opening, magnificently ornamented, rising to a height of, I should say, not less than twenty or twenty-five feet and broad in proportion. The door itself stood widely open and it, together with all of its fittings and surroundings, was composed of the same beautiful red metal. A Beautiful Girl! Stepping out a little way into the light I could see within the door an immense apartment, glittering on all sides with metallic ornaments and gems and lighted from the centre by a great chandelier of electric candles. In the middle of the great floor, holding the instrument delicately poised, and still awaking its ravishing voice, stood a figure, the sight of which almost stopped my breath. It was a slender sylph of a girl! A girl of my own race: a human being here upon the planet Mars! Her hair was loosely coiled and she was attired in graceful white drapery. "By ----!" cried Colonel Smith, "she's human!" Chapter XII. Still the bewildering strains of the music came to our ears, and yet we stood there unperceived, though in the full glare of the chandelier. The girl's face was presented in profile. It was exquisite in beauty, pale, delicate with a certain pleading sadness which stirred us to the heart. An element of romance and a touch of personal interest such as we had not looked for suddenly entered into our adventure. Colonel Smith's mind still ran back to the perils of the plains. A Human Prisoner. "She is a prisoner," he said, "and by the Seven Devils of Dona Ana we'll not leave her here. But where are the hellhounds themselves?" Our attention had been so absorbed by the sight of the girl that we had scarcely thought of looking to see if there was any one else in the room. Glancing beyond her, I now perceived sitting in richly decorated chairs three or four gigantic Martians. They were listening to the music as if charmed. The whole story told itself. This girl, if not their slave, was at any rate under their control, and she was furnishing entertainment for them by her musical skill. The fact that they could find pleasure in music so beautiful was, perhaps, an indication that they were not really as savage as they seemed. Yet our hearts went out to the girl, and were turned against them with an uncontrollable hatred. They were of the same remorseless race with those who so lately had lain waste our fair earth and who would have completed its destruction had not Providence interfered in our behalf. Singularly enough, although we stood full in the light, they had not yet seen us. Martians Guarding Her. Suddenly the girl, moved by what impulse I know not, turned her face in our direction. Her eyes fell upon us. She paused abruptly in her playing, and her instrument dropped to the floor. Then she uttered a cry, and with extended arms ran toward us. But when she was near she stopped abruptly, the glad look fading from her face, and started back with terror-stricken eyes, as if, after all, she had found us not what she expected. Then for an instant she looked more intently at us, her countenance cleared once more, and, overcome by some strange emotion, her eyes filled with tears, and, drawing a little nearer, she stretched forth her hands to us appealingly. Meanwhile the Martians had started to their feet. They looked down upon us in astonishment. We were like pigmies to them; like little gnomes which had sprung out of the ground at their feet. One of the giants seized some kind of a weapon and started forward with a threatening gesture. The Girl Appeals to Us. The girl sprang to my side and grasped my arm with a cry of fear. This seemed to throw the Martian into a sudden frenzy, and he raised his arms to strike. But the disintegrator was in my hand. My rage was equal to his. I felt the concentrated vengeance of the earth quivering through me as I pressed the button of the disintegrator and, sweeping it rapidly up and down, saw the gigantic form that confronted me melt into nothingness. There were three other giants in the room, and they had been on the point of following up the attack of their comrade. But when he disappeared from before their eyes, they paused, staring in amazement at the place where, but a moment before, he had stood, but where now only the metal weapon he had wielded lay on the floor. At first they started back, and seemed on the point of fleeing; then, with a second glance, perceiving again how small and insignificant we were, all three together advanced upon us. The girl sank trembling on her knees. In the meantime I had readjusted my disintegrator for another discharge, and Colonel Smith stood by me with the light of battle upon his face. "Sweep the discharge across the three," I exclaimed. "Otherwise there will be one left and before we can fire again he will crush us." The Martians Are Killed. The whirr of the two instruments sounded simultaneously, and with a quick, horizontal motion we swept the lines of force around in such a manner that all three of the Martians were caught by the vibratory streams and actually cut in two. Long gaps were opened in the wall of the room behind them, where the destroying currents had passed, for with wrathful fierceness, we had run the vibrations through half a gamut on the index. The victory was ours. There were no other enemies, that we could see, in the house. Yet at any moment others might make their appearance, and what more we did must be done quickly. The girl evidently was as much amazed as the Martians had been by the effects which we had produced. Still she was not terrified, and continued to cling to us and to glance beseechingly into our faces, expressing in her every look and gesture the fact that she knew we were of her own race. But clearly she could not speak our tongue, for the words she uttered were unintelligible. Colonel Smith, whose long experience in Indian warfare had made him intensely practical, did not lose his military instincts, even in the midst of events so strange. "It occurs to me," he said, "that we have got a chance at the enemies' supplies. Suppose we begin foraging right here. Let's see if this girl can't show us the commissary department." He immediately began to make signs to the girl to indicate that he was hungry. The Girl Understands Us. A look of comprehension flitted over her features, and, seizing our hands, she led us into an adjoining apartment and pointed to a number of metallic boxes. One of these she opened, taking out of it a kind of cake, which she placed between her teeth, breaking off a very small portion and then handing it to us, motioning that we should eat, but at the same time showing us that we ought to take only a small quantity. "Thank God! It's compressed food," said Colonel Smith. "I thought these Martians with their wonderful civilization would be up to that. And it's mighty lucky for us, because, without overburdening ourselves, if we can find one or two more caches like this we shall be able to reprovision the entire fleet. But we must get reinforcements before we can take possession of the fodder." The Prisoner Is Rescued. Accordingly we hurried out into the night, passed into the roadway, and, taking the girl with us, ran as rapidly as possible to the foot of the tree where we had made our descent. Then we signalled to the electric ship to drop down to the level of the ground. This was quickly done, the girl was taken aboard, and a dozen men, under our guidance, hastened back to the house, where we loaded ourselves with the compressed provisions and conveyed them to the ship. Beautiful Girl Prisoner. Establishing the Identity of the Martians' Captive. On this second trip to the mysterious house we had discovered another apartment containing a very large number of the metallic boxes, filled with compressed food. "By Jove, it is a store house," said Colonel Smith. "We must get more force and carry it all off. Gracious, but this is a lucky night. We can reprovision the whole fleet from this room." "I thought it singular," I said, "that with the exception of the girl whom we have rescued no women were seen in the house. Evidently the lights over yonder indicate the location of a considerable town, and it is quite probable that this building, without windows, and so strongly constructed, is the common storehouse, where the provisions for the town are kept. The fellows we killed must have been the watchmen in charge of the storehouse, and they were treating themselves to a little music from the slave girl when we happened to come upon them." A New Food Supply. With the utmost haste several of the other electrical ships, waiting above the cloud curtain, were summoned to descend, and, with more than a hundred men, we returned to the building, and this time almost entirely exhausted its stores, each man carrying as much as he could stagger under. Fortunately our proceedings had been conducted without much noise, and the storehouse being situated at a considerable distance from other buildings, none of the Martians, except those who would never tell the story, had known of our arrival or of our doings on the planet. "Now, we'll return and surprise Edison with the news," said Colonel Smith. Our ship was the last to pass up through the clouds, and it was a strange sight to watch the others as one after another they rose toward the great dome, entered it, though from below it resembled a solid vault of grayish-pink marble, and disappeared. Sunshine Again. We quickly followed them, and having penetrated the enormous curtain, were considerably surprised on emerging at the upper side to find that the sun was shining brilliantly upon us. It will be remembered that it was night on this side of Mars when we went down, but our adventure had occupied several hours, and now Mars had so far turned upon its axis that the portion of its surface over which we were had come around into the sunlight. We knew that the squadron which we had left besieging the Lake of the Sun must also have been carried around in a similar manner, passing into the night while the side of the planet where we were was emerging into day. Our shortest way back would be by travelling westward, because then we should be moving in a direction opposite to that in which the planet rotated, and the main squadron, sharing that rotation, would be continually moving in our direction. But to travel westward was to penetrate once more into the night side of the planet. The prows, if I may so call them, of our ships were accordingly turned in the direction of the vast shadow which Mars was invisibly projecting into space behind it, and on entering that shadow the sun disappeared from our eyes, and once more the huge hidden globe beneath us became a black chasm among the stars. Now that we were in the neighborhood of a globe capable of imparting considerable weight to all things under the influence of its attraction that peculiar condition which I have before described as existing in the midst of space, where there was neither up nor down for us, had ceased. Here where we had weight "up" and "down" had resumed their old meanings. "Down" was toward the centre of Mars, and "up" was away from that centre. The Two Moons of Mars. Standing on the deck, and looking overhead as we swiftly ploughed our smooth way at a great height through the now imperceptible atmosphere of the planet, I saw the two moons of Mars meeting in the sky exactly above us. Before our arrival at Mars, there had been considerable discussion among the learned men as to the advisability of touching at one of their moons, and when the discovery was made that our provisions were nearly exhausted, it had been suggested that the Martian satellites might furnish us with an additional supply. But it had appeared a sufficient reply to this suggestion that the moons of Mars are both insignificant bodies, not much larger than the asteroid we had fallen in with, and that there could not possibly be any form of vegetation or other edible products upon them. This view having prevailed, we had ceased to take an interest in the satellites, further than to regard them as objects of great curiosity on account of their motions. The nearer of these moons, Phobos, is only 3,700 miles from the surface of Mars, and we watched it travelling around the planet three times in the course of every day. The more distant one, Deimos, 12,500 miles away, required considerably more than one day to make its circuit. It now happened that the two had come into conjunction, as I have said, just over our heads, and, throwing myself down on my back on the deck of the electrical ship, for a long time I watched the race between the two satellites, until Phobos, rapidly gaining upon the other, had left its rival far behind. Suddenly Colonel Smith, who took very little interest in these astronomical curiosities, touched me, and pointing ahead, said: "There they are." Rejoining the Fleet. I looked, and sure enough there were the signal lights of the principal squadron, and as we gazed we occasionally saw, darting up from the vast cloud mass beneath, an electric bayonet, fiercely thrust into the sky, which showed that the siege was still actively going on, and that the Martians were jabbing away at their invisible enemies outside the curtain. In a short time the two fleets had joined, and Colonel Smith and I immediately transferred ourselves to the flagship. "Well, what have you done?" asked Mr. Edison, while others crowded around with eager attention. "If we have not captured their provision train," said Colonel Smith, "we have done something just about as good. We have foraged on the country, and have collected a supply that I reckon will last this fleet for at least a month." "What's that? What's that?" "It's just what I say," and Colonel Smith brought out of his pocket one of the square cakes of compressed food. "Set your teeth in that, and see what you think of it, but don't take too much, for it's powerful strong." "I say," he continued, "we have got enough of that stuff to last us all for a month, but we've done more than that; we have got a surprise for you that will make you open your eyes. Just wait a minute." Caring for the Rescued Girl. Colonel Smith made a signal to the electrical ship which we had just quitted to draw near. It came alongside, so that one could step from its deck onto the flagship. Colonel Smith disappeared for a minute in the interior of his ship, then re-emerged, leading the girl whom we had found upon the planet. "Take her inside, quick," he said, "for she is not used to this thin air." In fact, we were at so great an elevation that the rarity of the atmosphere now compelled us all to wear our air-tight suits, and the girl, not being thus attired, would have fallen unconscious on the deck if we had not instantly removed her to the interior of the car. There she quickly recovered from the effects of the deprivation of air and looked about her, pale, astonished, but yet apparently without fear. Every motion of this girl convinced me that she not only recognized us as members of her own race, but that she felt that her only hope lay in our aid. Therefore, strange as we were to her in many respects, nevertheless she did not think that she was in danger while among us. The circumstances under which we had found her were quickly explained. Her beauty, her strange fate and the impenetrable mystery which surrounded her excited universal admiration and wonder. How Came She on Mars? "How did she get on Mars?" was the question that everybody asked, and that nobody could answer. But while all were crowding around and overwhelming the poor girl with their staring, suddenly she burst into tears, and then, with arms outstretched in the same appealing manner which had so stirred our sympathies when we first saw her in the house of the Martians, she broke forth in a wild recitation, which was half a song and half a wail. As she went on I noticed that a learned professor of languages from the University of Heidelberg was listening to her with intense attention. Several times he appeared to be on the point of breaking in with an exclamation. I could plainly see that he was becoming more and more excited as the words poured from the girl's lips. Occasionally he nodded and muttered, smiling to himself. Her song finished, the girl sank half-exhausted upon the floor. She was lifted and placed in a reclining position at the side of the car. Then the Heidelberg professor stepped to the centre of the car, in the sight of all, and in a most impressive manner said: "Gentlemen, our sister." "I have her tongue recognized! The language that she speaks, the roots of the great Indo-European, or Aryan stock, contains." "This girl, gentlemen, to the oldest family of the human race belongs. Her language every tongue that now upon the earth is spoken antedates. Convinced am I that it that great original speech is from which have all the languages of the civilized world sprung." "How she here came, so many millions of miles from the earth, a great mystery is. But it shall be penetrated, and it is from her own lips that we the truth shall learn, because not difficult to us shall it be the language that she speaks to acquire since to our own it is akin." The Professor's Astonishing Statement. This announcement of the Heidelberg professor stirred us all most profoundly. It not only deepened our interest in the beautiful girl whom we had rescued, but, in a dim way, it gave us reason to hope that we should yet discover some means of mastering the Martians by dealing them a blow from within. It had been expected, the reader will remember, that the Martian whom we had made prisoner on the asteroid, might be of use to us in a similar way, and for that reason great efforts had been made to acquire his language, and considerable progress had been effected in that direction. But from the moment of our arrival at Mars itself, and especially after the battles began, the prisoner had resumed his savage and uncommunicative disposition, and had seemed continually to be expecting that we would fall victims to the prowess of his fellow beings, and that he would be released. How an outlaw, such as he evidently was, who had been caught in the act of robbing the Martian gold mines, could expect to escape punishment on returning to his native planet it was difficult to see. Nevertheless, so strong are the ties of race we could plainly perceive that all his sympathies were for his own people. In fact, in consequence of his surly manner, and his attempts to escape, he had been more strictly bound than before and to get him out of the way had been removed from the flagship, which was already overcrowded, and placed in one of the other electric ships, and this ship--as it happened--was one of those which were lost in the great battle beneath the clouds. So after all, the Martian had perished, by a vengeful stroke launched from his native globe. But Providence had placed in our hands a far better interpreter than he could ever have been. This girl of our own race would need no urging, or coercion, on our part in order to induce her to reveal any secrets of the Martians that might be useful in our further proceedings. But one thing was first necessary to be done. We must learn to talk with her. Learning Her Language. But for the discovery of the store of provisions it would have been impossible for us to spare the time needed to acquire the language of the girl, but now that we had been saved from the danger of starvation, we could prolong the siege for several weeks, employing the intervening time to the best advantage. The terrible disaster which we had suffered in the great battle above the Lake of the Sun, wherein we had lost nearly a third of our entire force, had been quite sufficient to convince us that our only hope of victory lay in dealing the Martians some paralyzing stroke that at one blow would deprive them of the power of resistance. A victory that cost us the loss of a single ship would be too dearly purchased now. How to deal that blow, and first of all, how to discover the means of dealing it, were at present the uppermost problems in our minds. The only hope for us lay in the girl. If, as there was every reason to believe, she was familiar with the ways and secrets of the Martians, then she might be able to direct our efforts in such a manner as to render them effective. "We can spare two weeks for this," said Mr. Edison. "Can you fellows of many tongues learn to talk with the girl in that time?" "We'll try it," said several. "It shall we do," cried the Heidelberg professor more confidently. "Then there is no use of staying here," continued the commander. "If we withdraw the Martians will think that we have either given up the contest or been destroyed. Perhaps they will then pull off their blanket and let us see their face once more. That will give us a better opportunity to strike effectively when we are again ready." Preparing a Rendezvous. "Why not rendezvous at one of the moons?" said an astronomer. "Neither of the two moons is of much consequence, as far as size goes, but still it would serve as a sort of anchorage ground, and while there, if we were careful to keep on the side away from Mars, we should escape detection." This suggestion was immediately accepted, and the squadron having been signalled to assemble quickly bore off in the direction of the more distant moon of Mars, Deimos. We knew that it was slightly smaller than Phobos but its greater distance gave promise that it would better serve our purpose of temporary concealment. The moons of Mars, like the earth's moon, always keep the same face toward their master. By hiding behind Deimos we should escape the prying eyes of the Martians, even when they employed telescopes, and thus be able to remain comparatively close at hand, ready to pounce down upon them again after we had obtained, as we now had good hope of doing, information that would make us masters of the situation. Chapter XIII. On One of Mars' Moons. Deimos proved to be, as we had expected, about six miles in diameter. Its mean density is not very great so that the acceleration of gravity did not exceed one two-thousandths of the earth's. Consequently the weight of a man turning the scales at 150 pounds at home was here only about one ounce. The result was that we could move about with greater ease than on the golden asteroid, and some of the scientific men eagerly resumed their interrupted experiments. But the attraction of this little satellite was so slight that we had to be very careful not to move too swiftly in going about lest we should involuntarily leave the ground and sail out into space, as, it will be remembered, happened to the fugitives during the fight on the asteroid. Not only would such an adventure have been an uncomfortable experience, but it might have endangered the success of our scheme. Our present distance from the surface of Mars did not exceed 12,500 miles, and we had reason to believe that Martians possessed telescopes powerful enough to enable them not merely to see the electrical ships at such a distance, but to also catch sight of us individually. Although the cloud curtain still rested on the planet it was probable that the Martians would send some of their airships up to its surface in order to determine what our fate had been. From that point of vantage, with their exceedingly powerful glasses, we feared that they might be able to detect anything unusual upon or in the neighborhood of Deimos. The Ships are Moored. Accordingly strict orders were given, not only that the ships should be moored on that side of the satellite which is perpetually turned away from Mars, but that, without orders, no one should venture around on the other side of the little globe, or even on the edge of it, where he might be seen in profile against the sky. Still, of course, it was essential that we, on our part, should keep a close watch, and so a number of sentinels were selected, whose duty it was to place themselves at the edge of Deimos, where they could peep over the horizon, so to speak, and catch sight of the globe of our enemies. The distance of Mars from us was only about three times its own diameter, consequently it shut off a large part of the sky, as viewed from our position. But in order to see its whole surface it was necessary to go a little beyond the edge of the satellite, on that side which faced Mars. At the suggestion of Colonel Smith, who had so frequently stalked Indians that devices of this kind readily occurred to his mind, the sentinels all wore garments corresponding in color to that of the soil of the asteroid, which was of a dark, reddish brown hue. This would tend to conceal them from the prying eyes of the Martians. The commander himself frequently went around the edge of the planet in order to take a look at Mars, and I often accompanied him. Marvellous Discoveries. The Martians Were the Builders of the Great Sphinx and the Pyramids. I shall never forget one occasion, when, lying flat on the ground, and cautiously worming our way around on the side toward Mars, we had just begun to observe it with our telescopes, when I perceived, against the vast curtain of smoke, a small, glinting object, which I instantly suspected to be an airship. I called Mr. Edison's attention to it, and we both agreed that it was, undoubtedly, one of the Martians' aerial vessels, probably on the lookout for us. A short time afterward a large number of airships made their appearance at the upper surface of the clouds, moving to and fro, and although, with our glasses, we could only make out the general form of the ships, without being able to discern the Martians upon them, yet we had not the least doubt but they were sweeping the sky in every direction in order to determine whether we had been completely destroyed or had retreated to a distance from the planet. Even when that side of Mars on which we were looking had passed into night, we could still see the guardships circling above the clouds, their presence being betrayed by the faint twinkling of the electric lights that they bore. Finally, after about a week had passed, the Martians evidently made up their minds that they had annihilated us, and that there was no longer danger to be feared. Convincing evidence that they believed we should not be heard from again was furnished when the withdrawal of the great curtain of cloud began. A Great Phenomenon. This phenomenon first manifested itself by a gradual thinning of the vaporous shield, until, at length, we began to perceive the red surface of the planet dimly shining through it. Thinner and rarer it became, and, after the lapse of about eighteen hours, it had completely disappeared, and the huge globe shone out again, reflecting the light of the sun from its continents and oceans with a brightness that, in contrast with the all-enveloping night to which we had so long been subjected, seemed unbearable to our eyes. Indeed, so brilliant was the illumination which fell upon the surface of Deimos that the number of persons who had been permitted to pass around upon the exposed side of the satellite was carefully restricted. In the blaze of light which had been suddenly poured upon us we felt somewhat like malefactors unexpectedly enveloped in the illumination of a policeman's dark lantern. Meanwhile, the object which we had in view in retreating to the satellite was not lost sight of, and the services of the chief linguists of the expedition were again called into use for the purpose of acquiring a new language. The experiment was conducted in the flagship. The fact that this time it was not a monster belonging to an utterly alien race upon whom we were to experiment, but a beautiful daughter of our common Mother Eve, added zest and interest as well as the most confident hopes of success to the efforts of those who were striving to understand the accents of her tongue. Lingual Difficulties Ahead. Still the difficulty was very great, notwithstanding the conviction of the professors that her language would turn out to be a form of the great Indo-European speech from which the many tongues of civilized men upon the earth had been derived. The learned men, to tell the truth, gave the poor girl no rest. For hours at a time they would ply her with interrogations by voice and by gesture, until, at length, wearied beyond endurance, she would fall asleep before their faces. Then she would be left undisturbed for a little while, but the moment her eyes opened again the merciless professors flocked about her once more, and resumed the tedious iteration of their experiments. Our Heidelberg professor was the chief inquisitor, and he revealed himself to us in a new and entirely unexpected light. No one could have anticipated the depth and variety of his resources. He placed himself in front of the girl and gestured and gesticulated, bowed, nodded, shrugged his shoulders, screwed his face into an infinite variety of expressions, smiled, laughed, scowled and accompanied all these dumb shows with posturings, exclamations, queries, only half expressed in words, and cadences which, by some ingenious manipulation of the tones of the voice, he managed to make as marvellous expressive of his desires. He was a universal actor--comedian, tragedian, buffoon--all in one. There was no shade of human emotion which he did not seem capable of giving expression to. The Professor Does His Best. His every attitude was a symbol, and all his features became in quick succession types of thought and exponents of hidden feelings, while his inquisitive nose stood forth in the midst of their ceaseless play like a perpetual interrogation point that would have electrified the Sphinx into life, and set its stone lips gabbling answers and explanations. The girl looked on, partly astonished, partly amused, and partly comprehending. Sometimes she smiled, and then the beauty of her face became most captivating. Occasionally she burst into a cheery laugh when the professor was executing some of his extraordinary gyrations before her. It was a marvellous exhibition of what the human intellect, when all its powers are concentrated upon a single object, is capable of achieving. It seemed to me, as I looked at the performance, that if all the races of men, who had been stricken asunder at the foot of the Tower of Babel by the miracle which made the tongues of each to speak a language unknown to the others, could be brought together again at the foot of the same tower, with all the advantages which thousands of years of education had in the meantime imparted to them, they would be able, without any miracle, to make themselves mutually understood. And it was evident that an understanding was actually growing between the girl and the professor. Their minds were plainly meeting, and when both had become focused upon the same point, it was perfectly certain that the object of the experiment would be attained. Whenever the professor got from the girl an intelligent reply to his pantomimic inquiries, or whenever he believed that he got such a reply, it was immediately jotted down in the ever open notebook which he carried in his hand. And then he would turn to us standing by, and with one hand on his heart, and the other sweeping grandly through the air, would make a profound bow and say: "The young lady and I great progress make already. I have her words comprehended. We shall wondrous mysteries solve. Jawohl! Wunderlich! Make yourselves gentlemen easy. Of the human race the ancestral stem have I here discovered." Once I glanced over a page of his notebook, and there I read this: "Mars--Zahmor." "Copper--Hayez." "Sword--Anz." "I jump--Altesna." "I slay--Amoutha." "I cut off a head--Ksutaskofa." "I sleep--Zlcha." "I love--Levza." Aha, Professor Heidelberg! When I saw this last entry I looked suspiciously at the professor. Was he trying to make love without our knowing it to the beautiful captive from Mars? If so, I felt certain that he would get himself into difficulty. She had made a deep impression upon every man in the flagship, and I knew that there was more than one of the younger men who would have promptly called him to account if they had suspected him of trying to learn from those beautiful lips the words, "I love." I pictured to myself the state of mind of Colonel Alonzo Jefferson Smith if, in my place, he had glanced over the notebook and read what I had read. And then I thought of another handsome young fellow in the flagship--Sidney Phillips--who, if mere actions and looks could make him so, had become exceedingly devoted to this long lost and happily recovered daughter of Eve. In fact, I had already questioned within my own mind whether the peace would be strictly kept between Colonel Smith and Mr. Phillips, for the former had, to my knowledge, noticed the young fellow's adoring glances, and had begun to regard him out of the corners of his eyes as if he considered him no better than an Apache or a Mexican greaser. Jealousy Crops Out. "But what," I asked myself, "would be the vengeance that Colonel Smith would take upon this skinny professor from Heidelberg if he thought that he, taking advantage of his linguistic powers, had stepped in between him and the damsel whom he had rescued?" However, when I took a second look at the professor, I became convinced that he was innocent of any such amorous intention, and that he had learned, or believed he had learned, the word for "love" simply in pursuance of the method by which he meant to acquire the language of the girl. There was one thing which gave some of us considerable misgiving, and that was the question whether, after all, the language the professor was acquiring was really the girl's own tongue or one that she had learned from the Martians. But the professor bade us rest easy on that point. He assured us, in the first place, that this girl could not be the only human being living upon Mars, but that she must have friends and relatives there. That being so, they unquestionably had a language of their own, which they spoke when they were among themselves. Here finding herself among beings belonging to her own race, she would naturally speak her own tongue and not that which she had acquired from the Martians. "Moreover, gentlemen," he added, "I have in her speech many roots of the great Aryan tongue already recognized." We were greatly relieved by this explanation, which seemed to all of us perfectly satisfactory. Yet, really, there was no reason why one language should be any better than the other for our present purpose. In fact, it might be more useful to us to know the language of the Martians themselves. Still, we all felt that we should prefer to know her language rather than that of the monsters among whom she had lived. Colonel Smith expressed what was in all our minds when, after listening to the reasoning of the Professor, he blurted out: "Thank God, she doesn't speak any of their blamed lingo! By Jove, it would soil her pretty lips." "But also that she speaks, too," said the man from Heidelberg, turning to Colonel Smith with a grin. "We shall both of them eventually learn." A Tedious Language Lesson. Three entire weeks were passed in this manner. After the first week the girl herself materially assisted the linguists in their efforts to acquire her speech. At length the task was so far advanced that we could, in a certain sense, regard it as practically completed. The Heidelberg Professor declared that he had mastered the tongue of the ancient Aryans. His delight was unbounded. With prodigious industry he set to work, scarcely stopping to eat or sleep, to form a grammar of the language. "You shall see," he said, "it will the speculations of my countrymen vindicate." No doubt the Professor had an exaggerated opinion of the extent of his acquirements, but the fact remained that enough had been learned of the girl's language to enable him and several others to converse with her quite as readily as a person of good capacity who has studied under the instructions of a native teacher during a period of six months can converse in a foreign tongue. Immediately almost every man in the squadron set vigorously at work to learn the language of this fair creature for himself. Colonel Smith and Sidney Phillips were neck and neck in the linguistic race. One of the first bits of information which the Professor had given out was the name of the girl. We Learn Her Name. It was Aina (pronounced Ah-ee-na). This news was flashed throughout the squadron, and the name of our beautiful captive was on the lips of all. After that came her story. It was a marvellous narrative. Translated into our tongue it ran as follows: "The traditions of my fathers, handed down for generations so many that no one can number them, declare that the planet of Mars was not the place of our origin." "Ages and ages ago our forefathers dwelt on another and distant world that was nearer to the sun than this one is, and enjoyed brighter daylight than we have here." "They dwelt--as I have often heard the story from my father, who had learned it by heart from his father, and he from his--in a beautiful valley that was surrounded by enormous mountains towering into the clouds and white about their tops with snow that never melted. In the valley were lakes, around which clustered the dwellings of our race." "It was, the traditions say, a land wonderful for its fertility, filled with all things that the heart could desire, splendid with flowers and rich with luscious fruits." "It was a land of music, and the people who dwelt in it were very happy." While the girl was telling this part of her story the Heidelberg Professor became visibly more and more excited. Presently he could keep quiet no longer, and suddenly exclaimed, turning to us who were listening, as the words of the girl were interpreted for us by one of the other linguists: "Gentlemen, it is the Vale of Cashmere! Has not my great countryman, Adelung, so declared? Has he not said that the Valley of Cashmere was the cradle of the human race already?" "From the Valley of Cashmere to the planet Mars--what a romance!" exclaimed one of the bystanders. Colonel Smith appeared to be particularly moved, and I heard him humming under his breath, greatly to my astonishment, for this rough soldier was not much given to poetry or music: "Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave; Its temples, its grottoes, its fountains as clear, As the love-lighted eyes that hang over the wave." Mr. Sidney Phillips, standing by, and also catching the murmur of Colonel Smith's words, showed in his handsome countenance some indications of distress, as if he wished he had thought of those lines himself. Aina Tells Her Story. The girl resumed her narrative: "Suddenly there dropped down out of the sky strange gigantic enemies, armed with mysterious weapons, and began to slay and burn and make desolate. Our forefathers could not withstand them. They seemed like demons, who had been sent from the abodes of evil to destroy our race." "Some of the wise men said that this thing had come upon our people because they had been very wicked, and the gods in Heaven were angry. Some said they came from the moon, and some from the far-away stars. But of these things my forefathers knew nothing for a certainty." "The destroyers showed no mercy to the inhabitants of the beautiful valley. Not content with making it a desert, they swept over other parts of the earth." "The tradition says that they carried off from the valley, which was our native land, a large number of our people, taking them first into a strange country, where there were oceans of sand, but where a great river, flowing through the midst of the sands, created a narrow land of fertility. Here, after having slain and driven out the native inhabitants, they remained for many years, keeping our people, whom they had carried into captivity, as slaves." "And in this Land of Sand, it is said, they did many wonderful works." "They had been astonished at the sight of the great mountains which surrounded our valley, for on Mars there are no mountains, and after they came into the Land of Sand they built there with huge blocks of stone mountains in imitation of what they had seen, and used them for purposes that our people did not understand." "Then, too, it is said they left there at the foot of these mountains that they had made a gigantic image of the great chief who led them in their conquest of our world." At this point in the story the Heidelberg Professor again broke in, fairly trembling with excitement: The Wonders of the Martians! "Gentlemen, gentlemen," he cried, "is it that you do not understand? This Land of Sand and of a wonderful fertilizing river--what can it be? Gentlemen, it is Egypt! These mountains of rock that the Martians have erected, what are they? Gentlemen, they are the great mystery of the land of the Nile, the Pyramids. The gigantic statue of their leader that they at the foot of their artificial mountains have set up--gentlemen, what is that? It is the Sphinx!" The Professor's agitation was so great that he could go no further. And indeed there was not one of us who did not fully share his excitement. To think that we should have come to the planet Mars to solve one of the standing mysteries of the earth, which had puzzled mankind and defied all their efforts at solution for so many centuries! Here, then, was the explanation of how those gigantic blocks that constitute the great Pyramid of Cheops had been swung to their lofty elevation. It was not the work of puny man, as many an engineer had declared that it could not be, but the work of these giants of Mars. Aina's Wonderful Story. The Martians' Beautiful Prisoner Recounts Her Marvellous Adventures. Aina resumed her story. "At length, our traditions say, a great pestilence broke out in the Land of Sand, and a partial vengeance was granted to us in the destruction of the larger number of our enemies. At last the giants who remained, fleeing before this scourge of the gods, used the mysterious means at their command, and, carrying our ancestors with them, returned to their own world, in which we have ever since lived." "Then there are more of your people in Mars?" said one of the professors. "Alas, no," replied Aina, her eyes filling with tears, "I alone am left." For a few minutes she was unable to speak. Then she continued: An Ancient Martian Conquest. "What fury possessed them I do not know, but not long ago an expedition departed from the planet, the purpose of which, as it was noised about over Mars, was the conquest of a distant world. After a time a few survivors of that expedition returned. The story they told caused great excitement among our masters. They had been successful in their battles with the inhabitants of the world they had invaded, but as in the days of our forefathers, in the Land of Sand, a pestilence smote them, and but few survivors escaped." "Not long after that, you, with your mysterious ships, appeared in the sky of Mars. Our masters studied you with their telescopes, and those who had returned from the unfortunate expedition declared that you were inhabitants of the world which they had invaded, come, doubtless, to take vengeance upon them." "Some of my people who were permitted to look through the telescopes of the Martians, saw you also, and recognized you as members of their own race. There were several thousand of us, altogether, and we were kept by the Martians to serve them as slaves, and particularly to delight their ears with music, for our people have always been especially skilful in the playing of musical instruments, and in songs, and while the Martians have but little musical skill themselves, they are exceedingly fond of these things." Awaiting a Rescue. "Although Mars had completed not less than five thousand circuits about the sun since our ancestors were brought as prisoners to its surface, yet the memory of our distant home had never perished from the hearts of our race, and when we recognized you, as we believed, our own brothers, come to rescue us from long imprisonment, there was great rejoicing. The news spread from mouth to mouth, wherever we were in the houses and families of our masters. We seemed to be powerless to aid you or to communicate with you in any manner. Yet our hearts went out to you, as in your ships you hung above the planet, and preparations were secretly made by all the members of our race for your reception when, as we believed, would occur, you should effect a landing upon the planet and destroy our enemies." "But in some manner the fact that we had recognized you, and were preparing to welcome you, came to the ears of the Martians." At this point the girl suddenly covered her eyes with her hands, shuddering and falling back in her seat. "Oh, you do not know them as I do!" at length she exclaimed. "The monsters! Their vengeance was too terrible! Instantly the order went forth that we should all be butchered, and that awful command was executed!" "How, then, did you escape?" asked the Heidelberg Professor. Aina seemed unable to speak for a while. Finally mastering her emotion, she replied: Her Fortunate Escape. "One of the chief officers of the Martians wished me to remain alive. He, with his aides, carried me to one of the military depot of supplies, where I was found and rescued," and as she said this she turned toward Colonel Smith with a smile that reflected on his ruddy face and made it glow like a Chinese lantern. "By ----!" muttered Colonel Smith, "that was the fellow we blew into nothing! Blast him, he got off too easy!" The remainder of Aina's story may be briefly told. When Colonel Smith and I entered the mysterious building which, as it now proved, was not a storehouse belonging to a village, as we had supposed, but one of the military depots of the Martians, the girl, on catching sight of us, immediately recognized us as belonging to the strange squadron in the sky. As such she felt that we must be her friends, and saw in us her only possible hope of escape. For that reason she had instantly thrown herself under our protection. This accounted for the singular confidence which she had manifested in us from the beginning. Her wonderful story had so captivated our imaginations that for a long time after it was finished we could not recover from the spell. It was told over and over again from mouth to mouth, and repeated from ship to ship, everywhere exciting the utmost astonishment. Destiny seemed to have sent us on this expedition into space for the purpose of clearing off mysteries that had long puzzled the minds of men. When on the moon we had unexpectedly to ourselves settled the question that had been debated from the beginning of astronomical history of the former habitability of that globe. A Question Settled. Now, on Mars, we had put to rest no less mysterious questions relating to the past history of our own planet. Adelung, as the Heidelberg Professor asserted, had named the Vale of Cashmere as the probable site of the Garden of Eden, and the place of origin of the human race, but later investigators had taken issue with this opinion, and the question where the Aryans originated upon the earth had long been one of the most puzzling that science presented. This question seemed now to have been settled. Aina had said that Mars had completed 5,000 circuits about the sun since her people were brought to it as captives. One circuit of Mars occupies 687 days. More than 9,000 years had therefore elapsed since the first invasion of the earth by the Martians. Another great mystery--that of the origin of those gigantic and inexplicable monuments, the great pyramids and the Sphinx, on the banks of the Nile, had also apparently been solved by us, although these Egyptian wonders had been the furthest things from our thoughts when we set out for the planet Mars. We had travelled more than thirty millions of miles in order to get answers to questions which could not be solved at home. But from these speculations and retrospects we were recalled by the commander of the expedition. Does Aina Hold the Secret? "This is all very interesting and very romantic, gentlemen," he said, "but now let us get at the practical side of it. We have learned Aina's language and have heard her story. Let us next ascertain whether she cannot place in our hands some key which will place Mars at our mercy. Remember what we came here for, and remember that the earth expects every man of us to do his duty." This Nelson-like summons again changed the current of our thoughts, and we instantly set to work to learn from Aina if Mars, like Achilles, had not some vulnerable point where a blow would be mortal. Chapter XIV. It was a curious scene when the momentous interview which was to determine our fate and that of Mars began. Aina had been warned of what was coming. We in the flagship had all learned to speak her language with more or less ease, but it was deemed best that the Heidelberg Professor, assisted by one of his colleagues, should act as interpreter. The girl, flushed with excitement of the novel situation, fully appreciating the importance of what was about to occur, and looking more charming than before, stood at one side of the principal apartment. Directly facing her were the interpreters, and the rest of us, all with ears intent and eyes focused upon Aina, stood in a double row behind them. As heretofore, I am setting down her words translated into our own tongue, having taken only so much liberty as to connect the sentences into a stricter sequence than they had when falling from her lips in reply to the questions that were showered upon her. She Has a Plan. "You will never be victorious," she said, "if you attack them openly as you have been doing. They are too strong and too numerous. They are well prepared for such attacks, because they have had to resist them before." "They have waged war with the inhabitants of the asteroid Ceres, whose people are giants greater than themselves. Their enemies from Ceres have attacked them here. Hence these fortifications, with weapons pointing skyward, and the great air fleets which you have encountered." "But there must be some point," said Mr. Edison, "where we can." "Yes, yes," interrupted the girl quickly, "there is one blow you can deal them which they could not withstand." "What is that?" eagerly inquired the commander. "You can drown them out." "How? With the canals?" We Must Drown Them Out. "Yes, I will explain to you. I have already told you, and, in fact, you must have seen it for yourselves, that there are almost no mountains on Mars. A very learned man of my race used to say that the reason was because Mars is so very old a world that the mountains it once had have been almost completely levelled, and the entire surface of the planet had become a great plain. There are depressions, however, most of which are occupied by the seas. The greater part of the land lies below the level of the oceans. In order at the same time to irrigate the soil and make it fruitful, and to protect themselves from overflows by the ocean breaking in upon them, the Martians have constructed the immense and innumerable canals which you see running in all directions over the continents." "There is one period in the year, and that period has now arrived, when there is special danger of a great deluge. Most of the oceans of Mars lie in the southern hemisphere. When it is Summer in that hemisphere, the great masses of ice and snow collected around the south pole melt rapidly away." "Yes, that is so," broke in one of our astronomers, who was listening attentively. "Many a time I have seen the vast snow fields around the southern pole of Mars completely disappear as the Summer sun rose high upon them." "With the melting of these snows," continued Aina, "a rapid rise in the level of the water in the southern oceans occurs. On the side facing these oceans the continents of Mars are sufficiently elevated to prevent an overflow, but nearer the equator the level of the land sinks lower." "With your telescopes you have no doubt noticed that there is a great bending sea connecting the oceans of the south with those of the north and running through the midst of the continents." "Quite so," said the astronomer who had spoken before, "we call it the Syrtis Major." "That long narrow sea," Aina went on, "forms a great channel through which the flood of waters caused by the melting of the southern polar snows flows swiftly toward the equator and then on toward the north until it reaches the sea basins which exist there. At that point it is rapidly turned into ice and snow, because, of course, while it is Summer in the southern hemisphere it is Winter in the northern." Mars Will Be Ours. "The Syrtis Major (I am giving our name to the channel of communication in place of that by which the girl called it) is like a great safety valve, which, by permitting the waters to flow northward, saves the continents from inundation." "But when mid-Summer arrives, the snows around the pole having been completely melted away, the flood ceases and the water begins to recede. At this time, but for a device which the Martians have employed, the canals connected with the oceans would run dry, and the vegetation, left without moisture under the Summer sun, would quickly perish." "To prevent this they have built a series of enormous gates extending completely across the Syrtis Major at its narrowest point (latitude 25 degrees south). These gates are all controlled by machinery collected at a single point on the shore of the strait. As soon as the flood in the Syrtis Major begins to recede, the gates are closed, and, the water being thus restrained, the irrigating canals are kept full long enough to mature the harvests." "The clew! The clew at last!" exclaimed Mr. Edison. "That is the place where we shall nip them. If we can close those gates now at the moment of high tide we shall flood the country. Did you say," he continued, turning to Aina, "that the movement of the gates was all controlled from a single point?" The Great Power House. "Yes," said the girl. "There is a great building (power house) full of tremendous machinery which I once entered when my father was taken there by his master, and where I saw one Martian, by turning a little handle, cause the great line of gates, stretching a hundred miles across the sea, to slowly shut in, edge to edge, until the flow of the water toward the north had been stopped." "How is the building protected?" "So completely," replied Aina, "that my only fear is that you may not be able to reach it. On account of the danger from their enemies on Ceres, the Martians have fortified it strongly on all sides, and have even surrounded it and covered it overhead with a great electrical network, to touch which would be instant death." "Ah," said Mr. Edison, "they have got an electric shield, have they? Well, I think we shall be able to manage that." "Anyhow," he continued, "we have got to get into that power house, and we have got to close those gates, and we must not lose much time in making up our minds how it is to be done. Evidently this is our only chance. We have not force enough to contend in open battle with the Martians, but if we can flood them out, and thereby render the engines contained in their fortifications useless, perhaps we shall be able to deal with the airships, which will be all the means of defence that will then remain to them." This idea commended itself to all the leaders of the expedition. It was determined to make a reconnaissance at once. But it would not do for us to approach the planet too hastily, and we certainly could not think of landing upon it in broad daylight. Still, as long as we were yet at a considerable distance from Mars, we felt that we should be safe from observation, because so much time had elapsed while we were hidden behind Deimos that the Martians had undoubtedly concluded that we were no longer in existence. So we boldly quitted the little satellite with our entire squadron and once more rapidly approached the red planet of war. This time it was to be a death grapple and our chances of victory still seemed good. Ready for a Death Grapple. As soon as we arrived so near the planet that there was danger of our being actually seen, we took pains to keep continually in the shadow of Mars, and the more surely to conceal our presence all lights upon the ships were extinguished. The precaution of the commander even went so far as to have the smooth metallic sides of the cars blackened over so that they should not reflect light, and thus become visible to the Martians as shining specks, moving suspiciously among the stars. The precise location of the great power house on the shores of the Syrtis Major having been carefully ascertained, the squadron dropped down one night into the upper limits of the Martian atmosphere, directly over the gulf. Then a consultation was called on the flagship and a plan of campaign was quickly devised. It was deemed wise that the attempt should be made with a single electrical ship, but that the others should be kept hovering near, ready to respond on the instant to any signal for aid which might come from below. It was thought that, notwithstanding the wonderful defences, which, according to Aina's account surrounded the building, a small party would have a better chance of success than a large one. Mr. Edison was certain that the electrical network which was described as covering the power house would not prove a serious obstruction to us, because by carefully sweeping the space where we intended to pass with the disintegrators before quitting the ship, the netting could be sufficiently cleared away to give us uninterrupted passage. At first the intention was to have twenty men, each armed with two disintegrators (that being the largest number that one person could carry to advantage) descend from the electrical ship and make the venture. But, after further discussion, this number was reduced; first to a dozen, and finally, to only four. These four consisted of Mr. Edison, Colonel Smith, Mr. Sidney Phillips and myself. Both by her own request and because we could not help feeling that her knowledge of the locality would be indispensable to us, Aina was also included in our party, but not, of course, as a fighting member of it. It was about an hour after midnight when the ship in which we were to make the venture parted from the remainder of the squadron and dropped cautiously down. The blaze of electric lights running away in various directions indicated the lines of innumerable canals with habitations crowded along their banks, which came to a focus at a point on the continent of Aeria, westward from the Syrtis Major. Destroying The Martians. With Aina's Aid Our Warriors Prepare an Awful Revenge on the Enemy. We stopped the electrical ship at an elevation of perhaps three hundred feet above the vast roof of a structure which Aina assured us was the building we were in search of. Here we remained for a few minutes, cautiously reconnoitring. On that side of the power house which was opposite to the shore of the Syrtis Major there was a thick grove of trees, lighted beneath, as was apparent from the illumination which here and there streamed up through the cover of leaves, but, nevertheless, dark and gloomy above the tree tops. "The electric network extends over the grove as well as over the building," said Aina. This was lucky for us, because we wished to descend among the trees, and, by destroying part of the network over the tree tops, we could reach the shelter we desired and at the same time pass within the line of electric defences. With increased caution, and almost holding our breath lest we should make some noise that might reach the ears of the sentinels beneath, we caused the car to settle gently down until we caught sight of a metallic net stretched in the air between us and the trees. After our first encounter with the Martians on the asteroid, where, as I have related, some metal which was included in their dress resisted the action of the disintegrators, Mr. Edison had readjusted the range of vibrations covered by the instruments, and since then we had found nothing that did not yield to them. Consequently, we had no fear that the metal of the network would not be destroyed. There was danger, however, of arousing attention by shattering holes through the tree tops. This could be avoided by first carefully ascertaining how far away the network was, and then with the adjustable mirrors attached to the disintegrators focusing the vibratory discharge at that distance. Overcoming Their Precautions. So successful were we that we opened a considerable gap in the network without doing any perceptible damage to the trees beneath. The ship was cautiously lowered through the opening and brought to rest among the upper branches of one of the tallest trees. Colonel Smith, Mr. Phillips, Mr. Edison and myself at once clambered out upon a strong limb. For a moment I feared our arrival had been betrayed on account of the altogether too noisy contest that arose between Colonel Smith and Mr. Phillips as to which of them should assist Aina. To settle the dispute I took charge of her myself. At length we were all safely in the tree. Then followed the still more dangerous undertaking of descending from this great height to the ground. Fortunately, the branches were very close together and they extended down within a short distance of the soil. So the actual difficulties of the descent were not very great after all. The one thing that we had particularly to bear in mind was the absolute necessity of making no noise. At length the descent was successfully accomplished, and we all five stood together in the shadow at the foot of the great tree. The grove was so thick around that while there was an abundance of electric lights among the trees, their illumination did not fall upon us where we stood. Peering cautiously through the vistas in various directions, we ascertained our location with respect to the wall of the building. Like all the structures that we had seen on Mars, it was composed of polished red metal. Looking for an Entrance. "Where is the entrance?" inquired Mr. Edison, in a whisper. "Come softly this way, and look out for the sentinel," replied Aina. Gripping our disintegrators firmly, and screwing up our courage, with noiseless steps we followed the girl among the shadows of the trees. We had one very great advantage. The Martians had evidently placed so much confidence in the electric network which surrounded the power house that they never dreamed of enemies being able to penetrate it--at least, without giving warning of their coming. But the hole which we had blown in this network with the disintegrators had been made noiselessly, and Mr. Edison believed, since no enemies had appeared, that our operations had not been betrayed by any automatic signal to watchers inside the building. Consequently, we had every reason to think that we now stood within the line of defence, in which they reposed the greatest confidence, without their having the least suspicion of our presence. Aina assured us that on the occasion of her former visit to the power house there had been but two sentinels on guard at the entrance. At the inner end of a long passage leading to the interior, she said, there were two more. Besides these there were three or four Martian engineers watching the machinery in the interior of the building. A number of air ships were supposed to be on guard around the structure, but possibly their vigilance had been relaxed, because not long ago the Martians had sent an expedition against Ceres which had been so successful that the power of that planet to make an attack upon Mars had for the present been destroyed. Supposing us to have been annihilated in the recent battle among the clouds, they would have no fear or cause for vigilance on our account. The entrance to the great structure was low--at least, when measured by the stature of the Martians. Evidently the intention was that only one person at a time should find room to pass through it. Drawing cautiously near, we discerned the outlines of two gigantic forms, standing in the darkness, one on either side of the door. Colonel Smith whispered to me: The Disintegrator Again. "If you will take the fellow on the right, I will attend to the other one." Adjusting our aim as carefully as was possible in the gloom, Colonel Smith and I simultaneously discharged our disintegrators, sweeping them rapidly up and down in the manner which had become familiar to us when endeavoring to destroy one of the gigantic Martians with a single stroke. And so successful were we that the two sentinels disappeared as if they had been ghosts of the night. Instantly we all hurried forward and entered the door. Before us extended a long, straight passage, brightly illuminated by a number of electric candles. Its polished sides gleamed with blood-red reflections, and the gallery terminated, at a distance of two or three hundred feet, with an opening into a large chamber beyond, on the further side of which we could see part of a gigantic and complicated mass of machinery. Making as little noise as possible, we pushed ahead along the passage, but when we had arrived within a distance of a dozen paces from the inner end, we stopped, and Colonel Smith, getting down upon his knees, crept forward until he had reached the inner end of the passage. There he peered cautiously around the edge into the chamber, and, turning his head a moment later, beckoned us to come forward. We crept to his side, and, looking out into the vast apartment, could perceive no enemies. What had become of the sentinels supposed to stand at the inner end of the passage we could not imagine. At any rate, they were not at their posts. In the Great Power House. The chamber was an immense square room at least a hundred feet in height and 400 feet on a side, and almost filling the wall opposite to us was an intricate display of machinery, wheels, levers, rods and polished plates. This we had no doubt was one end of the great engine which opened and shut the great gates that could dam an ocean. "There is no one in sight," said Colonel Smith. "Then we must act quickly," said Mr. Edison. "Where," he said, turning to Aina, "is the handle by turning which you saw the Martian close the gates?" Aina looked about in bewilderment. The mechanism before us was so complicated that even an expert mechanician would have been excusable for finding himself unable to understand it. There were scores of knobs and handles, all glistening in the electric light, any one of which, so far as the uninstructed could tell, might have been the master key that controlled the whole complex apparatus. The Magic Lever! "Quick," said Mr. Edison, "where is it?" The girl in her confusion ran this way and that, gazing hopelessly upon the machinery, but evidently utterly unable to help us. To remain here inactive was not merely to invite destruction for ourselves, but was sure to bring certain failure upon the purpose of the expedition. All of us began instantly to look about in search of the proper handle, seizing every crank and wheel in sight and striving to turn it. "Stop that!" shouted Mr. Edison, "you may set the whole thing wrong. Don't touch anything until we have found the right lever." But to find that seemed to most of us now utterly beyond the power of man. It was at this critical moment that the wonderful depth and reach of Mr. Edison's mechanical genius displayed itself. He stepped back, ran his eye quickly over the whole immense mass of wheels, handles, bolts, bars and levers, paused for an instant, as if making up his mind, then said decidedly, "There it is," and, stepping quickly forward, selected a small wheel amid a dozen others, all furnished at the circumference with handles like those of a pilot's wheel, and, giving it a quick wrench, turned it half way around. Surprised by the Enemy. At this instant, a startling shout fell upon our ears. There was a thunderous clatter behind us, and, turning, we saw three gigantic Martians rushing forward. Chapter XV. "Sweep them! Sweep them!" cried Colonel Smith, as he brought his disintegrator to bear. Mr. Phillips and I instantly followed his example, and thus we swept the Martians into eternity, while Mr. Edison coolly continued his manipulations of the wheel. The effect of what he was doing became apparent in less than half a minute. A shiver ran through the mass of machinery and shook the entire building. "Look! look!" cried Sidney Phillips, who had stepped a little apart from the others. The Grand Canal. We all ran to his side and found ourselves in front of a great window which opened through the side of the engine, giving a view of what lay in front of it. There, gleaming in the electric lights, we saw the Syrtis Major, its waters washing high against the walls of the vast power house. Running directly out from the shore, there was an immense metallic gate at least 400 yards in length and rising 300 feet above the present level of the water. This great gate was slowly swinging upon an invisible hinge in such a manner that in a few minutes it would evidently stand across the current of the Syrtis Major at right angles. Beyond was a second gate, which was moving in the same manner. Further on was a third gate, and then another, and another, as far as the eye could reach, evidently extending in an unbroken series completely across the great strait. As the gates, with accelerated motion when the current caught them, clanged together, we beheld a spectacle that almost stopped the beating of our hearts. A Great Rush of Waters. The great Syrtis seemed to gather itself for a moment, and then it leaped upon the obstruction and hurled its waters into one vast foaming geyser that seemed to shoot a thousand feet skyward. But the metal gates withstood the shock, though buried from our sight in the seething white mass, and the baffled waters instantly swirled round in ten thousand gigantic eddies, rising to the level of our window and beginning to inundate the power house before we fairly comprehended our peril. "We have done the work," said Mr. Edison, smiling grimly. "Now we had better get out of this before the flood bursts upon us." The warning came none too soon. It was necessary to act upon it at once if we would save our lives. Even before we could reach the entrance to the long passage through which we had come into the great engine room, the water had risen half way to our knees. Colonel Smith, catching Aina under his arm, led the way. The roar of the maddened torrent behind deafened us. As we ran through the passage, the water followed us, with a wicked swishing sound, and within five seconds it was above our knees; in ten seconds up to our waists. The great danger now was that we should be swept from our feet, and once down in that torrent there would have been little chance of our ever getting our heads above its level. Supporting ourselves as best we could with the aid of the walls, we partly ran, and were partly swept along, until, when we reached the outer end of the passage and emerged into the open air, the flood was swirling about our shoulders. Escaping the Water. Here there was an opportunity to clutch some of the ornamental work surrounding the doorway, and thus we managed to stay our mad progress, and gradually to work out of the current until we found that the water, having now an abundance of room to spread, had fallen again as low as our knees. But suddenly we heard the thunder of the banks tumbling behind us, and to the right and left, and the savage growl of the released water as it sprang through the breaches. To my dying day, I think, I shall not forget the sight of a great fluid column that burst through the dyke at the edge of the grove of trees, and, by the tremendous impetus of its rush, seemed turned into a solid thing. Like an enormous ram, it plowed the soil to a depth of twenty feet, uprooting acres of the immense trees like stubble turned over by the plowshare. The uproar was so awful that for an instant the coolest of us lost our self-control. Yet we knew that we had not the fraction of a second to waste. The breaking of the banks had caused the water again rapidly to rise about us. In a little while it was once more as high as our waists. In the excitement and confusion, deafened by the noise and blinded by the flying foam, we were in danger of becoming separated in the flood. We no longer knew certainly in what direction was the tree by whose aid we had ascended from the electrical ship. We pushed first one way and then another, staggering through the rushing waters in search of it. Finally we succeeded in locating it, and with all our strength hurried toward it. Then there came a noise as if the globe of Mars had been split asunder, and another great head of water hurled itself down upon the soil before us, and, without taking time to spread, bored a vast cavity in the ground, and scooped out the whole of the grove before our eyes as easily as a gardener lifts a sod with his spade. Are We, Too, Destroyed? Our last hope was gone. For a moment the level of the water around us sank again, as it poured into the immense excavation where the grove had stood, but in an instant it was reinforced from all sides and began once more rapidly to rise. We gave ourselves up for lost, and, indeed, there did not seem any possible hope of salvation. Even in the extremity I saw Colonel Smith lifting the form of Aina, who had fainted, above the surface of the surging water, while Sidney Phillips stood by his side and aided him in supporting the unconscious girl. "We stayed a little too long," was the only sound I heard from Mr. Edison. The huge bulk of the power house partially protected us against the force of the current, and the water spun around us in great eddies. These swept us this way and that, but yet we managed to cling together, determined not to be separated in death if we could avoid it. Suddenly a cry rang out directly above our heads: "Jump for your lives, and be quick!" At the same instant the ends of several ropes splashed into the water. We glanced upward, and there, within three or four yards of our heads, hung the electrical ship, which we had left moored at the top of the tree. Tom, the expert electrician from Mr. Edison's shop, who had remained in charge of the ship, had never once dreamed of such a thing as deserting us. The moment he saw the water bursting over the dam, and evidently flooding the building which we had entered, he cast off his moorings, as we subsequently learned, and hovered over the entrance to the power house, getting as low down as possible and keeping a sharp watch for us. But most of the electric lights in the vicinity had been carried down by the first rush of water, and in the darkness he did not see us when we emerged from the entrance. It was only after the sweeping away of the grove of trees had allowed a flood of light to stream upon the scene from a cluster of electric lamps on a distant portion of the bank on the Syrtis that had not yet given way that he caught sight of us. Mars Is Ruined! Immediately he began to shout to attract our attention, but in the awful uproar we could not hear him. Getting together all the ropes that he could lay his hands on, he steered the ship to a point directly over us, and then dropped down within a few yards of the boiling flood. Now as he hung over our heads, and saw the water up to our very necks and still swiftly rising, he shouted again: "Catch hold, for God's sake!" The three men who were with him in the ship seconded his cries. But by the time we had fairly grasped the ropes, so rapidly was the flood rising, we were already afloat. With the assistance of Tom and his men we were rapidly drawn up, and immediately Tom reversed the electric polarity, and the ship began to rise. At that same instant, with a crash that shivered the air, the immense metallic power house gave way and was swept tumbling, like a hill torn loose from its base, over the very spot where a moment before we had stood. One second's hesitation on the part of Tom, and the electrical ship would have been battered into a shapeless wad of metal by the careening mass. The Deluge On Mars. How the Martians Met Their Doom Through Aina's Plans. When we had attained a considerable height, so that we could see to a great distance on either side, the spectacle became even more fearful than it was when we were close to the surface. On all sides banks and dykes were going down; trees were being uprooted; buildings were tumbling, and the ocean was achieving that victory over the land which had long been its due, but which the ingenuity of the inhabitants of Mars had postponed for ages. Far away we could see the front of the advancing wave crested with foam that sparkled in the electric lights, and as it swept on it changed the entire aspect of the planet--in front of it all life, behind it all death. Eastward our view extended across the Syrtis Major toward the land of Libya and the region of Isidis. On that side also the dykes were giving way under the tremendous pressure, and the floods were rushing toward the sunrise, which had just begun to streak the eastern sky. The continents that were being overwhelmed on the western side of the Syrtis were Meroe, Aeria, Arabia, Edom and Eden. The water beneath us continually deepened. The current from the melting snows around the southern pole was at its strongest, and one could hardly have believed that any obstruction put in its path would have been able to arrest it and turn it into these two all-swallowing deluges, sweeping east and west. But, as we now perceived, the level of the land over a large part of its surface was hundreds of feet below the ocean, so that the latter, when once the barriers were broken, rushed into depressions that yawned to receive it. Waiting for the Flood. The point where we had dealt our blow was far removed from the great capital of Mars, around the Lake of the Sun, and we knew that we should have to wait for the floods to reach that point before the desired effect could be produced. By the nearest way, the water had at least 5,000 miles to travel. We estimated that its speed where we hung above it was as much as a hundred miles an hour. Even if that speed were maintained, more than two days and nights would be required for the floods to reach the Lake of the Sun. But as the water rushed on it would break the banks of all the canals intersecting the country, and these, being also elevated above the surface, would add the impetus of their escaping waters to hasten the advance of the flood. We calculated, therefore, that about two days would suffice to place the planet at our mercy. Half way from the Syrtis Major to the Lake of the Sun another great connecting link between the Southern and Northern ocean basins, called on our maps of Mars the Indus, existed, and through this channel we knew that another great current must be setting from the south toward the north. The flood that we had started would reach and break the banks of the Indus within one day. Flooding Hundreds of Canals. The flood travelling in the other direction, towards the east, would have considerably further to go before reaching the neighborhood of the Lake of the Sun. It, too, would involve hundreds of great canals as it advanced and would come plunging upon the Lake of the Sun and its surrounding forts and cities, probably about half a day later than the arrival of the deluge that travelled towards the west. Now that we had let the awful destroyer loose we almost shrank from the thought of the consequences which we had produced. How many millions would perish as the result of our deed we could not even guess. Many of the victims, so far as we knew, might be entirely innocent of enmity toward us, or of the evil which had been done to our native planet. But this was a case in which the good--if they existed--must suffer with the bad on account of the wicked deeds of the latter. I have already remarked that the continents of Mars were higher on their northern and southern borders where they faced the great oceans. These natural barriers bore to the main mass of the land somewhat the relation of the edge of a shallow dish to its bottom. Their rise on the land side was too gradual to give them the appearance of hills, but on the side toward the sea they broke down in steep banks and cliffs several hundred feet in height. We guessed that it would be in the direction of these elevations that the inhabitants would flee, and those who had timely warning might thus be able to escape in case the flood did not--as it seemed possible it might in its first mad rush--overtop the highest elevations on Mars. A Dreadful Scene. As day broke and the sun slowly rose upon the dreadful scene beneath us, we began to catch sight of some of the fleeing inhabitants. We had shifted the position of the fleet toward the south, and were now suspended above the southeastern corner of Aeria. Here a high bank of reddish rock confronted the sea, whose waters ran lashing and roaring along the bluffs to supply the rapid draught produced by the emptying of the Syrtis Major. Along the shore there was a narrow line of land, hundreds of miles in length, but less than a quarter of a mile broad, which still rose slightly above the surface of the water, and this land of refuge was absolutely packed with the monstrous inhabitants of the planet who had fled hither on the first warning that the water was coming. In some places it was so crowded that the later comers could not find standing ground on dry land, but were continually slipping back and falling into the water. It was an awful sight to look at them. It reminded me of pictures that I had seen of the deluge in the days of Noah, when the waters had risen to the mountain tops, and men, women and children were fighting for a foothold upon the last dry spots that the earth contained. We were all moved by a desire to help our enemies, for we were overwhelmed with feelings of pity and remorse, but to aid them was now utterly beyond our power. The mighty floods were out, and the end was in the hands of God. Fortunately, we had little time for these thoughts, because no sooner had the day begun to dawn around us than the airships of the Martians appeared. Evidently the people in them were dazed by the disaster and uncertain what to do. It is doubtful whether at first they comprehended the fact that we were the agents who had produced the cataclysm. The Flocking of the Airships. But as the morning advanced the airships came flocking in greater and greater numbers from every direction, many swooping down close to the flood in order to rescue those who were drowning. Hundreds gathered along the slip of land which was crowded as I have described, with refugees, while other hundreds rapidly assembled about us, evidently preparing for an attack. We had learned in our previous contests with the airships of the Martians that our electrical ships had a great advantage over them, not merely in rapidity and facility of movement, but in the fact that our disintegrators could sweep in every direction, while it was only with much difficulty that the Martian airships could discharge their electrical strokes at an enemy poised directly above their heads. Accordingly, orders were instantly flashed to all the squadron to rise vertically to an elevation so great that the rarity of the atmosphere would prevent the airships from attaining the same level. Outwitting the Enemy. This manoeuvre was executed so quickly that the Martians were unable to deal us a blow before we were poised above them in such a position that they could not easily reach us. Still they did not mean to give up the conflict. Presently we saw one of the largest of their ships manoeuvring in a very peculiar manner, the purpose of which we did not at first comprehend. Its forward portion commenced slowly to rise, until it pointed upward like the nose of a fish approaching the surface of the water. The moment it was in this position, an electrical bolt was darted from its prow, and one of our ships received a shock which, although it did not prove fatal to the vessel itself, killed two or three men aboard it, disarranged its apparatus, and rendered it for the time being useless. "Ah, that's their trick, is it?" said Mr. Edison. "We must look out for that. Whenever you see one of the airships beginning to stick its nose up after that fashion blaze away at it." An order to this effect was transmitted throughout the squadron. At the same time several of the most powerful disintegrators were directed upon the ship which had executed the stratagem and, reduced to a wreck, it dropped, whirling like a broken kite until it fell into the flood beneath. A Thousand Martian Ships. Still the Martians' ships came flocking in ever greater numbers from all directions. They made desperate attempts to attain the level at which we hung above them. This was impossible, but many, getting an impetus by a swift run in the denser portion of the atmosphere beneath, succeeded in rising so high that they could discharge their electric artillery with considerable effect. Others, with more or less success, repeated the manoeuvre of the ship which had first attacked us, and thus the battle became gradually more general and more fierce, until, in the course of an hour or two, our squadron found itself engaged with probably a thousand airships, which blazed with incessant lightning strokes, and were able, all too frequently, to do us serious damage. But on our part the battle was waged with a cool determination and a consciousness of insuperable advantage which boded ill for the enemy. Only three or four of our sixty electrical ships were seriously damaged, while the work of the disintegrators upon the crowded fleet that floated beneath us was terrible to look upon. They Battle on in Earnest. Our strokes fell thick and fast on all sides. It was like firing into a flock of birds that could not get away. Notwithstanding all their efforts they were practically at our mercy. Shattered into unrecognizable fragments, hundreds of the airships continually dropped from their great height to be swallowed up in the boiling waters. Yet they were game to the last. They made every effort to get at us, and in their frenzy they seemed to discharge their bolts without much regard to whether friends or foes were injured. Our eyes were nearly blinded by the ceaseless glare beneath us, and the uproar was indescribable. At length, after this fearful contest had lasted for at least three hours, it became evident that the strength of the enemy was rapidly weakening. Nearly the whole of their immense fleet of airships had been destroyed, or so far damaged that they were barely able to float. Just so long, however, as they showed signs of resistance we continued to pour our merciless fire upon them, and the signal to cease was not given until the airships which had escaped serious damage began to flee in every direction. Victory Is Ours! "Thank God, the thing is over," said Mr. Edison. "We have got the victory at last, but how we shall make use of it is something that at present I do not see." "But will they not renew the attack," asked someone. "I do not think they can," was the reply. "We have destroyed the very flower of their fleet." "And better than that," said Colonel Smith, "we have destroyed their elan; we have made them afraid. Their discipline is gone." But this was only the beginning of our victory. The floods below were achieving a still greater triumph, and now that we had conquered the airships we dropped within a few hundred feet of the surface of the water and then turned our faces westward in order to follow the advance of the deluge and see whether, as we had hoped, it would overwhelm our enemies in the very centre of their power. The Flood Advances. In a little while we had overtaken the front wave, which was still devouring everything. We saw it bursting the banks of the canals, sweeping away forests of gigantic trees, and swallowing cities and villages, leaving nothing but a broad expanse of swirling and eddying waters, which, in consequence of the prevailing red hue of the vegetation and the soil, looked, as shuddering we gazed down upon it, like an ocean of blood flecked with foam and steaming with the escaping life of the planet from whose veins it gushed. As we skirted the southern borders of the continent the same dreadful scenes which we had beheld on the coast of Aeria presented themselves. Crowds of refugees thronged the high border of the land and struggled with one another for a foothold against the continually rising flood. Watching the Destruction. We saw, too, flitting in every direction, but rapidly fleeing before our approach, many airships, evidently crowded with Martians, but not armed either for offence or defence. These, of course, we did not disturb, for merciless as our proceedings seemed even to ourselves, we had no intention of making war upon the innocent, or upon those who had no means to resist. What we had done it had seemed to us necessary to do, but henceforth we were resolved to take no more lives if it could be avoided. Thus, during the remainder of that day, all of the following night and all of the next day, we continued upon the heels of the advancing flood. Chapter XVI. The second night we could perceive ahead of us the electric lights covering the land of Thaumasia, in the midst of which lay the Lake of the Sun. The flood would be upon it by daybreak, and, assuming that the demoralization produced by the news of the coming of the waters, which we were aware had hours before been flashed to the capital of Mars, would prevent the Martians from effectively manning their forts, we thought it safe to hasten on with the flagship, and one or two others, in advance of the water, and to hover over the Lake of the Sun in the darkness, in order that we might watch the deluge perform its awful work in the morning. The Giant Woman Drowned. She, Like the Rest, a Prey to the Devouring Flood of the Canals. Thaumasia, as I have before remarked, was a broad, oval land, about 1,800 miles across, having the Lake of the Sun exactly in its centre. From this lake, which was four or five hundred miles in diameter, and circular in outline, many canals radiated, as straight as the spokes of a wheel, in every direction, and connected it with the surrounding seas. Like all the other Martian continents, Thaumasia lay below the level of the sea, except toward the south, where it fronted the ocean. Completely surrounding the lake was a great ring of cities constituting the capital of Mars. Here the genius of the Martians had displayed itself to the full. The surrounding country was irrigated until it fairly bloomed with gigantic vegetation and flowers; the canals were carefully regulated with locks so that the supply of water was under complete control; the display of magnificent metallic buildings of all kinds and sizes produced a most dazzling effect, and the protection against enemies afforded by the innumerable fortifications surrounding the ringed city, and guarding the neighboring lands, seemed complete. Waiting for the Flood. Suspended at a height of perhaps two miles from the surface, near the southern edge of the lake, we waited for the oncoming flood. With the dawn of day we began to perceive more clearly the effects which the news of the drowning of the planet had produced. It was evident that many of the inhabitants of the cities had already fled. Airships on which the fugitives hung as thick as swarms of bees were seen, elevated but a short distance above the ground, and making their way rapidly toward the south. The Martians knew that their only hope of escape lay in reaching the high southern border of the land before the floods were upon them. But they must have known also that that narrow beach would not suffice to contain one in ten of those who sought refuge there. The density of the population around the Lake of the Sun seemed to us incredible. Again our hearts sank within us at the sight of the fearful destruction of life for which we were responsible. Yet we comforted ourselves with the reflection that it was unavoidable. As Colonel Smith put it: "You couldn't trust these coyotes. The only thing to do was to drown them out. I am sorry for them, but I guess there will be as many left as will be good for us, anyhow." The Crest of the Waters. We had not long to wait for the flood. As the dawn began to streak the east we saw its awful crest moving out of the darkness, bursting across the canals and plowing its way in the direction of the crowded shores of the Lake of the Sun. The supply of water behind that great wave seemed inexhaustible. Five thousand miles it had travelled, and yet its power was as great as when it started from the Syrtis Major. We caught sight of the oncoming water before it was visible to the Martians beneath us. But while it was yet many miles away, the roar of it reached them, and then arose a chorus of terrified cries, the effect of which, coming to our ears out of the half gloom of the morning, was most uncanny and horrible. Thousands upon thousands of the Martians still remained here to become the victims of the deluge. Some, perhaps, had doubted the truth of the reports that the banks were down and the floods were out; others, for one reason or another had been unable to get away; others, like the inhabitants of Pompeii, had lingered too long, or had returned after beginning their flight to secure abandoned treasures, and now it was too late to get away. Engulfing the City. With a roar that shook the planet the white wall rushed upon the great city beneath our feet, and in an instant it had been engulfed. On went the flood, swallowing up the Lake of the Sun itself, and in a little while, as far as our eyes could range, the land of Thaumasia had been turned into a raging sea. We now turned our ships toward the southern border of the land, following the direction of the airships carrying the fugitives, a few of which were still navigating the atmosphere a mile beneath us. In their excitement and terror the Martians paid little attention to us, although, as the morning brightened, they must have been aware of our presence over their heads. But, apparently, they no longer thought of resistance; their only object was escape from the immediate and appalling danger. When we had progressed to a point about half way from the Lake of the Sun to the border of the sea, having dropped down within a few hundred feet of the surface, there suddenly appeared, in the midst of the raging waters, a sight so remarkable that at first I rubbed my eyes in astonishment, not crediting their report of what they beheld. A Woman Forty Feet High! Standing on the apex of a sandy elevation, which still rose a few feet above the gathering flood, was the figure of a woman, as perfect in form and in classic beauty of feature as the Venus of Milo--a magnified human being not less than forty feet in height! But for her swaying and the wild motions of her arms, we should have mistaken her for a marble statue. Aina, who happened to be looking, instantly exclaimed: "It is the woman from Ceres. She was taken prisoner by the Martians during their last invasion of that world, and since then has been a slave in the palace of the Emperor." Overtaken by the Flood. Apparently her great stature had enabled her to escape, while her masters had been drowned. She had fled like the others, toward the south, but being finally surrounded by the rising waters, had taken refuge on the hillock of sand, where we saw her. This was fast giving way under the assault of the waves, and even while we watched the water rose to her knees. "Drop lower," was the order of the electrical steersman of the flagship, and as quickly as possible we approached the place where the towering figure stood. She had realized the hopelessness of her situation, and quickly ceased those appalling and despairing gestures, which at first served to convince us that it was indeed a living being on whom we were looking. Save the Woman from Ceres! There she stood, with a light, white garment thrown about her, erect, half-defiant, half yielding to her fear, more graceful than any Greek statue, her arms outstretched, yet motionless, and her eyes upcast, as if praying to her God to protect her. Her hair, which shone like gold in the increasing light of day, streamed over her shoulders, and her great eyes were astare between terror and supplication. So wildly beautiful a sight not one of us had ever beheld. For a moment sympathy was absorbed in admiration. Then: "Save her! Save her!" was the cry that arose throughout the ship. Ropes were instantly thrown out, and one or two men prepared to let themselves down in order better to aid her. But when we were almost within reach, and so close that we could see the very expression of her eyes, which appeared to take no note of us, but to be fixed, with a far-away look upon something beyond human ken, suddenly the undermined bank on which she stood gave way, the blood-red flood swirled in from right to left, and then: "The waters closed above her face With many a ring." She, Like the Rest, Is Gone. "If but for that woman's sake, I am sorry we drowned the planet," exclaimed Sidney Phillips. But a moment afterward I saw that he regretted what he had said, for Aina's eyes were fixed upon him. Perhaps, however, she did not understand his remark, and perhaps if she did it gave her no offence. After this episode we pursued our way rapidly until we arrived at the shore of the Southern Ocean. There, as we had expected, was to be seen a narrow strip of land with the ocean on one side and the raging flood seeking to destroy it on the other. In some places it had been already broken through, so that the ocean was flowing in to assist in the drowning of Thaumasia. But some parts of the coast were evidently so elevated that no matter how high the flood might rise it would not completely cover them. Here the fugitives had gathered in dense throngs and above them hovered most of the airships, loaded down with others who were unable to find room upon the dry land. The Martians Not Discouraged. On one of the loftiest and broadest of these elevations we noticed indications of military order in the alignment of the crowds and the shore all around was guarded by gigantic pickets, who mercilessly shoved back into the flood all the later comers, and thus prevented too great crowding upon the land. In the centre of this elevation rose a palatial structure of red metal which Aina informed us was one of the residences of the Emperor, and we concluded that the monarch himself was now present there. The absence of any signs of resistance on the part of the airships, and the complete drowning of all of the formidable fortifications on the surface of the planet, convinced us that all we now had to do in order to complete our conquest was to get possession of the person of the chief ruler. The fleet was, accordingly, concentrated, and we rapidly approached the great Martian palace. As we came down within a hundred feet of them and boldly made our way among their airships, which retreated at our approach, the Martians gazed at us with mingled fear and astonishment. We were their conquerors and they knew it. We were coming to demand their surrender, and they evidently understood that also. As we approached the palace signals were made from it with brilliant colored banners which Aina informed us were intended as a token of truce. "We shall have to go down and have a confab with them, I suppose," said Mr. Edison. "We can't kill them off now that they are helpless, but we must manage somehow to make them understand that unconditional surrender is their only chance." A Parley with the Enemy. "Let us take Aina with us," I suggested, "and since she can speak the language of the Martians we shall probably have no difficulty in arriving at an understanding." Accordingly the flagship was carefully brought further down in front of the entrance to the palace, which had been kept clear by the Martian guards, and while the remainder of the squadron assembled within a few feet directly over our heads with the disintegrators turned upon the palace and the crowd below. Mr. Edison and myself, accompanied by Aina, stepped out upon the ground. There was a forward movement in the immense crowd, but the guards sternly kept everybody back. A party of a dozen giants, preceded by one who seemed to be their commander, gorgeously attired in jewelled garments, advanced from the entrance of the palace to meet us. Aina addressed a few words to the leader, who replied sternly, and then, beckoning us to follow, retraced his steps into the palace. Notwithstanding our confidence that all resistance had ceased, we did not deem it wise actually to venture into the lion's den without having taken every precaution against a surprise. Accordingly, before following the Martian into the palace, we had twenty of the electrical ships moored around it in such a position that they commanded not only the entrance but all of the principal windows, and then a party of forty picked men, each doubly armed with powerful disintegrators, were selected to attend us into the building. This party was placed under the command of Colonel Smith, and Sidney Phillips insisted on being a member of it. A Nearer Sight of the Martians. In the meantime the Martian with his attendants who had first invited us to enter, finding that we did not follow him, had returned to the front of the palace. He saw the disposition that we had made of our forces, and instantly comprehended its significance, for his manner changed somewhat, and he seemed more desirous than before to conciliate us. When he again beckoned us to enter, we unhesitatingly followed him, and, passing through the magnificent entrance, found ourselves in a vast ante-chamber, adorned after the manner of the Martians in the most expensive manner. Thence we passed into a great circular apartment, with a dome painted in imitation of the sky, and so lofty that to our eyes it seemed like the firmament itself. Here we found ourselves approaching an elevated throne situated in the centre of the apartment, while long rows of brilliantly armored guards flanked us on either side, and, grouped around the throne, some standing and others reclining upon the flights of steps which appeared to be of solid gold, was an array of Martian woman, beautifully and becomingly attired, all of whom greatly astonished us by the singular charm of their faces and bearing, so different from the aspect of most of the Martians, whom we had already encountered. The Martians' Beautiful Women. Despite their stature--for these women averaged twelve or thirteen feet in height--the beauty of their complexions--of a dark, olive tint--was no less brilliant than that of the women of Italy or Spain. At the top of the steps on a magnificent golden throne, sat the Emperor himself. There are some busts of Caracalla which I have seen that are almost as ugly as the face of the Martian ruler. He was of gigantic stature, larger than the majority of his subjects, and as near as I could judge must have been between fifteen and sixteen feet in height. As I looked at him I understood a remark which had been made by Aina to the effect that the Martians were not all alike, and that the peculiarities of their minds were imprinted on their faces and expressed in their forms in a very wonderful, and sometimes terrible manner. I had also learned from her that Mars was under a military government, and that the military class had absolute control of the planet. I was somewhat startled, then, in looking at the head and centre of the great military system of Mars, to find in his appearance a striking confirmation of the speculations of our terrestrial phrenologists. His broad, mis-shapen head bulged in those parts where they had placed the so-called organs of combativeness, destructiveness, etc. Something Learned About Them. Plainly, this was an effect of his training and education. His very brain had become a military engine; and the aspect of his face, the pitiless lines of his mouth and chin, the evil glare of his eyes, the attitude and carriage of his muscular body, all tended to complete the warlike ensemble. He was magnificently dressed in some vesture that had the lustre of a polished plate of gold, with the suppleness of velvet. As we approached he fixed his immense, deep-set eyes sternly upon our faces. The contrast between his truly terrible countenance and the Eve-like features of the women who surrounded his throne was as great as if Satan after his fall had here re-enthroned himself in the midst of angels. Mr. Edison, Colonel Smith, Sidney Phillips, Aina and myself advanced at the head of the procession, our guard following in close order behind us. It had been evident from the moment that we entered the palace that Aina was regarded with aversion by all of the Martians. Even the women about the throne gazed scowlingly at her as we drew near. Apparently, the bitterness of feeling which had led to the awful massacre of all her race had not yet vanished. And, indeed, since the fact that she remained alive could have been known only to the Martian who had abducted her and to his immediate companions, her reappearance with us must have been a great surprise to all those who now looked upon her. The Enemy Vanquished. The Martians Succumb at Last, and Are at Our Mercy. It was clear to me that the feeling aroused by her appearance was every moment becoming more intense. Still, the thought of a violent outbreak did not occur to me, because our recent triumph had seemed so complete that I believed the Martians would be awed by our presence, and would not undertake actually to injure the girl. I think we all had the same impression, but as the event proved, we were mistaken. Suddenly one of the gigantic guards, as if actuated by a fit of ungovernable hatred, lifted his foot and kicked Aina. With a loud shriek, she fell to the floor. Aina Attacked by a Martian. The blow was so unexpected that for a second we all remained riveted to the spot. Then I saw Colonel Smith's face turn livid, and at the same instant heard the whirr of his disintegrator, while Sidney Phillips, forgetting the deadly instrument that he carried in his hand, sprung madly toward the brute who had kicked Aina, as if he intended to throttle him, colossus as he was. But Colonel Smith's aim, though instantaneously taken, as he had been accustomed to shoot on the plains, was true, and Phillips, plunging madly forward, seemed wreathed in a faint blue mist--all that the disintegrator had left of the gigantic Martian. Swift Vengeance. Who could adequately describe the scene that followed? I remember that the Martian Emperor sprang to his feet, looking tenfold more terrible than before. I remember that there instantly burst from the line of guards on either side crinkling beams of death-fire that seemed to sear the eyeballs. I saw a half a dozen of our men fall in heaps of ashes, and even at that terrible moment I had time to wonder that a single one of us remained alive. Rather by instinct than in consequence of any order given, we formed ourselves in a hollow square, with Aina lying apparently lifeless in the centre, and then with gritted teeth we did our work. The lines of guards melted before the disintegrators like rows of snow men before a licking flame. A Terrible Battle. The discharge of the lightning engines in the hands of the Martians in that confined space made an uproar so tremendous that it seemed to pass the bounds of human sense. More of our men fell before their awful fire, and for the second time since our arrival on this dreadful planet of war our annihilation seemed inevitable. But in a moment the whole scene changed. Suddenly there was a discharge into the room which I knew came from one of the disintegrators of the electrical ships. It swept through the crowded throng like a destroying blast. Instantly from another side swished a second discharge, no less destructive, and this was quickly followed by a third. Our ships were firing through the windows. The Power of the Disintegrator. Almost at the same moment I saw the flagship, which had been moored in the air close to the entrance and floating only three or four feet above the ground, pushing its way through the gigantic doorway from the ante-room, with its great disintegrators pointed upon the crowd like the muzzles of a cruiser's guns. And now the Martians saw that the contest was hopeless for them, and their mad struggle to get out of the range of the disintegrators and to escape from the death chamber was more appalling to look upon than anything that had yet occurred. It was a panic of giants. They trod one another under foot; they yelled and screamed in their terror; they tore each other with their clawlike fingers. They no longer thought of resistance. The battle spirit had been blown out of them by a breath of terror that shivered their marrow. No Pity for Our Foes. Still the pitiless disintegrators played upon them until Mr. Edison, making himself heard, now that the thunder of their engines had ceased to reverberate through the chamber, commanded that our fire should cease. In the meantime the armed Martians outside the palace, hearing the uproar within, seeing our men pouring their fire through the windows, and supposing that we were guilty at once of treachery and assassination, had attempted an attack upon the electrical ships stationed round the building. But fortunately they had none of their larger engines at hand, and with their hand arms alone they had not been able to stand up against the disintegrators. They were blown away before the withering fire of the ships by the hundred until, fleeing from destruction, they rushed madly, driving their unarmed companions before them into the seething waters of the flood close at hand. Chapter XVII. The Emperor Survives. Through all this terrible contest the emperor of the Martians had remained standing upon his throne, gazing at the awful spectacle, and not moving from the spot. Neither he nor the frightened woman gathered upon the steps of the throne had been injured by the disintegrators. Their immunity was due to the fact that the position and elevation of the throne were such that it was not within the range of fire of the electrical ships which had poured their vibratory discharges through the windows, and we inside had only directed our fire toward the warriors who had attacked us. Now that the struggle was over we turned our attention to Aina. Fortunately the girl had not been seriously injured and she was quickly restored to consciousness. Had she been killed, we would have been practically helpless in attempting further negotiations, because the knowledge which we had acquired of the language of the Martians from the prisoner captured on the golden asteroid, was not sufficient to meet the requirements of the occasion. The Emperor Our Prisoner. When the Martian monarch saw that we had ceased the work of death, he sank upon his throne. There he remained, leaning his chin upon his two hands and staring straight before him like that terrible doomed creature who fascinates the eyes of every beholder standing in the Sistine Chapel and gazing at Michael Angelo's dreadful painting of "The Last Judgement." This wicked Martian also felt that he was in the grasp of pitiless and irresistible fate, and that a punishment too well deserved, and from which there was no possible escape, now confronted him. There he remained in a hopelessness which almost compelled our sympathy, until Aina had so far recovered that she was once more able to act as our interpreter. Then we made short work of the negotiations. Speaking through Aina, the commander said: "You know who we are. We have come from the earth, which, by your command, was laid waste. Our commission was not revenge, but self-protection. What we have done has been accomplished with that in view. You have just witnessed an example of our power, the exercise of which was not dictated by our wish, but compelled by the attack wantonly made upon a helpless member of our own race under our protection." We Dictate Terms. "We have laid waste your planet, but it is simply a just retribution for what you did with ours. We are prepared to complete the destruction, leaving not a living being in this world of yours, or to grant you peace, at your choice. Our condition of peace is simply this: 'All resistance must cease absolutely.'" "Quite right," broke in Colonel Smith; "let the scorpion pull out his sting or we'll do it for him." "Nothing that we could now do," continued the commander, "would in my opinion save you from ultimate destruction. The forces of nature which we have been compelled to let loose upon you will complete their own victory. But we do not wish, unnecessarily, to stain our hands further with your blood. We shall leave you in possession of your lives. Preserve them if you can. But, in case the flood recedes before you have all perished from starvation, remember that you here take an oath, solemnly binding yourself and your descendants forever never again to make war upon the earth." We Show Mercy. "That's really the best we can do," said Mr. Edison, turning to us. "We can't possibly murder these people in cold blood. The probability is that the flood has hopelessly ruined all their engines of war. I do not believe that there is one chance in ten that the waters will drain off in time to enable them to get at their stores of provisions before they have perished from starvation." "It is my opinion," said Lord Kelvin, who had joined us (his pair of disintegrators hanging by his side, attached to a strap running over the back of his neck, very much as a farmer sometimes carries his big mittens), "it is my opinion that the flood will recede more rapidly than you think, and that the majority of these people will survive. But I quite agree with your merciful view of the matter. We must be guilty of no wanton destruction. Probably more than nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Mars have perished in the deluge. Even if all the others survived ages would elapse before they could regain the power to injure us." The Martians Submit. I need not describe in detail how our propositions were received by the Martian monarch. He knew, and his advisers, some of whom he had called in consultation, also knew, that everything was in our hands to do as we pleased. They readily agreed, therefore, that they would make no more resistance and that we and our electrical ships should be undisturbed while we remained upon Mars. The monarch took the oath prescribed after the manner of his race: thus the business was completed. But through it all there had been the shadow of a sneer on the emperor's face which I did not like. But I said nothing. And now we began to think of our return home, and of the pleasure we should have in recounting our adventures to our friends on the earth, who were doubtless eagerly waiting for news from us. We knew they had been watching Mars with powerful telescopes, and we were also eager to learn how much they had seen and how much they had been able to guess of our proceedings. But a day or two at least would be required to overhaul the electrical ships and to examine the state of our provisions. Those which we had brought from the earth, it will be remembered, had been spoiled and we had been compelled to replace them from the compressed provisions found in the Martians' storehouse. This compressed food had proved not only exceedingly agreeable to the taste, but very nourishing, and all of us had grown extremely fond of it. A new supply, however, would be needed in order to carry us back to the earth. At least sixty days would be required for the homeward journey, because we could hardly expect to start from Mars with the same initial velocity which we had been able to generate on leaving home. In considering the matter of provisioning the fleet it finally became necessary to take an account of our losses. This was a thing that we had all shrunk from, because they had seemed to us almost too terrible to be borne. But now the facts had to be faced. Out of the 100 ships, carrying something more than two thousand souls, with which we had quitted the earth, there remained only fifty-five ships and 1,085 men! All the others had been lost in our terrific encounters with the Martians, and particularly in our first disastrous battle beneath the clouds. Preparing to Return. Among the lost were many men whose names were famous upon the earth, and whose death would be widely deplored when the news of it was received upon their native planet. Fortunately this number did not include any of those whom I have had occasion to mention in the course of this narrative. The venerable Lord Kelvin, who, notwithstanding his age, and his pacific disposition, proper to a man of science, had behaved with the courage and coolness of a veteran in every crisis; Monsieur Moissan, the eminent chemist; Prof. Sylvanus P. Thompson, and the Heidelberg Professor, to whom we all felt under special obligations because he had opened to our comprehension the charming lips of Aina--all these had survived, and were about to return with us to the earth. It seemed to some of us almost heartless to deprive the Martians who still remained alive of any of the provisions which they themselves would require to tide them over the long period which must elapse before the recession of the flood should enable them to discover the sites of their ruined homes, and to find the means of sustenance. But necessity was now our only law. We learned from Aina that there must be stores of provisions in the neighborhood of the palace, because it was the custom of the Martians to lay up such stores during the harvest time in each Martian year in order to provide against the contingency of an extraordinary drought. It was not with very good grace that the Martian Emperor acceded to our demands that one of the storehouses should be opened, but resistance was useless, and of course we had our way. The supplies of water which we brought from the earth, owing to a peculiar process invented by Monsieur Moissan, had been kept in exceedingly good condition, but they were now running low and it became necessary to replenish them also. This was easily done from the Southern Ocean, for on Mars, since the levelling of the continental elevations, brought about many years ago, there is comparatively little salinity in the sea waters. While these preparations were going on Lord Kelvin and the other men of science entered with the utmost eagerness upon those studies, the prosecution of which had been the principal inducement leading them to embark on the expedition. But, almost all of the face of the planet being covered with the flood, there was comparatively little that they could do. Much, however, could be learned with the aid of Aina from the Martians, now crowded on the land about the palace. The results of these discoveries will in due time appear, fully elaborated in learned and authoritative treatises prepared by these savants themselves. I shall only call attention to one, which seemed to me very remarkable. I have already said that there were astonishing differences in the personal appearance of the Martians, evidently arising from differences of character and education, which had impressed themselves in the physical aspect of the individuals. We now learned that these differences were more completely the result of education than we had at first supposed. Looking about among the Martians by whom we were surrounded, it soon became easy for us to tell who were the soldiers and who were the civilians, simply by the appearance of their bodies, and particularly of their heads. All members of the military class resembled, to a greater or less extent, the monarch himself, in that those parts of their skulls which our phrenologists had designated as the bumps of destructiveness, combativeness and so on were enormously and disproportionately developed. And all this, as we were assured, was completely under the control of the Martians themselves. They had learned, or invented, methods by which the brain itself could be manipulated, so to speak, and any desired portions of it could be specially developed, while the other parts of it were left to their normal growth. The consequence was that in the Martian schools and colleges there was no teaching in our sense of the word. It was all brain culture. A Martian youth selected to be a soldier had his fighting faculties especially developed, together with those parts of the brain which impart courage and steadiness of nerve. He who was intended for scientific investigation had his brain developed into a mathematical machine, or an instrument of observation. Poets and literary men had their heads bulging with the imaginative faculties. The heads of inventors were developed into a still different shape. "And so," said Aina, translating for us the words of a professor in the Imperial University of Mars, from whom we derived the greater part of our information on this subject, "the Martian boys do not study a subject; they do not have to learn it, but, when their brains have been sufficiently developed in the proper direction, they comprehend it instantly, by a kind of divine instinct." But among the women of Mars, we saw none of these curious, and to our eyes monstrous, differences of development. While the men received, in addition to their special education, a broad general culture also, with the women there was no special education. It was all general in its character, yet thorough enough in that way. The consequence was that only female brains upon Mars were entirely well balanced. This was the reason why we invariably found the Martian women to be remarkably charming creatures, with none of those physical exaggerations and uncouth developments which disfigured their masculine companions. All the books of the Martians, we ascertained, were books of history and of poetry. For scientific treatises they had no need, because, as I have explained, when the brains of those intended for scientific pursuits had been developed in the proper way the knowledge of nature's laws came to them without effort, as a spring bubbles from the rocks. One word of explanation may be needed concerning the failure of the Martians, with all their marvellous powers, to invent electrical ships like those of Mr. Edison and engines of destruction comparable with our disintegrators. This failure was simply due to the fact that on Mars there did not exist the peculiar metals by the combination of which Mr. Edison had been able to effect his wonders. The theory involved in our inventions was perfectly understood by them, and had they possessed the means, doubtless they would have been able to carry it into practice even more effectively than we had done. After two or three days all the preparations having been completed, the signal was given for our departure. The men of science were still unwilling to leave this strange world, but Mr. Edison decided that we could linger no longer. At the moment of starting a most tragic event occurred. Our fleet was assembled around the palace, and the signal was given to rise slowly to a considerable height before imparting a great velocity to the electrical ships. As we slowly rose we saw the immense crowd of giants beneath us, with upturned faces, watching our departure. The Martian monarch and all his suite had come out upon the terrace of the palace to look at us. At a moment when he probably supposed himself to be unwatched he shook his fist at the retreating fleet. My eyes and those of several others in the flagship chanced to be fixed upon him. Just as he made the gesture one of the women of his suite, in her eagerness to watch us, apparently lost her balance and stumbled against him. Without a moment's hesitation, with a tremendous blow, he felled her like an ox at his feet. A fearful oath broke from the lips of Colonel Smith, who was one of those looking on. It chanced that he stood near the principal disintegrator of the flagship. Before anybody could interfere he had sighted and discharged it. The entire force of the terrible engine, almost capable of destroying a fort, fell upon the Martian Emperor, and not merely blew him into a cloud of atoms, but opened a great cavity in the ground on the spot where he had stood. A shout arose from the Martians, but they were too much astounded at what had occurred to make any hostile demonstrations, and, anyhow, they knew well that they were completely at our mercy. Mr. Edison was on the point of rebuking Colonel Smith for what he had done, but Aina interposed. "I am glad it was done," said she, "for now only can you be safe. That monster was more directly responsible than any other inhabitant of Mars for all the wickedness of which they have been guilty." "The expedition against the earth was inspired solely by him. There is a tradition among the Martians--which my people, however, could never credit--that he possessed a kind of immortality. They declared that it was he who led the former expedition against the earth when my ancestors were brought away prisoners from their happy home, and that it was his image which they had set up in stone in the midst of the Land of Sand. He prolonged his existence, according to this legend, by drinking the waters of a wonderful fountain, the secret of whose precise location was known to him alone, but which was situated at that point where in your maps of Mars the name of the Fons Juventae occurs. He was personified wickedness, that I know; and he never would have kept his oath if power had returned to him again to injure the earth. In destroying him, you have made your victory secure." Chapter XVIII. When at length we once more saw our native planet, with its well-remembered features of land and sea, rolling beneath our eyes, the feeling of joy that came over us transcended all powers of expression. In order that all the nations which had united in sending out the expedition should have visual evidence of its triumphant return, it was decided to make the entire circuit of the earth before seeking our starting point and disembarking. Brief accounts in all known languages, telling the story of what we had done were accordingly prepared, and then we dropped down through the air until again we saw the well-loved blue dome over our heads, and found ourselves suspended directly above the white-topped cone of Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan. Shifting our place toward the northeast, we hung above the city of Tokio and dropped down into the crowds that had assembled to watch us, the prepared accounts of our journey, which, the moment they had been read and comprehended, led to such an outburst of rejoicing as it would be quite impossible to describe. One of the ships containing the Japanese members of the expedition dropped to the ground, and we left them in the midst of their rejoicing countrymen. Before we started--and we remained but a short time suspended above the Japanese capital--millions had assembled to greet us with their cheers. We now repeated what we had done during our first examination of the surface of Mars. We simply remained suspended in the atmosphere, allowing the earth to turn beneath us. As Japan receded in the distance we found China beginning to appear. Shifting our position a little toward the south we again came to rest over the city of Pekin, where once more we parted with some of our companions, and where the outburst of universal rejoicing was repeated. From Asia, crossing the Caspian Sea, we passed over Russia, visiting in turn Moscow and St. Petersburg. Still the great globe rolled steadily beneath, and still we kept the sun with us. Now Germany appeared, and now Italy, and then France, and England, as we shifted our position, first North then South, in order to give all the world the opportunity to see that its warriors had returned victorious from their far conquest. And in each country as it passed beneath our feet, we left some of the comrades who had shared our perils and our adventures. At length the Atlantic had rolled away under us, and we saw the spires of the new New York. The news of our coming had been flashed ahead from Europe, and our countrymen were prepared to welcome us. We had originally started, it will be remembered, at midnight, and now again as we approached the new capital of the world the curtain of night was just beginning to be drawn over it. But our signal lights were ablaze, and through these they were aware of our approach. Again the air was filled with bursting rockets and shaken with the roar of cannon, and with volleying cheers, poured from millions of throats, as we came to rest directly above the city. Three days after the landing of the fleet, and when the first enthusiasm of our reception had a little passed, I received a beautifully engraved card inviting me to be present in Trinity Church at the wedding of Aina and Sidney Phillips. When I arrived at the church, which had been splendidly decorated, I found there Mr. Edison, Lord Kelvin, and all the other members of the crew of the flagship, and, considerably to my surprise, Colonel Smith, appropriately attired, and with a grace for the possession of which I had not given him credit, gave away the beautiful bride. But Alonzo Jefferson Smith was a man and a soldier, every inch of him. "I asked her for myself," he whispered to me after the ceremony, swallowing a great lump in his throat, "but she has had the desire of her heart. I am going back to the plains. I can get a command again, and I still know how to fight." And thus was united, for all future time, the first stem of the Aryan race, which had been long lost, but not destroyed, with the latest offspring of that great family, and the link which had served to bring them together was the far-away planet of Mars. (The End.) 
51249	----	Spacemen Die at Home By EDWARD W. LUDWIG Illustrated by THORNE [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] One man's retreat is another's prison ... and it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home! Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing fear--a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura. Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning.... It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos, were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after spawning its first-born. For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight. The _first_ graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important, because we were the _first_. We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and grandparents and kid brothers and sisters--the people who a short time ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had never really existed. But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us with pride in their eyes. A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things. They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up at them and feel humility--for mankind needs humility." The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and who had just returned from his second hop to Venus. Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time, for I was thinking: _He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the first!_ * * * * * Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?" I blinked. "Who?" "My folks." That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those "You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie Taggart. Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the _Lunar Lady_, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White Sands. I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet. My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It wasn't surprising. The _Lunar Lady_ was in White Sands now, but liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars. _It doesn't matter_, I told myself. Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!" Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only half as big. And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by the sons of Earth. _They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do._ I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared. * * * * * At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge, babbling wave. Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie. His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear rows. But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that it was hard to believe he'd once been young. He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned. "You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as good spacemen should!" Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again, walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm with some silent melody. And you, Laura, were with him. "Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura." I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before. "I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for the past year." A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an introduction of Charlie. You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol. His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing. And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I knew, would find them ugly. You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to meet you, Charlie. Just think--one of Everson's men, one of the first to reach the Moon!" Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?" I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're planning to see the town tonight." "Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room. Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the Moon?" Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian fizzes and Plutonian zombies. But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration. "We'd really like to come," I said. * * * * * On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor should look. "Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two months to decide." "No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me." A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben? Did he make you an offer?" I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching astrogation. What a life _that_ would be! Imagine standing in a classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to--" I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want." I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart. Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used to want." "_Used_ to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?" You bit your lip, not answering. "What did she mean, Mickey?" Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben. We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But--" "Yes?" "Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know." My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to say, Mickey?" "I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben." I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my knees with the blast of a jet. "It doesn't change anything, Ben--right now, I mean. We can still have a good weekend." Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the 'copter. "Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend." * * * * * I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course. They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things, deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or housework. Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a shower, but he tried courageously to be himself. At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic. Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough, the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that. Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot." That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all. Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night, to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally streaked up from White Sands. We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said: "Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's sort of funny." "He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a spaceman then." "But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?" I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson." You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster. There was silence. You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the feeling that I shouldn't have come here. You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking, Laura?" You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that." "I could never hate you." "It--it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I lived for months, just thinking about it. "One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles, and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting before you get to them, and afterward they're not really." I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think maybe I haven't grown up yet?" Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman, to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it worth the things you'd have to give up?" I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up _what_?" Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew. All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path. Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on the stars. Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that I'd never noticed before. _You can go into space_, I thought, _and try to do as much living in ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like Charlie--a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally alone, never finding a home._ _Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous dust._ "I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben." "It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense--a lot of sense." * * * * * The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin, tight coughs. Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought maybe you'd like to have 'em." I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?" He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh, it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years. That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky. Some of these days, I won't be so lucky." I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie." He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the _Space Rat_, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a look inside. I'll probably be there." He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears. "Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian climate." Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered, too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were drugged. I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna. We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I. "When will you be back?" you asked. Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen." Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man. I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill the doubt worming through my brain. But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was gone. * * * * * That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids treasure--pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy, books, a home-made video. I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy. I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched their children grow to adulthood. I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams, I hadn't realized I was different. _My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd have lived the kind of life a kid should live._ Mickey noticed my frown. "What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just not like you and Charlie, I guess. I--" "No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really." "Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?" "No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the _Odyssey_, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me, too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than teaching. I want to be in deep space." "Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy Earth life while you can. Okay?" I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of courage that would put fuel on dying dreams. But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as much as I loved the stars. And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure, I'll stay, Mickey. Sure." * * * * * Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted. One morning I thought, _Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?_ All day the thought lay in my mind like fire. That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I want you to be my wife." You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face flushed. Then you murmured, "I--I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me to marry a spaceman or a teacher?" "Can't a spaceman marry, too?" "Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see, Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for _maybe_ two months, _maybe_ two years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty--and I'd have what?" Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years, then teach." "Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?" Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears glittering in your eyes. "Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened on the _Cyclops_. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was flooded with radiation--just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it was--" "I know, Laura. Don't say it." You had to finish. "It was a monster." That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me sleep. _You've got to decide now_, I told myself. _You can't stay here. You've got to make a choice._ The teaching job was still open. The spot on the _Odyssey_ was still open--and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the way to Pluto. _You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now._ _Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a line in a history book._ I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get out there on the _Odyssey_ where you belong. We got a date on Mars, remember? At the _Space Rat_, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal." That's what he'd say. And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always. "Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?" * * * * * Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who could be sending me a message. I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping, automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...." Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word "lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps." I stood staring at the cylinder. Charles Taggart was dead. Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie. My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie! The audiogram had lied! I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of Charles ..." I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken voice droned on. You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly--" Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze. The metallic words had told the truth. I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at Charlie's faded tin box. Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions--a few wrinkled photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god, a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol. This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space. It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters instead of children, a medal instead of a home. _It'd be a great future_, I thought. _You'd dream of sitting in a dingy stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky, stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first sign of lung-rot._ To hell with it! I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone. I accepted that job teaching. * * * * * And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping, and the house is silent. It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am writing this. I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they could tell me what he could not express in words. And among the things, Laura, I found a ring. A wedding ring. In that past he never talked about, there was a woman--his wife. Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to travel both. He later learned what we already know--that there can be no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose. Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a man's dream. He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was kind--but that doesn't matter now. Do you know _why_ he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth? It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother, brothers, the planets his children. You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes after you reach it. But how can one ever be _sure_ until the journey is made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a star and think, _I might have gone there; I could have been the first_? We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways? Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it. Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson. Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep--at a dingy stone cafe on Mars, the _Space Rat_, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura. I have two wedding rings with me--his wife's ring and yours. 
62109	----	The Star Mouse By FREDRIC BROWN Robinson Crusoe ... Gulliver ... Paul Bunyan; the story of their adventures is nothing compared to the Saga of Mitkey. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Mitkey, the mouse, wasn't Mitkey then. He was just another mouse, who lived behind the floorboards and plaster of the house of the great Herr Professor Oberburger, formerly of Vienna and Heidelberg; then a refugee from the excessive admiration of more powerful of his fellow-countrymen. The excessive admiration had concerned, not Herr Oberburger himself, but a certain gas which had been a by-product of an unsuccessful rocket fuel--which might have been a highly-successful something else. If, of course, the Professor had given them the correct formula. Which he--Well, anyway, the Professor had made good his escape and now lived in a house in Connecticut. And so did Mitkey. A small gray mouse, and a small gray man. Nothing unusual about either of them. Particularly there was nothing unusual about Mitkey; he had a family and he liked cheese and if there were Rotarians among mice, he would have been a Rotarian. The Herr Professor, of course, had his mild eccentricities. A confirmed bachelor, he had no one to talk to except himself, but he considered himself an excellent conversationalist and held constant verbal communion with himself while he worked. That fact, it turned out later, was important, because Mitkey had excellent ears and heard those night-long soliloquies. He didn't understand them, of course. If he thought about them at all, he merely thought of the Professor as a large and noisy super-mouse who squeaked over-much. "Und now," he would say to himself, "ve vill see vether this eggshaust tube vas broperly machined. It should fidt vithin vun vun-hundredth thousandth uf an indtch. Ahhh, it iss berfect. Und now--" Night after night, day after day, month after month. The gleaming thing grew, and the gleam in Herr Oberburger's eyes grew apace. It was about three and a half feet long, with weirdly shaped vanes, and it rested on a temporary framework on a table in the center of the room that served the Herr Professor for all purposes. The house in which he and Mitkey lived was a four room structure, but the Professor hadn't yet found it out, seemingly. Originally, he had planned to use the big room as a laboratory only, but he found it more convenient to sleep on a cot in one corner of it, when he slept at all, and to do the little cooking he did over the same gas burner over which he melted down golden grains of TNT into a dangerous soup which he salted and peppered with strange condiments, but did not eat. "Und now I shall bour it into tubes, und see vether vun tube adjacendt to another eggsplodes der secondt tube vhen der virst tube iss--" That was the night Mitkey almost decided to move himself and his family to a more stable abode, one that did not rock and sway and try to turn handsprings on its foundations. But Mitkey didn't move after all, because there were compensations. New mouse-holes all over, and--joy of joy!--a big crack in the back of the refrigerator where the Professor kept, among other things, food. Of course the tubes had been not larger than capillary size, or the house would not have remained around the mouse-holes. And of course Mitkey could not guess what was coming nor understand the Herr Professor's brand of English (nor any other brand of English, for that matter) or he would not have let even a crack in the refrigerator tempt him. The Professor was jubilant that morning. "Der fuel, idt vorks! Der secondt tube, idt did not eggsplode. Und der virst, in _seggtions_, as I had eggspectedt! Und it is more bowerful; there will be blenty of room for der combartment--" Ah, yes, the compartment. That was where Mitkey came in, although even the Professor didn't know it yet. In fact the Professor didn't even know that Mitkey existed. "Und now," he was saying to his favorite listener, "idt is budt a madter of combining der fuel tubes so they work in obbosite bairs. Und then--" That was the moment when the Herr Professor's eyes first fell on Mitkey. Rather, they fell upon a pair of gray whiskers and a black, shiny little nose protruding from a hole in the baseboards. "Vell!" he said, "vot haff ve here! Mitkey Mouse himself! Mitkey, how vould you like to go for a ride, negst veek? Ve shall see." * * * * * That is how it came about that the next time the Professor sent into town for supplies, his order included a mousetrap--not one of the vicious kind that kills, but one of the wire-cage kind. And it had not been set, with cheese, for more than ten minutes before Mitkey's sharp little nose had smelled out that cheese and he had followed his nose into captivity. Not, however, an unpleasant captivity. Mitkey was an honored guest. The cage reposed now on the table at which the Professor did most of his work, and cheese in indigestion-giving abundance was pushed through the bars, and the Professor didn't talk to himself any more. "You see, Mitkey, I vas going to sendt to der laboratory in Hardtford for a vhite mouse, budt vhy should I, mit you here? I am sure you are more soundt und healthy und able to vithstand a long chourney than those laboratory mices. No? Ah, you viggle your viskers und that means yes, no? Und being used to living in dargk holes, you should suffer less than they from glaustrophobia, no?" And Mitkey grew fat and happy and forgot all about trying to get out of the cage. I fear that he even forgot about the family he had abandoned, but he knew, if he knew anything, that he need not worry about them in the slightest. At least not until and unless the Professor discovered and repaired the hole in the refrigerator. And the Professor's mind was most emphatically not on refrigerators. "Und so, Mitkey, ve shall place this vane so--it iss only of assistance in der landing, in an atmosphere. It und these vill bring you down safely und slowly enough that der shock-absorbers in der movable combartment vill keep you from bumping your head too hard, I think." Of course, Mitkey missed the ominous note to that "I think" qualification because he missed all the rest of it. He did not, as has been explained, speak English. Not then. But Herr Oberburger talked to him just the same. He showed him pictures. "Did you effer see der Mouse you vas named after, Mitkey? Vhat? No? Loogk, this is der original Mitkey Mouse, by Valt Dissney. Budt I think you are cuter, Mitkey." Probably the Professor was a bit crazy to talk that way to a little gray mouse. In fact, he must have been crazy to make a rocket that worked. For the odd thing was that the Herr Professor was not really an inventor. There was, as he carefully explained to Mitkey, not one single thing about that rocket that was _new_. The Herr Professor was a technician; he could take other people's ideas and make them work. His only real invention--the rocket fuel that wasn't one--had been turned over to the United States Government and had proved to be something already known and discarded because it was too expensive for practical use. * * * * * As he explained very carefully to Mitkey, "It iss burely a matter of absolute accuracy and mathematical correctness, Mitkey. Idt iss all here--ve merely combine--and ve achieff vhat, Mitkey? "Eggscape velocity, Mitkey! Chust barely, it adds up to eggscape velocity. Maybe. There are yet unknown facgtors, Mitkey, in der ubper atmosphere, der troposphere, der stratosphere. Ve think ve know eggsactly how mudch air there iss to calculate resistance against, but are ve absolutely sure? No, Mitkey, ve are not. Ve haff not been there. Und der marchin iss so narrow that so mudch as an air current might affect idt." But Mitkey cared not a whit. In the shadow of the tapering aluminum-alloy cylinder he waxed fat and happy. "Der tag, Mitkey, der tag! Und I shall not lie to you, Mitkey. I shall not giff you valse assurances. You go on a dancherous chourney, mein little friendt. "A vifty-vifty chance ve giff you, Mitkey. Not der moon or bust, but der moon _und_ bust, or else maybe safely back to earth. You see, my boor little Mitkey, der moon iss not made of green cheese und if it were, you vould not live to eat it because there iss not enough atmosphere to bring you down safely und vith your viskers still on. [Illustration: "NOT DER MOON OR BUST, BUT DER MOON UND BUST!"] "Und vhy then, you may vell ask, do I send you? Because der rocket may not attain eggscape velocity. Und in that case, it iss still an eggsperiment, budt a different vun. Der rocket, if it goes not to der moon, falls back on der earth, no? Und in that case certain instruments shall giff us further information than ve haff yet about things up there in space. Und you shall giff us information, by vether or not you are yet alife, vether der shock absorbers und vanes are sufficient in an earth-equivalent atmosphere. You see? "Then ladter, vhen ve send rockets to Venus maybe vhere an atmosphere eggsists, ve shall haff data to calculate the needed size of vanes und shock-absorbers, no? Und in either case, und vether or not you return, Mitkey, you shall be vamous! You shall be der virst liffing greature to go oudt beyond der stratosphere of der earth, out into space. "Mitkey, you shall be der Star-Mouse! I enfy you, Mitkey, und I only vish I vere your size, so I could go, too." Der tag, and the door to the compartment. "Gootbye, little Mitkey Mouse." Darkness. Silence. Noise! "Der rocket--if it goes not to der moon--falls back on der earth, no?" That was what the Herr Professor thought. But the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. Even star-mice. All because of Prxl. * * * * * The Herr Professor found himself very lonely. After having had Mitkey to talk to, soliloquies were somehow empty and adequate. There may be some who say that the company of a small gray mouse is a poor substitute for a wife; but others may disagree. And, anyway, the Professor had never had a wife, and he _had_ a mouse to talk to, so he missed one and, if he missed the other, he didn't know it. During the long night after the launching of the rocket, he had been very busy with his telescope, a sweet little eight-inch reflector, checking its course as it gathered momentum. The exhaust explosions made a tiny fluctuating point of light that was possible to follow, if one knew where to look. But the following day there seemed to be nothing to do, and he was too excited to sleep, although he tried. So he compromised by doing a spot of housekeeping, cleaning the pots and pans. It was while he was so engaged that he heard a series of frantic little squeaks and discovered that another small gray mouse, with shorter whiskers and a shorter tail than Mitkey, had walked into the wire-cage mousetrap. "Vell, vell," said the Professor, "vot haff ve here? Minnie? Iss it Minnie come to look for her Mitkey?" The Professor was not a biologist, but he happened to be right. It _was_ Minnie. Rather, it was Mitkey's mate, so the name was appropriate. What strange vagary of mind had induced her to walk into an unbaited trap, the Professor neither knew nor cared, but he was delighted. He promptly remedied the lack of bait by pushing a sizable piece of cheese through the bars. Thus it was that Minnie came to fill the place of her far-traveling spouse as repository for the Professor's confidences. Whether she worried about her family or not there is no way of knowing, but she need not have done so. They were now large enough to fend for themselves, particularly in a house that offered abundant cover and easy access to the refrigerator. "Ah, und now it iss dargk enough, Minnie, that ve can loogk for that husband of yours. His viery trail across the sky. True, Minnie, it iss a very small viery trail und der astronomers vill not notice it, because they do not know vhere to loogk. But ve do. "He iss going to be a very vamous mouse, Minnie, this Mitkey of ours, vhen ve tell der vorld about him und about mein rocket. You see, Minnie ve haff not told them yet. Ve shall vait und giff der gomplete story all at vunce. By dawn of tomorrow ve'll-- "Ah, there he iss, Minnie! Vaint, but there. I'd hold you up to der scope und let you loogk, but it vould not be vocused right for your eyes, und I do not know how to-- "Almost vun hundred thousand miles, Minnie, und still agcelerating, but not for much longer. Our Mitkey iss on schedule; in fagt he iss going vaster than ve had vigured, no? It iss sure now that he vill eggscape the gravitation of der earth, und fall upon der moon!" Of course, it was purely coincidental that Minnie squeaked. "Ah, yess, Minnie, little Minnie. I know, I know. Ve shall neffer see our Mitkey again, und I almost vish our eggsperiment hadt vailed. Budt there are gompensations, Minnie. He shall be der most vamous of all mices. Der Star-Mouse! Virst liffing greature effer to go beyond der gravitational bull of earth!" The night was long. Occasionally high clouds obscured vision. "Minnie, I shall make you more gomfortable than in that so-small vire cage. You vould like to seem to be vree, vould you not, vithout bars, like der animals at modern zoos, vith moats insteadt?" * * * * * And so, to fill in an hour when a cloud obscured the sky, the Herr Professor made Minnie her new home. It was the end of a wooden crate, about half an inch thick and a foot square, laid flat on the table, and with no visible barrier around it. But he covered the top with metal foil at the edges, and he placed the board on another larger board which also had a strip of metal foil surrounding the island of Minnie's home. And wires from the two areas of metal foil to opposite terminals of a small transformer which he placed near by. "Und now, Minnie, I shall blace you on your island, vhich shall be liberally supplied mitt cheese und vater, und you shall vind it iss an eggcelent blace to liff. But you vill get a mild shock or two vhen you try to step off der edge of der island. It vill not hurt much, but you vill not like it, und after a few tries you vill learn not to try again, no? Und--" And night again. Minnie happy on her island, her lesson well learned. She would no longer so much as step on the inner strip of metal foil. It was a mouse-paradise of an island, though. There was a cliff of cheese bigger than Minnie herself. It kept her busy. Mouse and cheese; soon one would be a transmutation of the other. But Professor Oberburger wasn't thinking about that. The Professor was worried. When he had calculated and re-calculated and aimed his eight-inch reflector through the hole in the roof and turned out the lights-- Yes, there _are_ advantages to being a bachelor after all. If one wants a hole in the roof, one simply knocks a hole in the roof and there is nobody to tell one that one is crazy. If winter comes, or if it rains, one can always call a carpenter or use a tarpaulin. But the faint trail of light wasn't there. The Professor frowned and re-calculated and re-re-calculated and shifted his telescope three-tenths of a minute and still the rocket wasn't there. "Minnie, something iss wrong. Either der tubes haff stopped viring, or--" Or the rocket was no longer traversing a straight line relative to its point of departure. By straight, of course, is meant parabollically curved relative to everything other than velocity. So the Herr Professor did the only thing remaining for him to do, and began to search, with the telescope, in widening circles. It was two hours before he found it, five degrees off course already and veering more and more into a--Well, there was only one thing you could call it. A tailspin. The darned thing was going in circles, circles which appeared to constitute an orbit about something that couldn't possibly be there. Then narrowing into a concentric spiral. Then--out. Gone. Darkness. No rocket flares. The Professor's face was pale as he turned to Minnie. "It iss _imbossible_, Minnie. Mein own eyes, but it could not be. Even if vun side stopped viring, it could not haff gone into such sudden circles." His pencil verified a suspicion. "Und, Minnie, it decellerated vaster than bossible. Even mitt _no_ tubes viring, its momentum vould haff been more--" The rest of the night--telescope and calculus--yielded no clue. That is, no believable clue. Some force not inherent in the rocket itself, and not accountable by gravitation--even of a hypothetical body--had acted. "Mein poor Mitkey." [Illustration: "POOR MITKEY"] The gray, inscrutable dawn. "Mein Minnie, it vill haff to be a secret. Ve dare not bublish vhat ve saw, for it vould not be believed. I am not sure I believe it myself, Minnie. Berhaps because I vas offertired vrom not sleeping, I chust imachined that I saw--" Later. "But, Minnie, ve shall hope. Vun hundred vifty thousand miles out, it vas. It vill fall back upon der earth. But I gannot tell vhere! I thought that if it did, I vould be able to galculate its course, und--But after those goncentric cirgles--Minnie, not even _Einstein_ could galculate vhere it vill land. Not effen _me_. All ve can do iss hope that ve shall hear of vhere it falls." Cloudy day. Black night jealous of its mysteries. "Minnie, our poor Mitkey. There iss _nothing_ could have gauzed--" But something had. Prxl. Prxl is an asteroid. It isn't called that by earthly astronomers, because--for excellent reasons--they have not discovered it. So we will call it by the nearest possible transliteration of the name its inhabitants use. Yes, it's inhabited. Come to think of it, Professor Oberburger's attempt to send a rocket to the moon had some strange results. Or rather, Prxl did. You wouldn't think that an asteroid could reform a drunk, would you? But one Charles Winslow, a besotted citizen of Bridgeport, Connecticut, never took a drink when--right on Grove Street--a mouse asked him the road to Hartford. The mouse was wearing bright red pants and vivid yellow gloves-- But that was fifteen months after the Professor lost his rocket. We'd better start over again. * * * * * Prxl is an asteroid. One of those despised celestial bodies which terrestrial astronomers call vermin of the sky, because the darned things leave trails across the plates that clutter up the more important observations of novae and nebulae. Fifty thousand fleas on the dark dog of night. Tiny things, most of them. Astronomers have been discovering recently that some of them come close to Earth. Amazingly close. There was excitement in 1932 when Amor came within ten million miles; astronomically, a mere mashie shot. Then Apollo cut that almost in half, and in 1936 Adonis came within less than one and a half million miles. In 1937, Hermes, less than half a million but the astronomers got really excited when they calculated its orbit and found that the little mile-long asteroid _can_ come within a mere 220,000 miles, closer than Earth's own moon. Some day they may be still more excited, if and when they spot the 3/8-mile asteroid Prxl, that obstacle of space, making a transit across the moon and discover that it frequently comes within a mere hundred thousand miles of our rapidly whirling world. Only in event of a transit will they ever discover it, though, for Prxl does not reflect light. It hasn't, anyway, for several million years since its inhabitants coated it with a black, light-absorbing pigment derived from its interior. Monumental task, painting a world, for creatures half an inch tall. But worth it, at the time. When they'd shifted its orbit, they were safe from their enemies. There were giants in those days--eight-inch tall marauding pirates from Diemos. Got to Earth a couple of times too, before they faded out of the picture. Pleasant little giants who killed because they enjoyed it. Records in now-buried cities on Diemos might explain what happened to the dinosaurs. And why the promising Cro-Magnons disappeared at the height of their promise only a cosmic few minutes after the dinosaurs went west. But Prxl survived. Tiny world no longer reflecting the sun's rays, lost to the cosmic killers when its orbit was shifted. Prxl. Still civilized, with a civilization millions of years old. Its coat of blackness preserved and renewed regularly, more through tradition than fear of enemies in these later degenerate days. Mighty but stagnant civilization, standing still on a world that whizzes like a bullet. And Mitkey Mouse. * * * * * Klarloth, head scientist of a race of scientists, tapped his assistant Bemj on what would have been Bemj's shoulder if he had had one. "Look," he said, "what approaches Prxl. Obviously artificial propulsion." Bemj looked into the wall-plate and then directed a thought-wave at the mechanism that jumped the magnification of a thousand-fold through an alteration of the electronic field. The image leaped, blurred, then steadied. "Fabricated," said Bemj. "Extremely crude, I must say. Primitive explosive-powered rocket. Wait, I'll check where it came from." He took the readings from the dials about the viewplate, and hurled them as thoughts against the psychocoil of the computer, then waited while that most complicated of machines digested all the factors and prepared the answer. Then, eagerly, he slid his mind into rapport with its projector. Klarloth likewise listened in to the silent broadcast. Exact point on Earth and exact time of departure. Untranslatable expression of curve of trajectory, and point on that curve where deflected by gravitational pull of Prxl. The destination--or rather the original intended destination--of the rocket was obvious, Earth's moon. Time and place of arrival on Prxl if present course of rocket was unchanged. "Earth," said Klarloth meditatively. "They were a long way from rocket travel the last time we checked them. Some sort of a crusade, or battle of beliefs, going on, wasn't there?" Bemj nodded. "Catapults. Bows and arrows. They've taken a long stride since, even if this is only an early experimental thing of a rocket. Shall we destroy it before it gets here?" Klarloth shook his head thoughtfully. "Let's look it over. May save us a trip to Earth; we can judge their present state of development pretty well from the rocket itself." "But then we'll have to--" "Of course. Call the Station. Tell them to train their attracto-repulsors on it and to swing it into a temporary orbit until they prepare a landing-cradle. And not forget to damp out the explosive before they bring it down." "Temporary force-field around point of landing--in case?" "Naturally." So despite the almost complete absence of atmosphere in which the vanes could have functioned, the rocket came down safely and so softly that Mitkey, in the dark compartment, knew only that the awful noise had stopped. Mitkey felt better. He ate some more of the cheese with which the compartment was liberally provided. Then he resumed trying to gnaw a hole in the inch-thick wood with which the compartment was lined. That wooden lining was a kind thought of the Herr Professor for Mitkey's mental well-being. He knew that trying to gnaw his way out would give Mitkey something to do en route which would keep him from getting the screaming meamies. The idea had worked; being busy, Mitkey hadn't suffered mentally from his dark confinement. And now that things were quiet, he chewed away more industriously and more happily than ever, sublimely unaware that when he got through the wood, he'd find only metal which he couldn't chew. But better people than Mitkey have found things they couldn't chew. Meanwhile, Klarloth and Bemj and several thousand other Prxlians stood gazing up at the huge rocket which, even lying on its side, towered high over their heads. Some of the younger ones, forgetting the invisible field of force, walked too close and came back, ruefully rubbing bumped heads. Klarloth himself was at the psychograph. "There _is_ life inside the rocket," he told Bemj. "But the impressions are confused. One creature, but I cannot follow its thought processes. At the moment it seems to be doing something with its teeth." "It could not be an Earthling, one of the dominant race. One of them is much larger than this huge rocket. Gigantic creatures. Perhaps, unable to construct a rocket large enough to hold one of themselves, they sent an experimental creature, such as our wooraths." "I believe you've guessed right, Bemj. Well, when we have explored its mind thoroughly, we may still learn enough to save us a check-up trip to Earth. I am going to open the door." "But air--creatures of Earth would need a heavy, almost a dense atmosphere. It could not live." "We retain the force-field, of course. It will keep the air in. Obviously there is a source of supply of air within the rocket or the creature would not have survived the trip." Klarloth operated controls, and the force-field itself put forth invisible pseudo-pods and turned the outer screw-door, then reached within and unlatched the inner door to the compartment itself. * * * * * All Prxl watched breathlessly as a monstrous gray head pushed out of the huge aperture yawning overhead. Thick whiskers, each as long as the body of a Prxlian-- Mitkey jumped down, and took a forward step that bumped his black nose hard--into something that wasn't there. He squeaked, and jumped backwards against the rocket. There was disgust in Bemj's face as he looked up at the monster. "Obviously much less intelligent than a woorath. Might just as well turn on the ray." "Not at all," interrupted Klarloth. "You forget certain very obvious facts. The creature is unintelligent, of course, but the subconscious of every animal holds in itself every memory, every impression, every sense-image, to which it has ever been subjected. If this creature has ever heard the speech of the Earthlings, or seen any of their works--besides this rocket--every word and every picture is indellibly graven. You see now what I mean?" "Naturally. How stupid of me, Klarloth. Well, one thing is obvious from the rocket itself: we have nothing to fear from the science of Earth for at least a few millenia. So there is no hurry, which is fortunate. For to send back the creature's memory to the time of its birth, and to follow each sensory impression in the psychograph will require--well, a time at least equivalent to the age of the creature, whatever that is, plus the time necessary for us to interpret and assimilate each." "But that will not be necessary, Bemj." "No? Oh, you mean the X-19 waves?" "Exactly. Focused upon this creature's brain-center, they can, without disturbing his memories, be so delicately adjusted as to increase his intelligence--now probably about .0001 in the scale--to the point where he is a reasoning creature. Almost automatically, during the process, he will assimilate his own memories, and understand them just as he would if he had been intelligent at the time he received those impressions. "See, Bemj? He will automatically sort out irrelevant data, and will be able to answer our questions." "But would you make him as intelligent as--?" "As we? No, the X-19 waves would not work so far. I would say to about .2 on the scale. That, judging from the rocket coupled with what we remember of Earthlings from our last trip there, is about their present place on the intelligence scale." "Ummm, yes. At that level, he would comprehend his experiences on Earth just sufficiently that he would not be dangerous to us, too. Equal to an intelligent Earthling. Just about right for our purpose. Then, shall we teach him our language?" "Wait," said Klarloth. He studied the psychograph closely for a while. "No, I do not think so. He will have a language of his own. I see in his subconscious, memories of many long conversations. Strangely, they all seem to be monologues by one person. But he will have a language--a simple one. It would take him a long time, even under treatment, to grasp the concepts of our own method of communication. But we can learn his, while he is under the X-19 machine, in a few minutes." "Does he understand, now, any of that language?" Klarloth studied the psychograph again. "No, I do not believe he--Wait, there is one word that seems to mean something to him. The word 'Mitkey.' It seems to be his name, and I believe that, from hearing it many times, he vaguely associates it with himself." "And quarters for him--with air-locks and such?" "Of course. Order them built." V To say it was a strange experience for Mitkey is understatement. Knowledge is a strange thing, even when it is acquired gradually. To have it thrust upon one-- And there were little things that had to be straightened out. Like the matter of vocal chords. His weren't adapted to the language he now found he knew. Bemj fixed that; you would hardly call it an operation because Mitkey--even with his new awareness--didn't know what was going on, and he was wide awake at the time. And they didn't explain to Mitkey about the J-dimension with which one can get at the inwardness of things without penetrating the outside. They figured things like that weren't in Mitkey's line, and anyway they were more interested in learning from him than teaching him. Bemj and Klarloth, and a dozen others deemed worthy of the privilege. If one of them wasn't talking to him, another was. Their questioning helped his own growing understanding. He would not, usually, know that he knew the answer to a question until it was asked. Then he'd piece together, without knowing just how he did it (any more than you or I know _how_ we know things) and give them the answer. Bemj: "Iss this language vhich you sbeak a universal vun?" And Mitkey, even though he'd never thought about it before, had the answer ready: "No, it iss nodt. It iss Englitch, but I remember der Herr Brofessor sbeaking of other tongues. I belieff he sboke another himself originally, budt in American he always sboke Englitch to become more vamiliar mitt it. It iss a beaudiful sbeech, is it nodt?" "Hmmmm," said Bemj. Klarloth: "Und your race, the mices. Are they treated vell?" "Nodt by most people," Mitkey told him. And explained. "I vould like to do something for them," he added. "Loogk, could I nodt take back mitt me this brocess vhich you used upon me? Abbly it to other mices, und greate a race of super-mices?" "Vhy not?" asked Bemj. He saw Klarloth looking at him strangely, and threw his mind into rapport with the chief scientist's, with Mitkey left out of the silent communion. "Yes, of course," Bemj told Klarloth, "it will lead to trouble on Earth, grave trouble. Two equal classes of beings so dissimilar as mice and men cannot live together in amity. But why should that concern us, other than favorably? The resultant mess will slow down progress on Earth--give us a few more millennia of peace before Earthlings discover we are here, and trouble starts. You know these Earthlings." "But you would give them the X-19 waves? They might--" "No, of course not. But we can explain to Mitkey here how to make a very crude and limited machine for them. A primitive one which would suffice for nothing more than the specific task of converting mouse mentality from .0001 to .2, Mitkey's own level and that of the bifurcated Earthlings." "It is possible," communicated Klarloth. "It is certain that for aeons to come they will be incapable of understanding its basic principle." "But could they not use even a crude machine to raise their own level of intelligence?" "You forget, Bemj, the basic limitation of the X-19 rays; that no one can possibly design a projector capable of raising any mentality to a point on the scale higher than his own. Not even we." All this, of course, over Mitkey's head, in silent Prxlian. More interviews, and more. Klarloth again: "Mitkey, ve varn you of vun thing. Avoid carelessness vith electricity. Der new molecular rearranchement of your brain center--it iss unstable, und--" Bemj: "Mitkey, are you sure your Herr Brofessor iss der most advanced of all who eggsperiment vith der rockets?" "In cheneral, yess, Bemj. There are others who on vun specific boint, such as eggsplosives, mathematics, astrovisics, may know more, but not much more. Und for combining these knowledges, he iss ahead." "It iss vell," said Bemj. * * * * * Small gray mouse towering like a dinosaur over tinier half-inch Prxlians. Meek, herbivorous creature though he was, Mitkey could have killed any one of them with a single bite. But, of course, it never occurred to him to do so, nor to them to fear that he might. They turned him inside out mentally. They did a pretty good job of study on him physically, too, but that was through the J-dimension, and Mitkey didn't even know about it. They found out what made him tick, and they found out everything he knew and some things he didn't even know he knew. And they grew quite fond of him. "Mitkey," said Klarloth one day, "all der civilized races on Earth year glothing, do they nodt? Veil, if you are to raise der level of mices to men, vould it not be vitting that you vear glothes, too?" "An eggcelent idea, Herr Klarloth. Und I know chust vhat kind I vould like. Der Herr Brofessor vunce showed me a bicture of a mouse bainted by der artist Dissney, und der mouse vore glothing. Der mouse vas not a real-life vun, budt an imachinary mouse in a barable, und der Brofessor named me after der Dissney mouse." "Vot kind of glothing vas it, Mitkey?" That was on the eve of Mitkey's departure. Originally, Bemj had suggested awaiting the moment when Prxl's eccentric orbit would again take it within a hundred and fifty thousand miles of Earth. But, as Klarloth pointed out, that would be fifty-five Earth-years ahead, and Mitkey wouldn't last that long. Not unless they--And Bemj agreed that they had better not risk sending a secret like that back to Earth. "Bright red bants mitt two big yellow buttons in frondt und two in back, und yellow shoes for der back feet und a pair of yellow gloves for der vront. A hole in der seat of der bants to aggomodate der tail." [Illustration: MOUSE --WARNING-- FINE OF 500 BUCKS 6 MO. IMPRISONMENT OR BOTH TO ANY PERSON CAUGHT TYING KNOTS IN OR PLUCKING HAIRS OUT OF CREATURE'S TAIL--_POLICE DEPT._ HOT FRANKS TOURS ALL POINTS OF INTEREST EVERY HOUR ] [Illustration: "A HOLE IN DER SEAT OF DER BANTS TO AGGOMODATE DER TAIL." ] "Ogay, Mitkey. Such shall be ready for you in fife minutes." So they compromised by refueling Mitkey's rocket with something that would cancel out the million and a quarter odd miles he would have to travel. That secret they didn't have to worry about, because the fuel would be gone by the time the rocket landed. Day of departure. "Ve haff done our best, Mitkey, to set und time der rocket so it vill land on or near der spot from vhich you left Earth. But you gannot eggspect agguracy in a voyach so long as this. But you vill land near. The rest iss up to you. Ve haff equvipped the rocket ship for effery contingency." "Thank you, Herr Klarloth, Herr Bemj. Gootbye." "Gootbye, Mitkey. Ve hate to loose you." "Gootbye, Mitkey." "Gootbye, gootbye...." VI For a million and a quarter miles, the aim was really excellent. The rocket landed in Long Island Sound, ten miles out from Bridgeport, about sixty miles from the house of Professor Oberburger near Hartford. They had prepared for a water landing, of course. The rocket went down to the bottom, but before it was more than a few dozen feet under the surface, Mitkey opened the door--especially re-equipped to open from the inside--and stepped out. Over his regular clothes he wore a neat little diving suit that would have protected him at any reasonable depth, and which, being lighter than water, brought him to the surface quickly where he was able to open his helmet. He had enough synthetic food to last him for a week, but it wasn't necessary, as things turned out. The night-boat from Boston carried him in to Bridgeport on its anchor chain, and once in sight of land he was able to divest himself of the diving suit and let it sink to the bottom after he'd punctured the tiny compartments that made it float, as he'd promised Klarloth he would do. Almost instinctively, Mitkey knew that he'd do well to avoid human beings until he'd reached Professor Oberburger and told his story. His worst danger proved to be the rats at the wharf where he swam ashore. They were ten times Mitkey's size and had teeth that could have taken him apart in two bites. But mind has always triumphed over matter. Mitkey pointed an imperious yellow glove and said, "Scram," and the rats scrammed. They'd never seen anything like Mitkey before, and they were impressed. [Illustration: "SCRAM!"] So for that matter, was the drunk of whom Mitkey inquired the way to Hartford. We mentioned that episode before. That was the only time Mitkey tried direct communication with strange human beings. He took, of course, every precaution. He addressed his remarks from a strategic position only inches away from a hole into which he could have popped. But it was the drunk who did the popping, without even waiting to answer Mitkey's question. [Illustration: "I BEG YOUR PARDON SIR, BUT, COULD YOU DIRECT ME TO HARTFORD?"] But he got there, finally. He made his way afoot to the north side of town and hid out behind a gas station until he heard a motorist who had pulled in for gasoline inquire the way to Hartford. And Mitkey was a stowaway when the car started up. The rest wasn't hard. The calculations of the Prxlians showed that the starting point of the rocket was five Earth miles north-west of what showed on their telescopomaps as a city, and which from the Professor's conversation Mitkey knew would be Hartford. He got there. VII "Hello, Brofessor." The Herr Professor Oberburger looked up, startled. There was no one in sight. "Vot?" he asked, of the air. "Who iss?" "It iss I, Brofessor. Mitkey, der mouse whom you sent to der moon. But I vas not there. Insteadt, I--" "Vot?? It iss imbossible. Somebody blays der choke. Budt--budt nobody _knows_ about that rocket. Vhen it vailed, I didn't told nobody. Nobody budt me knows--" "And me, Brofessor." The Herr Professor sighed heavily. "Offervork. I am going vhat they call battly in der bel--" "No, Brofessor. This is really me, Mitkey. I can talk now. Chust like you." "You say you can--I do not belief it. Vhy can I not see you, then. Vhere are you? Vhy don't you--" "I am hiding, Brofessor, in der valll chust behind der big hole. I vanted to be sure efferything vas ogay before I showed myself. Then you vould not get eggcited und throw something at me maybe." "Vot? Vhy, Mitkey, if it iss really you und I am nodt asleep or going--Vhy, Mitkey, you know better than to think I might do something like that!" "Ogay, Brofessor." Mitkey stepped out of the hole in the wall, and the Professor looked at him and rubbed his eyes and looked again and rubbed his eyes and-- "I _am_ grazy," he said finally. "Red bants he vears yet, und yellow--It gannot be. I _am_ grazy." "No, Brofessor. Listen, I'll tell you all aboudt." And Mitkey told him. Gray dawn, and a small gray mouse still talking earnestly. "But, Mitkey--" "Yess, Brofessor. I see your boint, that you think an intelligent race of mices und an intelligent race of men couldt nodt get along side by sides. But it vould not be side by sides; as I said, there are only a ferry few beople in the smallest continent of Australia. Und it vould cost little to bring them back und turn offer that continent to us mices. Ve vould call it Moustralia instead Australia, und ve vould instead of Sydney call der capital Dissney, in honor of--" "But, Mitkey--" "But, Brofessor, look vot ve offer for that continent. _All_ mices vould go there. Ve civilize a few und the few help us catch others und bring them in to put them under der ray machine, und the others help catch more under build more machines und it grows like a snowball rolling down hill. Und ve sign a non-aggression pact mitt humans und stay on Moustralia und raise our own food und--" "But, Mitkey--" "Und look vot ve offer you in eggschange, Herr Brofessor! Ve vill eggsterminate your vorst enemy--der _rats_. Ve do not like them either. Und vun battalion of vun thousand mices, armed mitt gas masks und small gas bombs could go right in effery hole after der rats und could eggsterminate effery rat in a city in vun day or two. In der whole vorld ve could eggsterminate effery last rat in a year, und at the same time catch und civilize effery mouse und ship him to Moustralia, und--" "But, Mitkey--" "Vot, Brofessor?" "It vould vork, but it voul dnot work. You could eggsterminate der rats, yess. But how long vould it be before conflicts of interests vould lead to der mices trying to eggsterminate der people or der people trying to eggsterminate der--" "They vould not dare, Brofessor! Ve could make veapons that vould--" "You see, Mitkey?" "But it vould not habben. If men vill honor our rights, ve vill honor--" The Herr Professor sighed. "I--I vill act as your intermediary, Mitkey, und offer your broposition, und--Vell, it iss true that getting rid of rats vould be a greadt boon to der human race. Budt--" "Thank you, Brofessor." "By der vay, Mitkey. I haff Minnie. Your vife, I guess it iss, unless there vas other mices around. She iss in der other room; I put her there chust before you arriffed, so she vould be in der dark und could sleep. You vant to see her?" "Vife?" said Mitkey. It had been so long that he had really forgotten the family he had perforce abandoned. The memory returned slowly. "Veil," he said "--ummm, yess. Ve vill get her und I shall construct quvick a small X-19 prochector und--Yess, it vill help you in your negotiations mitt der governments if there are sefferal of us already so they can see I am not chust a freak like they might otherwise suspegt." VIII It wasn't deliberate. It couldn't have been, because the Professor didn't know about Klarloth's warning to Mitkey about carelessness with electricity--"Der new molecular rearrangement of your brain center--it iss unstable, und--" And the Professor was still back in the lighted room when Mitkey ran into the room where Minnie was in her barless cage. She was asleep, and the sight of her--Memory of his earlier days came back like a flash and suddenly Mitkey knew how lonesome he had been. "Minnie!" he called, forgetting that she could not understand. And stepped up on the board where she lay. "Squeak!" The mild electrical current between the two strips of tinfoil got him. There was silence for a while. Then: "Mitkey," called the Herr Professor. "Come on back und ve vill discuss this--" He stepped through the doorway and saw them, there in the gray light of dawn, two small gray mice cuddled happily together. He couldn't tell which was which, because Mitkey's teeth had torn off the red and yellow garments which had suddenly been strange, confining and obnoxious things. "Vot on earth?" asked Professor Oberburger. Then he remembered the current, and guessed. "Mitkey! Can you no longer talk? Iss der--" Silence. Then the Professor smiled. "Mitkey," he said, "my little star-mouse. I think you are more happier now." [Illustration: "GOOTBYE, MITKEY"] He watched them a moment, fondly, then reached down and flipped the switch that broke the electrical barrier. Of course they didn't know they were free, but when the Professor picked them up and placed them carefully on the floor, one ran immediately for the hole in the wall. The other followed, but turned around and looked back--still a trace of puzzlement in the little black eyes, a puzzlement that faded. "Gootbye, Mitkey. You vill be happier this vay. Und there vill always be cheese." "Squeak," said the little gray mouse, and it popped into the hole. "Gootbye--" it might, or might not, have meant. * * * * * [Transcriber's Note: Section heads for Sections I to IV are missing] 
62267	----	The Man From Siykul By RICHARD WILSON The Siykulans demanded pay for Myra and Steve's freedom. The price was small--merely the losing of their sanity in the spider's ray-trap. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Myra Horn awoke from her nap on the couch in the control room and looked at her husband. He was hunched over the Simplimatic 50-Button control board of their sleek Skypiercer space-launch, peering through the vision shield with a grim intensity. Myra turned her involuntary smile into a wifely frown at his muscular back. "Steve!" she said sharply. "Will you stop chasing that meteor? Aren't you ever going to grow up?" Steve Horn glanced at her over his shoulder. "Hush, dear," he grinned. "Papa's in the money." Myra sat up and smoothed her satin-leather jumper. She looked again at the meteor they were pursuing. "What a funny color!" she exclaimed. "The Primary Color," said Steve. "It's a flying goldmine. I think we're gaining on it." "What are you going to do when you catch up with it?" "Lasso it," replied her husband. "In half an hour," he paused impressively, "--we'll be Horns of plenty." Myra made a face at his back. "Bless your heart, darling," she said. "If there were another man closer than Jupiter I'd divorce you." "I'm captain here," said Steve Horn, "with power of life, death and divorce. You'll do no such thing. Grab the keyboard while I trip up our quarry." Myra slipped into his seat while Steve jumped to a boxlike affair that jutted from the floor on a pedestal. It was one of the "accessories optional at slight additional cost" which Myra had insisted they could do without--a Netaction wireless-grapple capable of exerting a magnetic pull on objects up to half a mile distant. Myra fell into the spirit of the chase. She accelerated their little craft until they were within snaring distance of the meteor. "Take it easy," advised Steve. "Don't get too close. You might dent it." He flicked over a switch on the wireless grapple. "Got it!" he cried triumphantly a moment later. "How do you know?" demanded Myra. "You can't see any more than I can--and I don't notice any difference." "Try decelerating," Steve suggested. Myra cut the motor. There was a silence they hadn't experienced since the start of their trip to Jupiter, more than two weeks before. It was broken almost immediately by a series of less-deep, sonorous staccato bursts from the Retarderockets in the nose of the ship. "You're right, Steve. There is a definite forward drag not caused by momentum." "'Course, I'm right." "But, Steve," said Myra abruptly, "that can't be gold. Since when has gold been attracted by a magnet?" He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again and looked disgusted. "Oh, well," Myra said after a moment, "don't let go. Maybe we can sell it to a Jovian museum as a rare curio. Probably worth millions!" "Probably iron pyrite. Probably worth less than twenty bucks. Pfah!" Steve snorted impatiently. "We'll throw it back. We haven't got time to lug museum pieces around the solar system, however scholarly we may be." "Okay!" Myra pouted prettily. * * * * * Steve flicked the grappler indicator to "off." Nothing happened. The retarding rockets continued to blast vainly away. The gold colored meteor sped before them; their ship followed it inexorably. "What's the matter?" asked Myra. "Change your mind?" Steve stared at the fleeting meteor in amazement. "I let go," he said. He indicated the silent grapple. "Look. It's dead." "Don't tell me," purred Myra sarcastically, "that you're going to let a little hunk of rock kidnap us." "Hell of a thing," muttered Steve. "Maybe I used too much power. Maybe the thing's charged with magnetism." "And exerting an attraction strong enough to affect us--half a mile away?" Suddenly the ship lurched sideways. Myra drew herself erect, rubbing a painful nose. "Now I ask you--is that any way for a full grown meteor to act?" Steve picked himself off the floor, where the sudden swerve of the ship had thrown him. He joined his wife at the shield. The meteor was twisting and turning like a thing demented. The Skypiercer, in its magnetic grasp, followed the crazy course helplessly. Steve looked very wise. "Something's wrong. I have a hunch it isn't a meteor." "Hear! Hear!" applauded Myra. "First it isn't a goldmine. Now it isn't a meteor. What won't it be next, my profound husband?" Steve ignored her. He cut off the Retarderockets. "Save fuel, anyway," he said. There was another cessation of sound. The Horns looked at each other in astonishment. They were slowing down! The meteor drifted slowly through space--then stopped. "Everything," said Myra softly, "is all wacked up. Where is the physics of yesteryear?" Steve was staring open mouthed at the gold colored piece of rock. "Little demons!" he breathed. "It's turning around. It wants to say hello. Isn't that nice! Pad a cell for me, old fruitcake, I feel a spasm coming on." The "meteor" described a wide arc that brought it to the side of the Horns' ship, now halted in space. It circled them a few times; then stopped and bobbed up and down in a friendly manner. "It wants to play," said Steve wearily. "Go shake hands with it." "If it's a ship," said Myra practically, "it's done a very good job of disguising itself. There aren't any rocket tubes, or ports, or landing gear, as far as I can see." Their golden companion began to whirl rapidly, like a miniature planet. Above it, English characters appeared against the black curtain of space in lines of fire. They were badly made, and misspelled, but readable. "GUD MORNIG," they said. "HELO CQ UGH." "Ugh," said Steve. He put his hands over his eyes and sat down. He moaned, "This," he said, "is too much." * * * * * When, in 2021, the government created a Department of Education, it consolidated hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the country and introduced robot lecturers. Hundreds of instructors were left without jobs. One of them was Stephen Horn, Professor of American Literature. He faced no immediate worry, however. His salary had permitted him to save enough to provide for him and his wife for a few years. Myra Horn, more popularly known as Myra Classon, was a novelist whose books had received considerable attention--especially in Steve's American Lit classes, where he shamelessly proclaimed her to be one of the greatest living authors. After a period of futile searching for another professorial position in America or abroad, Steve came bouncing home one day waving a pink Space-Cable form. It had been addressed to him care of his old University, and read: "IMPERATIVE NEED FOR LIT PROF HERE SALARY PHENOMENAL STOP WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR LOVE TO MYRA (Signed) ART WILDER UNIVERSITY OF JUPITER" Art, Myra and Steve were old friends, and had attended the same college. But when Steve and Myra married, Art disappeared. They heard nothing of him for three years, until one day there arrived in the trans-spatial mail a copy of Art's home-town paper, marked at an article lauding Wurtsboro's native son for his successful founding of a university at the booming Earth colony of New City, Jupiter. The upshot of his message was that, after several more cables, Steve went out and bought a space-launch, fully equipped for travel to high and far off places like the Sun's fifth planet. The Horns hadn't expected an uneventful trip, having once taken a weekend excursion to the Moon. Myra had a vivid recollection of the things that had happened to them at that time: events including coping with a pyromaniac, an undecided suicide who leaped overboard in a space-suit, and a crackpot mutineer who had tried to enlist their aid in overcoming the captain and setting up an anarchist Utopia on Mars with the thirty-two passengers aboard. But she had never expected to encounter a talking meteor. * * * * * "Shall we ignore it?" she asked her husband. "Or shall we be civil and chat a while?" "I wash my hands of the matter," said Steve. "If you want to strike up an acquaintance with every impossibility that comes along, it's up to you." The meteor was getting impatient. It began to bob up and down again, like a balloon caught in an air current. More letters appeared above it in space. "HELLO?" it said. "EXTRA ENGLISH WHAT?" "Okay, okay," soothed Myra. "Just a minute." She tore a page out of a notebook and printed something on it. She held it up to a porthole. The meteor bounded closer, so that it was almost touching their ship. Now they could see tiny mounds on its surface, about the size of walnuts. "Good grief!" said Steve. "It's got eyes. Like...." "Like a potato," finished Myra. The meteor bounced off again and stood stationary for a moment. "What'd you say?" Steve asked. "I said, 'I'm a married woman. But stick around.'" "Fine," said Steve. "Nothing like a little comedy to buck one up in moments fraught with suspense. What's it doing now?" The meteor was whirling again in a state of industrious agitation. Suddenly it stopped. A white, sticky substance began to pour out of it. As it grew it congealed into something resembling frosted glass, which formed a gigantic bubble, big enough to enclose several ships the size of the Horns. There was a large opening at one point. The transparent bubble drifted toward them. Before they could move they had entered it through the opening. The meteor-ship followed them, then spurted some more of the gelatine substance, sealing the opening. A nozzle poked its way through the hull of the golden ship. Through the hull of their ship they could hear a hissing noise. Presently it stopped. The nozzle was withdrawn. Their neighbor hopped over to them again. One of its "eyes" expanded until it was the size of a basketball, and transparent. More letters of fire, much smaller now, appeared within. "AIR," they said. "EARTH AIR SAFE OPEN DOOR." A section of the golden ship dropped. On it stood a creature less than two feet tall, colored a deep bronze. Vaguely terrestrial in shape, it stood on one thick limb which became its body without widening at what might be called its hips. It terminated below in a ball-shaped foot and above in a shapeless bumpy head, featureless, except that each of the bumps seemed to be an eye. Three arms, of various sizes, each with different joints, extended from its body--one just below the head, in front, one halfway down on its left side and one at what should have been the top of its right thigh. It was a thoroughly unnerving spectacle. "My two-headed aunt!" cried Steve. "The side show's in town." "No remarks," said Myra. "You should see yourself in the morning. But what are we going to do about it?" "Ask it to tea." He twisted a little wheel on the control board. "I'll have the data in a minute. Maybe the little fella isn't lying. Maybe there is air in the bubble." "Temperature 72°, humidity 84 percent," announced Steve. "Tomorrow fair, with slowly rising food prices." "Laugh and you laugh alone," said Myra. "I don't understand it, but do we let him in?" "Sure. Maybe he can play rummy." Steve stepped on the treadle that started the motor in the airlock. The lock rumbled slowly outward. "Steve--" Myra's voice was a little uncertain. "Maybe the instruments aren't working?" Steve sighed. "I like the way you think of these things just _after_ the nick of time. If that were so, we'd be frozen corpses by now. The door's open. It's a little muggy, but that's all." Now they could see the bronze midget more clearly. He looked no more inviting at close range, being wider and heavier than they had imagined, but what he lacked in looks he made up for in affability. He waved all three arms at them once, like a happy windmill. Steve waved back. "Nice day," he said. * * * * * The creature left off waving at them and signalled his ship. It drifted closer soundlessly, until the two ships were touching. "Look," whispered Myra. "He's all over fuzz. Like a peach." [Illustration: _"Look," whispered Myra, "he's all over fuzz, like a peach!"_] Steve craned his neck to look down at their visitor, who had stepped onto the platform of their ship and seemed to be inspecting their knees with great interest. Steve squatted down until he was almost on a level with their guest. He held out his hand. The fuzzy one let it overflow in one of his curious three-fingered hands and looked at it critically. He couldn't tell whether he was being looked at and listened to, or not. The creature's eyes were scattered all over its gold-hair-covered head. Their pupils were hairlike, resembling those of a horse. A low-pitched hum, rising and falling, ceasing occasionally, came from the three-armed one. It emanated from no particular spot, but surrounded him like an aura. "No savvy," said Steve. "C'mon. I want to see how you walk." * * * * * He got up and stepped backward. The creature followed, in an effortless, gliding motion. He appeared to have a ball set into a socket of his foot, which, combined with a delicate sense of balance, gave him a wonderful mobility. Abruptly he turned, gave a little hop to his own craft and disappeared. "What do you make of that?" Myra asked. "He just remembered a previous engagement," soothed Steve. "What's the matter, darling--jealous?" In a moment the creature reappeared, carrying a plain black box, about six inches square. "I told you he played rummy," said Steve. "Look--he brought chips." He set the box on the floor and threw back a lid. Inside the lid were three fine wires that ended in buttons. He handed one each to Myra and Steve and took one himself. "Now," said a metallic voice, "we'll be able to understand each other." The Horns looked at each other, then at the animate piece of bronze fuzz. At the same time the voice had spoken, there had been the hum they assumed to be his method of communication. Steve's eyebrows shot up in inquiry. "Does that thing act as a translator?" As he spoke, a hum came from the box. "Exactly," said the box, while the bronze one hummed. "Amazing," murmured Myra. "This should take the place of the self-lighting cigarette. Speaking of which, how about one? We'll be burning up Peach's air, not ours." "I think we both need one," said Steve. He handed her one, popped one in his own mouth. After looking in vain for a mouth on Peachy, he put the pack back in his pocket. They puffed, and smoke curled from the glow that was suddenly at the end. Peachy looked at them curiously. "First," he said, "my name isn't Peachy. It's WalmearFgon. Secondly, what are those?" "Wal...." Steve made a face. "We'll let it go at Peachy. Secondly, these are cigarettes. Also known as smokes, fags, the White Menace and coffin-nails. They stain your fingers, befoul the atmosphere, use up oxygen, give you bad breath and shorten your life-span." "Then why do you use them?" Steve shrugged. "I save coupons." Peachy looked blank. But then Peachy had no way of looking otherwise, so Myra said: "Where do you come from?" "Siykul." He waved his two free arms vaguely. "Over there." "He means he's a Martian," explained Steve. "Aren't you, Peachy?" "No," he said. "Venerian?" "No." "Mercurian, Jovian, Saturnine, Platonic?" "No." "Oh." Steve looked incredulous. "Solar System?" "Not this one." He pointed, more specifically this time. "That is my home. In your words it is called Bungula, in Centauri. I lived on the second planet, Siykul." "Pleased to meet you," said Myra. "Now that the formalities are over with, let's get to the point. To what do we owe the pleasure, as we say, of your visit?" "I have been on a quest," said Peachy. "I have traveled through several solar systems looking for two subjects for experimentation. All that I visited, however, I found far too intelligent for my purposes. Now, at last, I am successful." "_Wh-at?_" said Steve. "Imagine," said Myra softly. "This little one-legged, three-armed, potato-headed, noseless squirt of fuzz came um-teen trillion miles just to insult us. Imagine!" * * * * * Peachy's home, the second of five planets that circled the sun, Bungula, in the constellation of Centauri, was a world about the size of Mars, but more nearly resembling Earth in every other respect. Seven-eighths of its surface was covered with water. The atmosphere they breathed was essentially Earth air. There were two continents on Siykul, on opposite sides of the globe, as well as minor islands scattered here and there in the seas. The poles were covered with ice the year round. There were two dominant races on Siykul, one on each continent. According to Peachy, each was covetous of the other's land. His race was young, brilliant, industrious and ingenious. Their technicians, inventors and mechanics were unequaled anywhere in the cosmos, so far as he knew. Theirs were great cities, factories, ships of the sea, land and air. Buildings stretched scores of tiers into the sky and down into the ground as far again. Rich in minerals and raw materials, their race was one with a brief past, but a promising future. The other continent, however, was shockingly primitive. Vast forests and jungles stretched from one sea to the other. Aircraft passing overhead could make out only scattered and far apart settlements that might, possibly, house life. There were hundred-mile stretches in which no trace of a living thing could be found. The inhabitants, glimpsed occasionally, were immense, red, spidery things, evidently very savage. Steve and Myra interrupted Peachy's story long enough to make themselves comfortable on chairs and choose fresh cigarettes. "About how tremendous are these creatures, compared, say--to me?" asked Steve. "They're about your size." "Enormous," admitted Steve to the compact two-footer. "Go on." Peachy didn't seem to be made for any position other than an upright one. He shifted his communication wire to another hand and continued: "A few years ago my people began to realize that our continent would not be big enough to hold us very much longer. We are already utilizing every available inch of space in our country and we must have more room, otherwise many of our people will starve. "Spurred on thus, we quickly built a small fleet of extraplanetary ships to seek habitation on other worlds. The fleet became useless when it left our atmosphere, and the eight ships crashed. But we had profited by our mistakes, and the next fleet successfully navigated the upper air." Steve looked incredulous. "Do you mean to say those were the first space ships you ever made?" "Yes," said the Siykulan simply. "We had never needed them before." Steve whistled. "Look," said Myra. "What was the idea of dashing all over the Solar System for this elbow room, when you have all you needed on the other continent?" "We had no way of getting there," said Peachy. "Nonsense," said Steve, "you just finished telling us about your airships, and boats and marvelous inventions--" "You don't understand," said their tiny guest patiently. "There was no _physical_ hardship involved. We had no trouble flying over the continent, or approaching it from the ocean. But the moment we tried to land, from the sea or air, disaster overtook us." "What sort of disaster?" asked Myra. "Insanity." * * * * * Every so often, it seemed, the Siykulans sent an expedition to their neighboring continent. And once in a while--not so often--a member or two of the expedition would return, to babble crazily of monsters and blackness and throbbings in their heads. They had lost some of their best minds that way before they gave up. Except for one further experiment. They outfitted a remote control ship with an assortment of animals and sent this to the neighboring continent, accompanied by a ship manned by a higher-order Siykulan who directed the animal craft without himself going close enough to the other continent to be affected. The animal ship was landed while the controlling vessel hovered high above to note reactions. After a time, the first ship took off and the two sped back to Siykul. Tests previously conducted had proven that animals could be made insane by inaudible notes of music and by scientifically-induced frustration. But these animals had not been affected by their exposure to whatever it was that had driven their more intelligent neighbors into idiocy. It was therefore assumed that the malignant aura which hung over the green continent could affect only the brainy, possibly because the aura was electrical in nature and in some way short-circuited the brain through thought, which is another form of electricity. Hence the pilgrimage of the little Siykulan. Provided with what might best be described as a brainmeter, or intelligence-tester, he had roamed the spaceways in his golden ship searching for a race with a modicum of intelligence, but not too much. Steve put out his cigarette. "It's been a very interesting story, Peachy," he said, "if not very complimentary, but I'm sorry we can't oblige you. We have a date on Jupiter." "Yes," said Myra. "We're sorry to have to chase you out like this, but we must be getting on. Drop in to see us again any time you're in the neighborhood." Although there was no change in the demeanor of the Siykulan, or in the inflection of the voice that came from him through the black box, he seemed to them suddenly stern and, ridiculous though it seemed in one his size, awesome. "You must do what I say. You don't seem to understand that upon you rests the fate of five hundred million people...." "... like you," said Myra scornfully. "Like me," said Peachy proudly. "They are depending on me, and I shall not fail them. You need have no fear of not being compensated--" "It's not compensation," said Steve. "I don't know what your life span is, but ours is roughly a hundred years, and we aren't anxious to waste any of it on a trip to Centauri." "So!" said Peachy triumphantly, "since that is your only objection, you will--" "It's _not_ our only objection," said Myra, but Peachy went on inexorably. "--you will be glad to know that we are already in the atmosphere of my planet." "Don't be silly," said Steve. Then, uncertainly, "We couldn't be." "You shall see," said Peachy. He dropped his wire and glided to his own ship. He returned in a moment and with a grandiloquent motion of his hand, indicated the opaque, glass-like bubble. As they watched, it wavered and grew transparent, then disappeared. The Horn's space-launch and the meteor ship of the Siykulan were drifting a scant ten miles above an alien planet from which immense buildings, for as far as they could see, reached up to them like greedy fingers. * * * * * Steve Horn flicked cigarette ashes onto the floor of what seemed to be the room of a Siykulan hotel. "I don't like it one little bit," he said. "It isn't the delay so much as the affront to our intelligence." "Yes, darling," soothed Myra. "We should have shown them our diplomas and degrees. Or challenged them to a spelling bee!" "You're not funny," said her husband. "Do you realize that we've been in this hole for a week? Do you realize that Art Wilder and everyone on Jupiter and Earth will think we're dead?" He paused. "Not that we won't be." "What do you mean?" "I mean if they stick us in one of those ships of theirs to go explore that mad-aura continent and find out what's behind all the mystery, we'd be better off dead than crazy." Myra laughed. "What an ego you must have, my husband. It won't permit you to think that it's possible these peach-people have bigger and better brainwaves than we." A bell sounded and a blue light went on and off above the door. "Open it yourself," shouted Steve irritably. "I don't know how." The door opened. Peachy entered. Accompanying him was a strictly utilitarian piece of robot machinery. Headless, it consisted of a long steel body terminating in a balled foot at one end and two triple-jointed arms at the other. At the end of each arm was a murderous looking spiked ball, both of which swung idly and menacingly at the thing's sides. Peachy beckoned to them. When they hesitated, the robot clanged its spiked fists together with an unpleasant ringing sound, then raised them menacingly in the air. Steve and Myra blanched, and meekly followed Peachy through the door. They walked outside, followed Peachy to a space-ship and entered. Myra looked at Steve a trifle uncertainly. "Resistance would have been futile, I suppose?" Steve tried to make himself comfortable on a tiny seat of the cabin. "I think so, considering that our only hope of ever getting back to our own System lies in playing ball with these fuzzy Fascists. There may not be much chance of our succeeding in this screwball expedition, but the important thing is that there is _some_. Putting up a fight might have been gratifying to the ego, but I doubt that it would have convinced these gangsters that they ought to send us back home." "I suppose you're right, Steve. But just what exactly do you think our chances are, this way?" "Looking at it from the scientific angle, we're pretty well off. Here we are scootling along at Lord knows what speed, in what may well be the most up to date ship in the universe, with nothing to do but push Button X when we get to Point Q on--what the hell'd I do with that chart?" "It's all right," said Myra. "I've got it." "--And we land without fuss or bother. Providing...." A worried look crept into Steve's face. "Providing we don't go nuts," supplemented Myra. "We do have to put an awful lot of faith in Peachy's theory that we're subnormal enough, mentally, to escape the spider-people's batty beam. Then all they ask is that we put the beam out of business, or show them how they can." "Steve!" Myra's eyes reflected inspiration. "Why don't we escape? I mean really escape. Get out of this whole business!" "You mean off the planet?" Myra nodded. "Peachy paid a touching tribute to our allegedly minus intelligence by warning me against any such ideas--for our own good. Our fuel would last, and our food might, and even we might, since it'd take years without Peachy's space-annihilator. The only thing that stands in our way is the fact that this ship isn't space-proof. It leaks air. Compared to our Skypiercer," Steve clutched at a simile, "it is as a hotfoot compared to a holocaust." "Well," Myra shrugged philosophically, "no one can say Lady Horn ever leaves a stone unturned." "If you've stopped blowing your own, Horn," said Steve recklessly, "come look at the view. It makes me homesick." IV The tiny ship sped along, a thousand feet above the great ocean that separated Siykul from its neighboring continent. Only a slight mental effort was needed to imagine themselves back on Earth. Long swells swept across the deep, green surface. No sea-craft were in sight, but occasionally a huge fish would break through the surface and quiver in the air as sunlight glinted on the drops of water it shook from its back. Miles ahead, land appeared, like low-lying clouds on the horizon. Ten minutes of flying brought them over the shore--a wide beach that stretched back half a mile and ended abruptly in a forest. The forest seemed endless. "We must have gone a hundred miles inland," said Myra. "When are we supposed to push that fateful button?" "Point Q is described as a large prairie. We should reach it any minute now." "What's that up ahead?" "That appears to be it," said Steve. He pushed the button with crossed fingers. The ship immediately went into a long glide. The ground came up rapidly. Just when they thought they would surely crash, the nose came up automatically and the ship skidded to a bumpy halt. Steve shut off the motor. "Last stop," he said. Myra looked at him closely. "Steve," she said. "How do you feel?" "Fine," he replied. "Why? Scared?" "No. I mean--aren't we supposed to be ... well, affected, somehow?" "Oh." Steve looked at her and scratched his head in thought. "Well-l, I do feel a trifle crazy." "How?" Myra looked concerned. Steve grinned impishly. "I feel like kissing you." Myra puffed out her cheeks in mock anger, then smiled. "You know," she said, "I feel the same way." They didn't see the two creatures that stood outside the ship, watching them through the transparent door. Myra's eyes opened. She looked over her husband's shoulder. "Steve," she whispered. "Mmmm?" he said dreamily. "Remember your American history? Apaches, Utes and Algonquins?" "You mean the good old days, before spaceships and the machine age?" "Yes. And we're back in it. Look." Steve turned around. "Good grief!" he said. "Indians!" For a long time the two parties stared at each other without moving. Gradually their faces broke into smiles, the natives' of polite interest and the Horns of relief at having found the "spider people" of Peachy's description to be simply human beings like themselves. Finally the two outside came a little closer. The older one raised his hand, palm outward. Steve, hoping it meant friendship, did the same. He opened the door of the ship. The men outside were about six feet tall and burned a deep copper color by the planet's bright sun. They wore breech clouts of soft leather and moccasins of the same material. Their faces were fine and intelligent, with high brows and prominent noses. The elder had a shock of stiff, gray-white hair, while the hair of the younger was black. Their bodies, even in the older man, were muscular and powerful-looking. Steve and Myra hopped to the ground. Now that the possibility of being captured and enwebbed by giant red spiders had been discarded, Steve's spirits soared. He addressed the younger native jocularly: "You don't happen to know of a good hotel around here, do you?" The young man evidently understood the tenor of the question, for his face broke into a smile and he rattled off a string of gutturals in a speech that was reminiscent of something Steve had heard, but no more understandable than the voice of the wind soughing through the trees above them. The elder of the two had more sense than any of them. Evidently he realized that these one-sided conversations might go on all day. He motioned to the rest to follow him. Steve, with a look at the ship, hesitated a moment. Then he remembered Peachy and his mechanical mace. He made a grimace of distaste, took Myra's arm and followed. * * * * * There were no walls around the village. It began abruptly in a semi-cleared space half a mile from where their ship had landed. Dwarfed by the huge trees that surrounded it, it looked like something a gifted child might have built with a mechanical construction set. The houses were mostly two and three room affairs, one-storied and square, all made of green steel. From a distance, the village blended perfectly with the surrounding forest, making it invisible from the air. The houses had been set up in no preconceived pattern and gave a pleasant, haphazard effect to the scene. Nowhere had a tree been felled to make way for a house. Here nature and man shared a sylvan paradise, nature always given preference. Steve and Myra had been led to one of the larger buildings which consisted of one huge dining room with tables and chairs of the same green steel and here they were given food and drink not unlike what they had known on Earth. Myra's very faint misgivings about the quality of the food were allayed when their two hosts sat down to eat with them. At the conclusion of the meal, Steve was somewhat astonished when the two accepted the cigarettes he offered and smoked them with apparent enjoyment. A tour of the village impressed the visitors with the ease and contentment in which these simple people lived. Men and women worked in their gardens, or sat in the doorways of their houses fashioning the soft, leather garments that seemed to be their sole articles of dress. Children played between the trees, and in them, shrieking with young laughter. Many of the people showed curiosity about the visitors, but respectfully kept at a distance. Their hosts led Steve and Myra to a tiny building that looked like an old subway kiosk. With no thought of being on their guard, they entered, and were taken by surprise when the floor dropped away beneath them. "My astral aunt!" exclaimed Myra. "An elevator!" "Why not?" asked Steve. "Any race that can make steel ought to be able to build an elevator." The car stopped after a long descent, and the party stepped out into a high-ceilinged underground room, filled with hurrying people and, what was more apparent, noise. Sounds of machinery in feverish action crashed upon their eardrums in rhythmic, deafening beats. The giant machines themselves could be seen through great casings of glass-like material. Men sat at lever-studded desks here and there, evidently in control of the metal prometheans. Their guides led them quickly through the large room and out through a corridor at the far end. They passed many such rooms that branched off from the hall, but none so large as the first. At length they came to a platform. Beside it there was a strip of slowly moving steel. Next to this was another, moving faster. There were several more, each moving a bit faster than its predecessor, and the last one, on which there were seats, moving at thirty miles per hour. Carefully they made their way across these strips and sat down in the leather seats. Presently they were whizzing through a dimly illuminated tunnel. Steve and Myra took part in all these proceedings with interest, while questions mounted in their minds. They made many suppositions to each other, some of them fantastic. On the whole, they were enjoying themselves. Steve estimated they had gone about five miles when the moving strips rounded a curve and their hosts signed that they were to get off. They made their way over the more slowly moving strips onto another platform and through a door. Beyond the door was a wide corridor with an arched ceiling. The whole was a faint green, the effect achieved by painting the green steel of which the tunnel was constructed with white paint, which Steve reasoned had a luminous quality, since the light evidently came from the walls themselves. * * * * * As the faint rumble of the transportation strips died away behind them, they walked through a silence that was almost reverent. Their guides, who had heretofore carried on a pleasant guttural conversation between themselves, became silent, almost grave. A feeling of inexplicable awe crept over the visitors. The corridor stretched ahead in a straight line, without a bend to mar its symmetry. Just when they thought it would go on interminably, a great double door appeared at the far end. It took up the whole width and height of the tunnel, and, contrastingly, was of wood, carved over all in intricate designs. When they came to it, the older man knocked on it with the ball of his palm. The echoes of the sound reverberated throughout the tunnel. Slowly the door swung inward and revealed a dimly-lit room twenty feet high and about fifty square. A dark red carpet covered the floor. Heavy, comfortable-looking armchairs had been placed against the walls, and an immense wooden table occupied the center of the room. What light there was came from an ornate glass chandelier which hung halfway between the floor and ceiling. Steve and Myra took two involuntary steps into the room and stopped, to stare about them for several minutes without moving. The thing that struck them so forcibly was the extraordinary resemblance between the manner in which the room was furnished and one on Earth. Finally the spell broke and almost simultaneously they turned around. Their guides were gone. They could see them just within sight at the other end of the long corridor. They were about to go after them, when a voice said, in _English_: "Won't you come in?" V Steve and Myra turned around at the sound of the voice and automatically stepped back into the room. It wasn't until a few seconds later that they realized what had happened. Someone here, light years away from Earth, had spoken to them in their own language! They looked at each other with amazement, then looked around for the speaker. "I'm over here," the voice said, "to your right." In that dimly-lit part of the room they made out the figure of an old man sitting in a high-backed chair, his hands stretched out on its arms. "Please come in," he said. Slowly they went over to him. He was a very old man, his face and hands deeply wrinkled, with white hair brushed neatly away from his intelligent forehead. There was a curious immobility about him that half-frightened them, but his eyes were kindly. Steve and Myra sat down. There was silence for a minute. Then: "I am very wise," the old man said abruptly. Unable to help himself, Steve chuckled. Myra looked at him reprovingly. "You mustn't laugh at me," said the old man. "I know much. What I say is true. You must remember that. And if you will be patient and humor me, I will tell you where you are, and how you came to be." "You mean how we came to be _here_," corrected Steve. "You mustn't interrupt me, either," said the old man irritably. "I mean what I say. I will tell you how you began and how you are related to me and many other trivial things like how you will leave here when you have decided to go." "We were on our way to Jupiter," said Myra, "when we got kidnaped. Steve was going to teach at college there." "It is a good thing to teach," the old man said. "Of course, you know very little, but it is admirable to teach those who know less. I have always been a teacher...." He trailed off into silence. "Just what do you mean by 'always,'" asked Steve, "as long as we're being rude to each other. Just how old are you?" "Who knows?" the old man answered slowly. "Hundreds of thousands of years." Myra gave a little yip. "Steve," she gasped. "His lips aren't moving!" The oldster took this with equanimity. "True," he said. "Because they aren't mine. At least not any more. You see, the real me is up here, in this vat. I'm just a brain. That thing you've been talking to is just a corpse. I hope you don't mind." Myra shuddered. "It's all right," the voice continued. "It's sanitary. They used the best embalming fluid." "How come you speak English?" asked Steve. "I don't," said the voice. "You might as well ask why people understand music written by people who speak different languages. I'm not speaking; I'm thinking out loud, if you will pardon the idiom. Music and thought are universal. "Now I will tell you a story. Many millions of years ago there was a great planet, the greatest in the universe. On it was bred a race of geniuses. Mentally, the planet was ideal; physically, it was less fortunate. Our sun was about to become a nova. As a result, the day came when our scientists were forced to warn their people that they would have to leave the planet before it was burned to a cinder. "There was one scientist who was more renowned than the others, and with good reason. It was he was had isolated the _gion_ beam, as it was called, which had the property of breaking down a substance to its component atoms and sending it wherever directed. "To make the story easier to tell, I will admit that I was that scientist, and that my name is Gion, which you may call me, if you can do so without interrupting me." He paused for a moment, as if marshalling his memories. "Our scientists searched the universe with their instruments, seeking another planet. Finally this one was located. But it was too distant to be reached within a life-span by means of the antiquated space ships we had then. Only one method was possible--the _gion_ beam. "Even this method was not completely satisfactory, because it would require terrific power to transport anything here and we hadn't fuel for more than one shipment. Therefore, it was necessary to make a careful selection of those who were to go and what they were to take with them. "About three hundred were chosen--two hundred women and a hundred men, all unmarried and all about twenty. The emphasis was put on human beings, and not on equipment, so only certain surgical supplies were taken. "It was decided that one master-scientist was to go, regardless of his age, to act as guide and counselor to the new race. I was chosen, and it was a very bad choice. You see, I was dying of cancer of the stomach at the time. Naturally, I protested, but they paid no attention. Instead they killed me." * * * * * "_What?_" gasped Myra. "Exactly," said Gion. "They killed my body and locked my wise old brain in this glass case. Would you believe it--sometimes I get bored." Steve laughed. "You know, Mr. Gion, you're amazing. Tell me, did your party ever get here?" "No I'll tell you about the hairy people," said Gion reprovingly. "After we had set up our village and things were going along nicely, we met the people who lived on the planet long before we arrived. Those peach-colored scoundrels you've already met. Pack of thieves. They used to come around at night and steal anything they could lay their hands on. They would also watch up for hours while we worked and later imitate what we did. It didn't take them long to develop from dumb animals to malignantly intelligent creatures. Naturally we had to get rid of them. "We drove them down to the sea. As we might have expected, they played a foul trick on us. They stole one of our ships and escaped across the ocean. Ever since they've been getting brighter and brighter and breeding like rabbits, until now they've overrun their continent and want ours. Naturally, we had to take steps." "So you surrounded your continent with a field of insanity, producing vibrations to send them back gibbering?" asked Steve. The voice laughed. "Is that what they told you? Crazy beasts--we did no such thing. It would be too much bother, too expensive and--well, impossible. Our defense is much simpler. We merely let them land and get out of their ships--then biff them with our insanity beam. And since we don't want any idiotic foreigners running around our forests, we pile them back into their ships and shoot them back home. Nothing to it." Gion paused. Myra, who had been waiting for a propitious moment, said: "I thought you were going to tell us how _we_ began?" "I am. I am," he said. "Our new civilization was about a century old, when we began to receive messages from far out in space. They were from a ship that had taken off from our old planet just before the explosion, manned by an intrepid group of people who knew that they would never live to reach another land, but who hoped that their children might. "The messages were pathetic. They were from the sole survivor of the original travelers, who said that their children had revolted against the rigid discipline he had tried to maintain, and that the ship was in a state of bedlam. Only the fact that he had sealed the engine room against them had prevented them from reaching the controls and destroying themselves. Inertia kept the ship on its course. "Further messages from this old man reached us, saying that the rebels had reverted practically to wild beasts and were living in a state of indescribable filth. Our records show that the ship didn't reach your Earth until sixty years later, so you can imagine the condition its passengers were in when it finally landed. And those were your ancestors." "A pretty picture," grimaced Steve. There was a moment's silence. Then said: "Why do you live underground, or at least work down here? Isn't it impractical?" "On the contrary," explained Gion, "it's very practical. You see, we're a peace-loving people. We don't like trouble, and we don't believe in waging war to keep out of trouble at some future date. Consequently, we build all our factories underground, so that the hairy people can't blow them up whenever they feel like it by flying over and dropping bombs. Another reason is that we like the forest and believe it's healthy for our children to grow up there. We don't build cities to make targets for the potential enemy--human or bacterial, whichever it might be--but try to live in as close cooperation with nature as possible. Does that make sense?" "It makes perfect sense," agreed Myra. Steve nodded. "And now," said Gion, "if I read your minds correctly, you'd like to get away from this garrulous old man and see some more of our country before you continue your interrupted journey to Jupiter." VI What had seemed to be a long flat meadow was in reality, just beneath the surface, an emergency airport that was used in place of the moving chairs or the underground freight-railway when speed was imperative. Seldom used, but always in a state of preparedness, the port now buzzed with activity as the roof of simulated grass rolled back, disclosing a resplendent green space-ship waiting on the take-off ways. So simple was the ship in construction that less than an hour of intensive instruction from Gion, on a model control board set up in the underground room, was sufficient to acquaint him perfectly with the management of the craft. It almost frightened him to think that he and Myra were about to undertake a journey in a ship so swift that they would arrive on Jupiter, in an inestimably distant solar system, almost as soon as they would have in their Skypiercer, had they not been interrupted by Peachy. At last, all was ready. Steve and Myra waved good-bye to the people they had come to know as friends in such a short time, and sealed themselves inside the ship. Steve consulted the charts for a second, then sent the ship into a noiseless take-off that soon left the field far below, already being retransformed into a green meadow. He followed his instructions carefully and kept the ship at a moderate speed, to wait until the gravitational pull of the planet had been left behind before beginning the almost unbelievable acceleration of which the ship was capable. Myra sat in thought for a moment, then: "Steve," she said, "I don't want to seem skeptical, but doesn't Gion's theory about the beginning of man on Earth sort of conflict with our time-honored theory of evolution? Apes and men from the same source, and all that?" "Not exactly," Steve said. "The evidence seems to point to the fact that those third-generation refugees landed on North America a few ages ago, and founded the Indian nations. It's the only tenable explanation of the origin of the American Indian that I've ever heard." The planet was rapidly growing smaller behind them. "If only they hadn't mutinied against discipline, it's probable that with their advanced knowledge, the Indians would have discovered Europe long before Columbus--or Lief Erickson--crossed the Atlantic. Their culture, if they had kept it, might have been a better incentive to European development than theirs was--" "Brrr!" Myra shivered suddenly. "I get the creeps when I think of talking to a corpse." Steve Horn chuckled. "Don't ever accuse me of being dead, again," he said mockingly. "At least, I can get up and walk around." He flipped the drive control, sent the green space-ship whipping past a darting meteor. He spun the ship again, in a tight circle, thrilling to the surge of power released by the light touch of his hand on the controls, then laughed aloud at Myra's instant cry of ecstatic alarm. "Hush, Infant," he said, "I'm just practicing up for the time when I sell the rights to the constructing of ships identical to this. Boy, will the shekels ever roll in!" Myra tucked in a loose strand of hair, bent over and kissed Steve on the lobe of his right ear. He squirmed, wriggled, jerked the ship off-course by an inadvertent twitch of his hand, growled playfully, then let the ship travel uncontrolled while he kissed the ear of his wife in return. "Steve, pulleeze!" Myra said faintly. "What were you saying about the Indians, dear?" she asked finally. "'Lo, the poor Indian,'" Steve misquoted, "he has gone the way of all--_Damn!_" His words were bitten off by the sudden jerking of the ship. Myra frowned. "Maybe those Indians didn't build this thing so well," she said worriedly. "Remember Peachy said the first few ships built by his people wouldn't fly. It would be just our luck to try and ride an experimental job back to Jupiter." Steve jiggled the controls. "Something grabbed us," he said. "Something just reached out and jerked us off-course--tried to hold us back." "I don't believe it," Myra said. "You're just--" The ship whipped to one side, then bucked playfully like a trout riding a fisherman's line. "Ugh!" said Steve faintly, struggled to pull his body back into his seat. "Steve, I'm frightened!" Myra wailed. "Nonsense!" Steve said stoutly. "There isn't a blamed thing to be afra--" * * * * * Suddenly the ship began to toss crazily, like a rat shaken in a terrier's teeth. Steve and Myra were thrown to the floor. Unsteadily making their way to a window, they saw a little golden meteor-ship, such as had been the beginning of all their trouble. Evidently they were caught in its magnetic field. Steve tried accelerating, but they were powerless to escape. Myra burst into helpless tears. "Oh, Steve, this is too much. We _can't_ go back there again." "Damn those peach-creatures!" said Steve. "Just when I thought we'd never see them again." Again letters of fire appeared above the little golden ship. "RETURN," they said, simply. "You're not going to do it?" asked Myra. "There's no use getting killed." Steve shrugged disgustedly. He was about to reverse the ship's course when a long snake-like flame streaked up from the planet below with a menacing rumble that could be felt through the hull of the ship. The golden craft saw it coming and tried to escape, but the lash of flame followed its frantic dodgings inexorably. Suddenly, like a striking snake, it straightened. Its tip touched the meteor-ship. There was an eye-blinding flash. When they could see again, nothing was visible but the planet below, looking serene and peaceful on the wooded half of its surface turned to them. Of the attacking ship or the instrument of its doom there was no sign. Steve Horn looked for the last time at the planet before climbing back into the control seat. He wiped his eyes with a self-conscious gesture. "Thanks," he said. And flicked the drive-beam that was to send them home. * * * * * [Transcriber's Note: Section headings for section I to III missing.] 
63046	----	Mr. Meek--Musketeer By CLIFFORD D. SIMAK Adventure flamed in Mr. Meek's timorous heart, the surge of battle and singing blades. And so, with a rocket-ship for his steed and a ray-gun for his sword, he sallied forth ... carrying cavalier justice to the resentful shining stars. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Now that he'd done it, Oliver Meek found the thing he'd done hard to explain. Under the calm, inquiring eyes of Mr. Richard Belmont, president of Lunar Exports, Inc., he stammered a little before he could get started. "For years," he finally said, "I've been planning a trip...." "But, Oliver," said Belmont, "we would give you a leave of absence. You'll be back. There's no reason to resign." Oliver Meek shuffled his feet and looked uncomfortable, a little guilty. "Maybe I won't be back," he declared. "You see, it isn't just an ordinary trip. It may take a long, long time. Something might happen. I'm going out to see the Solar System." Belmont laughed lightly, reared back in his chair, matching fingertips. "Oh, yes. One of the tours. Nothing dangerous about them. Nothing at all. You needn't worry about that. I went on one a couple of years ago. Mighty interesting...." "Not one of the tours," interrupted Meek. "Not for me. I have a ship of my own." Belmont thumped forward in his chair, looking almost startled. "A ship of your own!" "Yes, sir," Oliver admitted, squirming uncomfortably. "Over thirty years I've saved for it ... for it and the other things I'll need. It sort of got to be ... well, an obsession, you might say." "I see," said Belmont. "You planned it." "Yes, sir, I planned it." Which was a masterpiece of understatement. For Belmont could not know and Oliver Meek, stoop-shouldered, white-haired bookkeeper, could not tell of those thirty years of thrift and dreams. Thirty years of watching ships of the void taking off from the space port, just outside the window where he sat hunched over ledgers and calculators. Thirty years of catching scraps of talk from the men who ran those ships. Men and ships with the alien dust of far off planets still clinging to their skins. Ships with strange marks and scars upon them, and men with strange words upon their tongues. Thirty years of reducing high adventure to cold figures. Thirty years of recording strange cargoes and stranger tales into accounts. Thirty years of watching through a window while rockets, outbound, dug molten pits into the field. Thirty years of being on the edge, the very fringe of life ... but _never_ in it. Nor could Belmont have guessed or Meek formed in words the romanticism that glowed within the middle-aged bookkeeper's heart ... a thing that sometimes hurt ... something earthbound that forever cried for space. Nor the night classes Oliver Meek had attended to learn the theory of space navigation and after that more classes to gain an understanding of the motors and controls that drove the ships between the planets. Nor how he had stood before the mirror in his room hour after hour, practicing, perfecting the art of pistol handling. Nor of the afternoons he had spent at the shooting gallery. Nor of the nights he had read avidly, soaking up the lore and information and color of those other worlds that seemed to beckon him. "How old are you, Oliver?" asked Belmont. "Fifty next month, sir," Meek answered. "I wish you were taking one of the passenger ships," said Belmont. "Now, one of those tours aren't so bad. They're comfortable and ..." Meek shook his head and there was a stubborn glint in the weak blue eyes behind the thick lensed glasses. "No tour for me, sir. I'm going to some of those places the tours never take you. I've missed a lot in these thirty years. I've waited a long time and now I'm going out and see the things I've dreamed about." * * * * * Oliver Meek pushed open the swinging doors of the Silver Moon and stepped timidly inside. Just through the door he stopped and stared, for the place hit him squarely in the face ... the acrid smoke of Venusian leaf, the high-pitched laughter of the Martian dancing girls, the soft whirr of wheels, the click of balls as they bounced around the spinning wheels, the clatter of poker chips, the odor of strange liquors, the chirping and growling of a dozen tongues, the strange, exotic music of Ganymede. Meek blinked through his heavy lenses, moved forward cautiously. In the far corner of the place stood a table occupied by one man ... an old, grizzled veteran of the Asteroids with his muzzle in a flagon of cheap beer. Meek sidled toward the table, drew out a chair. "Do you mind if I sit here?" he asked and Old Stiffy Grant choked on a mouthful of beer in his amazement. "Go ahead, stranger," he finally croaked. "I don't give a dang. I don't own the joint." Meek sat down on the edge of the chair. His eyes swept the room. He smelled the smoke, the raw liquor, the sweat-stained clothing of the men, the cheap perfumery of the dancing girls. He shifted his gun belt so the two energy pistols hung more easily, and cautiously slid farther back upon the chair. So this was Asteroid City on Juno. The place he'd read about. The place the pulp paper writers used as background for their more lurid tales. This was the place where guns flamed and men were found dead in the streets and a girl or a game of chance or just one spoken word could start a fight. The tours didn't include places such as this. They took one to the nice, civilized places ... towns like Gusta Pahn on Mars and Radium City on Venus and out to Satellite City on Ganymede. Civilized, polished places ... places hardly different than New York or Chicago or Denver back home. But this was different ... here one could sense something that made the blood run faster, made a thrill scamper up one's spine. "You're new here, ain't you?" asked Stiffy. Meek jumped, then recovered his composure. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I am. I always wanted to see this place. I read about it." "Ever read about an Asteroid Prowler?" asked Stiffy. "I believe I have somewhere. In a magazine section. A crazy story...." "It ain't crazy," protested Stiffy. "I saw one of them ... this afternoon. Right here on Juno. None of these dad-blamed fools will believe me." Furtively, Meek studied the man opposite him. He didn't seem to be such a bad fellow. Almost like any other human being. A little rough, maybe, but a good fellow just the same. "Say," he suggested impulsively, "maybe you'd have a drink with me." "You're dang tootin'," agreed Stiffy. "I never turn down no drinks." "You order it," said Meek. Stiffy bawled across the room. "Hey, Joe, bring us a couple snorts." "What kind of an animal was this you were speaking of?" asked Meek. "Asteroid Prowler," said Stiffy. "Most of these hoodlums don't think there is one, but I know different. I saw him this afternoon and he was the dad-blamest thing I ever laid my eyes on. He boiled right out from behind a big rock and started coming after me. I let him have one in the face but that didn't even nick him. Full-power, too. When that happened I didn't waste no more time. I took it on the lam. Got to my ship and got out of there." "What did he look like?" * * * * * Stiffy leaned across the table and wagged a forefinger solemnly. "Mister, you won't believe me when I tell you. But it's the truth, so help me. He had a beak. And eyes. Danged if them eyes weren't something. Like they were reaching out and trying to grab you. Not really reaching out, you know. But there was something in them that tried to talk to you. Big as plates and they shimmered like there was fire inside of them. "These dod-rotted rock-blasters here laughed at me when I told them about it. Insinuated I held the truth lightly, they did. Laughed their fool heads off. "It's pretty near as big as a house ... that animal, and it's got a body like a barrel. It's got a long neck and a little head with big teeth. It's got a tail, too, and it's kind of set close to the ground. You see, I was out looking for the Lost Mine." "Lost Mine?" "Sure, ain't you ever heard of the Lost Mine?" Stiffy blew beer in amazement. Oliver Meek shook his head, feeling that probably he was the victim of tales reserved for the greenest of the tenderfeet, not knowing what he could do about it if he were. Stiffy settled more solidly in his chair. "The Lost Mine story," he declared, "has been going around for years. Seems a couple of fellows found it a few years after the first dome was built. They came in and told about it, stocked up with grub and went out. They never did come back." He leaned across the table. "You know what I think?" he demanded gustily. "No," said Meek. "What do you think?" "The Prowler got 'em," Stiffy said, triumphantly. "But how could there be a lost mine?" asked Meek. "Asteroid City was one of the first mining domes built out here. There was no prospecting done until about that time." Stiffy shook his head, waggling his beard. "How should I know," he defended himself. "Maybe some early space traveler set down here, dug a mine, never got back to Earth to tell about it." "But Juno is only one hundred and eighteen miles in diameter," Meek argued. "If there had been a mine someone would have found it." Stiffy snorted. "That's all you know about it, stranger. Only one hundred and eighteen miles, sure ... but one hundred and eighteen miles of the worst danged country man ever set a boot on. Mostly up and down." The drinks came, the bartender slapping them down on the table before them. Meek gasped first at their price, then choked on the drink itself. But he smothered the choke manfully and asked: "What kind of stuff is this?" "_Bocca_," replied Stiffy. "Good old Martian _bocca_. Puts hair on your chest." He gulped his drink with gusto, blew noisily through his whiskers, eyed Meek disapprovingly. "Don't you like it?" he demanded. "Sure," lied Meek. "Sure I like it." He shut his eyes and poured the liquor into his mouth, gulped fiercely, desperately, almost strangling. Said Stiffy: "Tell you what let's do. Let's get into a game." Meek opened his mouth to accept the invitation, then closed it, caution stealing over him. After all, he didn't know much about this place. Maybe he'd better go a little easy, at least at first. He shook his head. "No, I'm not very good at cards. Just a few games of penny-ante now and then." Stiffy looked his disbelief. "Penny ante," he said, then guffawed as if he sensed humor in what Meek had said. "Say, you're good," he roared. "Don't s'pose you can use them lightnin' throwers of yours either." "Some," admitted Meek. "Practiced in front of a looking glass a little." He wondered why Stiffy rolled in his chair with mirth until tears ran down into his whiskers. * * * * * Stiffy held a full house ... aces with kings ... and his eyes had the look of a cat stalking a saucer full of cream. There were only two in the game, Stiffy and an oily gentleman called Luke. As the stakes mounted and the game grew hotter the others at the table dropped out. Standing behind Stiffy, Oliver Meek watched in awe, scarcely breathing. Here was life ... the kind of life one would never dream of back in the little cubby hole with its calculators and dusty books at Lunar Exports, Inc. In the space of an hour, he had seen more money pass across the table than he had ever owned in all his life. Pots that climbed and pyramided, fortunes gambled on the flip of a single card. But there was something else too ... something wrong about the dealing. He couldn't figure quite what it was, but he had read an article about how gamblers dealt the cards when they didn't aim to give the other fellow quite an even break. And there had been something about Luke's dealing ... something that he had read about in that article. Across the table Luke grimaced. "I'll have to call you," he announced. "I'm afraid you're too strong for me." Stiffy slapped down his hand triumphantly. "Match that, dang you!" he exulted. "The kind of cards I been waiting for all night." He reached out a gnarled hand to rake in the coins but Luke stopped him with a gesture. "Sorry," he said. He flipped the cards down slowly, one at a time. First a trey, then a four and then three more fours. Stiffy gulped, reached for the bottle. But even as he did, Oliver Meek reached out and placed his hand upon the money on the table, fingers wide spread. He'd remembered what he had read in that article.... "Just a minute, gentlemen," he said. "I've remembered something...." Silence thudded in the room. Meek looked across the table straight into the eyes of Luke. Luke said: "You better explain yourself, mister." Meek suddenly was flustered. "Why, maybe I acted too hastily. It really was nothing. I just noticed something about the deal...." Luke jerked erect, kicking his chair away with the single motion of rising. The crowd suddenly surged away, out of the line of fire. The bartender ducked behind the bar. Stiffy flung himself with a howl out of his chair, skidded along the floor. Meek, suddenly straightening from the table, saw Luke's hand streaking for the gun at his belt and in a split second he realized that here he faced a situation that demanded action. He didn't think about those days of practice in front of the mirror. He didn't call upon a single iota of the gun-lore he had read in hundreds of books. His mind, for a bare instant, was almost a blank, but he acted as if by instinct. His hands moved like driving pistons, snapped the twin guns from their holsters, heaved them clear of leather, grabbed them in mid-air. He saw Luke's gun muzzle swinging up, tilted down the muzzle of his own left gun, pressed the activator. There was a screeching hiss, a streak of blue that crackled in the air and the gun that Luke held in his hand was suddenly red hot. But Meek wasn't watching Luke. His eyes were for the crowd and even as he pressed the firing button he saw a hand pick a bottle off the bar, lift it to throw. The gun in his right hand shrieked and the bottle smashed into a million pieces, the liquor turned to steam. Slowly Meek backed away, his tread almost cat-like, his weak blue eyes like cold ice behind the thick-lensed spectacles, his hunched shoulders still hunched, his lean jaw like a steel trap. He felt the wall at his back and stopped. Out in the room before him no one stirred. Luke stood like a statue, gripping his right hand, badly burned by the smoking gun that lay at his feet. Luke's face was a mask of hatred. The rest of them simply stared. Stared at this outlander. A man who wore clothing such as the Asteroid Belt had never seen before. A man who looked as if he might be a clerk or even a retired farmer out on a holiday. A man with glasses and hunched shoulders and a skin that had never known the touch of sun in space. And yet a man who had given Luke Blaine a head start for his gun, had beaten him to the draw, had burned the gun out of his hand. Oliver Meek heard himself speaking, but he couldn't believe it was himself. It was as if some other person had taken command of his tongue, was forcing it to speak. He hardly recognized his voice, for it was hard and brittle and sounded far away. It was saying: "Does anyone else want to argue with me?" It was immediately apparent no one did. II Oliver Meek tried to explain it carefully, but it was hard when people were so insistent. Hard, too, to collect his thoughts so early in the day. He sat on the edge of the bed, white hair tousled, his night shirt wrinkled, his bony legs sticking out beneath it. "But I'm not a gun fighter," he declared. "I'm just on a holiday. I never shot at a man before in all my life. I can't imagine what came over me." The Rev. Harold Brown brushed his argument aside. "Don't you see, sir," he insisted, "what you can do for us? These hoodlums will respect you. You can clean up the town for us. Blacky Hoffman and his mob run the place. They make decent government and decent living impossible. They levy protection tribute on every businessman, they rob and cheat the miners and prospectors who come here, they maintain vice conditions...." "All you have to do," said Andrew Smith brightly, "is run Blacky and his gang out of town." "But," protested Meek, "you don't understand." "Five years ago," the Rev. Brown went on, disregarding him, "I would have hesitated to pit force against force. It is not my way nor the way of the church ... but for five years I've tried to bring the gospel to this place, have worked for better conditions and each year I see them steadily getting worse." "This could be a swell place," enthused Smith, "if we could get rid of the undesirables. Fine opportunities. Capital would come in. Decent people could settle. We could have some civic improvements. Maybe a Rotary club." Meek wiggled his toes despairingly. "You would earn the eternal gratitude of Asteroid City," urged the Rev. Brown. "We've tried it before but it never worked." "They always killed our man," Smith explained, "or he got scared, or they bought him off." "We never had a man like you before," the Rev. Brown declared. "Luke Blaine is a notorious gunman. No one, ever before, has been able to beat him to...." "There must be some mistake," insisted Meek. "I'm just a bookkeeper. I don't know a thing...." "We'd swear you in as marshal," said Smith. "The office is vacant now. Has been for three months or more. We can't find anyone to take it." "But I'm not staying long," protested Meek. "I'm leaving pretty soon. I just want to try to get a look at the Asteroid Prowler and scout around to see if I can't find some old rocks I read about once." The two visitors stared open mouthed at him. Meek brightened. "You've heard about those old rocks, maybe. Some funny inscriptions on them. Fellow who found them thought they had been made recently, probably just before Earthmen first came here. But no one can read them. Maybe some other race ... from somewhere far away." "But it won't take you long," pleaded Smith. "We got warrants for all of them. All you got to do is serve them." "Look," said Meek in desperation, "you have got me wrong. It must have been an accident, shooting that gun out of Mr. Blaine's hand." Meek felt dull anger stirring within him. What right did these people have of insisting that he help them with their troubles? What did they think he was? A desperado or space runner? Another gangster? Just because he'd been lucky at the Silver Moon. "By gosh," he declared flatly, "I just won't do it!" They looked pained, rose reluctantly. "I suppose we shouldn't have expected that you would," said the Reverend Brown bitingly. * * * * * The Silver Moon was quiet. The bartender was languidly wiping the top of the bar. A Venusian boy was as languidly sweeping out. The dancing girls were gone, the music was silent. Stiffy and Oliver Meek were among the few customers. Stiffy gulped a drink and blew fiercely through his whiskers. "Oliver," he said, "you sure are a ring-tailed bearcat with them guns of yours. I wonder, would you tell me how you do it?" "Look here, Mr. Grant," said Meek. "I wish you'd quit talking about what I did. It was just an accident, anyhow. What I'm mainly interested in is this Asteroid Prowler you were telling me about. Is there any chance I might find him if I went out and looked?" Stiffy choked, almost purple with astonishment. "Good gravy," he said, "now you want to go out and tangle with the Prowler!" "Not tangle with him," Meek declared. "Just look at him." "Mister," Stiffy warned, "the best way to look at that thing is with a telescope. A good, powerful telescope." The swinging doors swung open and a man walked in. The newcomer walked directly toward the table occupied by Stiffy and Meek. He halted beside it, black beard jutting fearsomely, eyes bleakly cold. "I'm Blacky Hoffman," he said. "I suppose you're Meek." He disregarded Stiffy. Meek stood up and held out his hand. "Glad to know you, Mr. Hoffman," he said. Blacky took the proffered hand in some surprise. "Seems I should know you, Meek, but I don't. Should have heard of you at some time or other. A man like you would get talked about." Meek shook his head. "I don't think you ever have. I never did anything to get talked about." "Sit down," said Hoffman and it sounded like a command. "I got to be going," Stiffy piped, already halfway to the door. Hoffman poured out a drink and shoved the bottle at Meek. Meek gritted his teeth and poured a short one. "No use beating around the bush," said Blacky. "We may as well get down to cases. I guess we understand one another." Oliver Meek didn't know what the other meant, but he had to say something. "I guess we do," he agreed. "All right, then," said Hoffman. "I've built up a sweet little racket here and I don't like fellows butting in." Meek essayed to down his liquor, succeeded, gasped for breath. "But I could use a man like you," said Hoffman. "Luke tells me you are handy with the blasters." "I practice sometimes," Meek admitted. A smile twitched Hoffman's bearded lips. "We have the town just where we want it. The officials can't do a thing. Scared to. Marshals always eat rock or skip town. Maybe you would like to throw in with us. Not much to do, easy pickings." "I'm sorry," said Meek, "but I can't do that." "Listen, Meek," warned Hoffman, "you're either with us or you aren't. We don't like chiselers here. We know what to do with guys who try to muscle in. I don't know who you are or where you come from, but I'm telling you this ... straight. If you don't come in, all right ... but if you stick around after tonight I can't promise you protection." Meek was silent, mulling the threat. "You mean," he finally asked, "that you're ordering me out if I don't join your gang?" Hoffman nodded. "That, big boy, is just exactly what I mean." Slow anger and resentment ate at Meek. Who was this Hoffman to order him out of Asteroid City? This was a free Solar System, wasn't it? No wonder the Rev. Brown was jittery. No wonder the decent people wanted a clean-up. Meek's anger mounted, a cold deadly anger that shook him like a frigid hand. An anger that almost frightened him, for very seldom in his life had he been really angry. He rose slowly from the table, hitched his gun belt to a comfortable position. "The town's been without a marshal for a long time, hasn't it?" he asked. Hoffman's laugh boomed out. "You bet it has. And it's going to stay that way. The last one took it on the lam. The one before that got killed. The one before that sort of disappeared...." Meek spoke slowly, weak eyes burning. "Horrible condition," he said. "Something's got to be done about it." * * * * * The streets were deserted, quiet, a deadly quiet that lurked and hovered, waiting for something to happen. Oliver Meek polished his marshal's star with his coat sleeve, glanced up at the dome. Stars glittered, their light distorted by the heavy quartz. Stars in a dead black sky. Bathed in the weak starlight, the mighty walls of the canyon reared above the dome. A canyon, the only sort of place where a city could rise on one of the planetoids. For the walls protected the dome against the deadly barrage of whizzing debris that continually shrieked down from space. Those mighty cragged mountains and dizzy cliffs were pocked with the blows dealt, through long eons, by that hail of armor-piercing projectiles. Meek returned his gaze to the street, saw the lights of the Silver Moon. Nervously he felt of the papers in his inside pocket. Warrants for the arrest of John Hoffman for murder, Luke Blaine for murder, Jim Smithers for reckless shooting, Jake Loomis for assault and battery, Robert Blake for robbery. And suddenly, Oliver Meek was afraid. For death waited him, he knew, inside the swinging doors of the Silver Moon. A death preluded by this quiet street. Almost as if he were awaking from a dream, he found questions filling his brain. What was he doing here? Why had he gotten himself into a jam like this? What difference did it make to him what happened to Asteroid City? It had been anger that had made him do it ... that unaccountable anger which had flared when Hoffman told him to get out. After all, what difference would a few days make? He was going to leave anyhow. He'd seen about all there was to see in Asteroid City. He wanted to see the Prowler and the stones with the strange inscriptions on them, but they were sights he could get along without. If he turned around and walked the other way he could reach his space ship in just a few minutes. There was fuel enough to take him to Ganymede. No one would know until he was already gone. And after he was gone, what would he care what anybody thought? He stood irresolutely, arguing with himself. Then he shook his head, resumed his march toward the Silver Moon. A figure stepped from a dark doorway. Meek saw the threatening gleam of steel. His hands streaked toward his gun-butts, but something prodded him in the back and he froze, fingers touching metal. "All right, marshal," said a mocking voice. "You just turn around and walk the other way." He felt his guns lifted from their holsters and he turned around and walked. Footsteps crunched beside him and behind him, but otherwise he walked in silence. "Where are you taking me?" he asked, his voice just a trifle shaky. One of the men laughed. "Just on a little trip, marshal. Out to take a look at Juno. It's a right pretty sight at night." * * * * * Juno wasn't pretty. For the most part, there was little of it one could see. The stars shed little light and the depressions were in shadow, while the cragged mountain tops seemed like shimmering mirages in the ghostly starlight. The ship lay on a plateau between a needle-like range and a deep, shadowed valley. "Now, marshal," said one of the men, "you stay right here. You'll see the Sun come up over that mountain back there. Interesting. Dawn on Juno is something to remember." Meek started forward, but the other waved him back with his pistol. "You're leaving me here?" shrieked Meek. "Why sure," the man said. "You wanted to see the Solar System, didn't you?" They backed away from him, guns in hand. Frozen in terror, he watched them enter the ship, saw the port close. An instant later the ship roared away, the backwash of its tubes buffeting Meek to the ground. He struggled to his feet, watching the blasting tubes until they were out of sight. Clumsily he stepped forward and then stopped. There was no place to go ... nothing to do. Loneliness and fear swept over him in terrible waves of anguish. Fear that dwarfed any emotion he had ever felt. Fear of the ghostly shimmer of the peaks, fear of the shadow-blackened valley, fear of space and the mad, cold intensity of unwinking stars. He fought for a grip on himself. It was fear such as this that drove men mad in space. He'd read about that, heard about it. Fear of the loneliness and the terrible depths of space ... fear of the indifference of endless miles of void, fear of the unknown that always lurked just at elbow distance. "Meek," he told himself, "you should have stayed at home." Dawn came shortly, but no such dawn as one would see on Earth. Just a gradual dimming of the stars, a gradual lifting of the blacker darkness as a larger star, the Sun, swung above the peaks. The stars still shone, but a gray light filtered over the landscape, made the mountains solid things instead of ghostly shapes. Jagged peaks loomed on one side of the plateau, fearsome depths on the other. A meteor thudded somewhere to his right and Meek shuddered. There was no sound of the impact but he could feel the vibrations of the blow as the whizzing mass struck the cliffs. But it was foolish to be afraid of meteors, he told himself. He had greater and more immediate worries. There were less than eight hours of air left in the tanks of his space suit. He had no idea where he was, although he knew that many miles of rugged, fearsome country stretched between him and Asteroid City. The space suit carried no food and no water, but that was of minor moment, he realized, for his air would give out long before he felt the pangs of thirst or hunger. He sat down on a massive boulder and tried to think. There wasn't much to think about. Everywhere his thoughts met black walls. The situation, he told himself, was hopeless. If only he hadn't come to Asteroid City in the first place! Or having come, if he had only minded his business, this never would have happened. If he hadn't been so anxious to show off what he knew about card dealing tricks. If only he hadn't agreed to be sworn in as marshal. If he'd swallowed his pride and left when Hoffman told him to. He brushed away such thoughts as futile, took stock of his surroundings. The cliff on the right hand side was undercut, overhanging several hundred feet of level ground. Ponderously, he heaved himself off the boulder, wandered aimlessly up the wider tongue of plateau. The undercut, he saw, grew deeper, forming a deep cleft, as if someone had furrowed out the mountain side. Heavy shadows clung within it. Suddenly he stopped, riveted to the ground, scarcely daring to breathe. Something was moving in the deep shadow of the undercut. Something that seemed to glint faintly with reflected light. The thing lurched forward and, in the fleeting instant before he turned and ran, Oliver Meek had an impression of a barrel-like body, a long neck, a cruel mouth, monstrous eyes that glowed with hidden fires. There was no speculation in Oliver Meek's mind. From the description given him by Stiffy, from the very terror of the thing, he knew the being shambling toward him was the Asteroid Prowler. With a shriek of pure fear, Meek turned and fled and behind him came the Prowler, its head swaying on the end of its whip-like neck. * * * * * Meek's legs worked like pistons, his breath gasping in his throat, his body soaring through space as he covered long distances at each leap under the influence of lesser gravity. Thunderous blasts hammered at the earphones in his helmet and as he ran he craned his head skyward. Shooting down toward the plateau, forward rockets braking, was a small spaceship! Hope rose within him and he glanced back over his shoulder. Hope died instantly. The Prowler was gaining on him, gaining fast. Suddenly his legs gave out. Simply folded up, worn out with the punishment they had taken. He threw up his arms to shield his helmet plate and sobbed in panic. The Asteroid Prowler would get him now. Sure as shooting. Just at the minute rescue came, the Prowler would get him. But the Prowler didn't get him. Nothing happened at all. Surprised, he sat up and spun around, crouching. The ship had landed, almost at the edge of the plateau and a man was tumbling out of the port. The Prowler had changed his course, was galloping toward the ship. The man from the ship ran in leaping bounds, a pistol in one gloved hand, and his yelp of terror rang in Meek's earphones. "Run, dang you. Run! That dad-blamed Prowler will be after us any minute now." "Stiffy," yelled Meek. "Stiffy, you came out to get me." Stiffy landed beside him, hauled him to his feet. "Dang right I came to get you," he panted. "I thought them hoodlums would be up to some dirty tricks, so I stuck around and watched." He jerked at Meek's arm. "Come on, Oliver, we got to get along." But Meek jerked his arm away. "Look what he's doin!" he shouted. "Just look at him!" The Prowler seemed to be bent on systematic destruction of the space ship. His jaws were ripping at the steel plating.... Ripping at it and tearing it away, peeling it off the frame as one might peel an orange. "Hey," howled Stiffy. "You can't do that. Get out of there, you danged...." The Prowler turned to look at them, a heavy power cable in its mouth. "You'll be electrocuted," yelped Stiffy. "Danged if it won't serve you right." But, far from being electrocuted, the Prowler seemed to be enjoying himself. He sucked at the power cable and his eyes eyes glowed blissfully. Stiffy flourished his pistol. "Get away," he yelled. "Get away or I'll blister your danged hide." [Illustration: _The Prowler whirled from the shattered ship._] Almost playfully the Prowler minced away from the ship, feet dancing. "He did it!" said Meek. "Did what?" Stiffy scowled bewilderedly. "Got away from that ship, just like you told him to." Stiffy snorted. "Don't ever kid yourself he did it because I told him to. He couldn't even hear me, probably. Living out here like this, he wouldn't have anything to hear with. Probably he's just trying to decide which one of us he'll catch first. Better be ready to kick you up some dust." The Prowler trotted toward them, head bobbing up and down. "Get going," Stiffy yelled at Meek and brought up his pistol. A blue shaft of light whipped out, smacked the Prowler in the head, but the Prowler didn't even falter in his stride. The energy charge seemed to have no power at all. It didn't even spatter ... it looked as if the blue pencil of raging death was boring straight into the spread of forehead between the monstrous eyes. "Run, you danged fool," Stiffy screeched at Meek. "I can't hold him off." But Meek didn't run ... instead he sprang straight into the Prowler's path, arm upraised. "Stop!" he yelled. III The Prowler skidded to a stop, his metal hooves leaving scratches on the solid rock. For a moment the three of them stood stock still, Stiffy's jaw hanging in astonishment. Meek reached out a hand and patted the Prowler's massive shoulder. "Good boy," he said. "Good boy." "Come away from there!" Stiffy yelled in sudden terror. "Just one good gulp and that guy would have you." "Ah, shucks," said Meek, "he won't hurt anybody. He's only hungry, that's all." "That," declared Stiffy, "is just what I'm afraid of." "You don't understand," insisted Meek. "He isn't hungry for us. He's starved for energy. Give him another shot from the gun." Stiffy stared at the gun hanging in his hand. "You're sure it wouldn't make him sore?" he asked. "Gosh, no," said Meek. "That's what he wants. He soaks it up. Didn't you notice how the beam went right into him, without spattering or anything. And the way he sucked that power cable. He drained your ship of every drop of energy it had." "He did what?" yelped Stiffy. "He drained the ship of energy. That's what he lives on. That's why he chased you. He wanted you to keep on shooting." Stiffy clapped a hand to his forehead. "We're sunk for certain, now," he declared. "There might have been a chance to get back with just a few plates ripped off the ship. But with all the energy gone...." "Hey, Stiffy," yelled Meek, "take a look at this." Stiffy moved nearer, cautiously. "What you got now?" he demanded irritably. "These marks on his shoulder," said Meek. His gloved finger shook excitedly as he pointed. "They're the same kind of marks as were on those stones I read about in the book. Marks no one could read. Fellow who wrote the book figured they were made by some other race that had visited Juno. Maybe a race from outside the Solar System, even." "Good gravy," said Stiffy, in awe, "you don't think...." "Sure, I do," Meek declared with the air of a man who is sure of his knowledge. "A race came here one time and they had the Prowler along. For some reason they left him. Maybe he was just a robot and they didn't have room for him, or maybe something happened to them...." "Say," said Stiffy, "I bet you that's just what he is. A robot. Attuned to thought waves. That's why he minds you." "That's what I figured," Meek agreed. "Thought waves would be the same, no matter who thought them ... human being or a ... well ... or something else." A sudden thought struck Stiffy. "Maybe them guys found the Lost Mine! By cracky, that would be something, wouldn't it? Maybe this critter could lead us to it." "Maybe?" Meek said doubtfully. Meek patted the Prowler's rocky shoulder gently, filled with wonder. In some unguessed time, in some unknown sector of space, the Prowler had been fashioned by an alien people. For some reason they had made him, for some reason they had left him here. Abandonment or purpose? Meek shook his head. That would be something to puzzle over later, something to roll around in his brain on some monotonous flight into the maw of space. Space! Startled at the thought clanging on his brain he jerked a quick glance upward, saw the bleak stars staring at him. Eyes that seemed to be laughing at him, cruel, ironic laughter. "Stiffy," he whispered. "Stiffy, I just thought of something." "Yeah, what is it?" Stark terror walked in Meek's words. "My oxygen tank is better than half gone. And the ship is wrecked...." "Cripes," said Stiffy, "I guess we just forgot. We sure are behind the eight ball. Somehow we got to get back to Asteroid City. And we got to get there quick." Meek's eyes brightened. "Stiffy, maybe.... Maybe we could ride the Prowler." Stiffy backed away. But Meek reached out and grasped his arm. "Come on. It's the only way, Stiffy. We have to get there and the Prowler can take us." "But ... but ... but...." Stiffy stammered. "Give me a leg up," Meek ordered. Stiffy complied and Meek leaped astride the broad metal back, reached down and hauled Stiffy aboard. "Get going, you flea-bitten nag!" Meek yipped, in sudden elation. There was reason for elation. Not until that moment had he stopped to consider the Prowler might object to being ridden. Might consider it an insult. The Prowler apparently was astonished, but that was all. He shook his head in bewilderment and weaved his neck around as if he wasn't quite sure just what to do. But at least he hadn't started to take the place apart. "Giddap!" yelled Stiffy, bringing the butt of his pistol down. The Prowler jigged a little, then gathered himself together and started. The landscape blurred with speed as he leaped a mighty boulder, skipped along a narrow ledge around a slick-faced mountain, skidded a hairpin turn. Meek and Stiffy fought desperately to hang on. The metal back was slick and broad and there weren't any handholds. They bounced and thumped, almost fell off a dozen times. "Stiffy," yelled Meek, "how do we know he's taking us to Asteroid City?" "Don't fret about that," said Stiffy. "He knows where we want to go. He read our mind." "I hope so," Meek said, prayerfully. The Prowler whished around a right angle turn on a narrow ledge and the distant peaks wheeled sickeningly against the sky. Meek lay flat on his belly and hugged the Prowler's sides. The mountains whistled past. He stole a look at the jagged peaks on the near horizon and they looked like a tight board fence. * * * * * Oliver Meek fought manfully to get back his composure as the Prowler pranced down the main street of Asteroid City. The sidewalks were lined with hundreds of staring faces, faces that drooped in astonishment and disbelief. Stiffy was yelling at someone. "Now, doggone you, will you believe there is a Prowler?" And the man he yelled at didn't have a word to say, just stood and stared. In the swarm of faces, Meek saw those of the Reverend Harold Brown and Andrew Smith and, almost as if in a dream, he waved jauntily to them. At least, he hoped the wave was jaunty. Wouldn't do to let them know his knees were too weak to hold him up. Smith waved back and shouted something, but the Reverend Brown's jaw hung open and he seemed too wonder-struck to move. This, thought Meek, is the kind of things you read about. The conquering hero coming home astride his mighty charger. Only the conquering hero, he remembered with a sudden twinge, usually was a young lad who sat straight in the saddle instead of an old man with shoulders hunched from thirty years of poring over dusty ledgers. A man was stepping out into the street, a man who carried a gun in hand and suddenly Meek realized they were abreast of the Silver Moon. The armed man was Blacky Hoffman. Here, thought Meek, is where I get it. This is what I get for playing the big shot ... for being a smart alec, for remembering how cards shouldn't be dealt and for shooting a man's gun out of his hand and letting myself be talked into being a marshal. But he sat stiff and as straight as he could on the Prowler and kept his eyes on Hoffman. That was the only way to do. That was the way all the heroes did in the stories he had read. And doggone, he was a hero. Whether he liked it or not, he was one. The street was hushed with sudden tension and the very air seemed to be crackling with the threat of direful happenings. Hoffman's voice rang crisply through the stillness. "Go for your blasters, Meek!" "I have no blasters," Meek told him calmly. "Your hoodlums took them from me." "Borrow Stiffy's," snapped Hoffman, and added, with a nasty laugh: "You won't need them long." Meek nodded, watching Hoffman narrowly. Slowly he reached back for Stiffy's gun. He felt it in his hand, wrapped his fingers tightly around it. Funny, he thought, how calm he was. Like he had been in the Silver Moon that night. There was something about a gun. It changed him, turned him into another man. He didn't have a chance, he knew. Hoffman would shoot before he could ever get the gun around. But despite that, he felt foolishly sure.... Hoffman's gun flashed in the weak sunlight, blooming with blue brilliance. For an instant, a single fraction of a second, Meek saw the flash of the beam straight in his eyes, but even before he could involuntarily flinch, the beam had bent. True to its mark, it would have drilled Meek straight between the eyes ... but it didn't go straight to its mark. Instead, it bent and slapped itself straight between the Prowler's eyes. And the Prowler danced a little jig of happiness as the blue spear of energy knifed into its metal body. "Cripes," gasped Stiffy, "he draws it! He ain't satisfied with just taking it when you give it to him. He reaches out and gets it. Just like a lightning rod reaching up and grabbing lightning." Puzzlement flashed across Hoffman's face, then incredulity and finally something that came close to fear. The gun's beam snapped off and his hands sagged. The gun dropped in the dust. The Prowler stood stock still. "Well, Hoffman?" Meek asked quietly and his voice seemed to run all along the street. Hoffman's face twitched. "Get down and fight like a man," he rasped. "No," said Meek, "I won't do that. Because it wouldn't be man to man. It would be me against your entire gang." Hoffman started to back away, slowly, step by furtive step. Step by step the Prowler stalked him there in the silent street. Then Hoffman, with a scream of terror, broke and ran. "Get him!" Meek roared at the Prowler. The Prowler, with one lightning lunge, one flip of its whip-like neck, got him. Got him, gently, as Meek had meant he should. * * * * * Howling in mingled rage and terror, Hoffman dangled by the seat of his pants from the Prowler's beak. Neatly as any circus horse, the Prowler wheeled and trotted back to the Silver Moon, carrying Hoffman with a certain gentle grace that was not lost upon the crowd. Hoffman quieted and the crowd's jeers rang against the dome. The Prowler pranced a bit, jiggled Hoffman up and down. Meek raised a hand for silence, spoke to Hoffman. "O.K., Mr. Hoffman, call out your men. All of them. Out into the middle of the street. Where we can see them." Hoffman swore at him. "Jiggle him some," Meek told the Prowler. The Prowler jiggled him and Hoffman bawled and clawed at empty air. "Damn you," shrieked Hoffman, "get out into the street. All of you. Just like he said." No one stirred. "Blaine," yelled Hoffman. "Get out there! You, too Smithers. Loomis. Blake!" They came slowly, shame-faced. At a command from Meek they unholstered their blasters and heaved them in a pile. The Prowler deposited Hoffman with them. Meek saw Andrew Smith standing at the edge of the sidewalk and nodded to him. "There you are, Mr. Smith. Rounded up, just like you wanted them." "Neat," said Stiffy, "but not gaudy." Slowly, carefully, bones aching, Meek slid from the Prowler's back, was surprised his legs would hold him up. "Come in and have a drink," yelled a dozen voices all at once. "Bet your life," agreed Stiffy, licking his chops. Men were slapping Meek on the back, yelling at him. Yelling friendly things, calling him an old he-wolf. He tried to thrust out his chest but didn't succeed too well. He hoped they wouldn't insist on his drinking of lot of _bocca_. A hand tugged at Meek's elbow. It was the Reverend Brown. "You aren't going to leave that beast out here all alone?" he asked. "No telling what he might do." "Ah, shucks," protested Stiffy, "he's gentle as a kitten. Stands without hitching." But even as he spoke, the Prowler lifted his head, almost as if he were sniffing, started down the street at a swinging trot. "Hey," yelled Stiffy, "come back here, you cross-eyed crow-bait!" The Prowler didn't falter in his stride. He went even faster. Cold fear gripped Meek by the throat. He tried to speak and gulped instead. He'd just thought of something. The power plant that supplied Asteroid City with its power and light, the very oxygen it breathed, was down that way. A power plant and an alien robot that was starved for energy! "My stars!" gasped Meek. He shook off the minister's hand and galloped down the street, shrieking at the Prowler. But the Prowler had no thought of stopping. Panting, Meek slowed from a gallop to a trot, then to a labored walk. Behind him, he heard Stiffy puffing along. Behind Stiffy trailed practically the entire population of Asteroid City. Far ahead came the sound of rending steel and crashing structure as the Prowler ripped the plant apart to get at the juice. Stiffy gained Meek's side and panted at him. "Cripes, they'll crucify us for this. We got to get him out of there." "How?" asked Meek. "Danged if I know," said Stiffy. One side of the plant was a mass of tangled wreckage, surrounding a hole out of which protruded the Prowler's hind quarters. Terrified workers and maintenance men were running for their lives. Live wires spat and crackled with flaming energy. IV Meek and Stiffy halted a half block away, breath whistling in their throats. The Prowler's tail, protruding from the hole in the side of the plant, twitched happily. Meek regarded the scene with doleful thoughts. "I wish," Stiffy declared, "we'd stayed out there and died. It would have been easier than what's liable to happen to us now." Feet thumped behind them and a hand grabbed Meek's shoulder, grabbed it. It was Andrew Smith, a winded, apoplectic Andrew Smith. "What are you going to do?" he shouted at Meek. Meek swallowed hard, tried to make his voice even. "Just studying over the situation, Mr. Smith. I'll figure out something in a minute." "Sure he will," insisted Stiffy. "Leave him alone. Give him time. He always does what he says he'll do. He said he'd round up Blacky for you, and he did. He went out single-handed and captured the Prowler. He ..." "Yeah," yelled Smith, "and he said the Prowler would stand without hitching, too. And did he stand? I ask you ..." "He didn't say that," Stiffy interrupted, testily, "I said that." "It don't make a bit of difference who said it," shrieked Smith. "I got stock in that plant there. And the Prowler's ruining it. He's jeopardizing the life of this whole city. And it's all your fault. You brought him here. I'll sue you, the both of you, so help me...." "Ah, shut up," snapped Stiffy. "Who can think with you blabbering around?" Smith danced in rage. "Who's blabbering? I got a good mind to...." He doubled up his fist and started toward Stiffy. And once again Oliver Meek did something he never would have thought of doing back on Earth. He put out his gloved hand, deliberately, and pushed Smith in the face. Pushed hard, so hard that Smith thumped down in the dust of the street and sat there, silenced by surprise. Without even looking back, Meek strode purposefully down the street toward the Prowler. What he meant to do he did not know. What he possibly could do he had no idea. But anything was better than standing there while the crowd screamed at him and men shook their fists at him. Why, they might even lynch him! He shivered at the thought. But men still did things like that. Especially when someone monkeyed around with the very things they depended on for life out here in naked space. Maybe they'd turn him out on Juno with only an hour or two of oxygen. Maybe they'd.... Stiffy was yelling at him. "Come back, you danged old fool...." Suddenly the ground leaped and bucked beneath Meek's feet. The power plant reeled before his startled eyes and then, somehow, he was on his back, watching the dome wheel and weave above him. Fighting for breath that had been knocked out of him, he clawed his way to his knees, tried to stand erect, but the ground still was crawling with motion. It was like an earthquake, he told himself, startled that he could even think. But it couldn't be an earthquake. Juno didn't have earthquakes, there was no reason for Juno to have earthquakes. The little planetoid eons ago had cooled through and through, each rock, each strata had found its place. Juno was dead, dead as the reaches of space itself, and earthquakes don't happen on dead planets. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw the Prowler had backed out of the hole in the power plant, was standing with four legs spread wide, bracing himself. His long neck was stretched high in the air and the ugly, toothy head had the look of quick alertness. Meek gained his feet, stood tottering, keeping upright by some fancy footwork. The Prowler started toward him, legs gathering speed, heading down the street. With a hoarse whoop, Meek steadied himself, half crouched and held his breath, leaped, leaped so hard he almost vaulted over the beast's broad back. Sprawling, he scrambled into position astride the running robot, saw Stiffy leaping at him. Quickly he shot out a hand, grasped Stiffy and hauled him aboard. Ahead of them the crowd rushed for safety, leaving a broad avenue for the storming Prowler and his two riders. "Get the locks open," yelled Stiffy. "Here we come!" The crowd took up the shriek. "Get the locks open!" * * * * * The Prowler swept down the street, hoofs clattering like hammer blows. Ahead of them the inner lock swung open. As the Prowler bulleted into the entrance tunnel, the outer lock swung out and for a few wild seconds air screamed and howled, rushing from the city into the vacuum of space. In frantic haste, Meek and Stiffy worked with their helmets, getting them clamped down. Then they were out in the open, the gleaming city behind them. Less than half a mile away loomed a massive boulder towering a hundred feet or more above the level of the canyon floor. The Prowler made a beeline for it. "Oliver," yelled Stiffy, "that thing wasn't there before. Look, it almost blocks the canyon!" The boulder was black but it crawled with a greenish glow, a faint network of somber fire. The breath caught in Meek's throat. "Stiffy," he whispered. Behind him, Stiffy almost sobbed in excitement. "Yeah, I know. It's a meteor. And it's lousy with radium." "It just fell," said Meek, voice unsteady. "That's what shook up the place. Wonder is it didn't crack the dome wide open." "We better jump for it," urged Stiffy, "if we don't want to get plumb burned. Can't go near that thing without lead sheathing." Meek flung himself sidewise, throwing up his arms to shield his helmet, struck on his shoulders and rolled. Slowly, benumbed from the fall, he crept out of the shadow of a high rock wall into the starlight. Stiffy was sitting on the ground, rubbing his shins. "Barked them up some," he admitted. Up the valley the Prowler was arching its back and rubbing against the green-glowing boulder. "Just like a dad-blamed cat that has found some catnip," said Stiffy. "Must sort of like that radium." He rose slowly, dusted off his suit. "Well," he suggested, "let's you and me go into action." "Action?" "Sure. Let's go back and file us a claim on that meteor. Don't need to worry about anybody else jumping it, cause every dad-blamed one of them is scared speechless of the Prowler. They won't go near the meteor long as he's around." Meek stared at the meteor speculatively. "That's worth a lot of money, isn't it, Stiffy? Filled with radium like that." "Bet your boots," said Stiffy cheerfully. "We go fifty-fifty on her. Split equal ways. We're pardners." "Tell you what you do," Meek said slowly. "You take it all. Just take out enough to fix up the damage back there and call that my share." Stiffy's jaw drooped. "Say, what you getting at?" "I'm leaving," said Meek. "Good gravy! Leaving! And just when we made us a strike." "You don't understand," said Meek. "I didn't come out here to find radium. Or to arrest gangs. Or even to capture an Asteroid Prowler. I just came out to look around. Nice and quiet. Didn't want to bother anybody. Didn't want anybody to bother me." "Doggone it," said Stiffy, "and I was just figuring maybe, soon as we cleaned up the radium, we might get that Prowler to lead us to the Lost Mine." * * * * * Meek brightened. "I have a hunch I know where that Lost Mine is, Stiffy. Remember there was a cut-back in the cliff near where we found the Prowler. Well, when I first saw him, he was in that place. Got a hunch maybe that's the mine." Stiffy grinned. "So you're sticking with me." Meek shook his head. "No, I'm still leaving." "Just like that?" said Stiffy. Stiffy held out his hand, "O.K., if that's what you want to do. I'll bank your half in the First Martian back on Earth. Leave my address there. Might want to get in touch with me some time." Meek gripped his hand. "You don't need to do that. Take all of it. Just see the plant's fixed up." Stiffy's eyes shone queerly, moistly in the starlight. "Shucks, there's enough for both of us. More than enough." His voice was rough. "Now get along with you." Meek started to walk away. "Goodbye, Stiffy," he called. "So long," Stiffy shouted. Meek hesitated. It seemed there should have been more he could have said. Some way to let Stiffy know he liked him. Some way to tell him he was a friend in a life which had known few friends. He tried to think of ways to put what he felt in words, but there wasn't any way, none that didn't sound awkward and sentimental. He wheeled about, headed for the space port. His feet went faster and faster, until finally he was running. He had to get out of here, he told himself, before he got into another jam. His luck was stretched too thin already. A fellow just couldn't go on having luck like that. And besides, there was all of space to roam in, other places to see. That was what he had set out to do. To see the Solar System in his own ship, to do all the things he'd dreamed about back in the cubby hole at Lunar Exports, Inc. And he was going to do just that, he promised himself. Although he hoped the next stop would be more peaceable. Oliver Meek sighed happily--_this was the life_. 
60846	----	A GREAT DAY FOR THE IRISH By A. M. LIGHTNER _Watchdogs have to be watched or they keep everything out--including our friends!_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Bridget Kelly stood at the foot of the rocket lift and watched the loading operation. The freight had long since been inspected and stowed, and now it was the passengers' turn. Bridget was glad that for once she was not responsible. Let others worry and snoop. This time she was a passenger herself, starward bound. Inspected, passed and okayed, she could have the pleasure of watching others squirm. Like that beauty coming aboard with the furs and the orchid. She wouldn't be allowed to keep the orchid, of course. Bridget grinned as she saw the flower tossed into a trash can and imagined the words the beauty was mouthing. The man beside her sported a boutonniere. Yes, there it went into the can. He was still smiling, probably cracking wise. Bridget had separated so many travelers from so many items that she could tell what the passenger was going to say before he said it. Most people knew that strenuous efforts were being made to keep pests and epidemics away from Earth. Ever since the beginnings of space travel, the quarantine of incoming ships at the Moon had been rigidly observed. But the fact that plagues could also spread _from_ Earth seldom registered on the public's mind. Bridget was all too well aware of it. For several years she had labored to that end in the Quarantine Service. Now that her savings had accumulated and her abilities as an entomologist were recognized, she was about to board one of the shining ships herself. There were raised eyebrows when her destination was known. An entomologist going to New Eden--a planet where insects were at a minimum. But Bridget only smiled. She knew what she wanted. She was bound for the frontier, where men are men and women are scarce. The speaker blared. The countdown was beginning. "Fifteen minutes!" rasped the mechanical voice. "Fifteen minutes to blast-off!" * * * * * She took a last look at the planet of her birth and squeezed into the lift. The few remaining passengers pushed in with her. A man in a red waistcoat was commiserating with the woman beside him. "Don't let the officials get you down," he said. "We'll have to put up with them for the journey. But on New Eden, I hear, the conditions are so good they hardly need any regulations at all." "It isn't that," sniffed his friend. "It's just that you gave it to me and I was hoping to wear it tonight." "Perhaps I can buy you something in hydroponics. I had no idea they were so touchy or I'd have had the orchid fumigated." Bridget felt the scorn of the official for the general public. "If you're going to New Eden, you ought to know we want to keep it that way." The red waistcoat looked down at her. "Oh, officialdom without stripes?" he said. "Or are you an old hand? Perhaps you can explain the deal before we get there." So he _was_ the type that cracked wise, and she had put her foot in it right at the beginning. "I've never been off Earth before," she admitted. "I read up on it all first." The lift was at the lock door, and she slipped through without looking back. The speaker was croaking "Ten minutes to go" as she hurried to her cabin and prepared for takeoff. She'd have to do better than this or the trip would be a washout. Better just concentrate on enjoying it ... the new experiences ... the fascination of travel. The jets roared and Bridget Kelly blacked out. Several hours later she had recovered enough to spruce up, take the prescribed dose of covitron against space sickness, and make her way to the lounge. She found the table setting with her name on it and had hardly sat down before a familiar voice began at her ear. "Sure and if it isn't Bridget Kelly, and it's a long time I've been waiting for herself." She looked up into the same laughing eyes, only this time they were above an emerald-green waistcoat. "Still determined that New Eden shall not be polluted by snakes? Oh, excuse me, that was St. Patrick. You're worried about bugs." She laughed in spite of herself and glanced at the place card next hers. "Mr. Patch Maguire," it read. "I didn't mean to sound stuffy," she said. "It's just that most people don't realize how important it is ... how much trouble just a few insects ... well, I've worked at it and I ought to know." "Ah, an official entomologist. But in that case, why New Eden? Or are you insurance against people like Carrie and me who might import something?" "You never can tell. Something may turn up. It's hard to imagine a planet without any insects at all." "Eden's remarkable that way," put in the young officer sitting across from them. "No stinging bugs or parasites. Makes everything a lot more comfortable. Still, it's pretty new. Only a small part developed so far." "So we've insurance against the unknown in Bridget Kelly." "And what might _you_ be insurance against, Mr. Maguire?" she countered. * * * * * The officer stared. "Don't you folks know each other? Mr. Maguire's a grower of fancy plants. Sort of goes together ... plants and insects!" He laughed. "Well, it looks like the rest of our table won't show up for this meal." "What happened to the lady without the orchid? She was with you, wasn't she?" Bridget asked. "Carrie," said Patch Maguire, "is one of those unfortunates on whom covitron does not work. She won't be with anyone for the duration. I was just hoping our whole table was not similarly afflicted." "It's a pity," mused the young officer. "So many people make the flight across space only once. If they did it more often, they might get accustomed." "Don't you take covitron?" Bridget asked, beginning to wonder how soon she should repeat the dose. Some people said it made you sleepy, and she certainly didn't want that with things just getting started ... and Patch Maguire ... Patch Maguire.... Suddenly a window opened in her mind. She saw a letter with short punching sentences. "You think you can get away with this high-handed, overbearing, totally uncalled-for destruction of property? I'll take it to the top! I'll see you idiots in hell ... or at least out of the Service!" Patch Maguire protesting the destruction of his shipment of seeds imported from Regulus V. No amount of explanation that the seeds had been found to harbor a blight which, once let loose on Earth.... Patch Maguire had a reputation as an authority on crossbreeding and mutation of plants ... and also for throwing his weight around. It was several years ago, but Bridget remembered the consternation in the department. She realized that Maguire and the officer were talking. They were agreeing that space sickness was only a matter of psychology, and that if you just didn't think about it, no covitron was necessary. She hastily swallowed another pill with her coffee and hoped the coffee would keep her awake. They toured the ship together, she and Patch. They marveled at the scene from the viewport and chatted with the captain in the control room. The steward inquired about his taste in music and stereo, and he even gave advice to the gardeners in hydroponics. All doors were open to Patch, and there were murmurs about the "handsome couple" as they moved through the lounge. By the end of the trip they were making plans for New Eden. Patch insisted that Bridget was in the wrong profession and she agreed that the science of agriculture might be more rewarding than entomology under certain conditions. At the farewell dinner, Patch gave her a bouquet he'd had made up especially by the gardeners. But she was more interested in the small green leaf he wore in his lapel. He took it out and insisted on fastening it in her hair. "Sure and it's a shamrock!" he cried, as he arranged it. "And have you forgotten what day it is tomorrow?" "It's the day we land," Bridget replied. "But what day that is in our time or ship's time ... it's too confusing!" "It's St. Patrick's Day, that's what it is!" he said. "A great day for the Irish and a great day for us. And I wouldn't be without the shamrock on St. Patrick's Day! They should call the planet New Ireland, that they should. Wasn't Ireland the garden island, all green and fruitful and with no snakes? And I hear this planet's the garden planet and with no insects either to make life miserable. But let you and me be living there a while and we'll make it New Ireland for sure!" And he planted a kiss on her mouth without a thought of who was looking at them. * * * * * As their tablemates drank their health, Bridget blushed and her eyes shone, and after dinner Patch escorted her to the stereo where they sat very close together in the dark. But as the pictures flashed across the screen and as Patch's arm went across her shoulder and drew her close, her mind was besieged by an army of little doubts. Shamrock ... shamrock ... what had she read about the shamrock? "Patch," she whispered. "Where did you get it?" "Get what?" Patch murmured, bending over to kiss her. "The shamrock, Patch? I don't believe they have it in hydroponics." "Sure, they must have it." Patch's lips brushed hers and she found it difficult to think clearly. "I never saw it there. Patch! Are you sure?" "Saw what? I don't see anything but you. That's enough for me." "About the shamrock, Patch!" "It looks beautiful on you. Sure and I wouldn't be without a shamrock on St. Patrick's Day." Bridget gave up. She lay back in the sanctuary of his arm and basked in the warm feeling of his lips on her hair. But the doubts kept crawling about in her mind. What was the matter with her? Couldn't she be happy when everything was perfect? Had she been a cut-and-dried inspector for too many years? But she remembered the words of Professor Schwarzkopf, the day she received her degree: "The inspectors are the watchdogs of the planets. Without them, all that man has built can be destroyed." When Patch had kissed her good night outside her cabin and his footsteps had died away along the corridor, she crept out into the passage and made her way to hydroponics. "Why, no," said the chief gardener, "we never carry clover of any sort. Why do you ask?" On her way to the control room, Bridget tried not to think. She found the young officer from her table on duty with the captain, and the two men listened in surprise as she outlined her fears. "I don't want to accuse Mr. Maguire of anything," she said. "I'm sure he doesn't realize how serious--and of course there may be nothing to it. It's just that I remember that shamrocks harbor the golden nematode--that is, in the soil around the roots. And it seems likely that if Mr. Maguire has live shamrocks--and I remember what a serious plague they once brought over from Ireland to America...." The captain pulled his mustache. "It's clearly against regulations. I can't imagine how he'd get it past inspection. But then, Maguire's a very persistent man and he's got pull in odd places. I don't want to rouse the ire of the Irish, but I see your point." "Couldn't you search his cabin--without his knowing I said to? Oh, I'm sure he'd be very angry. But if I could only look at his plants, then I'd be sure if they're safe. You must have ways of getting in--if there should be a short circuit or something in his cabin." "Oh, we have ways," the captain said. "Don't we, Lieutenant?" "Perhaps at breakfast," suggested the young officer. "If Miss Kelly could arrange to make it as leisurely as possible." "And right afterward you might go to the lieutenant's cabin--with your instruments and without Mr. Maguire." * * * * * She had no trouble in making her breakfast leisurely. She could hardly choke it down. Under Patch's admiring gaze and flagrant approval she was uncomfortably conscious of treachery. She left as soon as the protracted meal was over, even though she knew it would give him the opportunity to discover the rape of his plants. The lieutenant was waiting for her in his cabin. He sat behind his desk eyeing a motley collection of clover in an assortment of little jars and boxes. Bridget brought out her pocket 'scope and without a word pulled the first specimen up by the roots and began to examine it. The lieutenant watched in fascination. "It's a good thing Mr. Maguire can't see you now," he said. "He'd take an entirely different tone from the one I've been hearing lately." "I'm hoping he doesn't find out," she muttered. "What he doesn't know.... Oh! Oh! Look here! A fine big cyst! Now if they're all like this...." The lieutenant's face took on a look of respect. He came around from behind his desk and peered over her shoulder. "Found something already?" he asked. Bridget pushed the scope under his nose. "See that?" she said. "In the right-hand corner." "You mean that lump? Doesn't look very dangerous." "No, it doesn't. But it's a nematode cyst, all right. That little brown lump, if turned loose in the soil--give it a few years and you'll have a real pest on your hands." "You don't say. We'd better get rid of it right away. Do you think there's any more?" "That's just what I'm going to find out." But before she could move to the desk for the other containers there was a sound of scuffling outside, the door was flung violently open, and a rich, Irish voice proclaimed in righteous anger: "So here you are, conspiring against me! Both the culprits red-handed! And my shamrocks, my little plants, my babies! Thank heavens I got here in time!" The lieutenant moved to intercept him. "I beg your pardon, sir, but these plants are in quarantine, and if you have any others we haven't found--" "You're no true daughter of Ireland, Bridget Kelly. And I'm fortunate to have found you out in time, false and faithless as you are!" "Now, now," cautioned the lieutenant, getting between Maguire and the desk. "She was only doing her duty. You should see the things she's been showing me in her microscope. A menace to the whole planet!" "Don't you believe a word of it!" thundered Maguire. "These inspectors are full of fears and fancies. Puffed up with their own importance. And I'll thank you to give me back my plants that you stole out of my cabin." "I'm afraid I can't do that," the lieutenant said. "Not until Miss Kelly has examined each one--and then only the ones that get a clean bill of health." And he began to collect the little pots and remove them as far as possible from Maguire's reach. "Well, come along then, Bridget--give them the bill of health," Maguire ordered. "You'll do that for me, I'm sure. And I don't know what all the fuss is about either, all over a few little plants, and shamrocks at that." "The few little plants have a few little cysts all through their roots," said Bridget, whose temper was wearing thin. "I've only looked at one so far, but as nice an infestation of the golden nematode I've seldom seen. It's got to go down the incinerator." "The incinerator!" screamed Maguire. "Woman! My shamrocks! All the way from Ireland!" "If you hadn't spent your whole life circumventing regulations and pulling wires, this wouldn't have happened. Why didn't you get them treated and certified before coming aboard?" * * * * * "Because there wasn't time, that's why!" Patch shouted. "They only came from Ireland as I was leaving for the ship. If it hadn't been for a snooping, sniveling worry-wart--all about a worm that you can't even see...." "You can see the results right enough!" Bridget's voice was rising to match his. "Did you ever hear of the Long Island potato? The best on the East Coast they were. The golden nematode ruined Long Island for potatoes. That's what the shamrock did for America! That's a sneaking, treacherous worm for you!" "And who would want to grow potatoes on Long Island, built up into a city as it is?" "They're going to want to grow potatoes on New Eden, and I'm here to see they can." "If that's all that's worrying you, I'll breed you a nematode-resistant potato. And now I'll thank you to let me take my shamrocks and make an end to this disgraceful scene." But when he looked around, he found the lieutenant had quietly removed himself with the plants, and the door of the cabin was crowded with interested passengers. "So you think you've put one over on me!" Patch shouted. "It's a good thing I found out in time how I was being deceived by a pair of eyes and a mouth that says one thing and means another!" "And I suppose you're the soul of honor! With no thought of responsibility to your fellow man! You've had your way all your life, and it's lucky I found _that_ out, too--before--before...." But he was gone, elbowing his way through the crowd, and the onlookers drifted away, embarrassed at the sight of the stormy girl who shouted hysterically after him. Bridget slammed the door and collapsed into a chair. "I'm sorry for the noise," she apologized when the officer returned. "I'd better finish checking the plants before it's time to land." "Never mind the plants," the lieutenant told her. "I've put them where he won't find them in a hurry. As a matter of fact, we aren't going to land. We're in orbit now and they're to send a rocket shuttle. They aren't worried about what we're bringing in this time. It's what we might take out. There's a howling plague on New Eden after all. Several of our passengers have changed their minds about landing." "A plague?" said Bridget stupidly. It was hard to concentrate on anything more deadly than the golden nematode. "Oh, nothing you or I could catch. Something to do with agriculture and the plants. Which reminds me, I've a batch of telegrams for you. The authorities are delighted to learn we've a registered entomologist aboard. Very few of them have come this way." By the time Bridget had read the sheaf of papers, she had made the transition from the world of shipboard romance to her accustomed world of science and order. There was work to be done. Her talents were needed in a dozen places at once. She left orders for the confiscated clovers to be destroyed and went to her cabin to pack. She was on the first shuttle to leave the ship. * * * * * The weeks that followed were filled with hard work with test tube and microscope, at her desk and in the field. The majority of her co-workers were men, but none had time to look for a laughing eye or a smiling mouth. The beautiful garden planet of New Eden was being reduced to a desert by a mysterious _something_ that was swiftly attacking all the cultivated areas. Starvation was looming and there was talk of hasty evacuation. The situation was passing out of control. The villain could not be isolated. Was it an insect, a virus, a chemical in the soil? Some of the few native insects were caught and subjected to experiment. The soils were analyzed and tested. Those were not the answer. The only thing certain was that the previously lush brown loam was turning to a yellow, chalky sand, and everything that grew in it withered and died. Bridget visited farm after farm and trudged from field to field. She looked at worried faces and tried to think of words of encouragement. Back at the laboratory she studied her specimens far into the night and fell asleep at her desk. She was too tired to think about Patch Maguire, who, she concluded, had never left the spaceship. What would a grower of gardens, a breeder of plants do in a spreading desert? He had gone on to some more flourishing planet. She was called to the office one day. "I hear there's a farm that claims they don't have the plague," said the harassed young scientist behind the desk. "Better get over there and see if it's any more than a rumor. Take the heli and bring back all the usual samples. Here's the directions on getting there." He shoved a torn piece of paper at her and turned back to his cluttered desk. Bridget picked up her collecting kit and climbed into the cab of the machine. By this time she knew her way about the settlements. Without doubt, she told herself, this farm was on the outskirts of civilization, in some valley as yet untouched by the plague. But long before she reached the limits of cultivated land, she could see her destination. It stood out like an oasis in the desert, a little patch of green between a dried-up cornfield and an expanse of stricken wheat. Bridget brought her heli down on a velvety lawn in front of a small cottage and walked, unbelieving, to the door. A shout from within welcomed her and she entered a clean and simple kitchen-parlor. The owner of the one healthy farm in New Eden was busy in the attached greenhouse. As she glimpsed the red waistcoat dangling from a hook, Bridget screamed, and Patch Maguire came through the greenhouse door, a flower pot in one hand, trowel in the other. "And if it isn't the worm-hunter herself!" he cried. "The czar of the spaceways! The dandelion dictator! And I was wondering how long it would take you to find me out." "But you--" she gasped. "You couldn't--you wouldn't--aren't supposed to be here!" "And why not?" he countered. "I'm not like Carrie, she'd rather go on too sick to eat in space than face starvation on this planet. And then the bargain I was offered for this place--you wouldn't believe it! All modern conveniences and they were practically giving it away. Besides, what had I to fear with the best entomologist in five solar systems working for the Department of Agriculture? Sure, you'll be having the problem solved in no time!" "Don't be giving me that blarney!" Bridget said. "You need only look out the window to know we've solved nothing at all. And you sitting here crowing to yourself! You've been breeding plague-resistant plants, that's what you've done, and keeping them all to yourself! It's a disgrace!" Patch began to laugh, and the more he laughed, the angrier Bridget got. "You should be ashamed!" she shouted. "The whole planet dying and you sitting here growing greener all the time!" "And that's the way it's been," he assured her. "This place was dying on me, too. But only the last few days it's taken a new lease and I'm at my wit's end to explain it." "You mean you don't _want_ to explain it. You're hoarding the secret, and it's a shameful thing!" "Woman, you're crazy!" he bellowed at her. "I'm no magician to breed a plague-resistant plant overnight. It takes patience and many seasons, and I've only just settled in. I put a few things in the garden and stirred things up in the potting shed. Here, come along--you can see for yourself." * * * * * He drew her through the cottage, pointing out the advantages of the kitchen so near the greenhouse. She walked about the paths and felt of the rich brown soil without a streak of yellow, and finally her eyes fell upon some little low leaves by the back step. "Patch," she demanded, "what's that?" "You've the eagle eye, to be sure. What do you suppose it is?" "It's clover," she said. "Shamrock to you. Surely not the same shamrock! I gave strict orders!" Before he could stop her, she had tugged a plant up by the roots and pulled out her pocket microscope as she bent over it. "Sure, they were so busy worrying about the plague here, they forgot all about the little plague from Earth. And all I wanted was a bit of old Ireland to bring with me. A few little cysts couldn't be that important. And you've got to admit that's what I've got--a green island!" "The idiots!" screamed Bridget. "The irresponsible, shirking, doublefaced--" Her hand went up and Patch dodged involuntarily, expecting her to throw shamrock, dirt and all right at his head. But her hand stopped in midair. "Patch!" Her voice fell to a whisper of incredulity. "I think I've got the answer here in my hand. Don't say a word till I'm sure, but get me soil samples from all over your place--there--and over there--and _hurry_!" Patch ran back and forth with the soil samples and Bridget looked in her microscope, and everywhere the golden nematode was teeming and nowhere was there a sign of the sinister yellow streaks. "Don't you see?" Bridget said. "Whatever it is, the nematodes are killing it." "It will take some experimenting to prove it, but Bridget, my girl, I believe you're right." "And while they're proving it, Patch, you and I are going to breed nematodes right here." And she had a vision of the golden horde, burrowing from Patch's land in all directions, bringing back health and sanity to the land. Whatever would Professor Schwarzkopf say? Dear Professor Schwarzkopf! Sometimes the watchdogs are too faithful. They keep out everyone--even our friends. And that was how New Eden was saved. And the nematodes prospered and the Maguires prospered and the shamrocks grew everywhere. And so there was nothing for it but to call the planet New Ireland. 
21670	----	EDISON'S CONQUEST OF MARS BY GARRETT P. SERVISS. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. LANGLEY SEARLES, Ph. D. CARCOSA HOUSE 1947 LOS ANGELES The special contents of this volume are copyright 1947 by CARCOSA HOUSE. FIRST EDITION [Transcriber's note: This is a Rule 6 Clearance. PG has not been able to find a U.S. Copyright Renewal] DEDICATED to GARRETT PUTMAN SERVISS A COSMOPOLITE IN TIME 1851-1929 TABLE OF CONTENTS _Introduction_ CHAPTER ONE _"Let Us Go To Mars"_ CHAPTER TWO _The Disintegrator_ CHAPTER THREE _The Congress of Nations_ CHAPTER FOUR _To Conquer Another World_ CHAPTER FIVE _The Footprint on the Moon_ CHAPTER SIX _The Monsters on the Asteroid_ CHAPTER SEVEN _A Planet of Gold_ CHAPTER EIGHT _"The Martians are Coming!"_ CHAPTER NINE _Journey's End_ CHAPTER TEN _The Great Smoke Barrier_ CHAPTER ELEVEN _The Earth Girl_ CHAPTER TWELVE _Retreat to Deimos_ CHAPTER THIRTEEN _There Were Giants in the Earth_ CHAPTER FOURTEEN _The Flood Gates of Mars_ CHAPTER FIFTEEN _Vengeance is Ours_ CHAPTER SIXTEEN _The Woman From Ceres_ CHAPTER SEVENTEEN _The Fearful Oaths of Colonel Smith_ CHAPTER EIGHTEEN _The Great Ovation_ _Bibliography_ ILLUSTRATIONS _"Like men, and yet not like men...."_ _"... rising out of the shadow of the globe...."_ _"A consultation in Wizard Edison's laboratory...."_ _"Through this the meteor had passed...."_ _"... the ruins of ... an ancient watch tower."_ _"... another of our ships ... was destroyed."_ _"Two of the Martians were stretched dead upon the ground."_ _"He might have been a match for twenty of us."_ _"... he proceeded to teach us ... words of his language."_ _"... approaching from the eastward a large airship...."_ _"... a human being here on Mars!"_ _"The gigantic statue of their leader is THE GREAT SPHINX!"_ _"It was a panic of giants."_ These illustrations are a selection of the best from the original newspaper installments and were redrawn for this volume by Bernard Manley, Jr., of Chicago, Illinois. INTRODUCTION If you picked up a magazine and read in it a story mentioning a passenger-carrying rocket driven by atomic power furnished by a substance prepared from uranium, you probably would not be greatly surprised. After all, such an invention is today but a step or two ahead of cold fact. But you might be surprised to learn that if this story was _A Columbus of Space_, the one I happen to have in mind, your grand-parents may well have read it before you were born--for _A Columbus of Space_ was published in _All-Story_ magazine in 1909, thirty years before the potentialities of U235 were realized, and nearly forty before the atomic bomb became a problem for people to think about. Did the author of this story simply make a lucky shot in the dark? Perhaps; but let me tell those who are inclined to think so that he was a Carnegie lecturer, a member of half-a-dozen learned societies, one of the first to write a book on Einstein's theory of relativity, and an internationally known figure in his specialty, astronomy. His name is Garrett Putman Serviss. He was born on March 24, 1851, at Sharon Springs, New York, of native New England stock. His interest in astronomy began as a boy, and was greatly stimulated when he began to examine the beauties of the heavens through a small telescope, the gift of his older brother. This encouraged his enrolling in the course of science at Cornell University in 1868 (its opening year) from which he was graduated in 1872. There followed two years at the Columbia College Law School, which he left as an LL. B.; and in June, 1874 he was admitted to the bar. He did not practice law, however, but turned instead to newspaper reporting. Whence came this interest in law and journalism? We can only guess, tracing its onset to the man's college days. As a Cornell sophomore, he was the class poet; as a senior, its historian; and on commencement day delivered an oration on "The Perpetuity of the Heroic Element." But whatever the origin of the interest, unquestioned ability supported it. From the position of reporter and correspondent with the New York _Tribune_ he rose to the post of copy editor on the staff of the _Sun_. Finally he became night editor, a position which he held for a full decade. During this period we can see the old interest in science gradually assert itself. At first it took the form of anonymous articles, mainly on matters astronomical. These usually appeared on the editorial page and, partly because they were then a novelty, partly because of a quirk of fate--editor-in-chief Charles Dana frequently had them set up in bold type, believing their logic was a fine counter-irritant for heated political campaigns of the day--the attention of subscribers was focused on them more sharply than usual. In fact, readers over the entire country were soon conjecturing about the identity of "the _Sun's_ astronomer." Very few knew that it was Garrett Serviss, who successfully cloaked his identity for years. Success in written popularizing of science led him to attempt its duplication on the lecture platform. There his triumphs were such as to lead him to resign as night editor of the _Sun_ in 1892 and make astronomy his life work. Until 1894 he was occupied with "The Urania Lectures." These were sponsored by Andrew Carnegie, and dealt with geology, astronomy, archeology and similar scientific topics. With them Serviss successfully toured the country, and it was only because of the great difficulty in transporting the elaborate staging equipment they required that they were eventually discontinued. He continued to give popular lectures, however, and one of his few biographers has credited his greatness on the rostrum to "a pleasant voice, a charming personality, and a genuine enthusiasm for his subject." One cannot doubt this enthusiasm; it shines forth unmistakably from all his writings. Probably, too, it played the major part in enabling him to reach a wider reading public than any other astronomer before or after him. For he never abandoned the pen. Up until his death, which occurred on May 25, 1929, he wrote continually, syndicated newspaper columns, magazine articles, books on astronomy, fiction. His first book, _Astronomy with an Opera Glass_, appeared in 1888. He was responsible for several other scientific titles (the reader is referred to the bibliography at the end of this volume for a detailed listing); they include _Einstein's Theory of Relativity_, which is a companion work to the motion picture of the same name. He was also editor-in-chief of Collier's sixteen-volume _Popular Science Library_. It might be added that much of the editing and captioning of the Einstein film was his work, and that he collaborated with Leon Barritt in the invention of the Barritt-Serviss Star and Planet Finder, a device still in use. In comparison with his other writings his output of fiction is small: five novels and a single short story. It is, however, characterized by the same logic and interest, this time tossed aloft to soar on the wings of romantic imagination. Two of these works deal in some detail with the world of the future as he thought it might be--prophetic fiction, if you will; another two give us a picture of life on neighboring planets; and the final couple, although they maintain a terrestrial locale, show as wide a scope of creative invention. In only one of these does astronomy fail to play at least a supporting role. That is _The Sky Pirate_ (1909), which is an adventure story laid in the year 1936. Its plot revolves around an abduction for ransom in a period which is visualized as rampant with piracy because of the general adoption of air transportation. As usual, fact has outmoded prophecy, for long before 1936 airplane speeds exceeded the 140 miles per hour Serviss predicted. We still need, though, his invention which enables badly damaged aircraft to drift slowly down to a safe landing. _The Moon Metal_ (1900) deals with the problem of a strange, lunar metal used as a monetary standard to replace gold when, in 1949, huge new deposits of that metal rendered it common as iron. This is of short story length, and amply demonstrates the author's mastery of that medium. From the prophetic as well as the entertainment standpoint, one of Garrett Serviss' most interesting novels is _A Columbus of Space_. Here he visualizes atomic energy liberated and harnessed to drive a rocket to the planet Venus. His conception is uncannily close to truth; he names uranium as the raw material from which is extracted the vital substance, a "crystallized powder" which releases its energy on proper treatment. No less intriguing is the description of the intelligent civilizations on Venus which explorers from this world find. Two later novels came from his pen: _The Moon Maiden_ (1915) and _The Second Deluge_ (1911). The former is a scientific mystery, and probably the least distinguished of his works. The latter, conversely, is probably his best. It tells of a watery nebula which collides with the earth, flooding it with a second deluge; and of how the human race is saved through the wisdom of one man who foresaw the coming disaster in time to build a second ark. A new civilization which has mastered the secret of atomic energy springs up on the planet as the waters recede. The canvas is a broad one, and the author does it full justice. Serviss' outstanding stories have been published abroad and re-printed in this country several times, a deserved tribute to their quality and popularity. His very first work of fiction, however, has been shrouded in obscurity for nearly half a century. Indeed, among collectors and aficionados of the fantastic there was for a time debate as to its actual existence. This is hardly surprising, for until its reprinting in this book _Edison's Conquest of Mars_ lay buried in the Congressional Library's file of the ephemeral New York _Evening Journal_, where it ran serially in early 1898. This is a remarkable work. First of all, as many readers will quickly discern, it is in a sense a sequel to H. G. Wells' well known _War of the Worlds_. The latter novel was serialized by _Cosmopolitan_ magazine in 1897; it caught the public's fickle fancy, and was widely commented upon. All evidence indicates that Serviss also read it: he was a regular contributor to _Cosmopolitan_. Yet I am inclined to doubt that mere reading of _The War of the Worlds_ in itself prompted him to produce a work in the same vein. Wells' effort was not concluded until the December, 1897 number of the magazine, and _Edison's Conquest of Mars_ began on the following January 12th--a scant six weeks later. For Serviss it was the initial excursion into the realm of fiction, and it is hard to conceive his so hastily adopting a new metier on personal impulse alone. These circumstances, in conjunction with the context of the novel itself, clearly stamp the entire business as clever capitalization on already existent publicity. Again, I doubt if he thought of it at first in that light; his name was well enough known so that he could live by his knowledge, not his wits. But to a newspaper editor the prospect of combining the authority of a nationally known and reputable astronomer with a work designed to satisfy a reading public's waiting appetite for the unusual--in short, presenting legitimatized sensationalism at the psychological moment--this must have had irresistible appeal. That _Edison's Conquest of Mars_ was written on editorial commission, perhaps as fast as it appeared, seems, then, the most probable interpretation. Historically, the work is one of the earliest to employ the interplanetary theme. It is the first to portray a battle fought by space craft in the airless void; and possibly the first also to propose the use of sealed suits that enable men to traverse a vacuum. Of the more minor twists of plot initially found here that have since become parts of the "pulp" science-fiction writers' standard stock-in-trade, there are literally too many to mention. The novel opens with a description of the ruins of eastern America. Although the Martians who survived terrestrial bacteria have left the planet, astronomical observations show a recurrence on the red planet of the same lights that were a prelude to the first onslaught. The conclusion is inevitable: a second invasion is on the way. Serviss pictures the gathering together of the most famous scientists of the day--Edison, Roentgen, Lord Kelvin and others. The Martian machines and weapons left behind are dismantled; their principles of operation are discovered and duplicated; and a defense against their forces is perfected. Armed with this knowledge and with the "disintegrator," a device invented by Edison which is capable of reducing to atoms any substance at which it is aimed, the nations of the world pool their resources and launch an invasion of Mars across interplanetary space. More by way of explanation than justification, it should be stated that science today is diminishing the number of critics who are wont to label plots of this nature "too fantastic." For them to say that the colossal has become more important than the rational is, I feel, misleading. For this is a branch of literature that is in many respects the most rational of all: it is a symptom of progress. These same critics also complain that a fantastic plot is frequently developed at the expense of characterization. To this, one may answer that at times what happens can be more important than the people to whom it happens. In essence, both charges derive from laying undue stress upon psychology as the only legitimate fibre from which a fictional cloth may be woven. Undoubtedly psychology is necessary--but it can be a warp alone if a strong woof is supplied. Let me cite two imaginary examples. If a single scientist had released atomic energy and was in doubt as to whether he should destroy his secret or reveal it, the psychological processes that determine his decision become more relevant to consideration than the decision itself. But if that same scientist managed by the aid of atomic energy to transport himself to Mars, I would unquestionably be more interested in what he found on that planet than in why an Oedipus complex drove him there in the first place. In the fiction of Garrett Serviss the sweeping magnitude of events described gives them the leading role. Yet within the limits he has set for himself he has used human psychology to good advantage. His stories do not lack empathy, and they are rich in pictorial detail. Inevitably they reflect the mores of the time, but do not emphasize them unduly. As a consequence they remain readable and entertaining even to this day. They show, too, that he was familiar with the works of the few authors in the genre who preceeded him. _A Columbus of Space_ was dedicated "to the readers of Jules Verne's romances," Not because the author flatters himself that he can walk in the Footsteps of that Immortal Dreamer, but because, like Jules Verne, he believes that the World of Imagination is as legitimate a Domain of the Human Mind as the World of Fact. Garrett Serviss modestly underestimated his abilities. With the perspective we possess today it can be seen that he is easily the equal of Verne, standing with him and H. G. Wells as one of the foremost science-fiction writers of his day. A. Langley Searles _New York, N. Y._ _May 1947_ EDISON'S CONQUEST OF MARS CHAPTER ONE _"LET US GO TO MARS"_ It is impossible that the stupendous events which followed the disastrous invasion of the earth by the Martians should go without record, and circumstances having placed the facts at my disposal, I deem it a duty, both to posterity and to those who were witnesses of and participants in the avenging counterstroke that the earth dealt back at its ruthless enemy in the heavens, to write down the story in a connected form. The Martians had nearly all perished, not through our puny efforts, but in consequence of disease, and the few survivors fled in one of their projectile cars, inflicting their crudest blow in the act of departure. They possessed a mysterious explosive, of unimaginable puissance, with whose aid they set their car in motion for Mars from a point in Bergen County, N. J., just back of the Palisades. The force of the explosion may be imagined when it is recollected that they had to give the car a velocity of more than seven miles per second in order to overcome the attraction of the earth and the resistance of the atmosphere. The shock destroyed all of New York that had not already fallen a prey, and all the buildings yet standing in the surrounding towns and cities fell in one far-circling ruin. The Palisades tumbled in vast sheets, starting a tidal wave in the Hudson that drowned the opposite shore. The victims of this ferocious explosion were numbered by tens of thousands, and the shock, transmitted through the rocky frame of the globe, was recorded by seismographic pendulums in England and on the Continent of Europe. The terrible results achieved by the invaders had produced everywhere a mingled feeling of consternation and hopelessness. The devastation was widespread. The death-dealing engines which the Martians had brought with them had proved irresistible and the inhabitants of the earth possessed nothing capable of contending against them. There had been no protection for the great cities; no protection even for the open country. Everything had gone down before the savage onslaught of those merciless invaders from space. Savage ruins covered the sites of many formerly flourishing towns and villages, and the broken walls of great cities stared at the heavens like the exhumed skeletons of Pompeii. The awful agencies had extirpated pastures and meadows and dried up the very springs of fertility in the earth where they had touched it. In some parts of the devastated lands pestilence broke out; elsewhere there was famine. Despondency black as night brooded over some of the fairest portions of the globe. Yet all had not been destroyed, because all had not been reached by the withering hand of the destroyer. The Martians had not had time to complete their work before they themselves fell a prey to the diseases that carried them off at the very culmination of their triumph. From those lands which had, fortunately, escaped invasion, relief was sent to the sufferers. The outburst of pity and of charity exceeded anything that the world had known. Differences of race and religion were swallowed up in the universal sympathy which was felt for those who had suffered so terribly from an evil that was as unexpected as it was unimaginable in its enormity. But the worst was not yet. More dreadful than the actual suffering and the scenes of death and devastation which overspread the afflicted lands was the profound mental and moral depression that followed. This was shared even by those who had not seen the Martians and had not witnessed the destructive effects of the frightful engines of war that they had imported for the conquest of the earth. All mankind was sunk deep in this universal despair, and it became tenfold blacker when the astronomers announced from their observatories that strange lights were visible, moving and flashing upon the red surface of the Planet of War. These mysterious appearances could only be interpreted in the light of past experience to mean that the Martians were preparing for another invasion of the earth, and who could doubt that with the invincible powers of destruction at their command they would this time make their work complete and final? This startling announcement was the more pitiable in its effects because it served to unnerve and discourage those few of stouter hearts and more hopeful temperaments who had already begun the labor of restoration and reconstruction amid the embers of their desolated homes. In New York this feeling of hope and confidence, this determination to rise against disaster and to wipe out the evidences of its dreadful presence as quickly as possible, had especially manifested itself. Already a company had been formed and a large amount of capital subscribed for the reconstruction of the destroyed bridges over the East River. Already architects were busily at work planning new twenty-story hotels and apartment houses; new churches and new cathedrals on a grander scale than before. Amid this stir of renewed life came the fatal news that Mars was undoubtedly preparing to deal us a death blow. The sudden revulsion of feeling flitted like the shadow of an eclipse over the earth. The scenes that followed were indescribable. Men lost their reason. The faint-hearted ended the suspense with self-destruction, the stout-hearted remained steadfast, but without hope and knowing not what to do. But there was a gleam of hope of which the general public as yet knew nothing. It was due to a few dauntless men of science, conspicuous among whom were Lord Kelvin, the great English savant; Herr Roentgen, the discover of the famous X-ray, and especially Thomas A. Edison, the American genius of science. These men and a few others had examined with the utmost care the engines of war, the flying machines, the generators of mysterious destructive forces that the Martians had produced, with the object of discovering, if possible, the sources of their power. Suddenly from Mr. Edison's laboratory at Orange flashed the startling intelligence that he had not only discovered the manner in which the invaders had been able to produce the mighty energies which they employed with such terrible effect, but that, going further, he had found a way to overcome them. The glad news was quickly circulated throughout the civilized world. Luckily the Atlantic cables had not been destroyed by the Martians, so that communication between the Eastern and Western continents was uninterrupted. It was a proud day for America. Even while the Martians had been upon the earth, carrying everything before them, demonstrating to the confusion of the most optimistic that there was no possibility of standing against them, a feeling--a confidence had manifested itself in France, to a minor extent in England, and particularly in Russia, that the Americans might discover means to meet and master the invaders. Now, it seemed, this hope and expectation was to be realized. Too late, it is true, in a certain sense, but not too late to meet the new invasion which the astronomers had announced was impending. The effect was as wonderful and indescribable as that of the despondency which but a little while before had overspread the world. One could almost hear the universal sigh of relief which went up from humanity. To relief succeeded confidence--so quickly does the human spirit recover like an elastic spring, when pressure is released. "Let them come," was the almost joyous cry. "We shall be ready for them now. The Americans have solved the problem. Edison has placed the means of victory within our power." Looking back upon that time now, I recall, with a thrill, the pride that stirred me at the thought that, after all, the inhabitants of the earth were a match for those terrible men from Mars, despite all the advantage which they had gained from their millions of years of prior civilization and science. As good fortunes, like bad, never come singly, the news of Mr. Edison's discovery was quickly followed by additional glad tidings from that laboratory of marvels in the lap of the Orange mountains. During their career of conquest the Martians had astonished the inhabitants of the earth no less with their flying machines--which navigated our atmosphere as easily as they had that of their native planet--than with their more destructive inventions. These flying machines in themselves had given them an enormous advantage in the contest. High above the desolation that they had caused to reign on the surface of the earth, and, out of the range of our guns, they had hung safe in the upper air. From the clouds they had dropped death upon the earth. Now, rumor declared that Mr. Edison had invented and perfected a flying machine much more complete and manageable than those of the Martians had been. Wonderful stories quickly found their way into the newspapers concerning what Mr. Edison had already accomplished with the aid of his model electrical balloon. His laboratory was carefully guarded against the invasion of the curious, because he rightly felt that a premature announcement, which should promise more than could actually be fulfilled, would, at this critical juncture, plunge mankind back again into the gulf of despair, out of which it had just begun to emerge. Nevertheless, inklings of the truth leaked out. The flying machine had been seen by many persons hovering by night high above the Orange hills and disappearing in the faint starlight as if it had gone away into the depths of space, out of which it would re-emerge before the morning light had streaked the east, and be seen settling down again within the walls that surrounded the laboratory of the great inventor. At length the rumor, gradually deepening into a conviction, spread that Edison himself, accompanied by a few scientific friends, had made an experimental trip to the moon. At a time when the spirit of mankind was less profoundly stirred, such a story would have been received with complete incredulity, but now, rising on the wings of the new hope that was buoying up the earth, this extraordinary rumor became a day star of truth to the nations. And it was true. I had myself been one of the occupants of the car of the flying Ship of Space on that night when it silently left the earth, and rising out of the great shadow of the globe, sped on to the moon. We had landed upon the scarred and desolate face of the earth's satellite, and but that there are greater and more interesting events, the telling of which must not be delayed, I should undertake to describe the particulars of this first visit of men to another world. [Illustration: _I had myself been one of the occupants of the car of the flying Ship of Space on that night, when it silently left the earth, and, rising out of the great shadow of the globe, sped on to the moon._] But, as I have already intimated, this was only an experimental trip. By visiting this little nearby island in the ocean of space, Mr. Edison simply wished to demonstrate the practicability of his invention, and to convince, first of all, himself and his scientific friends that it was possible for men--mortal men--to quit and to revisit the earth at their will. That aim this experimental trip triumphantly attained. It would carry me into technical details that would hardly interest the reader to describe the mechanism of Mr. Edison's flying machine. Let it suffice to say that it depended upon the principal of electrical attraction and repulsion. By means of a most ingenious and complicated construction he had mastered the problem of how to produce, in a limited space, electricity of any desired potential and of any polarity, and that without danger to the experimenter or to the material experimented upon. It is gravitation, as everybody knows, that makes man a prisoner on the earth. If he could overcome, or neutralize, gravitation he could float away, a free creature of interstellar space. Mr. Edison in his invention had pitted electricity against gravitation. Nature, in fact, had done the same thing long before. Every astronomer knew it, but none had been able to imitate or to reproduce this miracle of nature. When a comet approaches the sun, the orbit in which it travels indicates that it is moving under the impulse of the sun's gravitation. It is in reality falling in a great parabolic or elliptical curve through space. But, while a comet approaches the sun it begins to display--stretching out for millions, and sometimes hundreds of millions of miles on the side away from the sun--an immense luminous train called its tail. This train extends back into that part of space from which the comet is moving. Thus the sun at one and the same time is drawing the comet toward itself and driving off from the comet in an opposite direction minute particles or atoms which, instead of obeying the gravitational force, are plainly compelled to disobey it. That this energy, which the sun exercises against its own gravitation, is electrical in its nature, hardly anybody will doubt. The head of the comet being comparatively heavy and massive, falls on toward the sun, despite the electrical repulsion. But the atoms which form the tail, being almost without weight, yield to the electrical rather than to the gravitational influence, and so fly away from the sun. Now, what Mr. Edison had done was, in effect, to create an electrified particle which might be compared to one of the atoms composing the tail of a comet, although in reality it was a kind of car, of metal, weighing some hundreds of pounds and capable of bearing some thousands of pounds with it in its flight. By producing, with the aid of the electrical generator contained in this car, an enormous charge of electricity, Mr. Edison was able to counterbalance, and a trifle more than counterbalance, the attraction of the earth, and thus cause the car to fly off from the earth as an electrified pithball flies from the prime conductor. As we sat in the brilliantly lighted chamber that formed the interior of the car, and where stores of compressed air had been provided together with chemical apparatus, by means of which fresh supplies of oxygen and nitrogen might be obtained for our consumption during the flight through space, Mr. Edison touched a polished button, thus causing the generation of the required electrical charge on the exterior of the car, and immediately we began to rise. The moment and direction of our flight had been so timed and prearranged, that the original impulse would carry us straight toward the moon. When we fell within the sphere of attraction of that orb it only became necessary to so manipulate the electrical charge upon our car as nearly, but not quite, to counterbalance the effect of the moon's attraction in order that we might gradually approach it and with an easy motion, settle, without shock, upon its surface. We did not remain to examine the wonders of the moon, although we could not fail to observe many curious things therein. Having demonstrated the fact that we could not only leave the earth, but could journey through space and safely land upon the surface of another planet, Mr. Edison's immediate purpose was fulfilled, and we hastened back to the earth, employing in leaving the moon and landing again upon our own planet the same means of control over the electrical attraction and repulsion between the respective planets and our car which I have already described. When actual experiment had thus demonstrated the practicability of the invention, Mr. Edison no longer withheld the news of what he had been doing from the world. The telegraph lines and the ocean cables labored with the messages that in endless succession, and burdened with an infinity of detail, were sent all over the earth. Everywhere the utmost enthusiasm was aroused. "Let the Martians come," was the cry. "If necessary, we can quit the earth as the Athenians fled from Athens before the advancing host of Xerxes, and like them, take refuge upon our ships--these new ships of space, with which American inventiveness has furnished us." And then, like a flash, some genius struck out an idea that fired the world. "Why should we wait? Why should we run the risk of having our cities destroyed and our lands desolated a second time? Let us go to Mars. We have the means. Let us beard the lion in his den. Let us ourselves turn conquerors and take possession of that detestable planet, and if necessary, destroy it in order to relieve the earth of this perpetual threat which now hangs over us like the sword of Damocles." CHAPTER TWO _THE DISINTEGRATOR_ This enthusiasm would have had but little justification had Mr. Edison done nothing more than invent a machine which could navigate the atmosphere and the regions of interplanetary space. He had, however, and this fact was generally known, although the details had not yet leaked out--invented also machines of war intended to meet the utmost that the Martians could do for either offence or defence in the struggle which was now about to ensue. Acting upon the hint which had been conveyed from various investigations in the domain of physics, and concentrating upon the problem all those unmatched powers of intellect which distinguished him, the great inventor had succeeded in producing a little implement which one could carry in his hand, but which was more powerful than any battleship that ever floated. The details of its mechanism could not be easily explained, without the use of tedious technicalities and the employment of terms, diagrams and mathematical statements, all of which would lie outside the scope of this narrative. But the principle of the thing was simple enough. It was upon the great scientific doctrine, which we have since seen so completely and brilliantly developed, of the law of harmonic vibrations, extending from atoms and molecules at one end of the series up to the worlds and suns at the other end, that Mr. Edison based his invention. Every kind of substance has its own vibratory rhythm. That of iron differs from that of pine wood. The atoms of gold do not vibrate in the same time or through the same range as those of lead, and so on for all known substances, and all the chemical elements. So, on a larger scale, every massive body has its period of vibration. A great suspension bridge vibrates, under the impulse of forces that are applied to it, in long periods. No company of soldiers ever crosses such a bridge without breaking step. If they tramped together, and were followed by other companies keeping the same time with their feet, after a while the vibrations of the bridge would become so great and destructive that it would fall in pieces. So any structure, if its vibration rate is known, could easily be destroyed by a force applied to it in such a way that it should simply increase the swing of those vibrations up to the point of destruction. Now Mr. Edison had been able to ascertain the vibratory swing of many well known substances, and to produce, by means of the instrument which he had contrived, pulsations in the ether which were completely under his control, and which could be made long or short, quick or slow, at his will. He could run through the whole gamut from the slow vibrations of sound in air up to the four hundred and twenty-five millions of millions of vibrations per second of the ultra red rays. Having obtained an instrument of such power, it only remained to concentrate its energy upon a given object in order that the atoms composing that object should be set into violent undulation, sufficient to burst it asunder and to scatter its molecules broadcast. This the inventor effected by the simplest means in the world--simply a parabolic reflector by which the destructive waves could be sent like a beam of light, but invisible, in any direction and focused upon any desired point. I had the good fortune to be present when this powerful engine of destruction was submitted to its first test. We had gone upon the roof of Mr. Edison's laboratory and the inventor held the little instrument, with its attached mirror, in his hand. We looked about for some object on which to try its powers. On a bare limb of a tree not far away, for it was late in fall, sat a disconsolate crow. "Good," said Mr. Edison, "that will do." He touched a button at the side of the instrument and a soft, whirring noise was heard. "Feathers," said Mr. Edison, "have a vibration period of three hundred and eighty-six million per second." He adjusted the index as he spoke. Then, through a sighting tube, he aimed at the bird. "Now watch," he said. Another soft whirr in the instrument, a momentary flash of light close around it, and, behold, the crow had turned from black to white! "Its feathers are gone," said the inventor; "they have been dissipated into their constituent atoms. Now, we will finish the crow." Instantly there was another adjustment of the index, another outshooting of vibratory force, a rapid up and down motion of the index to include a certain range of vibrations, and the crow itself was gone--vanished in empty space! There was the bare twig on which a moment before it had stood. Behind, in the sky, was the white cloud against which its black form had been sharply outlined, but there was no more crow. "That looks bad for the Martians, doesn't it?" said the Wizard. "I have ascertained the vibration rate of all the materials of which their war engines, whose remains we have collected together, are composed. They can be shattered into nothingness in the fraction of a second. Even if the vibration period were not known, it could quickly be hit upon by simply running through the gamut." "Hurrah!" cried one of the onlookers. "We have met the Martians and they are ours." Such in brief was the first of the contrivances which Mr. Edison invented for the approaching war with Mars. And these facts had become widely known. Additional experiments had completed the demonstration of the inventor's ability, with the aid of his wonderful instrument, to destroy any given object, or any part of an object, provided that that part differed in its atomic constitution, and consequently in its vibratory period, from the other parts. A most impressive public exhibit of the powers of the little disintegrator was given amid the ruins of New York. On lower Broadway a part of the walls of one of the gigantic buildings, which had been destroyed by the Martians, impended in such a manner that it threatened at any moment to fall upon the heads of the passersby. The Fire Department did not dare touch it. To blow it up seemed a dangerous expedient, because already new buildings had been erected in its neighborhood, and their safety would be imperilled by the flying fragments. The fact happened to come to my knowledge. "Here is an opportunity," I said to Mr. Edison, "to try the powers of your machine on a large scale." "Capital," he instantly replied. "I shall go at once." For the work now in hand it was necessary to employ a battery of disintegrators, since the field of destruction covered by each was comparatively limited. All of the impending portions of the wall must be destroyed at once and together, for otherwise the danger would rather be accentuated rather than annihilated. The disintegrators were placed upon the roof of a neighboring building, so adjusted that their fields of destruction overlapped one another upon the wall. Their indexes were all set to correspond with the vibration period of the peculiar kind of brick of which the wall consisted. Then the energy was turned on, and a shout of wonder arose from the multitudes which had assembled at a safe distance to witness the experiment. The wall did not fall; it did not break asunder; no fragments shot this way and that and high in the air; there was no explosion; no shock or noise disturbed the still atmosphere--only a soft whirr, that seemed to pervade everything and to tingle in the nerves of the spectators; and--what had been was not! The wall was gone! But high above and all around the place where it had hung over the street with its threat of death there appeared, swiftly billowing outward in every direction, a faint bluish cloud. It was the scattered atoms of the destroyed wall. And now the cry "On to Mars!" was heard on all sides. But for such an enterprise funds were needed--millions upon millions. Yet some of the fairest and richest portions of the earth had been impoverished by the frightful ravages of those enemies who had dropped down upon them from the skies. Still, the money must be had. The salvation of the planet, as everyone was now convinced, depended upon the successful negotiation of a gigantic war fund, in comparison with which all the expenditures in all of the wars that had been waged by the nations for 2,000 years would be insignificant. The electrical ships and the vibration engines must be constructed by scores and thousands. Only Mr. Edison's immense resources and unrivaled equipment had enabled him to make the models whose powers had been so satisfactorily shown. But to multiply these upon a war scale was not only beyond the resources of any individual--hardly a nation on the globe in the period of its greatest prosperity could have undertaken such a work. All the nations, then, must now conjoin. They must unite their resources, and if necessary, exhaust all their hoards, in order to raise the needed sum. Negotiations were at once begun. The United States naturally took the lead, and their leadership was never for a moment questioned abroad. Washington was selected as the place of meeting for a great congress of nations. Washington, luckily, had been one of the places which had not been touched by the Martians. But if Washington had been a city composed of hotels alone, and every hotel so great as to be a little city in itself, it would have been utterly insufficient for the accommodation of the innumerable throngs which now flocked to the banks of the Potomac. But when was American enterprise unequal to a crisis? The necessary hotels, lodging-houses and restaurants were constructed with astounding rapidity. One could see the city growing and expanding day by day and week after week. It flowed over Georgetown Heights; it leaped the Potomac; it spread east and west, south and north; square mile after square mile of territory was buried under the advancing buildings, until the gigantic city, which had thus grown up like a mushroom in a night, was fully capable of accommodating all its expected guests. At first it had been intended that the heads of the various governments should in person attend this universal congress, but as the enterprise went on, as the enthusiasm spread, as the necessity for haste became more apparent through the warning notes which were constantly sounded from the observatories where the astronomers were nightly beholding new evidences of threatening preparations in Mars, the kings and queens of the old world felt that they could not remain at home; that their proper place was at the new focus and center of the whole world--the city of Washington. Without concerted action, without interchange of suggestion, this impulse seemed to seize all the old world monarchs at once. Suddenly cablegrams flashed to the government at Washington, announcing that Queen Victoria, the Emperor William, the Czar Nicholas, Alphonso of Spain, with his mother, Maria Christina; the old emperor Francis Joseph and the empress Elizabeth, of Austria; King Oscar and Queen Sophia, of Sweden and Norway; King Humbert and Queen Margherita, of Italy; King George and Queen Olga, of Greece; Abdul Hamid, of Turkey; Tsait'ien, Emperor of China; Mutsuhito, the Japanese Mikado, with his beautiful Princess Haruko; the President of France, the President of Switzerland, the First Syndic of the little republic of Andorra, perched on the crest of the Pyrenees, and the heads of all the Central and South American republics, were coming to Washington to take part in the deliberations, which, it was felt, were to settle the fate of earth and Mars. One day, after this announcement had been received, and the additional news had come that nearly all the visiting monarchs had set out, attended by brilliant suites and convoyed by fleets of warships, for their destination, some coming across the Atlantic to the port of New York, others across the Pacific to San Francisco, Mr. Edison said to me: "This will be a fine spectacle. Would you like to watch it?" "Certainly," I replied. The Ship of Space was immediately at our disposal. I think I have not yet mentioned the fact that the inventor's control over the electrical generator carried in the car was so perfect that by varying the potential or changing the polarity he could cause it slowly or swiftly, as might be desired, to approach or recede from any object. The only practical difficulty was presented when the polarity of the electrical charge upon an object in the neighborhood of the car was unknown to those in the car, and happened to be opposite to that of the charge to which the car, at that particular moment was bearing. In such a case, of course, the car would fly toward the object, whatever it might be, like a pithball or a feather, attracted to the knob of an electrical machine. In this way, considerable danger was occasionally encountered, and a few accidents could not be avoided. Fortunately, however, such cases were rare. It was only now and then that, owing to some local cause, electrical polarities unknown to or unexpected by the navigators, endangered the safety of the car. As I shall have occasion to relate however, in the course of the narrative, this danger became more acute and assumed at times a most formidable phase, when we had ventured outside the sphere of the earth and were moving through the unexplored regions beyond. On this occasion, having embarked, we rose rapidly to a height of some thousands of feet and directed our course over the Atlantic. When half-way to Ireland, we beheld, in the distance, steaming westward, the smoke of several fleets. As we drew nearer a marvelous spectacle unfolded itself to our eyes. From the northeast, their great guns flashing in the sunlight and their huge funnels belching black volumes that rested like thunder clouds upon the sea, came the mighty warships of England, with her meteor flag streaming red in the breeze, while the royal insignia, indicating the presence of the ruler of the British Empire, was conspicuously displayed upon the flagship of the squadron. Following a course more directly westward there appeared, under another black cloud of smoke, the hulls and guns and burgeons of another great fleet, carrying the tri-color of France, and bearing in its midst the head of the magnificent republic of western Europe. Further south, beating up against the northerly winds came a third fleet with the gold and red of Spain fluttering from its masthead. This, too, was carrying its King westward, where now, indeed, the star of empire had taken its way. Rising a little higher, so as to extend our horizon, we saw coming down the English channel, behind the British fleet, the black ships of Russia. Side by side, or following one another's lead, these war fleets were on a peaceful voyage that belied their threatening appearance. There had been no thought of danger to or from the forts and ports of rival nations which they had passed. There was no enmity, and no fear between them when the throats of their ponderous guns yawned at one another across the waves. They were now, in spirit, all one fleet, having one object, bearing against one enemy, ready to defend but one country, and that country was the entire earth. It was some time before we caught sight of the emperor William's fleet. It seems that the Kaiser, although at first consenting to the arrangement by which Washington had been selected as the assembling place for the nations, afterwards objected to it. "I ought to do this thing myself," he had said. "My glorious ancestors would never have consented to allow these upstart Republicans to lead in a warlike enterprise of this kind. What would my grandfather have said to it? I suspect that it is some scheme aimed at the divine right of kings." But the good sense of the German people would not suffer their ruler to place them in a position so false and so untenable. And swept along by their enthusiasm the Kaiser had at last consented to embark upon his flagship at Kiel, and now he was following the other fleets on their great mission to the Western Continent. Why did they bring their warships when their intentions were peaceable, do you ask? Well, it was partly the effect of ancient habit, and partly due to the fact that such multitudes of officials and members of ruling families wished to embark for Washington that the ordinary means of ocean communications would have been utterly inadequate to convey them. After we had feasted our eyes on this strange sight, Mr. Edison suddenly exclaimed: "Now let us see the fellows from the rising sun." The car was immediately directed toward the west. We rapidly approached the American coast, and as we sailed over the Allegheny Mountains and the broad plains of the Ohio and the Mississippi, we saw crawling beneath us from west, south and north, an endless succession of railway trains bearing their multitudes on toward Washington. With marvelous speed we rushed westward, rising high to skim over the snow-topped peaks of the Rocky Mountains and then the glittering rim of the Pacific was before us. Half-way between the American Coast and Hawaii we met the fleets coming from China and Japan. Side by side they were plowing the main, having forgotten, or laid aside, all the animosities of their former wars. I well remember how my heart was stirred at this impressive exhibition of the boundless influence which my country had come to exercise over all the people of the world, and I turned to look at the man to whose genius this uprising of the earth was due. But Mr. Edison, after his wont, appeared totally unconscious of the fact that he was personally responsible for what was going on. His mind, seemingly, was entirely absorbed in considering problems, the solution of which might be essential to our success in the terrific struggle which was soon to begin. "Well, have you seen enough?" he asked. "Then let us go back to Washington." As we speeded back across the continent we beheld beneath us again the burdened express trains rushing toward the Atlantic, and hundreds of thousands of upturned eyes watched our swift progress, and volleys of cheers reached our ears, for everyone knew that this was Edison's electrical warship, on which the hope of the nation, and the hopes of all the nations, depended. These scenes were repeated again and again until the car hovered over the still expanding capitol on the Potomac, where the unceasing ring of hammers rose to the clouds. [Illustration: _A consultation in Wizard Edison's laboratory between him and Professor Serviss on the best means of repaying the damage wrought upon this planet by the Martians._] CHAPTER THREE _THE CONGRESS OF NATIONS_ The day appointed for the assembling of the nations in Washington opened bright and beautiful. Arrangements had been made for the reception of the distinguished guests at the Capitol. No time was to be wasted, and having assembled in the Senate Chamber, the business that had called them together was to be immediately begun. The scene in Pennsylvania Avenue, when the procession of dignitaries and royalties passed up toward the Capitol was one never to be forgotten. Bands were playing, magnificent equipages flashed in the morning sunlight, the flags of every nation on the earth fluttered in the breeze. Queen Victoria, with the Prince of Wales escorting her, and riding in an open carriage, was greeted with roars of cheers; the emperor William, following in another carriage with empress Victoria at his side, condescended to bow and smile in response to the greetings of a free people. Each of the other monarchs was received in a similar manner. The Czar of Russia proved to be an especial favorite with the multitude on account of the ancient friendship of his house for America. But the greatest applause of all came when the President of France, followed by the President of Switzerland and the First Syndic of the little republic of Andorra, made their appearance. Equally warm were the greetings extended to the representatives of Mexico and the South American States. The crowd apparently hardly knew at first how to receive the Sultan of Turkey, but the universal good feeling was in his favor, and finally rounds of hand clapping and cheers greeted his progress along the splendid avenue. A happy idea had apparently occurred to the Emperor of China and the Mikado of Japan, for, attended by their intermingled suites, they rode together in a single carriage. This object lesson in the unity of international feeling immensely pleased the spectators. The scene in the Senate Chamber stirred everyone profoundly. That it was brilliant and magnificent goes without saying, but there was a seriousness, an intense feeling of expectancy, pervading both those who looked on and those who were to do the work for which these magnates of the earth had assembled, which produced an ineradicable impression. The President of the United States, of course, presided. Representatives of the greater powers occupied the front seats, and some of them were honored with special chairs near the President. No time was wasted in preliminaries. The President made a brief speech. "We have come together," he said, "to consider a question that equally interests the whole earth. I need not remind you that unexpectedly and without provocation on our part the people--the monsters, I should rather say--of Mars, recently came down upon the earth, attacked us in our homes and spread desolation around them. Having the advantage of ages of evolution, which for us are yet in the future, they brought with them engines of death and destruction against which we found it impossible to contend. It is within the memory of every one within reach of my voice that it was through the entirely unexpected succor which Providence sent us that we were suddenly and effectually freed from the invaders. By our own efforts we could have done nothing. "But, as you all know, the first feeling of relief which followed the death of our foes was quickly succeeded by the fearful news which came to us from the observatories, that the Martians were undoubtedly preparing for a second invasion of our planet. Against this we should have had no recourse and no hope but for the genius of one of my countrymen, who, as you are all aware, has perfected means which may enable us not only to withstand the attack of those awful enemies, but to meet them, and, let us hope, to conquer them on their own ground. "Mr. Edison is here to explain to you what those means are. But we have also another object. Whether we send a fleet of interplanetary ships to invade Mars or whether we simply confine our attention to works of defense, in either case it will be necessary to raise a very large sum of money. None of us has yet recovered from the effects of the recent invasion. The earth is poor today compared to its position a few years ago; yet we can not allow our poverty to stand in the way. The money, the means, must be had. It will be part of our business here to raise a gigantic war fund by the aid of which we can construct the equipment and machinery that we shall require. This, I think, is all I need to say. Let us proceed to business." "Where is Mr. Edison?" cried a voice. "Will Mr. Edison please step forward?" said the President. There was a stir in the assembly, and the iron-grey head of the great inventor was seen moving through the crowd. In his hand he carried one of his marvelous disintegrators. He was requested to explain and illustrate its operation. Mr. Edison smiled. "I can explain its details," he said, "to Lord Kelvin, for instance, but if Their Majesties will excuse me, I doubt whether I can make it plain to the Crown Heads." The Emperor William smiled superciliously. Apparently he thought that another assault had been committed upon the divine right of kings. But the Czar Nicholas appeared to be amused, and the Emperor of China, who had been studying English, laughed in his sleeve, as if he suspected that a joke had been perpetrated. "I think," said one of the deputies, "that a simple exhibition of the powers of the instrument, without a technical explanation of its method of working, will suffice for our purpose." This suggestion was immediately approved. In response to it, Mr. Edison, by a few simple experiments, showed how he could quickly and certainly shatter into its constituent atoms any object upon which the vibratory force of the disintegrator should be directed. In this manner he caused an inkstand to disappear under the very nose of the Emperor William without a spot of ink being scattered upon his sacred person, but evidently the odor of the disunited atoms was not agreeable to the nostrils of the Kaiser. Mr. Edison also explained in general terms the principle on which the instrument worked. He was greeted with round after round of applause, and the spirit of the assembly rose high. Next the workings of the electrical ship were explained, and it was announced that after the meeting had adjourned an exhibition of the flying powers of the ship would be given in the open air. These experiments, together with the accompanying explanations, added to what had already been disseminated through the public press, were quite sufficient to convince all the representatives who had assembled in Washington that the problem of how to conquer the Martians had been solved. The means were plainly at hand. It only remained to apply them. For this purpose, as the President had pointed out, it would be necessary to raise a very large sum of money. "How much will be needed?" asked one of the English representatives. "At least ten thousand millions of dollars," replied the President. "It would be safer," said a Senator from the Pacific Coast, "to make it twenty five thousand millions." "I suggest," said the King of Italy, "that the nations be called in alphabetical order, and that the representatives of each name a sum which he is ready and able to contribute." "We want the cash or its equivalent," shouted the Pacific Coast Senator. "I shall not follow the alphabet strictly," said the President, "but shall begin with the larger nations first. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it is proper that the United States should lead the way. Mr. Secretary," he continued, turning to the Secretary of the Treasury, "how much can we stand?" "At least a thousand millions," replied the Secretary of the Treasury. A roar of applause that shook the room burst from the assembly. Even some of the monarchs threw up their hats. The Emperor Tsait'ien smiled from ear to ear. One of the Roko Tuis, or native chiefs, from Fiji, sprang up and brandished a war club. The President then proceeded to call the other nations, beginning with Austria-Hungary and ending with Zanzibar, whose Sultan, Hamoud bin Mahomed, had come to the congress in the escort of Queen Victoria. Each contributed liberally. Germany, coming in alphabetical order just before Great Britain, had named, through its chancellor, the sum of $500,000,000, but when the First Lord of the British Treasury, not wishing to be behind the United States, named double that sum as the contribution of the British Empire, the Emperor William looked displeased. He spoke a word in the ear of the Chancellor who immediately raised his hand. "We will give a thousand million dollars," said the Chancellor. Queen Victoria seemed surprised, though not displeased. The First Lord of the Treasury met her eye, and then, rising in his place, said: "Make it fifteen hundred million for Great Britain." Emperor William consulted again with his Chancellor, but evidently concluded not to increase his bid. But, at any rate, the fund had benefited to the amount of a thousand millions by this little outburst of imperial rivalry. The greatest surprise of all, however, came when the King of Siam was called upon for his contribution. He had not been given a foremost place in the Congress, but when the name of his country was pronounced he rose by his chair, dressed in a gorgeous specimen of the peculiar attire of his country, then slowly pushed his way to the front, stepped up to the President's desk and deposited upon it a small box. "This is our contribution," he said in broken English. The cover was lifted, and there darted, shimmering in the half-gloom of the Chamber, a burst of iridescence from the box. "My friends of the Western world," continued the King of Siam, "will be interested in seeing this gem. Only once before has the eye of a European been blessed with the sight of it. Your books will tell you that in the seventeenth century a traveller, Tavernier, saw in India an unmatched diamond which afterward disappeared like a meteor, and was thought to have been lost from the earth. You all know the name of that diamond and its history. It is the Great Mogul, and it lies before you. How it came into my possession I shall not explain. At any rate, it is honestly mine, and I freely contribute it here to aid in protecting my native planet against those enemies who appear determined to destroy it." When the excitement which the appearance of this long lost treasure, that had been the subject of so many romances and of such long and fruitless search, had subsided, the President continued calling the list, until he had completed it. Upon taking the sum of the contributions (the Great Mogul was reckoned at three millions) it was found to be still one thousand millions short of the required amount. The secretary of the Treasury was instantly on his feet. "Mr. President," he said, "I think we can stand that addition. Let it be added to the contribution of the United States of America." When the cheers that greeted the conclusion of the business were over, the President announced that the next affair of the Congress was to select a director who should have entire charge of the preparations for the war. It was the universal sentiment that no man could be so well suited for this post as Mr. Edison himself. He was accordingly selected by the unanimous and enthusiastic choice of the great assembly. "How long a time do you require to put everything in readiness?" asked the President. "Give me _carte blanche_," replied Mr. Edison, "and I believe I can have a hundred electric ships and three thousand disintegrators ready within six months." A tremendous cheer greeted this announcement. "Your powers are unlimited," said the President, "draw on the fund for as much money as you need," whereupon the Treasurer of the United States was made the disbursing officer of the fund, and the meeting adjourned. Not less than 5,000,000 people had assembled at Washington from all parts of the world. Every one of this immense multitude had been able to listen to the speeches and the cheers in the Senate Chamber, although not personally present there. Wires had been run all over the city, and hundreds of improved telephonic receivers provided, so that everyone could hear. Even those who were unable to visit Washington, people living in Baltimore, New York, Boston, and as far away as New Orleans, St. Louis and Chicago, had also listened to the proceedings with the aid of these receivers. Upon the whole, probably not less than 50,000,000 people had heard the deliberations of the great congress of the nations. The telegraph and the cable had sent the news across the oceans to all the capitols of the earth. The exultation was so great that the people seemed mad with joy. The promised exhibition of the electrical ship took place the next day. Enormous multitudes witnessed the experiment, and there was a struggle for places in the car. Even Queen Victoria, accompanied by the Prince of Wales, ventured to take a ride in it, and they enjoyed it so much that Mr. Edison prolonged the journey as far as Boston and the Bunker Hill monument. Most of the other monarchs also took a high ride, but when the turn of the Emperor of China came he repeated a fable which he said had come down from the time of Confucius: "Once upon a time there was a Chinaman living in the valley of the Hoang-Ho River, who was accustomed frequently to lie on his back, gazing at, and envying, the birds that he saw flying away in the sky. One day he saw a black speck which rapidly grew larger and larger, until as it got near he perceived that it was an enormous bird, which overshadowed the earth with its wings. It was the elephant of birds, the roc. 'Come with me,' said the roc, 'and I will show you the wonders of the kingdom of the birds.' The man caught hold of its claw and nestled among its feathers, and they rapidly rose high in the air, and sailed away to the Kuen-Lun Mountains. Here, as they passed near the top of the peaks, another roc made its appearance. The wings of the two great birds brushed together, and immediately they fell to fighting. In the midst of the melee the man lost his hold and tumbled into the top of a tree, where his pigtail caught on a branch, and he remained suspended. There the unfortunate man hung helpless, until a rat, which had its home in the rocks at the foot of the tree, took compassion upon him, and, climbing up, gnawed off the branch. As the man slowly and painfully wended his weary way homeward, he said: 'This teaches me that creatures to whom nature has given neither feathers nor wings should leave the kingdom of the birds to those who are fitted to inhabit it.'" Having told this story, Tsait'ien turned his back on the electrical ship. After the exhibition was finished, and amid the fresh outburst of enthusiasm that followed, it was suggested that a proper way to wind up the Congress and give suitable expression to the festive mood which now possessed mankind would be to have a grand ball. This suggestion met with immediate and universal approval. But for so gigantic an affair it was, of course, necessary to make special preparations. A convenient place was selected on the Virginia side of the Potomac; a space of ten acres was carefully levelled and covered with a polished floor, rows of columns one hundred feet apart were run across it in every direction, and these were decorated with electric lights, displaying every color of the spectrum. Above this immense space, rising in the center to a height of more than a thousand feet, was anchored a vast number of balloons, all aglow with lights, and forming a tremendous dome, in which brilliant lamps were arranged in such a manner as to exhibit, in an endless succession of combinations, all the national colors, ensigns and insignia of the various countries represented at the Congress. Blazing eagles, lions, unicorns, dragons and other imaginary creatures that the different nations had chosen for their symbols appeared to hover high above the dancers, shedding a brilliant light upon the scene. Circles of magnificent thrones were placed upon the floor in convenient locations for seeing. A thousand bands of music played, and tens of thousands of couples, gayly dressed and flashing with gems, whirled together upon the polished floor. The Queen of England led the dance, on the arm of the President of the United States. The Prince of Wales led forth the fair daughter of the President, universally admired as the most beautiful woman on the great ballroom floor. The Emperor William, in his military dress, danced with the beauteous Princess Masaco, the daughter of the Mikado, who wore for the occasion the ancient costume of the women of her country, sparkling with jewels, and glowing with quaint combinations of color like a gorgeous butterfly. The Chinese Emperor, with his pigtail flying high as he spun, danced with the Empress of Russia. The King of Siam essayed a waltz with the Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar, while the Sultan of Turkey basked in the smiles of a Chicago heiress to a hundred millions. The Czar chose for his partner a dark-eyed beauty from Peru, but King Malietoa, of Samoa, was suspicious of civilized charmers and, avoiding all of their allurements, expressed his joy and gave vent to his enthusiasm in a _pas seul_. In this he was quickly joined by a band of Sioux Indian chiefs, whose whoops and yells so startled the leader of a German band on their part of the floor that he dropped his baton, and followed by the musicians, took to his heels. This incident amused the good-natured Emperor of China more than anything else that had occurred. "Make muchee noisee," he said, indicating the fleeing musicians with his thumb. "Allee samee muchee flaid noisee," and then his round face dimpled into another laugh. The scene from the outside was even more imposing than that which greeted the eye within the brilliantly lighted enclosure. Far away in the night, rising high among the stars, the vast dome of illuminated balloons seemed, like some supernatural creation, too grand and glorious to have been constructed by the inhabitants of the earth. All around it, and from some of the balloons themselves, rose jets and fountains of fire, ceasingly playing, and blotting out the constellations of the heavens by their splendor. The dance was followed by a grand banquet, at which the Prince of Wales proposed a toast to Mr. Edison: "It gives me much pleasure," he said, "to offer, in the name of the nations of the Old World, this tribute of our admiration for, and our confidence in, the genius of the New World. Perhaps on such an occasion as this, when all racial differences and prejudices ought to be, and are, buried and forgotten, I should not recall anything that might revive them; yet I cannot refrain from expressing my happiness in knowing that the champion who is to achieve the salvation of the earth has come forth from the bosom of the Anglo-Saxon race." Several of the great potentates looked grave upon hearing the Prince of Wales' words, and the Czar and the Kaiser exchanged glances; but there was no interruption to the cheers that followed. Mr. Edison, whose modesty and dislike to display and to speechmaking were well known, simply said: "I think we have got the machine that can whip them. But we ought not to be wasting any time. Probably they are not dancing on Mars, but are getting ready to make us dance." These words instantly turned the current of feeling in the vast assembly. There was no longer any disposition to expend time in vain boastings and rejoicings. Everywhere the cry now became, "Let us make haste! Let us get ready at once! Who knows but the Martians have already embarked, and are now on their way to destroy us?" Under the impulse of this new feeling, which, it must be admitted, was very largely inspired by terror, the vast ballroom was quickly deserted. The lights were suddenly put out in the great dome of balloons, for someone had whispered: "Suppose they should see that from Mars? Would they not guess what we were about, and redouble their preparations to finish us?" Upon the suggestion of the President of the United States, an executive committee, representing all the principal nations, was appointed, and without delay a meeting of this committee was assembled at the White House. Mr. Edison was summoned before it, and asked to sketch briefly the plan upon which he proposed to work. I need not enter into the details of what was done at this meeting. Let it suffice to say that when it broke up, in the small hours of the morning, it had been unanimously resolved that as many thousands of men as Mr. Edison might require should be immediately placed at his disposal; that as far as possible all the great manufacturing establishments of the country should be instantly transformed into factories where electrical ships and disintegrators could be built, and upon the suggestion of Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, the celebrated English electrical expert, seconded by Lord Kelvin, it was resolved that all the leading men of science in the world should place their services at the disposal of Mr. Edison in any capacity in which, in his judgement, they might be useful to him. The members of this committee were disposed to congratulate one another on the good work which they had so promptly accomplished, when at the moment of their adjournment, a telegraphic dispatch was handed to the President from Professor George E. Hale, the director of the great Yerkes Observatory, in Wisconsin. The telegram read: "Professor Barnard, watching Mars tonight with the forty-inch telescope, saw a sudden outburst of reddish light, which we think indicates that something has been shot from the planet. Spectroscopic observations of this moving light indicated that it was coming earthward, while visible, at the rate of not less than one hundred miles a second." Hardly had the excitement caused by the reading of this dispatch subsided, when others of a similar import came from the Lick Observatory, in California; from the branch of the Harvard Observatory at Arequipa, in Peru, and from the Royal Observatory, at Potsdam. When the telegram from this last named place was read the Emperor William turned to his Chancellor and said: "I want to go home. If I am to die I prefer to leave my bones among those of my imperial ancestors and not in this vulgar country, where no king has ever ruled. I don't like this atmosphere. It makes me limp." And now, whipped on by the lash of alternate hope and fear, the earth sprang to its work of preparation. CHAPTER FOUR _TO CONQUER ANOTHER WORLD_ It is not necessary for me to describe the manner in which Mr. Edison performed his tremendous task. He was as good as his word, and within six months from the first stroke of the hammer, a hundred electrical ships, each provided with a full battery of disintegrators, were floating in the air above the harbor and the partially rebuilt city of New York. It was a wonderful scene. The polished sides of the huge floating cars sparkled in the sunlight, and, as they slowly rose and fell, and swung this way and that, upon the tides of the air, as if held by invisible cables, the brilliant pennons streaming from their peaks waved up and down like the wings of an assemblage of gigantic humming birds. Not knowing whether the atmosphere of Mars would prove suitable to be breathed by inhabitants of the earth, Mr. Edison had made provision, by means of an abundance of glass-protected openings, to permit the inmates of the electrical ships to survey their surroundings without quitting the interior. It was possible by properly selecting the rate of undulation, to pass the vibratory impulse from the disintegrators through the glass windows of a car without damage to the glass itself. The windows were so arranged that the disintegrators could sweep around the car on all sides, and could also be directed above or below, as necessity might dictate. To overcome the destructive forces employed by the Martians no satisfactory plan had yet been devised, because there was no means to experiment with them. The production of those forces was still the secret of our enemies. But Mr. Edison had no doubt that if we could not resist their efforts we might at least be able to avoid them by the rapidity of our motions. As he pointed out, the war machines which the Martians had employed in their invasion of the earth, were really very awkward and unmanageable affairs. Mr. Edison's electrical ships, on the other hand, were marvels of speed and of manageability. They could dart about, turn, reverse their course, rise, fall, with the quickness and ease of a fish in the water. Mr. Edison calculated that even if mysterious bolts should fall upon our ships we could diminish their power to cause injury by our rapid evolutions. We might be deceived in our expectations, and might have overestimated our powers, but at any rate we must take our chances and try. A multitude, exceeding even that which had assembled during the great congress in Washington, now thronged New York and its neighborhood to witness the mustering and the departure of the ships bound for Mars. Nothing further had been heard of the mysterious phenomenon reported from the observatories six months before, and which at the time was believed to indicate the departure of another expedition from Mars for the invasion of the earth. If the Martians had set out to attack us they had evidently gone astray; or, perhaps, it was some other world that they were aiming at this time. The expedition had, of course, profoundly stirred the interest of the scientific world, and representatives of every branch of science, from all the civilized nations, urged their claims to places in the ships. Mr. Edison was compelled, from lack of room, to refuse transportation to more than one in a thousand of those who now, on the plea that they might be able to bring back something of advantage to science, wished to embark for Mars. On the model of the celebrated corps of literary and scientific men which Napoleon carried with him in his invasion of Egypt, Mr. Edison selected a company of the foremost astronomers, archaeologists, anthropologists, botanists, bacteriologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, mechanics, meteorologists and experts in mining, metallurgy and every other branch of practical science, as well as artists and photographers. It was but reasonable to believe that in another world, and a world so much older than the earth as Mars was, these men would be able to gather materials in comparison with which the discoveries made among the ruins of ancient empires in Egypt and Babylonia would be insignificant indeed. It was a wonderful undertaking and a strange spectacle. There was a feeling of uncertainty which awed the vast multitude whose eyes were upturned to the ships. The expedition was not large, considering the gigantic character of the undertaking. Each of the electrical ships carried about twenty men, together with an abundant supply of compressed provisions, compressed air, scientific apparatus and so on. In all, there were about 2,000 men, who were going to conquer, if they could, another world! But though few in numbers, they represented the flower of the earth, the culmination of the genius of the planet. The greatest leaders in science, both theoretical and practical, were there. It was the evolution of the earth against the evolution of Mars. It was a planet in the hey-day of its strength matched against an aged and decrepit world which, nevertheless, in consequence of its long ages of existence, had acquired an experience which made it a most dangerous foe. On both sides there was desperation. The earth was desperate because it foresaw destruction unless it could first destroy its enemy. Mars was desperate because nature was gradually depriving it of the means of supporting life, and its teeming population was compelled to swarm like the inmates of an overcrowded hive of bees, and find new homes elsewhere. In this respect the situation on Mars, as we were well aware, resembled what had already been known upon the earth, where the older nations overflowing with population had sought new lands in which to settle, and for that purpose had driven out the native inhabitants, whenever those natives had proven unable to resist the invasion. No man could foresee the issue of what we were about to undertake, but the tremendous powers which the disintegrators had exhibited and the marvelous efficiency of the electrical ships bred almost universal confidence that we should be successful. The car in which Mr. Edison travelled was, of course, the flagship of the squadron, and I had the good fortune to be included among its inmates. Here, besides several leading men of science from our own country, were Lord Kelvin, Lord Rayleigh, Professor Roentgen, Dr. Moissan--the man who first made artificial diamonds--and several others whose fame had encircled the world. Each of these men cherished hopes of wonderful discoveries, along his line of investigation, to be made in Mars. An elaborate system of signals had, of course, to be devised for the control of the squadron. These signals consisted of brilliant electric lights displayed at night and so controlled that by their means long sentences and directions could be easily and quickly transmitted. The day signals consisted partly of brightly colored pennons and flags, which were to serve only when, shadowed by clouds or other obstructions, the full sunlight could not fall upon the ship. This could naturally only occur near the surface of the earth or of another planet. Once out of the shadow of the earth we should have no more clouds and no more night until we arrived at Mars. In open space the sun would be continually shining. It would be perpetual day for us, except as, by artificial means, we furnished ourselves with darkness for the purpose of promoting sleep. In this region of perpetual day, then, the signals were also to be transmitted by flashes of light from mirrors reflecting the rays of the sun. Yet this perpetual day would be also, in one sense, a perpetual night. There would be no more blue sky for us, because without an atmosphere the sunlight could not be diffused. Objects would be illuminated only on the side toward the sun. Anything that screened off the direct rays of sunlight would produce absolute darkness behind it. There would be no graduation of shadow. The sky would be as black as ink on all sides. While it was the intention to remain as much as possible within the cars, yet since it was probable that necessity would arise for occasionally quitting the interior of the electrical ships, Mr. Edison had provided for this emergency by inventing an air-tight dress constructed somewhat after the manner of a diver's suit, but of much lighter material. Each ship was provided with several of these suits, by wearing which one could venture outside the ship even when it was beyond the atmosphere of the earth. Provision had been made to meet the terrific cold which we knew would be encountered the moment we had passed beyond the atmosphere--that awful absolute zero which men had measured by anticipation, but never yet experienced--by a simple system of producing within the air-tight suits a temperature sufficiently elevated to counteract the effects of the frigidity without. By means of long, flexible tubes, air could be continually supplied to the wearers of the suits, and by an ingenious contrivance a store of compressed air sufficient to last for several hours was provided for each suit, so that in case of necessity the wearer could throw off the tubes connecting him with the air tanks in the car. Another object which had been kept in view in the preparation of these suits was the possible exploration of an airless planet, such as the moon. The necessity of some contrivance by means of which we should be enabled to converse with one another while outside the cars in open space, or when in an airless world, like the moon, where there would be no medium by which the waves of sound could be conveyed as they are in the atmosphere of the earth, had been foreseen by our great inventor, and he had not found it difficult to contrive suitable devices for meeting the emergency. Inside the headpiece of each of the electrical suits was the mouthpiece of a telephone. This was connected to a wire which, when not in use, could be conveniently coiled upon the arm of the wearer. Near the ears, similarly connected with wires, were telephonic receivers. When two persons wearing the air-tight dresses wished to converse with one another it was only necessary for them to connect themselves by the wires, and conversation could then be easily carried on. Careful calculations of the precise distance of Mars from the earth at the time when the expedition was to start had been made by a large number of experts in mathematical astronomy. But it was not Mr. Edison's intention to go direct to Mars. With the exception of the first electrical ship, which he had completed, none had yet been tried in a long voyage. It was desirable that the qualities of each of the ships should first be carefully tested, and for this reason the leader of the expedition determined that the moon should be the first port of space at which the squadron would call. It chanced that the moon was so situated at this time as to be nearly in a line between the earth and Mars, which latter was in opposition to the sun, and consequently as favorably situated as possible for the purposes of the voyage. What would be, then, for 99 out of the 100 ships of the squadron, a trial trip would at the same time be a step of a quarter of a million of miles gained in the direction of our journey, and so no time would be wasted. The departure from the earth was arranged to occur precisely at midnight. The moon near the full was hanging high over head, and a marvelous spectacle was presented to the eyes of those below as the great squadron of floating ships, with their insignia lights ablaze, cast loose and began slowly to move away on their adventurous and unprecedented expedition into the great unknown. A tremendous cheer, billowing up from the throats of millions of excited men and women, seemed to rend the curtain of the night, and made the airships tremble with the atmospheric vibrations that were set in motion. Instantly magnificent fireworks were displayed in honor of our departure. Rockets by hundreds of thousands shot heaven-ward, and then burst in constellations of firey drops. The sudden illumination thus produced, overspreading hundreds of square miles of the surface of the earth with a light almost like that of day, must certainly have been visible to the inhabitants of Mars, if they were watching us at the time. They might, or might not, correctly interpret its significance; but, at any rate, we did not care. We were off, and were confident that we could meet our enemy on his own ground before he could attack us again. And now, as we slowly rose higher, a marvelous scene was disclosed. At first the earth beneath us, buried as it was in night, resembled the hollow of a vast cup of ebony blackness, in the center of which, like the molten lava run together at the bottom of a volcanic crater, shone the light of the illuminations around New York. But when we got beyond the atmosphere, and the earth still continued to recede below us, its aspect changed. The cup-shaped appearance was gone, and it began to round out beneath our eyes in the form of a vast globe--an enormous ball mysteriously suspended under us, glimmering over most of its surface, with the faint illumination of the moon, and showing toward its eastern edge the oncoming light of the rising sun. When we were still further away, having slightly varied our course so that the sun was once more entirely hidden behind the center of the earth, we saw its atmosphere completely illuminated, all around it, with prismatic lights, like a gigantic rainbow in the form of a ring. Another shift in our course rapidly carried us out of the shadow of the earth and into that all pervading sunshine. Then the great planet beneath us hung unspeakable in its beauty. The outlines of several of the continents were clearly discernible on its surface, streaked and spotted with delicate shades of varying color, and the sunlight flashed and glowed in long lanes across the convex surface of the oceans. Parallel with the Equator and along the regions of the ever blowing trade winds, were vast belts of clouds, gorgeous with crimson and purple as the sunlight fell upon them. Immense expanses of snow and ice lay like a glittering garment upon both land and sea around the North Pole. As we gazed upon this magnificent spectacle, our hearts bounded within us. This was our earth--this was the planet we were going to defend--our home in the trackless wilderness of space. And it seemed to us indeed a home for which we might gladly expend our last breath. A new determination to conquer or die sprang up in our hearts, and I saw Lord Kelvin, after gazing at the beauteous scene which the earth presented through his eyeglass, turn about and peer in the direction in which we knew that Mars lay, with a sudden frown that caused the glass to lose its grip and fall dangling from its string upon his breast. Even Mr. Edison seemed moved. "I am glad I thought of the disintegrator," he said. "I shouldn't like to see that world down there laid waste again." "And it won't be," said Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, gripping the handle of an electric machine, "not if we can help it." CHAPTER FIVE _THE FOOTPRINT ON THE MOON_ To prevent accidents, it had been arranged that the ships should keep a considerable distance apart. Some of them gradually drifted away, until, on account of the neutral tint of their sides, they were swallowed up in the abyss of space. Still it was possible to know where every member of the squadron was through the constant interchange of signals. These, as I have explained, were effected by means of mirrors flashing back the light of the sun. But, although it was now unceasing day for us, yet, there being no atmosphere to diffuse the sun's light, the stars were visible to us just as at night upon the earth, and they shone with extraordinary splendor against the intense black background of the firmament. The lights of some of the more distant ships of our squadron were not brighter than the stars in whose neighborhood they seemed to be. In some cases it was only possible to distinguish between the light of a ship and that of a star by the fact that the former was continually flashing while the star was steady in its radiance. The most uncanny effect was produced by the absence of atmosphere around us. Inside the car, where there was air, the sunlight, streaming through one or more of the windows, was diffused and produced ordinary daylight. But when we ventured outside we could only see things by halves. The side of the car that the sun's rays touched was visible, the other side was invisible, the light from the stars not making it bright enough to affect the eye in contrast with the sun-illumined half. As I held up my arm before my eyes, half of it seemed to be shaved off lengthwise; a companion on the deck of the ship looked like half a man. So the other electrical ships near us appeared as half ships, only the illumined sides being visible. We had now gotten so far away that the earth had taken on the appearance of a heavenly body like the moon. Its colors had become all blended into a golden-reddish hue, which overspread nearly its entire surface, except at the poles, where there were broad patches of white. It was marvelous to look at this huge orb behind us, while far beyond it shone the blazing sun like an enormous star in the blackest of nights. In the opposite direction appeared the silver orb of the moon, and scattered all around were millions of brilliant stars, amid which, like fireflies, flashed and sparkled the signal lights of the squadron. A danger that might easily have been anticipated, that perhaps had been anticipated, but against which it had been difficult, if not impossible, to provide, presently manifested itself. Looking out of a window toward the right, I suddenly noticed the lights of a distant ship darting about in a curious curve. Instantly afterward, another member of the squadron, nearer by, behaved in the same inexplicable manner. Then two or three of the floating cars seemed to be violently drawn from their courses and hurried rapidly in the direction of the flagship. Immediately I perceived a small object, luridly flaming, which seemed to move with immense speed in our direction. The truth instantly flashed upon my mind, and I shouted to the other occupants of the car: "A meteor!" And such indeed it was. We had met this mysterious wanderer in space at a moment when we were moving in a direction at right angles to the path it was pursuing around the sun. Small as it was, and its diameter probably did not exceed a single foot, it was yet an independent little world, and as such a member of the solar system. Its distance from the sun being so near that of the earth, I knew that its velocity, assuming it to be travelling in a nearly circular orbit, must be about eighteen miles in a second. With this velocity, then, it plunged like a projectile shot by some mysterious enemy in space directly through our squadron. It had come and was gone before one could utter a sentence of three words. Its appearance, and the effect it had produced upon the ships in whose neighborhood it passed, indicated that it bore an intense and tremendous charge of electricity. How it had become thus charged I cannot pretend to say. I simply record the fact. And this charge, it was evident, was opposite in polarity to that which the ships of the squadron bore. It therefore exerted an attractive influence upon them and thus drew them after it. I had just time to think how lucky it was that the meteor did not strike any of us, when, glancing at a ship just ahead, I perceived that an accident had occurred. The ship swayed violently from its course, dazzling flashes played around it, and two or three of the men forming its crew appeared for an instant on its exterior, wildly gesticulating, but almost instantly falling prone. It was evident at a glance that the car had been struck by the meteor. How serious the damage might be we could not instantly determine. The course of our ship was immediately altered, the electric polarity was changed and we rapidly approached the disabled car. The men who had fallen lay upon its surface. One of the heavy circular glasses covering a window had been smashed to atoms. Through this the meteor had passed, killing two or three men who stood in its course. Then it had crashed through the opposite side of the car, and, passing on, had disappeared into space. The store of air contained in the car had immediately rushed out through the openings, and when two or three of us, having donned our air-tight suits as quickly as possible, entered the wrecked car we found all its inmates stretched upon the floor in a condition of asphyxiation. They, as well as those who lay upon the exterior, were immediately removed to the flagship, restoratives were applied, and, fortunately, our aid had come so promptly that the lives of all of them were saved. But life had fled from the mangled bodies of those who had stood directly in the path of the fearful projectile. [Illustration: _"Through this the meteor had passed, killing two or three men who stood in its course."_] This strange accident had been witnessed by several of the members of the fleet, and they quickly drew together, in order to inquire for the particulars. As the flagship was now overcrowded by the addition of so many men to its crew, Mr. Edison had them distributed among the other cars. Fortunately it happened that the disintegrators contained in the wrecked car were not injured. Mr. Edison thought that it would be possible to repair the car itself, and for that purpose he had it attached to the flagship in order that it might be carried on as far as the moon. The bodies of the dead were transported with it, as it was determined, instead of committing them to the fearful deep of space, where they would have wandered forever, or else have fallen like meteors upon the earth, to give them interment in the lunar soil. As we now rapidly approached the moon the change which the appearance of its surface underwent was no less wonderful than that which the surface of the earth had presented in the reverse order while we were receding from it. From a pale silver orb, shining with comparative faintness among the stars, it slowly assumed the appearance of a vast mountainous desert. As we drew nearer its colors became more pronounced; the great flat regions appeared darker; the mountain peaks shone more brilliantly. The huge chasms seemed bottomless and blacker than midnight. Gradually separate mountains appeared. What seemed like expanses of snow and immense glaciers streaming down their sides sparkled with great brilliancy in the perpendicular rays of the sun. Our motion had now assumed the aspect of falling. We seemed to be dropping from an immeasurable height, and with an inconceivable velocity, straight down upon those giant peaks. Here and there curious lights glowed upon the mysterious surface of the moon. Where the edge of the moon cut the sky behind it, it was broken and jagged with mountain masses. Vast crater rings overspread its surface, and in some of these I imagined I could perceive a lurid illumination coming out of their deepest cavities, and the curling of mephitic vapors around their terrible jaws. We were approaching that part of the moon which is known to the astronomers as the Bay of Rainbows. Here a huge semi-circular region, as smooth almost as the surface of a prairie, lay beneath our eyes, stretching southward into a vast ocean-like expanse, while on the north it was enclosed by an enormous range of mountain cliffs, rising perpendicularly to a height of many thousands of feet, and rent and gashed in every direction by forces which seemed at some remote period to have labored at tearing this little world in pieces. It was a fearful spectacle; a dead and mangled world, too dreadful to look upon. The idea of the death of the moon was, of course, not a new one to many of us. We had long been aware that the earth's satellite was a body which had passed beyond the stage of life, if indeed it had ever been a life supporting globe; but none of us were prepared for the terrible spectacle which now smote our eyes. At each end of the semi-circular ridge that encloses the Bay of Rainbows there is a lofty promontory. That at the northwestern extremity had long been known to the astronomers under the name of Cape Laplace. The other promontory, at the southeastern termination, is called Cape Heraclides. It was toward the latter that we were approaching, and by interchange of signals all the members of the squadron had been informed that Cape Heraclides was to be our rendezvous upon the moon. I may say that I had been somewhat familiar with the scenery of this part of the lunar world, for I had often studied it from the earth with a telescope, and I had thought that if there was any part of the moon where one might, with fair expectation of success, look for inhabitants, or if not inhabitants, at least for relics of life no longer existant there, this would surely be the place. It was, therefore, with no small degree of curiosity, notwithstanding the unexpectedly frightful and repulsive appearance that the surface of the moon presented, that I now saw myself rapidly approaching the region concerning whose secrets my imagination had so often busied itself. When Mr. Edison and I had paid our previous trip to the moon on our first experimental trip of the electrical ship we had landed at a point on its surface remote from this, and, as I have before explained, we then made no effort to investigate its secrets. But now it was to be different, and we were at length to see something of the wonders of the moon. I had often on the earth drawn a smile from my friends by showing them Cape Heraclides with a telescope, and calling their attention to the fact that the outline of the peak terminating the cape was such as to present a remarkable resemblance to a human face, unmistakably a feminine countenance, seen in profile, and possessing no small degree of beauty. To my astonishment, this curious human semblance still remained when we had approached so close to the moon that the mountains forming the cape filled nearly the whole field of view of the window from which I was watching it. The resemblance, indeed, was most startling. "Can this indeed be Diana herself?" I said half-aloud, but instantly afterward I was laughing at my fancy, for Mr. Edison had overhead me and exclaimed, "Where is she?" "Who?" "Diana." "Why, there," I said, pointing to the moon. But lo! the appearance was gone even while I spoke. A swift change had taken place in the line of sight by which we were viewing it, and the likeness had disappeared in consequence. A few moments later my astonishment was revived, but the cause this time was a very different one. We had been dropping rapidly toward the mountains, and the electrician in charge of the car was swiftly and constantly changing his potential, and, like a pilot who feels his way into an unknown harbor, endeavoring to approach the moon in such a manner that no hidden peril should surprise us. As we thus approached I suddenly perceived, crowning the very apex of the lofty peak near the termination of the cape, the ruins of what appeared to be an ancient watch tower. It was evidently composed of Cyclopean blocks larger than any that I had ever seen even among the ruins of Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor. [Illustration: _"As we thus approached I suddenly perceived, crowning the very apex of the lofty peak near the termination of the cape, the ruins of what appeared to be the ancient watch-tower."_] Here, then, was visible proof that the moon had been inhabited, although probably it was not inhabited now. I cannot describe the exultant feeling which took possession of me at this discovery. It settled so much that learned men had been disputing about for centuries. "What will they say," I exclaimed, "when I show them a photograph of that?" Below the peak, stretching far to right and left, lay a barren beach which had evidently once been washed by sea waves, because it was marked by long curved ridges such as the advancing and retiring tide leaves upon the shore of the ocean. This beach sloped rapidly outward and downward toward a profound abyss, which had once, evidently, been the bed of a sea, but which now appeared to us simply as the empty, yawning shell of an ocean that had long vanished. It was with no small difficulty, and only after the expenditure of considerable time, that all the floating ships of the squadron were gradually brought to rest on this lone mountain top of the moon. In accordance with my request, Mr. Edison had the flagship moored in the interior of the great ruined watch tower that I have described. The other ships rested upon the slope of the mountain around us. Although time pressed, for we knew that the safety of the earth depended upon our promptness in attacking Mars, yet it was determined to remain here at least two or three days in order that the wrecked car might be repaired. It was found also that the passage of the highly electrified meteor had disarranged the electrical machinery in some of the other cars, so that there were many repairs to be made besides those needed to restore the wreck. Moreover, we must bury our unfortunate companions who had been killed by the meteor. This, in fact, was the first work that we performed. Strange was the sight, and stranger our feelings, as here on the surface of a world distant from the earth, and on soil which had never before been pressed by the foot of man, we performed that last ceremony of respect which mortals pay to mortality. In the ancient beach at the foot of the peak we made a deep opening, and there covered forever the faces of our friends, leaving them to sleep among the ruins of empires, and among the graves of races which had vanished probably ages before Adam and Eve appeared in Paradise. While the repairs were being made several scientific expeditions were sent out in various directions across the moon. One went westward to investigate the great ring of Plato, and the lunar Alps. Another crossed the ancient Sea of Showers toward the inner Appenines. One started to explore the immense Crater of Copernicus, which, yawning fifty miles across, presents a wonderful appearance even from the distance of the earth. The ship in which I, myself, had the good fortune to embark, was bound for the mysterious inner mountain Aristarchus. Before these expeditions started, a careful exploration had been made in the neighborhood of Cape Heraclides. But, except that the broken walls of the watch tower on the peak, composed of blocks of enormous size, had evidently been the work of creatures endowed with human intelligence, no remains were found indicating the former presence of inhabitants upon this part of the moon. But along the shore of the old sea, just where the so-called Bay of Rainbows separates itself from the abyss of the Sea of Showers, there were found some stratified rocks in which the fascinated eyes of the explorer beheld the clear imprint of a gigantic human foot, measuring five feet in length from toe to heel. The most minute search failed to reveal another trace of the presence of the ancient giant, who had left the impress of his foot in the wet sands of the beach here so many millions of years ago that even the imagination of the geologists shrank from the task of attempting to fix the precise period. Around this gigantic footprint gathered most of the scientific members of the expedition, wearing their oddly shaped air-tight suits, connected with telephonic wires, and the spectacle, but for the impressiveness of the discovery, would have been laughable in the extreme. Bending over the mark in the rock, nodding their heads together, pointing with their awkwardly accoutered arms, they looked like an assemblage of antidiluvian monsters collected around their prey. Their disappointment over the fact that no other marks of anything resembling human habitation could be discovered was very great. Still this footprint in itself was quite sufficient, as they all declared, to settle the question of the former habitation of the moon, and it would serve for the production of many a learned volume after their return to earth, even if no further discoveries should be made in other parts of the lunar world. It was the hope of making such other discoveries that led to the dispatch of the other various expeditions which I have already named. I was chosen to accompany the car that was going to Aristarchus, because, as every one who had viewed the moon from the earth was aware, there was something very mysterious about that mountain. I knew that it was a crater nearly thirty miles in diameter and very deep, although its floor was plainly visible. What rendered it remarkable was the fact that the floor and the walls of the crater, particularly on the inner side, glowed with a marvelous brightness which rendered them almost blinding when viewed with a powerful telescope. So bright were they, indeed, that the eye was unable to see many of the details which the telescope would have made visible but for the flood of light which poured from the mountains. Sir William Hershel had been so completely misled by this appearance that he supposed he was watching a lunar volcano in eruption. It had always been a difficult question what caused the extraordinary luminosity of Aristarchus. No end of hypothesis had been invented to account for it. Now I was to assist in settling these questions forever. From Cape Heraclides to Aristarchus the distance in air line was something over 300 miles. Our course lay across the northeastern part of the Sea of Showers, with enormous cliffs, mountain masses and peaks shining on the right, while in the other direction the view was bounded by the distant range of the lunar Appenines, some of whose towering peaks, when viewed from our immense elevation, appeared as sharp as the Swiss Matterhorn. When we had arrived within about a hundred miles of our destination we found ourselves, floating directly over the so-called Harbinger Mountains. The serrated peaks of Aristarchus then appeared ahead of us, fairly blazing in the sunshine. It seemed as if a gigantic string of diamonds, every one as great as a mountain peak, had been cast down upon the barren surface of the moon and left to waste their brilliance upon the desert air of this abandoned world. As we rapidly approached the dazzling splendor of the mountain became almost unbearable to our eyes, and we were compelled to resort to the devise, practised by all climbers of lofty mountains, where the glare of sunlight on snow surfaces is liable to cause temporary blindness, of protecting our eyes with neutral-tinted glasses. Professor Moissan, the great French chemist and maker of artificial diamonds, fairly danced with delight. "Voila! Voila! Voila!" was all that he could say. When we were comparatively near, the mountain no longer seemed to glow with a uniform radiance, evenly distributed over its entire surface, but now innumerable points of light, all as bright as so many little suns, blazed away at us. It was evident that we had before us a mountain composed of, or at least covered with, crystals. Without stopping to alight on the outer slopes of the great ring-shaped range of peaks which composed Aristarchus, we sailed over their rim and looked down into the interior. Here the splendor of the crystals was greater than on the outer slopes, and the broad floor of the crater, thousands of feet beneath us, shone and sparkled with overwhelming radiance, as if it were an immense bin of diamonds, while a peak in the center flamed like a stupendous tiara incrusted with selected gems. Eager to see what these crystals were, the car was now allowed rapidly to drop into the interior of the crater. With great caution we brought it to rest upon the blazing ground, for the sharp edges of the crystals would certainly have torn the metallic sides of the car if it had come into violent contact with them. Donning our air-tight suits and stepping carefully out upon this wonderful footing we attempted to detach some of the crystals. Many of them were firmly fastened, but a few--some of astonishing size--were readily loosened. A moment's inspection showed that we had stumbled upon the most marvelous work of the forces of crystalization that human eyes had ever rested upon. Some time in the past history of the moon there had been an enormous outflow of molten material from the crater. This had overspread the walls and partially filled up the interior, and later its surface had flowered into gems, as thick as blossoms in a bed of pansies. The whole mass flashed prismatic rays of indescribable beauty and intensity. We gazed at first speechless with amazement. "It cannot be, surely it cannot be," said Professor Moissan at length. "But it is," said another member of the party. "Are these diamonds?" asked a third. "I cannot yet tell," replied the Professor. "They have the brilliancy of diamonds, but they may be something else." "Moon jewels," suggested a third. "And worth untold millions, whatever they are," remarked another. These magnificent crystals, some of which appeared to be almost flawless, varied in size from the dimensions of a hazelnut to geometrical solids several inches in diameter. We carefully selected as many as it was convenient to carry and placed them in the car for future examination. We had solved another long standing lunar problem and had, perhaps, opened up an inexhaustible future mine of wealth which might eventually go far toward reimbursing the earth for the damage which it had suffered from the invasion of the Martians. On returning to Cape Heraclides we found that the other expeditions had arrived at the rendezvous ahead of us. Their members had wonderful stories to tell of what they had seen, but nothing caused quite so much astonishment as that which we had to tell and to show. The party which had gone to visit Plato and the lunar Alps brought back, however, information which, in a scientific sense, was no less interesting than what we had been able to gather. They had found within this curious ring of Plato, which is a circle of mountains sixty miles in diameter, enclosing a level plain remarkably smooth over most of its surface, unmistakable evidences of former habitation. A gigantic city had evidently at one time existed near the center of this great plain. The outlines of its walls and the foundation marks of some of its immense buildings were plainly made out, and elaborate plans of this vanished capitol of the moon were prepared by several members of the party. One of them was fortunate enough to discover an even more precious relic of the ancient lunarians. It was a piece of petrified skullbone, representing but a small portion of the head to which it had belonged, but yet sufficient to enable the anthropologists, who immediately fell to examining it, to draw ideal representations of the head as it must have been in life--the head of a giant of enormous size, which, if it had possessed a highly organized brain, of proportionate magnitude, must have given to its possessor intellectual powers immensely greater than any of the descendants of Adam have ever been endowed with. Indeed, one of the professors was certain that some little concretions found on the interior of the piece of skull were petrified portions of the brain matter itself, and he set to work with the microscope to examine its organic quality. In the meantime, the repairs to the electrical ships had been completed, and, although these discoveries on the moon had created a most profound sensation among the members of the expedition, and aroused an almost irresistable desire to continue the explorations thus happily begun, yet everybody knew that these things were aside from the main purpose in view, and that we should be false to our duty in wasting a moment more upon the moon than was absolutely necessary to put the ships in proper condition to proceed on their warlike voyage. Everything being prepared then, we left the moon with great regret, just forty-eight hours after we had landed upon its surface, carrying with us a determination to revisit it and to learn more of its wonderful secrets in case we should survive the dangers which we were now going to face. CHAPTER SIX _THE MONSTERS ON THE ASTEROID_ A day or two after leaving the moon, we had another adventure with a wandering inhabitant of space which brought us into far greater peril than had our encounter with the meteor. The airships had been partitioned off so that a portion of the interior could be darkened in order to serve as a sleeping chamber, wherein, according to the regulations prescribed by the commander of the squadron each member of the expedition in his turn passed eight out of every twenty-four hours--sleeping if he could, if not, meditating in a more or less dazed way, upon the wonderful things that he was seeing and doing--things far more incredible than the creations of a dream. One morning, if I may call by the name morning the time of my periodical emergence from the darkened chamber, glancing from one of the windows, I was startled to see in the black sky a brilliant comet. No periodical comet, as I knew, was at this time approaching the neighborhood of the sun, and no stranger of that kind had been detected from the observatories making its way sunward before we left the earth. Here, however, was unmistakably a comet rushing toward the sun, flinging out a great gleaming tail behind it and so close to us that I wondered to see it remaining almost motionless in the sky. This phenomenon was soon explained to me, and the explanation was of a most disquieting character. The stranger had already been perceived, not only from the flagship, but from the other members of the squadron, and, as I now learned, efforts had been made to get out of the neighborhood, but for some reason the electrical apparatus did not work perfectly--some mysterious disturbing force acting upon it--and so it had been found impossible to avoid an encounter with the comet, not an actual coming into contact with it, but a falling into the sphere of its influence. In fact, I was informed that for several hours the squadron had been dragging along in the wake of a comet, very much as boats are sometimes towed off by a wounded whale. Every effort had been made to so adjust the electric charge upon the ships that they would be repelled from the cometic mass, but, owing apparently to electric changes affecting the clashing mass of meteoric bodies which constituted the head of the comet, we found it impossible to escape from its influence. At one instant the ships would be repelled; immediately afterward they would be attracted again, and thus they were dragged hither and thither, but never able to break from the invisible leash which the comet had cast upon them. The latter was moving with enormous velocity toward the sun, and, consequently, we were being carried back again, away from the object of our expedition, with a fair prospect of being dissipated in blazing vapors when the comet had dragged us, unwilling prisoners, into the immediate neighborhood of the solar furnace. Even the most cool-headed lost his self control in this terrible emergency. Every kind of devise that experience or the imagination could suggest was tried, but nothing would do. Still on we rushed with the electrified atoms composing the tail of the comet swinging to and fro over the members of the squadron, as they shifted their position, like the plume of smoke from a gigantic steamer, drifting over the sea birds that follow in its course. Was this to end it all, then? Was this the fate that Providence had in store for us? Were the hopes of the earth thus to perish? Was the expedition to be wrecked and its fate to remain for ever unknown to the planet from which it had set forth? And was our beloved globe, which had seemed so fair to us when we last looked upon it nearby, and in whose defense we had resolved to spend our last breath, to be left helpless and at the mercy of its implacable foe in the sky? At length we gave ourselves up for lost. There seemed to be no possible way to free ourselves from the baleful grip of this terrible and unlooked for enemy. As the comet approached the sun its electrical energy rapidly increased, and watching it with telescopes, for we could not withdraw our fascinated eyes from it, we could clearly behold the fearful things that went on in its nucleus. This consisted of an immense number of separate meteors of no very great size individually, but which were in constant motion among one another, darting to and fro, clashing and smashing together, while fountains of blazing metallic particles and hot mineral vapours poured out in every direction. As I watched it, unable to withdraw my eyes, I saw imaginary forms revealing themselves amid the flaming meteors. They seemed like creatures in agony, tossing their arms, bewailing in their attitudes the awful fate that had overtaken them, and fairly chilling my blood with the pantomime of torture which they exhibited. I thought of an old superstition which I had often heard about the earth, and exclaimed: "Yes, surely, this is a flying hell!" As the electric activity of the comet increased, its continued changes of potential and polarity became more frequent, and the electrical ships darted about with even greater confusion than before. Occasionally one of them, seized with a sudden impulse, would spring forward toward the nucleus of the comet with a sudden access of velocity that would fling every one of its crew from his feet, and all would lie sprawling on the floor of the car while it rushed, as it seemed, to inevitable and instant destruction. Then, either through the frantic efforts of the electrician struggling with the controller or through another change in the polarity of the comet, the ship would be saved on the very brink of ruin and stagger away out of immediate danger. Thus the captured squadron was swept, swaying and darting hither and thither, but never able to get sufficiently far from the comet to break the bond of its fatal attraction. So great was our excitement and so complete our absorption in the fearful peril that we had not noticed the precise direction in which the comet was carrying us. It was enough to know that the goal of the journey was the furnace of the sun. But presently someone in the flagship recalled us to a more accurate sense of our situation in space by exclaiming: "Why, there is the earth!" And there, indeed, it was, its great globe rolling under our eyes, with the contrasted colors of the continents and clouds and the watery gleam of the oceans spread beneath us. "We're going to strike it!" exclaimed somebody. "The comet is going to dash us into the earth." Such a collision at first seemed inevitable, but presently it was noticed that the direction of the comet's motion was such that while it might graze the earth it would not actually strike it. And so, like a swarm of giant insects circling about an electric light from whose magic influence they could not escape, our ships went on, to be whipped against the earth in passing and then to continue their swift journey to destruction. "Thank God, this saves us," suddenly cried Mr. Edison. "What-what?" "Why, the earth, of course. Do you not see that as the comet sweeps close to the great planet the superior attraction of the latter will snatch us from its grasp, and that thus we shall be able to escape." And it was indeed as Mr. Edison had predicted. In a blaze of falling meteors the comet swept the outer limits of the earth's atmosphere and passed on, while the swaying ships, having been instructed by signals what to do, desperately applied their electrical machinery to reverse the attraction and threw themselves into the arms of their mother earth. In another instant we were all free, settling down through the quiet atmosphere with the Atlantic Ocean sparkling in the morning sun far below. We looked at one another in amazement. So this was the end of our voyage! This was the completion of our warlike enterprise. We had started out to conquer a world, and we had come back ignominiously dragged in the train of a comet. The earth which we were going to defend and protect had herself turned protector, and reaching out her strong arm had snatched her foolish children from the destruction which they had invited. It would be impossible to describe the chagrin of every member of the expedition. The electric ships rapidly assembled and hovered high in the air, while their commanders consulted about what should be done. A universal feeling of shame almost drove them to a decision not to land upon the surface of the planet, and if possible not to let its inhabitants know what had occurred. But it was too late for that. Looking carefully beneath us, we saw that fate had brought us back to our very starting point, and signals displayed in the neighborhood of New York indicated that we had already been recognized. There was nothing for us then but to drop down and explain the situation. I shall not delay my narrative by undertaking to describe the astonishment and the disappointment of the inhabitants of the earth when, within a fortnight from our departure, they saw us back again, with no laurels of victory crowning our brows. At first they had hoped that we were returning in triumph, and we were overwhelmed with questions the moment we had dropped within speaking distance. "Have you whipped them?" "How many are lost?" "Is there any more danger?" "Faix, have ye got one of thim men from Mars?" But their rejoicing and their facetiousness were turned into wailing when the truth was imparted. We made a short story of it, for we had not the heart to go into details. We told of our unfortunate comrades whom we had buried upon the moon, and there was one gleam of satisfaction when we exhibited the wonderful crystals we had collected in the crater of Aristarchus. Mr. Edison determined to stop only long enough to test the electrical machinery of the cars, which had been more or less seriously deranged during our wild chase after the comet, and then to start straight back for Mars--this time on a through trip. The astronomers, who had been watching Mars, since our departure, with their telescopes, reported that mysterious lights continued to be visible, but that nothing indicating the starting of another expedition for the earth had been seen. Within twenty-four hours we were ready for our second start. The moon was now no longer in a position to help us on our way. It had moved out of line between Mars and the earth. High above us, in the center of the heavens, glowed the red planet which was the goal of our journey. The needed computations of velocity and direction of flight having been repeated, and the ships being all in readiness, we started direct for Mars. An enormous charge of electricity was imparted to each member of the squadron, in order that as soon as we had reached the upper limits of the atmosphere, where the ships could move swiftly, without danger of being consumed by the heat developed by the friction of their passage through the air, a very great initial velocity could be imparted. Once started off by this tremendous electrical kick, and with no atmosphere to resist our motion, we should be able to retain the same velocity, baring incidental encounters, until we arrived near the surface of Mars. When we were free of the atmosphere, and the ships were moving away from the earth, with the highest velocity which we were able to impart to them, observations on the stars were made in order to determine the rate of our speed. This was found to be ten miles in a second, or 864,000 miles in a day, a very much greater speed than that with which we had travelled on starting to touch at the moon. Supposing this velocity to remain uniform, and, with no known resistance, it might reasonably be expected to do so, we should arrive at Mars in a little less than forty-two days, the distance of the planet from the earth being at this time, about thirty-six million miles. Nothing occurred for many days to interrupt our journey. We became accustomed to our strange surroundings, and many entertainments were provided to while away the time. The astronomers in the expedition found plenty of occupation in studying the aspects of the stars and the other heavenly bodies from their new point of view. At the expiration of about thirty-five days we had drawn so near to Mars that with our telescopes, which, though small, were of immense power, we could discern upon its surface features and details which no one had been able to glimpse from the earth. As the surface of this world, that we were approaching as a tiger hunter draws near the jungle, gradually unfolded itself to our inspection, there was hardly one of us willing to devote to sleep or idleness the prescribed eight hours that had been fixed as the time during which each member of the expedition must remain in the darkened chamber. We were too eager to watch for every new revelation upon Mars. But something was in store that we had not expected. We were to meet the Martians before arriving at the world in which they dwelt. Among the stars which shone in that quarter of the heavens where Mars appeared as the master orb, there was one, lying directly in our path, which, to our astonishment, as we continued on, altered from the aspect of a star, underwent a gradual magnification, and soon presented itself in the form of a little planet. "It is an asteroid," said somebody. "Yes, evidently; but how does it come inside the orbit of Mars?" "Oh, there are several asteroids," said one of the astronomers, "which travel inside the orbit of Mars, along a part of their course, and, for aught we can tell, there may be many which have not yet been caught sight of from the earth, that are nearer to the sun than Mars is." "This must be one of them." "Manifestly so." As we drew nearer the mysterious little planet revealed itself to us as a perfectly formed globe not more than five miles in diameter. "What is that upon it?" asked Lord Kelvin, squinting intently at the little world through his glass. "As I live, it moves." "Yes, yes!" exclaimed several others, "there are inhabitants upon it, but what giants!" "What monsters!" "Don't you see?" exclaimed an excited savant. "They are the Martians!" The startling truth burst upon the minds of all. Here upon this little planetoid were several of the gigantic inhabitants of the world that we were going to attack. There was more than one man in the flagship who recognized them well, and who shuddered at the recognition, instinctively recalling the recent terrible experience of the earth. Was this an outpost of the warlike Mars? Around these monstrous enemies we saw several of their engines of war. Some of these appeared to have been wrecked, but at least one, as far as we could see, was still in a proper condition for use. How had these creatures got there? "Why, that is easy enough to account for," I said, as a sudden recollection flashed into my mind. "Don't you remember the report of the astronomers more than six months ago, at the end of the conference in Washington, that something would seem to indicate the departure of a new expedition from Mars had been noticed by them? We have heard nothing of that expedition since. We know that it did not reach the earth. It must have fallen foul of this asteroid, run upon this rock in the ocean of space and been wrecked here." "We've got 'em, then," shouted our electric steersman, who had been a workman in Mr. Edison's laboratory and had unlimited confidence in his chief. The electrical ships were immediately instructed by signal to slow down, an operation that was easily affected through the electrical repulsion of the asteroid. The nearer we got the more terrifying was the appearance of the gigantic creatures who were riding upon the little world before us like castaway sailors upon a block of ice. Like men, and yet not like men, combining the human and the beast in their appearance, it required a steady nerve to look at them. If we had not known their malignity and their power to work evil, it would have been different, but in our eyes their moral character shone through their physical aspect and thus rendered them more terrible than they would otherwise have been. When we first saw them their appearance was most forlorn, and their attitudes indicated only despair and desperation, but as they caught sight of us their malign power of intellect instantly penetrated the mystery, and they recognized us for what we were. Their despair immediately gave place to reawakened malevolence. On the instant they were astir, with such heart-chilling movements as those that characterize a venomous serpent preparing to strike. Not imagining that they would be in a position to make serious resistance, we had been somewhat incautious in approaching. Suddenly there was a quicker movement than usual among the Martians, a swift adjustment of that one of their engines of war which, as already noticed, seemed to be practically uninjured, then there darted from it and alighted upon one of the foremost ships, a dazzling lightning stroke a mile in length, at whose touch the metallic sides of the car curled and withered and, licked for a moment by what seemed lambent flames, collapsed into a mere cinder. For an instant not a word was spoken, so sudden and unexpected was the blow. We knew that every soul in the stricken car had perished. "Back! Back!" was the signal instantly flashed from the flagship, and reversing their polarities the members of the squadron sprang away from the little planet as rapidly as the electrical impulse could drive them. But before we were out of reach a second flaming tongue of death shot from the fearful engine, and another of our ships, with all its crew, was destroyed. [Illustration: _"Back! Back!" was the signal instantaneously flashed from the flag ship, and the members of the squadron sprang away from the little planet. But before we were out of reach a second tongue of death shot from the fearful engine, and another of our ships, with all its crew, was destroyed._] It was an inauspicious beginning for us. Two of our electrical ships, with their entire crews, had been wiped out of existence, and this appalling blow had been dealt by a few stranded and disabled enemies floating on an asteroid. What hope would there be for us when we came to encounter the millions of Mars itself on their own ground and prepared for war? However, it would not do to despond. We had been incautious, and we should take good care not to commit the same fault again. The first thing to do was to avenge the death of our comrades. The question whether we were able to meet these Martians and overcome them might as well be settled right here and now. They had proved what they could do, even when disabled and at a disadvantage. Now it was our turn. CHAPTER SEVEN _A PLANET OF GOLD_ The squadron had been rapidly withdrawn to a very considerable distance from the asteroid. The range of the mysterious artillery employed by the Martians was unknown to us. We did not even know the limit of the effective range of our own disintegrators. If it should prove that the Martians were able to deal their strokes at a distance greater than any we could reach, then they would of course have an insuperable advantage. On the other hand, if it should turn out that our range was greater than theirs, the advantage would be on our side. Or--which was perhaps most probable--there might be practically no difference in the effective range of the engines. Anyhow, we were going to find out how the case stood, and that without delay. Everything being in readiness, the disintegrators all in working order, and the men who were able to handle them, most of whom were experienced marksmen, chosen from among the officers of the regular army of the United States, and accustomed to the straight shooting and the sure hits of the West, standing at their posts, the squadron again advanced. In order to distract the attention of the Martians, the electrical ships had been distributed over a wide space. Some dropped straight down toward the asteroid; others approached it by flank attack, from this side and that. The flagship moved straight in toward the point where the first disaster occurred. Its intrepid commander felt that his post should be that of the greatest danger, and where the severest blows would be given and received. The approach of the ships was made with great caution. Watching the Martians with our telescopes we could clearly see that they were disconcerted by the scattered order of our attack. Even if all of their engines of war had been in proper condition for use it would have been impossible for them to meet the simultaneous assault of so many enemies dropping down upon them from the sky. But they were made of fighting mettle, as we knew from old experience. It was no question of surrender. They did not know how to surrender, and we did not know how to demand their surrender. Besides, the destruction of the two electrical ships with the forty men, many of whom bore names widely known upon the earth, had excited a kind of fury among the members of the squadron which called for vengeance. Suddenly a repetition of the quick movement by the Martians, which had been the forerunner of the former coup, was observed; again a blinding flash burst from their war engines and instantaneously a shiver ran through the frame of the flagship; the air within quivered with strange pulsations and seemed suddenly to have assumed the temperature of a blast furnace. We all gasped for breath. Our throats and lungs seemed scorched in the act of breathing. Some fell unconscious upon the floor. The marksmen, carrying the disintegrators ready for use, staggered, and one of them dropped his instrument. But we had not been destroyed like our comrades before us. In a moment the wave of heat passed; those who had fallen recovered from their momentary stupor and staggered to their feet. The electrical steersman stood hesitating at his post. "Move on," said Mr. Edison sternly, his features set with determination and his eyes afire. "We are still beyond their effective range. Let us get closer in order to make sure work when we strike." The ship moved on. One could hear the heartbeats of its inmates. The other members of the squadron, thinking for the moment that disaster had overtaken the flagship, had paused and seemed to be meditating flight. "Signal them to move on," said Mr. Edison. The signal was given, and the circle of electrical ships closed in upon the asteroid. In the meantime Mr. Edison had been donning his air-tight suit. Before we could clearly comprehend his intention he had passed through the double trapped door which gave access to the exterior of the car without permitting the loss of air, and was standing upon what served as the deck of the ship. In his hand he carried a disintegrator. With a quick motion he sighted it. As quickly as possible I sprang to his side. I was just in time to note the familiar blue gleam about the instrument, which indicated that its terrific energies were at work. The whirring sound was absent, because here, in open space, where there was no atmosphere, there could be no sound. My eyes were fixed upon the Martian's engine, which had just dealt us a staggering, but not fatal, blow, and particularly I noticed a polished knob projecting from it which seemed to have been the focus from which its destructive bolt emanated. A moment later the knob disappeared. The irresistible vibrations darted from the electrical disintegrator and had fallen upon it and instantaneously shattered it into atoms. "That fixes them," said Mr. Edison, turning to me with a smile. And indeed it did fix them. We had most effectually spiked their gun. It would deal no more death blows. The doings of the flagship had been closely watched throughout the squadron. The effect of its blow had been evident to all, and a moment later we saw, on some of the nearer ships, men dressed in their air suits, appearing upon the deck, swinging their arms and sending forth soundless cheers into empty space. The stroke that we had dealt was taken by several of the electrical ships as a signal for a common assault, and we saw two of the Martians fall beside the ruins of their engine, their heads having been blown from their bodies. "Signal them to stop firing," commanded Mr. Edison. "We have got them down, and we are not going to murder them without necessity." "Besides," he added, "I want to capture some of them alive." The signal was given as he had ordered. The flagship then alone dropped slowly toward the place on the asteroid where the prostrate Martians were. As we got near them a terrible scene unfolded itself to our eyes. There had evidentially been not more than a half dozen of the monsters in the beginning. Two of these were stretched headless upon the ground. Three others had suffered horrible injuries where the invisible vibratory beams from the disintegrators had grazed them, and they could not long survive. One only remained apparently uninjured. [Illustration: _As we got near them a terrible scene unfolded itself. Two of the Martians were stretched headless upon the ground. Three others had suffered horrible injuries, and only one remained apparently unhurt._] It is impossible for me to describe the appearance of this creature in terms that would be readily understood. Was he like a man? Yes and no. He possessed many human characteristics, but they were exaggerated and monstrous in scale and in detail. His head was of enormous size, and his huge projecting eyes gleamed with a strange fire of intelligence. His face was like a caricature, but not one to make the beholder laugh. Drawing himself up, he towered to a height of at least fifteen feet. But let the reader not suppose from this inadequate description that the Martians stirred in the beholder precisely the sensation that would be caused by the sight of a gorilla, or other repulsive inhabitant of our terrestrial jungles, suddenly confronting him in its native wilds. With all his horrible characteristics, and all his suggestions of beast and monster, nevertheless the Martian produced the impression of being a person and not a mere animal. I have already referred to the enormous size of his head, and to the fact that his countenance bore considerable resemblance to that of a man. There was something in his face that sent a shiver through the soul of the beholder. One could feel in looking upon it that here was intellect, intelligence developed to the highest degree, but in the direction of evil instead of good. The sensations of one who had stood face to face with Satan, when he was driven from the battlements of heaven by the swords of his fellow archangels, and had beheld him transformed from Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, into the Prince of Night and Hell, might not have been unlike those which we now experienced as we gazed upon this dreadful personage, who seemed to combine the intellectual powers of a man, raised to their highest pitch, with some of the physical features of a beast, and all the moral depravity of a fiend. The appearance of the Martian was indeed so threatening and repellent that we paused at the height of fifty feet above the ground, hesitating to approach nearer. A grin of rage and hate overspread his face. If he had been a man I should say he shook his fist at us. What he did was to express in even more telling pantomime his hatred and defiance, and his determination to grind us to shreds if he could once get us within his clutches. Mr. Edison and I still stood upon the deck of the ship, where several others had gathered around us. The atmosphere of the little asteroid was so rare that it practically amounted to nothing, and we could not possibly have survived if we had not continued to wear our air tight suits. How the Martians contrived to live here was a mystery to us. It was another of their secrets which we were yet to learn. Mr. Edison retained his disintegrator in his hand. "Kill him," said someone. "He is too horrible to live." "If we do not kill him we shall never be able to land upon the asteroid," said another. "No," said Mr. Edison. "I shall not kill him. We have got another use for him. Tom," he continued, turning to one of his assistants, whom he had brought from his laboratory, "bring me the anaesthetic." This was something entirely new to nearly all the members of the expedition. Mr. Edison, however, had confided to me before we left the earth the fact that he had invented a little instrument by means of which a bubble, strongly charged with a powerful anaesthetic agent, could be driven to a considerable distance into the face of an enemy, where exploding without other damage, it would instantly put him to sleep. When Tom had placed the instrument in his hands Mr. Edison ordered the electrical ship to forge slightly ahead and drop a little lower toward the Martian, who, with watchful eyes and threatening gestures, noted our approach in the attitude of a wild beast on the spring. Suddenly Mr. Edison discharged from the instrument in his hand a little gaseous globe, which glittered like a ball of tangled rainbows in the sunshine, and darted with astonishing velocity straight into the upturned face of the Martian. It burst as it touched and the monster fell back senseless upon the ground. "You have killed him!" exclaimed all. "No," said Mr. Edison. "He is not dead, only asleep. Now we shall drop down and bind him tight before he can awake." When we came to bind our prisoner with strong ropes we were more than ever impressed with his gigantic stature and strength. Evidentially in single combat with equal weapons he would have been a match for twenty of us. [Illustration: _"When we came to bind our prisoner with strong ropes we were more than ever impressed with his gigantic stature and strength. He might have been a match for twenty of us."_] All that I had read of giants had failed to produce upon my mind the impression of enormous size and tremendous physical energy which the sleeping body of this immense Martian produced. He had fallen on his back, and was in a most profound slumber. All his features were relaxed, and yet even in that condition there was a devilishness about him that made the beholders instinctively shudder. So powerful was the effect of the anaesthetic which Mr. Edison had discharged into his face that he remained perfectly unconscious while we turned him half over in order the more securely to bind his muscular limbs. In the meantime the other electrical ships approached, and several of them made a landing upon the asteroid. Everybody was eager to see this wonderful little world, which, as I have already remarked, was only five miles in diameter. Several of us from the flagship started out hastily to explore the miniature planet. And now our attention was recalled to an intensely interesting phenomenon which had engaged our thoughts not only when we were upon the moon, but during our flight through space. This was the almost entire absence of weight. On the moon, where the force of gravitation is one-sixths as great as upon the earth, we had found ourselves astonishingly light. Five-sixths of our own weight, and of the weight of the air-tight suits in which we were encased, had magically dropped from us. It was therefore comparatively easy for us, encumbered, as we were, to make our way about on the moon. But when we were far from both the earth and the moon, the loss of weight was more astonishing still--not astonishing because we had not known that it would be so, but nevertheless a surprising phenomenon in contrast with our lifelong experience on the earth. In open space we were practically without weight. Only the mass of the electrical car in which we were enclosed attracted us, and inside that we could place ourselves in any position without falling. We could float in the air. There was no up and no down, no top and no bottom for us. Stepping outside the car, it would have been easy for us to spring away from it and leave it forever. One of the most startling experiences that I have ever had was one day when we were navigating space about half way between the earth and Mars. I had stepped outside the car with Lord Kelvin, both of us, of course, wearing our air-tight suits. We were perfectly well aware what would be the consequence of detaching ourselves from the car as we moved along. We should still retain the forward motion of the car, and of course accompany it in its flight. There would be no falling one way or the other. The car would have a tendency to draw us back again by its attraction, but this tendency would be very slight, and practically inappreciable at a distance. "I am going to step off," I suddenly said to Lord Kelvin. "Of course I shall keep right along with the car, and step aboard again when I am ready." "Quite right on general principles, young man," replied the great savant, "but beware in what manner you step off. Remember, if you give your body an impulse sufficient to carry it away from the car to any considerable distance, you will be unable to get back again, unless we can catch you with a boathook or a fishline. Out there in empty space you will have nothing to kick against, and you will be unable to propel yourself in the direction of the car, and its attraction is so feeble that we should probably arrive at Mars before it had drawn you back again." All this was, of course, perfectly self-evident, yet I believe that but for the warning words of Lord Kelvin I should have been rash enough to step out into empty space, with sufficient force to have separated myself hopelessly from the electrical ship. As it was, I took good care to retain a hold upon a projecting portion of the car. Occasionally cautiously releasing my grip, I experienced for a few minutes the delicious, indescribable pleasure of being a little planet swinging through space, with nothing to hold me up and nothing to interfere with my motion. Mr. Edison, happening to come upon the deck of the ship at this time, and seeing what we were about at once said: "I must provide against this danger. If I do not, there is a chance that we shall arrive at Mars with the ships half empty and the crews floating helplessly around us." Mr. Edison's way of guarding against the danger was by contriving a little apparatus, modeled after that which was the governing force of the electrical ships themselves, and which, being enclosed in the air-tight suits, enabled their wearers to manipulate the electrical charge upon them in such a way that they could make excursions from the cars into open space like steam launches from a ship, going and returning at their will. These little machines being rapidly manufactured, for Mr. Edison had a miniature laboratory aboard, were distributed about the squadron, and henceforth we had the pleasure of paying and receiving visits among the various members of the fleet. But to return from this digression to our experience of the asteroid. The latter being a body of some mass was, of course, able to impart to us a measurable degree of weight. Being five miles in diameter, on the assumption that its mean density was the same as that of the earth, the weight of bodies on its surface should have borne the same ratio to their weight upon the earth that the radius of the asteroid bore to the radius of the earth; in other words, as 1 to 1,600. Having made this mental calculation, I knew that my weight, being 150 pounds on the earth, should on this asteroid be an ounce and a half. Curious to see whether fact would bear out theory, I had myself weighed with a spring balance. Mr. Edison, Lord Kelvin and the other distinguished scientists stood by watching the operation with great interest. To our complete surprise, my weight instead of coming out an ounce and a half, as it should have done, on the supposition that the mean density of the asteroid resembled that of the earth--a very liberal supposition on the side of the asteroid, by the way--actually came out five ounces and a quarter! "What in the world makes me so heavy?" I asked. "Yes, indeed, what an elephant you have become," said Mr. Edison. Lord Kelvin screwed his eyeglass in his eye, and carefully inspected the balance. "It's quite right," he said. "You do indeed weigh five ounces and a quarter. Too much; altogether too much," he added. "You shouldn't do it, you know." "Perhaps the fault is in the asteroid," suggested Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson. "Quite so," exclaimed Lord Kelvin, a look of sudden comprehension overspreading his features. "No doubt it is the internal constitution of the asteroid which is the cause of the anomaly. We must look into that. Let me see? This gentleman's weight is three and one-half times as great as it ought to be. What element is there whose density exceeds the mean density of the earth in about that proportion?" "Gold," exclaimed one of the party. For a moment we were startled beyond expression. The truth had flashed upon us. This must be a golden planet this little asteroid. If it were not composed internally of gold it could never have made me weight three times more than I ought to weight. "But where is the gold?" cried one. "Covered up, of course," said Lord Kelvin. "Buried in Stardust. This asteroid could not have continued to travel for millions of years through legions of space strewn with meteoric particles without becoming covered with the inevitable dust and grime of such a journey. We must dig now, and then doubtless we shall find the metal." This hint was instantly acted upon. Something that would serve as a spade was seized by one of the men, and in a few minutes a hole had been dug in the comparatively light soil of the asteroid. I shall never forget the sight, nor the exclamations of wonder that broke forth from all of us standing around, when the yellow gleam of the precious metal appeared under the "star dust." Collected in huge masses it reflected the light of the sun from its hiding place. Evidently the planet was not a solid ball of gold, formed like a bullet run in a mold, but was composed of nuggets of various sizes, which had come together here under the influence of their mutual gravitation, and formed a little metallic planet. Judging by the test of weight which we had already tried, and which had led to the discovery of the gold, the composition of the asteroid must be the same to its very center. In an assemblage of famous scientific men such as this the discovery of course, immediately led to questions as to the origin of this incredible phenomenon. How did these masses of gold come together? How did it chance that, with the exception of the thin crust of the asteroid nearly all its substance was composed of the precious metal? One asserted that it was quite impossible that there should be so much gold at so great a distance from the sun. "It is the general law," he said, "that the planets increase in density towards the sun. There is every reason to think that the inner planets possess the greater amount of dense elements, while the outer ones are comparatively light." But another referred to the old theory that there was once in this part of the solar system a planet which had been burst in pieces by some mysterious explosion, the fragments forming what we know as the asteroids. In his opinion, this planet might have contained, a large quantity of gold, and in the course of ages the gold, having, in consequence of its superior atomic weight, not being so widely scattered by the explosion as some of the other elements of the planet, had collected itself together in this body. But I observed that Lord Kelvin and the other more distinguished men of science said nothing during this discussion. The truly learned man is the truly wise man. They were not going to set up the theories without sufficient facts to substain them. The one fact that the gold was here was all they had at present. Until they could learn more they were not prepared to theorize as to how the gold got there. And in truth, it must be confessed, the greater number of us really cared less for the explanation of the wonderful fact than we did for the fact itself. Gold is a thing which may make its appearance anywhere and at any time without offering any excuses or explanations. "Phew! Won't we be rich?" exclaimed a voice. "How are we going to dig it and get it back to earth?" asked another. "Carry it in your pockets," said one. "No need of staking claims here," remarked another. "There is enough for everybody." Mr. Edison suddenly turned the current of talk. "What do you suppose those Martians were doing here?" "Why, they were wrecked here." "Not a bit of it," said Mr. Edison. "According to your own showing they could not have been wrecked here. This planet hasn't gravitation enough to wreck them by a fall, and besides I have been looking at their machines and I know there has been a fight." "A fight?" exclaimed several, pricking up their ears. "Yes," said Mr. Edison. "Those machines bear the marks of the lightning of the Martians. They have been disabled, but they are made of some metal or some alloy of metals unknown to me, and consequently they have withstood the destructive force applied to them, as our electric ships were unable to withstand it. It is perfectly plain to me that they have been disabled in a battle. The Martians must have been fighting among themselves." "About the gold!" exclaimed one. "Of course. What else was there to fight about?" At this instant one of our men came running from a considerable distance, waving his arms excitedly, but unable to give voice to his story, in the inappreciable atmosphere of the asteroid, until he had come up and made telephonic connection with us. "There are a lot of dead Martians over there," he said. "They've been cleaning one another out." "That's it," said Mr. Edison. "I knew it when I saw the condition of those machines." "Then this is not a wrecked expedition, directed against the earth?" "Not at all." "This must be the great gold mine of Mars," said the president of an Australian mining company, opening both his eyes and his mouth as he spoke. "Yes, evidently that's it. Here's where they come to get their wealth." "And this," I said, "must be their harvest time. You notice that this asteroid, being several million miles nearer to the sun than Mars is, must have an appreciably shorter period of revolution. When it is in conjunction with Mars, or nearly so, as it is at present, the distance between the two is not very great, whereas when it is in the opposite part of its orbit they are separated by an enormous gap in space and the sun is between them. "Manifestly in the latter case it would be perilous if not entirely impossible for the Martians to visit the golden asteroid, but when it is near Mars, as it is at present, and as it must be periodically for several years at a time, then is their opportunity. "With their projectile cars sent forth with the aid of the mysterious explosives which they possess, it is easy for them under such circumstances, to make visits to the asteroid. "Having obtained all the gold they need or all that they can carry, a comparatively slight impulse given to their car, the direction of which is carefully calculated, will carry them back again to Mars." "If that's so," exclaimed a voice, "we had better look out for ourselves! We have got into a very hornet's nest! If this is the place where the Martians come to dig gold, and if this is the height of their season, as you say, they are not likely to leave us here long undisturbed." "These fellows must have been pirates that they had the fight with," said another. "But what's become of the regulars, then?" "Gone back to Mars for help, probably, and they'll be here again pretty quick, I am afraid!" Considerable alarm was caused by this view of the case, and orders were sent to several of the electrical ships to cruise out to a safe distance in the direction of Mars and keep a sharp outlook for the approach of enemies. Meanwhile our prisoner awoke. He turned his eyes upon those standing about him, without any appearance of fear, but rather with a look of contempt, like that which Gulliver must have felt for the Lilliputians who had bound him under similar circumstances. There were both hatred and defiance in his glance. He attempted to free himself, and the ropes strained with the tremendous pressure that he put upon them, but he could not break loose. Satisfied that the Martian was safely bound, we left him where he lay, and, while awaiting news from the ships which had been sent to reconnoitre, continued the exploration of the little planet. At a point nearly opposite to that where we had landed we came upon the mine which the Martians had been working. They had removed the thin coating of soil, laying bare the rich stores of gold beneath, and large quantities of the latter had been removed. Some of it was so solidly packed that the strokes of the instruments by means of which they had detached it were visible like the streaks left by a knife cutting cheese. The more we saw of this golden planet the greater became our astonishment. What the Martians had removed was a mere nothing in comparison with the entire bulk of the asteroid. Had the celestial mine been easier to reach, perhaps they would have removed more, or, possibly, their political economists perfectly understood the necessity of properly controlling the amount of precious metal in circulation. Very likely, we thought, the mining operations were under government control in Mars and it might be that the majority of the people there knew nothing of this store of wealth floating in the firmament. That would account for the battle with the supposed pirates, who, no doubt had organized a secret expedition to the asteroid and had been caught red-handed at the mine. There were many detached masses of gold scattered about, and some of the men, on picking them up, exclaimed with astonishment at their lack of weight, forgetting for the moment that the same law which caused their own bodies to weigh so little must necessarily affect everything else in a like degree. A mass of gold that on the earth no man would have been able to lift could here be tossed about like a hollow rubber ball. While we were examining the mine, one of the men left to guard the Martian came running to inform us that the latter evidently wished to make some communication. Mr. Edison and the others hurried to the side of the prisoner. He still lay on his back, from which position he was not able to move, notwithstanding all his efforts. But by the motion of his eyes, aided by the pantomime with his fingers, he made us understand that there was something in a metallic box fastened at his side which he wished to reach. With some difficulty we succeeded in opening the box and in it there appeared a number of bright red pellets, as large as an ordinary egg. When the Martians saw these in our hands he gave us to understand by the motion of his lips that he wished to swallow one of them. A pellet was accordingly placed in his mouth, and he instantly and with great eagerness swallowed it. While trying to communicate his wishes to us, the prisoner had seemed to be in no little distress. He exhibited spasmodic movements which led some of the bystanders to think that he was on the point of dying, but within a few seconds after he had swallowed the pellet he appeared to be completely restored. All evidence of distress vanished, and a look of content came over his ugly face. "It must be a powerful medicine," said one of the bystanders. "I wonder what it is?" "I will explain to you my notion," said Professor Moissan, the great French chemist. "I think it was a pill of the air, which he has taken." "What do you mean by that?" "My meaning is," said Professor Moissan, "that the Martian must have, for that he may live, the nitrogen and the oxygen. These can he not obtain here, where there is not the atmosphere. Therefore must he get them in some other manner. This has he managed to do by combining in these pills the oxygen and the nitrogen in the proportions which make atmospheric air. Doubtless upon Mars there are the very great chemists. They have discovered how this may be done. When the Martian has swallowed his little pill, the oxygen and the nitrogen are rendered to his blood as if he had breathed them, and so he can live with that air which has been distributed to him with the aid of his stomach in place of his lungs." If Monsieur Moissan's explanation was not correct, at any rate it seemed the only one which would fit the facts before us. Certainly the Martian could not breathe where there was practically no air, yet just as certainly after he had swallowed his pill he seemed as comfortable as any of us. Suddenly, while we were gathered around the prisoner, and interested in this fresh evidence of the wonderful ingenuity of the Martians, and of their control over the processes of nature, one of the electrical ships that had been sent off in the direction of Mars was seen rapidly returning and displaying signals. It reported that the Martians were coming! CHAPTER EIGHT _"THE MARTIANS ARE COMING!"_ The alarm was spread instantly among those upon the planet and through the remainder of the fleet. One of the men from the returning electrical ship dropped down upon the asteroid and gave a more detailed account of what they had seen. His ship had been the one which had gone to the greatest distance, in the direction of Mars. While cruising there, with all eyes intent, they had suddenly perceived a glittering object moving from the direction of the ruddy planet, and manifestly approaching them. A little inspection with the telescope had shown them that it was one of the projectile cars used by the Martians. Our ship had ventured so far from the asteroid that for a moment it seemed doubtful whether it would be able to return in time to give warning, because the electrical influence of the asteroid was comparatively slight at such a distance, and, after they had reversed their polarity, and applied their intensifier, so as to make that influence effective, their motion was at first exceedingly slow. Fortunately after a time they got under way with sufficient velocity to bring them back to us before the approaching Martians could overtake them. The latter were not moving with great velocity, having evidently projected themselves from Mars with only just sufficient force to throw them within the feeble sphere of gravitation of the asteroid, so that they should very gently land upon its surface. Indeed, looking out behind the electrical ship which had brought us the warning, we immediately saw the projectile of the Martians approaching. It sparkled like a star in the black sky as the sunlight fell upon it. The ships of the squadron whose crews had not landed upon the planet were signaled to prepare for action, while those who were upon the asteroid made ready for battle there. A number of disintegrators were trained upon the approaching Martians, but Mr. Edison gave strict orders that no attempt should be made to discharge the vibratory force at random. "They do not know that we are here," he said, "and I am convinced that they are unable to control their motions as we can do with our electrical ships. They depend simply upon the force of gravitation. Having passed the limit of the attraction of Mars, they have now fallen within the attraction of the asteroid, and they must slowly sink to its surface. "Having, as I am convinced, no means of producing or controlling electrical attraction and repulsion, they cannot stop themselves, but must come down upon the asteroid. Having got here, they could never get away again, except as we know the survivors got away from earth, by propelling their projectile against gravitation with the aid of an explosive. "Therefore, to a certain extent they will be at our mercy. Let us allow them quietly to land upon the planet, and then I think, if it becomes necessary, we can master them." Notwithstanding Mr. Edison's reassuring words and manner, the company upon the asteroid experienced a dreadful suspense while the projectile which seemed very formidable as it drew near, sank with a slow and graceful motion toward the surface of the ground. Evidently it was about to land very near the spot where we stood awaiting it. Its inmates had apparently just caught sight of us. They evinced signs of astonishment, and seemed at a loss exactly what to do. We could see projecting from the fore part of their car at least two of the polished knobs, whose fearful use and power we well comprehended. Several of our men cried out to Mr. Edison in an extremity of terror: "Why do you not destroy them? Be quick, or we shall all perish." "No," said Mr. Edison, "there is no danger. You can see that they are not prepared. They will not attempt to attack us until they have made their landing." And Mr. Edison was right. With gradually accelerated velocity, and yet very, very slowly in comparison with the speed they would have exhibited in falling upon such a planet as the earth, the Martians and their car came down to the ground. We stood at a distance of perhaps three hundred feet from the point where they touched the asteroid. Instantly a dozen of the giants sprang from the car and gazed about for a moment with a look of intense surprise. At first it was doubtful whether they meant to attack us at all. We stood on our guard, several carrying disintegrators in our hands, while a score more of these terrible engines were turned upon the Martians from the electrical ships which hovered near. Suddenly he who seemed to be the leader of the Martians began to speak to them in pantomime, using his fingers after the manner in which they are used for conversation by deaf and dumb people. Of course, we did not know what he was saying, but his meaning became perfectly evident a minute later. Clearly they did not comprehend the powers of the insignificant looking strangers with whom they had to deal. Instead of turning their destructive engines on us, they advanced on a run, with the evident purpose of making us prisoners or crushing us by main force. The soft whirr of the disintegrator in the hands of Mr. Edison standing near me came to my ears through the telephonic wire. He quickly swept the concentrating mirror a little up and down, and instantly the foremost Martian vanished! Part of some metallic dress that he wore fell upon the ground where he had stood, its vibratory rate not having been included in the range imparted to the disintegrator. His followers paused for a moment, amazed, stared about as if looking for their leader, and then hurried back to their projectile and disappeared within it. "Now we've got business on our hands," said Mr. Edison. "Look out for yourselves." As he spoke, I saw the death-dealing knob of the war engine contained in the car of the Martians moving around toward us. In another instant it would have launched its destroying bolt. Before that could occur, however, it had been dissipated into space by a vibratory stream from a disintegrator. But we were not to get the victory quite so easily. There was another of the war engines in the car, and before we could concentrate our fire upon it, its awful flash shot forth, and a dozen of our comrades perished before our eyes. "Quick! Quick!" shouted Mr. Edison to one of his electrical experts standing near. "There is something the matter with this disintegrator, and I cannot make it work. Aim at the knob, and don't miss it." But the aim was not well taken, and the vibratory force fell upon a portion of the car at a considerable distance from the knob, making a great breach, but leaving the engine uninjured. A section of the side of the car had been destroyed, and the vibratory energy had spread no further. To have attempted to sweep the car from end to end would have been futile, because the period of action of the disintegrators during each discharge did not exceed one second, and distributing the energy over so great a space would have seriously weakened its power to shatter apart the atoms of the resisting substance. The disintegrators were like firearms, in that after each discharge they must be readjusted before they could be used again. Through the breach we saw the Martians inside making desperate efforts to train their engine upon us, for after their first disastrous stroke we had rapidly shifted our position. Swiftly the polished knob, which gleamed like an evil eye, moved round to sweep over us. Instinctively, though incautiously, we had collected in a group. A single discharge would sweep us all into eternity. "Will no one fire upon them?" exclaimed Mr. Edison, struggling with the disintegrator in his hands which still refused to work. At this fearful moment I glanced around upon our company, and was astonished at the spectacle. In the presence of the danger many of them had lost all self-command. A half dozen had dropped their disintegrators upon the ground. Others stood as if frozen fast in their tracks. The expert electrician, whose poor aim had had such disastrous results, held in his hand an instrument which was in perfect condition, yet with mouth agape, he stood trembling like a captured bird. It was a disgraceful exhibition. Mr. Edison, however, had not lost his head. Again and again he sighted at the dreadful knob with his disintegrator, but the vibratory force refused to respond. The means of safety were in our hands, and yet through a combination of ill luck and paralyzing terror, we seemed unable to use them. In a second more it would be all over with us. The suspense in reality lasted only during the twinkling of an eye, though it seemed ages long. Unable to endure it, I sharply struck the shoulder of the paralyzed electrician. To have attempted to seize the disintegrator from his hands would have been a fatal waste of time. Luckily the blow either roused him from his stupor or caused an instinctive movement of his hand that set the little engine in operation. I am sure he took no aim, but providentially the vibratory force fell upon the desired point, and the knob disappeared. We were saved! Instantly half a dozen rushed toward the car of the Martians. We bitterly repented their haste; they did not live to repent. Unknown to us the Martians carried hand engines, capable of launching bolts of death of the same character as those which emanated from the knobs of their larger machines. With these they fired, so to speak, through the breach in their car, and four of our men who were rushing upon them fell in heaps of cinders. The effect of the terrible fire was like that which the most powerful strokes of lightning occasionally produce on earth. The destruction of the threatening knob had instantaneously relieved the pressure upon the terror-stricken nerves of our company, and they had all regained their composure and self-command. But this new and unexpected disaster, following so close upon the fear which had recently overpowered them, produced a second panic, the effect of which was not to stiffen them in their tracks as before, but to send them scurrying in every direction in search of hiding places. And now a most curious effect of the smallness of the planet we were on began to play a conspicuous part in our adventures. Standing on a globe only five miles in diameter was like being on the summit of a mountain whose sides sloped rapidly off in every direction, disappearing in the black sky on all sides, as if it were some stupendous peak rising out of an unfathomable abyss. In consequence of the quick rounding off of the sides of this globe, the line of the horizon was close at hand, and by running a distance of less that 250 yards the fugitives disappeared down the sides of the asteroid, and behind the horizon, even from the elevation of about fifteen feet from which the Martians were able to watch them. From our sight they disappeared much sooner. The slight attraction of the planet and their consequent almost entire lack of weight enabled the men to run with immense speed. The result, as I have subsequently learned, was that after they had disappeared from our view they quitted the planet entirely, the force being sufficient to partially free them from its gravitation, so that they sailed out into space, whirling helplessly end over end, until the elliptical orbits in which they travelled eventually brought them back again to the planet on the side nearly opposite to that from which they had departed. But several of us, with Mr. Edison, stood fast, watching for an opportunity to get the Martians within range of the disintegrators. Luckily we were enabled, by shifting our position a little to the left, to get out of the line of sight of our enemies concealed in the car. "If we cannot catch sight of them," said Mr. Edison, "we shall have to riddle the car on the chance of hitting them." "It will be like firing into a bush to kill a hidden bear," said one of the party. But help came from a quarter which was unexpected to us, although it should not have been so. Several of the electric ships had been hovering above us during the fight, their commanders being apparently uncertain how to act--fearful, perhaps, of injuring us in the attempt to smite our enemy. But now the situation apparently lightened for them. They saw that we were at an immense disadvantage, and several of them immediately turned their batteries upon the car of the Martians. They riddled it far more quickly and effectively than we could have done. Every stroke of the vibratory emanation made a gap in the side of the car, and we could perceive from the commotion within that our enemies were being rapidly massacred in their fortification. So overwhelming was the force and the advantage of the ships that in a little while it was all over. Mr. Edison signaled them to stop firing because it was plain that all resistance had ceased and probably not one of the Martians remained alive. We now approached the car, which had been transpierced in every direction, and whose remaining portions were glowing with heat in consequence of the spreading of the atomic vibrations. Immediately we discovered that all our anticipations were correct and that all of our enemies had perished. The effect of the disintegrators upon them had been awful--too repulsive, indeed, to be described in detail. Some of the bodies had evidently entirely vanished; only certain metal articles which they had worn remaining, as in the case of the first Martian killed, to indicate that such beings had ever existed. The nature of the metal composing these articles was unknown to us. Evidently its vibratory rhythm did not correspond with any included in the ordinary range of the disintegrators. Some of the giants had been only partially destroyed, the vibratory current having grazed them, in such a manner that the shattering undulations had not acted upon the entire body. One thing that lends a peculiar horror to a terrestrial battlefield was absent; there was no bloodshed. The vibratory energy, not only completely destroyed whatever it fell upon but it seared the veins and arteries of the dismembered bodies so that there was no sanguinary exhibition connected with its murderous work. All this time the shackled Martian had lain on his back where we had left him bound. What his feeling must have been may be imagined. At times, I caught a glimpse of his eyes, wildly rolling and exhibiting, when he saw that the victory was in our hands, the first indications of fear and terror shaking his soul that had yet appeared. "That fellow is afraid at last," I said to Mr. Edison. "Well, I should think he ought to be afraid," was the reply. "So he ought, but if I am not mistaken this fear of his may be the beginning of a new discovery for us." "How so?" asked Mr. Edison. "In this way. When once he fears our power, and perceives that there would be no hope of contending against us, even if he were at liberty, he will respect us. This change in his mental attitude may tend to make him communicative. I do not see why we should despair of learning his language from him, and having done that, he will serve as our guide and interpreter, and will be of incalculable advantage to us when we have arrived at Mars." "Capital! Capital!" said Mr. Edison. "We must concentrate the linguistic genius of our company upon that problem at once." In the meantime some of the skulkers whose flight I have referred to began to return, crestfallen, but rejoicing in the disappearance of the danger. Several of them, I am ashamed to say, had been army officers. Yet possibly some excuse could be made for the terror by which they had been overcome. No man has a right to hold his fellow beings to account for the line of conduct they may pursue under circumstances which are not only entirely unexampled in their experience, but almost beyond the power of the imagination to picture. Paralyzing terror had evidently seized them with the sudden comprehension of the unprecedented singularity of their situation. Millions of miles away from the earth, confronted on an asteroid by these diabolical monsters from a maleficent planet, who were on the point of destroying them with a strange torment of death--perhaps it was really more than human nature, deprived of the support of human surroundings, could be expected to bear. Those who, as already described, had run with so great a speed that they were projected, all unwilling, into space, rising in elliptical orbits from the surface of the planet, describing great curves in what might be denominated its sky, and then coming back again to the little globe on another side, were so filled with the wonders of their remarkable adventure that they had almost forgotten the terror which had inspired it. There was nothing surprising in what had occurred to them the moment one considered the laws of gravitation on the asteroid, but their stories aroused an intense interest among all who listened to them. Lord Kelvin was particularly interested, and while Mr. Edison was hastening preparations to quit the asteroid and resume our voyage to Mars, Lord Kelvin and a number of other scientific men instituted a series of remarkable experiments. It was one of the most laughable things imaginable to see Lord Kelvin, dressed in his air-tight suit, making tremendous jumps in empty space. It reminded me forcibly of what Lord Kelvin, then plain William Thompson, and Professor Blackburn had done when spending a summer vacation at the seaside, while they were undergraduates of Cambridge University. They had spent all their time, to the surprise of onlookers, in spinning rounded stones on the beach, their object being to obtain a practical solution of the mathematical problem of "precession." Immediately Lord Kelvin was imitated by a dozen others. With what seemed very slight effort they projected themselves straight upwards, rising to a height of four hundred feet or more, and then slowly settling back again to the surface of the asteroid. The time of rise and fall combined was between three and four minutes. On this little planet the acceleration of gravity or the velocity acquired by a falling body in one second was only four-fifths of an inch. A body required an entire minute to fall a distance of only 120 feet. Consequently, it was more like gradually settling than falling. The figures of these men of science, rising and sinking in this manner, appeared like so many gigantic marionettes bobbing up and down in a pneumatic bottle. "Let us try that," said Mr. Edison, very much interested in the experiments. Both of us jumped together. At first, with great swiftness, but gradually losing speed, we rose to an immense height straight from the ground. When we had reached the utmost limit of our flight we seemed to come to rest for a moment, and then began slowly, but with accelerated velocity, to sink back again to the planet. It was not only a peculiar but a delicious sensation, and but for strict orders which were issued that the electrical ships should be immediately prepared for departure, our entire company might have remained for an indefinite period enjoying this new kind of athletic exercise in a world where gravitation had become so humble that it could be trifled with. While the final preparations for departure were being made, Lord Kelvin instituted other experiments that were no less unique in their results. The experience of those who had taken unpremeditated flights in elliptical orbits when they had run from the vicinity of the Martians suggested the throwing of solid objects in various directions from the surface of the planet in order to determine the distance they would go and the curves they would describe in returning. For these experiments there was nothing more convenient or abundant than chunks of gold from the Martians' mine. These, accordingly, were hurled in different directions and with every degree of velocity. A little calculation had shown that an initial velocity of thirty feet per second imparted to one of these chunks, moving at right angles to the radius of the asteroid, would, if the resistance of an almost inappreciable atmosphere were neglected, suffice to turn the piece of gold into a little satellite that would describe an orbit around the asteroid, and continue to do so forever, or at least until the slight atmospheric resistance should eventually bring it down to the surface. But a less velocity than thirty feet per second would cause the golden missile to fly only part way around, while a greater velocity would give it an elliptical instead of a circular orbit, and in this ellipse it would continue to revolve around the asteroid in the character of a satellite. If the direction of the original impulse were at more than a right angle to the radius of the asteroid, then the flying body would pass out to a greater or less distance in space in an elliptical orbit, eventually coming back again and falling upon the asteroid, but not at the same spot from which it had departed. So many took part in these singular experiments, which assumed rather the appearance of outdoor sports than of scientific demonstrations, that in a short time we had provided the asteroid with a very large number of little moons, or satellites, of gold, which revolved around it in orbits of various degrees of ellipticity, taking, on the average, about three-quarters of an hour to complete a circuit. Since, on completing a revolution, they must necessarily pass through the point from which they started, they kept us constantly on the _qui vive_ to avoid being knocked over by them as they swept around in their orbits. Finally the signal was given for all to embark, and with great regret the savants quitted their scientific games, and prepared to return to the electric ships. Just on the moment of departure, the fact was announced by one, who had been making a little calculation on a bit of paper, that the velocity with which a body must be thrown in order to escape forever the attraction of the asteroid, and to pass on to an infinite distance in any direction, was only about forty-two feet in a second. Manifestly it would be quite easy to impart such a speed as that to the chunks of gold that we held in our hands. "Hurrah!" exclaimed one. "Let's send some of this back to the earth." "Where is the earth?" asked another. Being appealed to, several astronomers turned their eyes in the direction of the sun, where the black firmament was ablaze with stars, and in a moment recognized the earth-star shining there, with the moon attending close at hand. "There," said one, "is the earth. Can you throw straight enough to hit it?" "We'll try," was the reply, and immediately several threw huge golden nuggets in the direction of our far-away world, endeavoring to impart to them at least the required velocity of forty-two feet in a second, which would insure their passing beyond the attraction of the asteroid, and if there should be no disturbance on the way, and the aim were accurate, their eventual arrival upon the earth. "Here's for you, Old Earth," said one of the throwers, "good luck, and more gold to you!" If these precious missiles ever reached the earth we knew that they would plunge into the atmosphere like meteors and that probably the heat developed by their passage would melt and dissipate them in golden vapors before they could touch the ground. Yet there was a chance that some of them--if the aim were true--might survive the fiery passage through the atmosphere and fall upon the surface of our planet where, perhaps, they would afterward be picked up by a prospector and lead him to believe that he had struck a new bonanza. But until we returned to the earth it would be impossible for us to tell what had become of the golden gifts which we had launched into space for our mother planet. CHAPTER NINE _JOURNEY'S END_ "All aboard!" was the signal, and the squadron having assembled under the lead of the flagship, we started again for Mars. This time, as it proved, there was to be no further interruption, and when next we paused it was in the presence of the world inhabited by our enemies, and facing their frowning batteries. We did not find it so easy to start from the asteroid as it had been to start from the earth; that is to say, we could not so readily generate a very high velocity. In consequence of the comparatively small size of the asteroid, its electric influence was very much less than that of the earth, and notwithstanding the appliances which we possessed for intensifying the electrical effect, it was not possible to produce a sufficient repulsion to start us off for Mars with anything like the impulse which we had received from the earth on our original departure. The utmost velocity that we could generate did not exceed three miles in a second, and to get this required our utmost efforts. In fact, it had not seemed possible that we should attain even so great a speed as that. It was far more than we could have expected, and even Mr. Edison was surprised, as well as greatly gratified, when he found that we were moving with the velocity that I have named. We were still about 6,000,000 miles from Mars, so that, traveling three miles in a second, we should require at least twenty-three days to reach the immediate neighborhood of the planet. Meanwhile we had plenty of occupation to make the time pass quickly. Our prisoner was transported along with us, and we now began our attempts to ascertain what his language was, and, if possible, to master it ourselves. Before quitting the asteroid we had found that it was necessary for him to swallow one of his "air pills," as Professor Moissan had called them, at least three times in the course of every twenty-four hours. One of us supplied him regularly and I thought that I could detect evidences of a certain degree of gratitude in his expression. This was encouraging, because it gave additional promise of the possibility of our being able to communicate with him in some more effective way than by mere signs. But once inside the car, where we had a supply of air kept at the ordinary pressure experienced on the earth, he could breathe like the rest of us. The best linguists in the expedition, as Mr. Edison had suggested, were now assembled in the flagship, where the prisoner was, and they set to work to devise some means of ascertaining the manner in which he was accustomed to express his thoughts. We had not heard him speak, because until we carried him into our car there was no atmosphere capable of conveying any sounds he might attempt to utter. It seemed a fair assumption that the language of the Martians would be scientific in its structure. We had so much evidence of the practical bent of their minds, and of the immense progress which they had made in the direction of the scientific conquest of nature, that it was not to be supposed their medium of communication with one another would be lacking in clearness, or would possess any of the puzzling and unnecessary ambiguities that characterized the languages spoken on the earth. "We shall not find them making he's and she's of stones, sticks and other inanimate objects," said one of the American linguists. "They must certainly have gotten rid of all that nonsense long ago." "Ah," said a French Professor from the Sorbonne, one of the makers of the never-to-be-finished dictionary. "It will be like the language of my country. Transparent, similar to the diamond, and sparkling as is the fountain." "I think," said a German enthusiast, "that it will be a universal language, the Volapuk of Mars, spoken by all the inhabitants of that planet." "But all these speculations," broke in Mr. Edison, "do not help you much. Why not begin in a practical manner by finding out what the Martian calls himself, for instance." This seemed a good suggestion, and accordingly several of the bystanders began an expressive pantomime, intended to indicate to the giant, who was following all their motions with his eyes, that they wished to know by what name he called himself. Pointing their fingers to their own breast they repeated, one after the other, the word "man." If our prisoner had been a stupid savage, of course any such attempt as this to make him understand would have been idle. But it must be remembered that we were dealing with a personage who had presumably inherited from hundreds of generations the results of a civilization, and an intellectual advance, measured by the constant progress of millions of years. Accordingly we were not very much astonished, when, after a few repetitions of the experiment, the Martian--one of whose arms had been partially released from its bonds in order to give him a little freedom of motion--imitated the action of his interrogators by pressing his finger over his heart. Then, opening his mouth, he gave utterance to a sound which shook the air of the car like the hoarse roar of a lion. He seemed himself surprised by the noise he made, for he had not been used to speak in so dense an atmosphere. Our ears were deafened and confused, and we recoiled in astonishment, not to say, half in terror. With an ugly grin distorting his face as if he enjoyed our discomfiture, the Martian repeated the motion and the sound. "R-r-r-r-r-r-h!" It was not articulate to our ears and not to be represented by any combination of letters. "Faith," exclaimed a Dublin University professor, "if that's what they call themselves, how shall we ever translate their names when we come to write the history of the conquest?" "Whist, mon," replied a professor from the University of Aberdeen, "let us whip the gillravaging villains first, and then we can describe them by any intitulation that may suit our deesposition." The beginning of our linguistic conquest was certainly not promising, at least if measured by our acquirement of words, but from another point of view it was very gratifying, inasmuch as it was plain that the Martian understood what we were trying to do, and was, for the present, at least, disposed to aid us. These efforts to learn the language of Mars were renewed and repeated every few hours, all the experience, learning and genius of the squadron being concentrated upon the work, and the result was that in the course of a few days we had actually succeeded in learning a dozen or more of the Martian's words and were able to make him understand us when we pronounced them, as well as to understand him when our ears had become accustomed to the growling of his voice. Finally, one day the prisoner, who seemed to be in an unusually cheerful frame of mind, indicated that he carried in his breast some object which he wished us to see. With our assistance he pulled out a book! Actually, it was a book, not very unlike the books which we have upon the earth, but printed, of course, in characters that were entirely strange and unknown to us. Yet these characters evidently gave expression to a highly intellectual language. All those who were standing by at the moment uttered a shout of wonder and of delight, and the cry of "a book! a book!" ran around the circle, and the good news was even promptly communicated to some of the neighboring electric ships of the squadron. Several other learned men were summoned in haste from them to examine our new treasure. [Illustration: _Actually, it was a book that the prisoner produced, and then he proceeded to teach us, as well as he could, several words of his language._] The Martian, whose good nature had manifestly been growing day after day, watched our inspection of his book with evidences of great interest, not unmingled with amusement. Finally he beckoned the holder of the book to his side, and placing his broad finger upon one of the huge letters--if letters they were, for they more nearly resembled the characters employed by the Chinese printer--he uttered a sound which we, of course, took to be a word, but which was different from any we had yet heard. Then he pointed to one after another of us standing around. "Ah," explained everybody, the truth being apparent, "that is the word by which the Martians designate us. They have a name, then, for the inhabitants of the earth." "Or, perhaps, it is rather the name for the earth itself," said one. But this could not, of course, be at once determined. Anyhow, the word, whatever its precise meaning might be, had now been added to our vocabulary, although as yet our organs of speech proved unable to reproduce it in a recognizable form. This promising and unexpected discovery of the Martian's book lent added enthusiasm to those who were engaged in the work of trying to master the language of our prisoner, and the progress that they made in the course of the next few days was truly astonishing. If the prisoner had been unwilling to aid them, of course, it would have been impossible to proceed, but, fortunately for us, he seemed more and more to enter into the spirit of the undertaking, and actually to enjoy it himself. So bright and quick was his understanding that he was even able to indicate to us methods of mastering his language that would otherwise, probably, never have occurred to our minds. In fact, in a very short time he had turned teacher and all these learned men, pressing around him with eager attention, had become his pupils. I cannot undertake to say precisely how much of the Martian language had been acquired by the chief linguists of the expedition before the time when we arrived so near to Mars that it became necessary for most of us to abandon our studies in order to make ready for the more serious business which now confronted us. But, at any rate, the acquisition was so considerable as to allow of the interchange of ordinary ideas with our prisoner, and there was no longer any doubt that he would be able to give us much information when we landed on his native planet. At the end of twenty-three days as measured by terrestrial time, since our departure from the asteroid, we arrived in the sky of Mars. For a long time the ruddy planet had been growing larger and more formidable, gradually turning from a huge star into a great red moon, and then expanding more and more until it began to shut out from sight the constellations behind it. The curious markings on its surface, which from the earth can only be dimly glimpsed with a powerful telescope, began to reveal themselves clearly to our naked eyes. I have related how even before we had reached the asteroid, Mars began to present a most imposing appearance as we saw it with our telescopes. Now, however, that it was close at hand, the naked eye view of the planet was more wonderful than anything we had been able to see with telescopes when at a greater distance. We were approaching the southern hemisphere of Mars in about latitude 45 degrees south. It was near the time of the vernal equinox in that hemisphere of the planet, and under the stimulating influence of the spring sun, rising higher and higher every day, some such awakening of life and activity upon its surface as occurs on the earth under similar circumstances was evidently going on. Around the South Pole were spread immense fields of snow and ice, gleaming with great brilliance. Cutting deep into the borders of these ice-fields, we could see broad channels of open water, indicating the rapid breaking of the grip of the frost. Almost directly beneath us was a broad oval region, light red in color, to which terrestrial astronomers had given the name of Hellas. Toward the south, between Hellas and the borders of the polar ice, was a great belt of darkness that astronomers had always been inclined to regard as a sea. Looking toward the north, we could perceive the immense red expanses of the continent of Mars, with the long curved line of the Syrtis Major, or "The Hour-glass Sea," sweeping through the midst of them toward the north until it disappeared under the horizon. Crossing and recrossing the red continent, in every direction, were the canals of Schiaparelli. Plentifully sprinkled over the surface we could see brilliant points, some of dazzling brightness, outshining the daylight. There was also an astonishing variety in the colors of the broad expanses beneath us. Activity, vivacity and beauty, such as we were utterly unprepared to behold, expressed their presence on all sides. The excitement on the flagship and among the other members of the squadron was immense. It was certainly a thrilling scene. Here, right under our feet, lay the world we had come to do battle with. Its appearances, while recalling in some of their broader aspects those which it had presented when viewed from our observatories, were far more strange, complex and wonderful than any astronomer had ever dreamed. Suppose all of our anticipations about Mars should prove to have been wrong, after all? There could be no longer any question that it was a world which, if not absolutely teeming with inhabitants, like a gigantic ant-hill, at any rate bore on every side the marks of their presence and of their incredible undertakings and achievements. Here and there clouds of smoke arose and spread slowly through the atmosphere beneath us. Floating higher above the surface of the planet were clouds of vapor, assuming the familiar forms of stratus and cumulus with which we were acquainted upon the earth. These clouds, however, seemed upon the whole to be much less dense than those to which we were accustomed at home. They had, too, a peculiar iridescent beauty as if there was something in their composition or their texture which split up the chromatic elements of the sunlight and thus produced internal rainbow effects that caused some of the heavier cloud masses to resemble immense collections of opals, alive with the play of ever-changing colors and magically suspended above the planet. As we continued to study the phenomena that was gradually unfolded beneath us we thought we could detect in many places evidences of the existence of strong fortifications. The planet of war appeared to be prepared for the attacks of enemies. Since, as our own experience had shown, it sometimes waged war with distant planets, it was but natural that it should be found prepared to resist foes who might be disposed to revenge themselves for injuries suffered at its hands. As had been expected, our prisoner now proved to be of very great assistance to us. Apparently he took a certain pride in exhibiting to strangers from a distant world the beauties and wonders of his own planet. We could not understand by any means all that he said, but we could readily comprehend, from his gestures, and from the manner in which his features lighted up at the recognition of familiar scenes and objects, what his sentiments in regard to them were, and, in a general way, what part they played in the life of the planet. He confirmed our opinion that certain of the works which we saw beneath us were fortifications, intended for the protection of the planet against invaders from outer space. A cunning and almost diabolical look came into his eyes as he pointed to one of these strongholds. His confidence and his mocking looks were not reassuring to us. He knew what his planet was capable of, and we did not. He had seen, on the asteroid, the extent of our power, and while its display served to intimidate him there, yet now that he and we together were facing the world of his birth, his fear had evidently fallen from him, and he had the manner of one who feels that the shield of an all-powerful protector had been extended over him. But it could not be long now before we could ascertain, by the irrevocable test of actual experience, whether the Martians possessed the power to annihilate us or not. How shall I describe our feelings as we gazed at the scene spread beneath us? They were not quite the same as those of the discoverer of new lands upon the earth. This was a whole new world that we had discovered, and it was filled, as we could see, with inhabitants. But that was not all. We had not come with peaceful intentions. We were to make war on this new world. Deducting our losses we had not more than 940 men left. With these we were to undertake the conquest of a world containing we could not say how many millions! Our enemies, instead of being below us in the scale of intelligence were, we had every reason to believe, greatly our superiors. They had proved that they possessed a command over the powers of nature such as we, up to the time when Mr. Edison made his inventions, had not even dreamed that it was possible for us to obtain. It was true that at present we appeared to have the advantage, both in our electrical ships and in our means of offense. The disintegrator was at least as powerful an engine of destruction as any that the Martians had yet shown that they possessed. It did not seem that in that respect they could possibly excel us. During the brief war with the Martians upon the earth it had been gunpowder against a mysterious force as much stronger than gunpowder as the latter was superior to the bows and arrows that preceded it. There had been no comparison whatever between the offensive means employed by the two parties in the struggle on the earth. But the genius of one man had suddenly put us on the level of our enemies in regard to fighting capacity. Then, too, our electrical ships were far more effective for their purpose than the projectile cars used by the Martians. In fact, the principle upon which they were based was, at bottom, so simple that it seemed astonishing the Martians had not hit upon it. Mr. Edison himself was never tired of saying in reference to this matter: "I cannot understand why the Martians did not invent these things. They have given ample proof that they understand electricity better than we do. Why should they have resorted to the comparatively awkward and bungling means of getting from one planet to another that they have employed when they might have ridden through the solar system in such conveyances as ours with perfect ease?" "And besides," Mr. Edison would add, "I cannot understand why they did not employ the principle of harmonic vibrations in the construction of their engines of war. The lightning-like strokes which they dealt from their machines are no doubt equally powerful, but I think the range of destruction covered by the disintegrators is greater." However, these questions must remain open until we could effect a landing on Mars, and learn something of the condition of things there. The thing that gave us the most uneasiness was the fact that we did not yet know what powers the Martians might have in reserve. It was but natural to suppose that here, on their own ground, they would possess means of defense even more effective than the offensive engines they had employed in attacking enemies so many millions of miles from home. It was important that we should waste no time, and it was equally important that we should select the most vulnerable point for attack. It was self-evident, therefore, that our first duty would be to reconnoiter the surface of the planet and determine its weakest point of defense. At first Mr. Edison contemplated sending the various ships in different directions around the planet in order that the work of exploration might be quickly accomplished. But upon second thought it seemed wiser to keep the squadron together, thus diminishing the chance of disaster. Besides, the commander wished to see with his own eyes the exact situation of the various parts of the planet, where it might appear advisable for us to begin our assault. Thus far we had remained suspended at so great a height above the planet that we had hardly entered into the perceptible limits of its atmosphere and there was no evidence that we had been seen by the inhabitants of Mars; but before starting on our voyage of exploration it was determined to drop down closer to the surface in order that we might the more certainly identify the localities over which we passed. This maneuver nearly got us into serious trouble. When we had arrived within a distance of three miles from the surface of Mars we suddenly perceived approaching from the eastward a large airship which was navigating the Martian atmosphere at a height of perhaps half a mile above the ground. [Illustration: _When we arrived within a distance of three miles from the surface of Mars we suddenly perceived approaching from the eastward a large airship, which was navigating the Martian atmosphere at a height of perhaps half a mile above the ground._] This airship moved rapidly on to a point nearly beneath us, when it suddenly paused, reversed its course, and evidently made signals, the purpose of which was not at first evident to us. But in a short time their meaning became perfectly plain, when we found ourselves surrounded by at least twenty similar aerostats approaching swiftly from different sides. It was a great mystery to us where so many airships had been concealed previous to their sudden appearance in answer to the signals. But the mystery was quickly solved when we saw detaching itself from the surface of the planet beneath us, where, while it remained immovable, its color had blended with that of the soil so as to render it invisible, another of the mysterious ships. Then our startled eyes beheld on all sides these formidable-looking enemies rising from the ground beneath us like so many gigantic insects, disturbed by a sudden alarm. In a short time the atmosphere a mile or two below us, and to a distance of perhaps twenty miles around in every direction, was alive with airships of various sizes, and some of most extraordinary forms, exchanging signals, rushing to and fro, but all finally concentrating beneath the place where our squadron was suspended. We had poked the hornet's nest with a vengeance! As yet there had been no sting, but we might quickly expect to feel it if we did not get out of range. Quickly instructions were flashed to the squadrons to rise as rapidly as possible to a great height. It was evident that this maneuver would save us from danger if it were quickly effected, because the airships of the Martians were simply airships and nothing more. They could only float in the atmosphere, and had no means of rising above it, or of navigating empty space. To have turned our disintegrators upon them, and to have begun a battle then and there, would have been folly. They overwhelmingly outnumbered us, the majority of them were yet at a considerable distance and we could not have done battle, even with our entire squadron acting together, with more than one-quarter of them simultaneously. In the meantime the others would have surrounded and might have destroyed us. We must first get some idea of the planet's means of defence before we ventured to assail it. Having risen rapidly to a height of twenty-five or thirty miles, so that we could feel confident that our ships had vanished at least from the naked eye view of our enemies beneath, a brief consultation was held. It was determined to adhere to our original program and to circumnavigate Mars in every direction before proceeding to open the war. The overwhelming forces shown by the enemy had intimidated even some of the most courageous of our men, but still it was universally felt that it would not do to retreat without a blow struck. The more we saw of the power of the Martians, the more we became convinced that there would be no hope for the earth, if these enemies ever again effected a landing upon its surface, the more especially since our squadron contained nearly all of the earth's force that would be effective in such a contest. With Mr. Edison and the other men of science away, they would not be able at home to construct such engines as we possessed, or to manage them even if they were constructed. Our planet had staked everything on a single throw. These considerations again steeled our hearts, and made us bear up as bravely as possible in the face of the terrible odds that confronted us. Turning the noses of our electrical ships toward the west, we began our circumnavigation. CHAPTER TEN _THE GREAT SMOKE BARRIER_ At first we rose to a still greater height, in order more effectually to escape the watchful eyes of our enemies, and then, after having moved rapidly several hundred miles toward the west, we dropped down again within easy eyeshot of the surface of the planet, and commenced our inspection. When we originally reached Mars, as I have related, it was at a point in its southern hemisphere, in latitude 45 degrees south, and longitude 75 degrees east, that we first closely approached its surface. Underneath us was the land called "Hellas," and it was over this land of Hellas that the Martian air fleet had suddenly made its appearance. Our westward motion, while at a great height above the planet, had brought us over another oval-shaped land called "Noachia," surrounded by the dark ocean, the "Mare Erytræum." Now approaching nearer the surface our course was changed so as to carry us toward the equator of Mars. We passed over the curious half-drowned continent known to terrestrial astronomers as the Region of Deucalion, then across another sea, or gulf, until we found ourselves floating at a height of perhaps five miles, above a great continental land, at least three thousand miles broad from east to west, and which I immediately recognized as that to which astronomers had given the various names of "Aeria," "Edom," "Arabia," and "Eden." Here the spectacle became of breathless interest. "Wonderful! Wonderful!" "Who could have believed it!" Such were the exclamations heard on all sides. When at first we were suspended above Hellas, looking toward the north, the northeast and the northwest, we had seen at a distance some of these great red regions, and had perceived the curious network of canals by which they were intersected. But that was a far-off and imperfect view. Now, when we were near at hand and straight above one of these singular lands, the magnificence of the panorama surpassed belief. From the earth about a dozen of the principal canals crossing the continent beneath us had been perceived, but we saw hundreds, nay thousands of them! It was a double system, intended both for irrigation and for protection, and far more marvelous in its completeness than the boldest speculative minds among our astronomers had ever dared to imagine. "Ha! that's what I always said," exclaimed a veteran from one of our great observatories. "Mars is red because its soil and vegetation are red." And certainly appearances indicated that he was right. There were no green trees, and there was no green grass. Both were red, not of a uniform red tint, but presenting an immense variety of shades which produced a most brilliant effect, fairly dazzling our eyes. But what trees! And what grass! And what flowers! Our telescopes showed that even the smaller trees must be 200 or 300 feet in height, and there were forests of giants, whose average height was evidently at least 1,000 feet. "That's all right," exclaimed the enthusiast I have just quoted. "I knew it would be so. The trees are big for the same reason that the men are, because the planet is small, and they can grow big without becoming too heavy to stand." Flashing in the sun on all sides were the roofs of metallic buildings, which were evidently the only kind of edifices which Mars possessed. At any rate, if stone or wood were employed in their construction both were completely covered with metallic plates. This added immensely to the warlike aspect of the planet. For warlike it was. Everywhere we recognized fortified stations, glittering with an array of the polished knobs of the lightning machines, such as we had seen in the land of Hellas. From the land of Edom, directly over the equator of the planet, we turned our faces westward, and, skirting the Mare Erytræum, arrived above the place where the broad canal known as the Indus empties into the sea. Before us, and stretching away to the northwest, now lay the Continent of Chryse, a vast red land, oval in outline, and surrounded and crossed by innumerable canals. Chryse was not less than 1,600 miles across and it, too, evidently swarmed with giant inhabitants. But the shadow of night lay upon the greater portion of the land of Chryse. In our rapid motion westward we had outstripped the sun and had now arrived at a point where day and night met upon the surface of the planet beneath us. Behind all was brilliant with sunshine, but before us the face of Mars gradually disappeared in the deepening gloom. Through the darkness, far away, we could behold magnificent beams of electric light darting across the curtain of night, and evidently serving to illuminate towns and cities that lay beneath. We pushed on into the night for two or three hundred miles over that part of the continent of Chryse whose inhabitants were doubtless enjoying the deep sleep that accompanies the dark hours immediately preceding the dawn. Still everywhere splendid clusters of light lay like fallen constellations upon the ground, indicating the sites of great towns, which, like those of the earth never sleep. But this scene, although weird and beautiful, could give us little of the kind of information of which we were in search. Accordingly it was resolved to turn back eastward until we had arrived in the twilight space separating day and night, and then hover over the planet at that point, allowing it to turn beneath us so that, as we looked down, we should see in succession the entire circuit of the globe of Mars while it rolled under our eyes. The rotation of Mars on its axis is performed in a period very little longer than the earth's rotation, so that the length of the day and night in the world of Mars is only some forty minutes longer than their length upon the earth. In thus remaining suspended over the planet, on the line of daybreak, so to speak, we believed that we should be peculiarly safe from detection by the eyes of the inhabitants. Even astronomers are not likely to be wide awake just at the peep of dawn. Almost all of the inhabitants, we confidently believed, would still be sound asleep upon that part of the planet passing directly beneath us, and those who were awake would not be likely to watch for unexpected appearances in the sky. Besides, our height was so great that notwithstanding the numbers of the squadron, we could not easily be seen from the surface of the planet, and if seen at all we might be mistaken for high-flying birds. Here we remained then through the entire course of twenty-four hours and saw in succession as they passed from night into day beneath our feet the land of Chryse, the great continent of Tharsis, the curious region of intersecting canals which puzzled astronomers on the earth had named the "Gordian Knot." The continental lands of Memnonia, Amozonia and Aeolia, the mysterious center where hundreds of vast canals came together from every direction, called the Triviun Charontis; the vast circle of Elysium, a thousand miles across, and completely surrounded by a broad green canal; the continent of Libya, which, as I remembered, had been half covered by a tremendous inundation whose effects were visible from the earth in 1889, and finally the long, dark sea of the Syrtis Major, lying directly south of the land of Hellas. The excitement and interest which we all experienced were so great that not one of us took a wink of sleep during the entire twenty-four hours of our marvelous watch. There are one or two things of special interest amid the multitude of wonderful observations that we made which I must mention here on account of their connection with the important events that followed soon after. Just west of the land of Chryse we saw the smaller land of Ophir, in the midst of which is a singular spot called the Juventae Fons, and this Fountain of Youth, as our astronomers, by a sort of prophetic inspiration, had named it, proved later to be one of the most incredible marvels on the planet of Mars. Further to the west, and north from the great continent of Tharsis, we beheld the immense oval-shaped land of Thaumasia containing in its center the celebrated "Lake of the Sun," a circular body of water not less than five hundred miles in diameter, with dozens of great canals running away from it like the spokes of a wheel in every direction, thus connecting it with the ocean which surrounds it on the south and east, and with the still larger canals that encircle it toward the north and west. This Lake of the Sun came to play a great part in our subsequent adventures. It was evident to us from the beginning that it was the chief center of population on the planet. It lies in latitude 25 degrees south and longitude about 90 degrees west. Having completed the circuit of the Martian globe, we were moved by the same feeling which every discoverer of new lands experiences, and immediately returned to our original place above the land of Hellas, because since that was the first part of Mars which we had seen, we felt a greater degree of familiarity with it than with any portion of the planet, and there, in a certain sense, we felt "at home." But, as it proved, our enemies were on the watch for us there. We had almost forgotten them, so absorbed were we by the great spectacles that had been unrolling themselves beneath our feet. We ought, of course, to have been a little more cautious in approaching the place where they first caught sight of us, since we might have known that they would remain on the watch near that spot. But at any rate they had seen us, and it was now too late to think of taking them again by surprise. They on their part had a surprise in store for us, which was greater than any we had yet experienced. We saw their ships assembling once more far down in the atmosphere beneath us, and we thought we could detect evidences of something unusual going on upon the surface of the planet. Suddenly from the ships, and from various points on the ground beneath, there rose high in the air, and carried by invisible currents in every direction, immense volumes of black smoke, or vapor, which blotted out of sight everything below them! South, north, west and east, the curtain of blackness rapidly spread, until the whole face of the planet as far as our eyes could reach, and the airships thronging under us, were all concealed from sight! Mars had played the game of the cuttlefish, which when pursued by its enemies darkens the water behind it by a sudden outgush of inky fluid and thus escapes the eye of its foe. The eyes of man had never beheld such a spectacle! Where a few minutes before the sunny face of a beautiful and populous planet had been shining beneath us, there was now to be seen nothing but black, billowing clouds, swelling up everywhere like the mouse-colored smoke that pours from a great transatlantic liner when fresh coal has just been heaped upon her fires. In some places the smoke spouted upward in huge jets to the height of several miles; elsewhere it eddied in vast whirlpools of inky blackness. Not a glimpse of the hidden world beneath us was anywhere to be seen. Mars had put on its war mask, and fearful indeed was the aspect of it! After the first pause of surprise the squadron quickly backed away into the sky, rising rapidly, because, from one of the swirling eddies beneath us the smoke began suddenly to pile itself up in an enormous aerial mountain, whose peaks shot higher and higher, with apparently increasing velocity, until they seemed about to engulf us with their tumbling ebon masses. Unaware what the nature of this mysterious smoke might be, and fearing that it was something more than a shield for the planet, and might be destructive to life, we fled before it, as before the onward sweep of a pestilence. Directly underneath the flagship, one of the aspiring smoke peaks grew with most portentous swiftness, and, notwithstanding all our efforts, in a little while it had enveloped us. Several of us were standing on the deck of the electrical ship. We were almost stifled by the smoke, and were compelled to take refuge within the car, where, until the electric lights had been turned on, darkness so black that it oppressed the strained eyeballs prevailed. But in this brief experience, terrifying though it was, we had learned one thing. The smoke would kill by strangulation, but evidently there was nothing especially poisonous in its nature. This fact might be of use to us in our subsequent proceedings. "This spoils our plans," said the commander. "There is no use of remaining here for the present; let us see how far this thing extends." At first we rose straight away to a height of 200 or 300 miles, thus passing entirely beyond the sensible limits of the atmosphere, and far above the highest point that the smoke could reach. From this commanding point of view our line of sight extended to an immense distance over the surface of Mars in all directions. Everywhere the same appearance; the whole planet was evidently covered with the smoke. A complete telegraphic system evidently connected all the strategic points upon Mars, so that, at a signal from the central station, the wonderful curtain could be instantaneously drawn over the entire face of the planet. In order to make certain that no part of Mars remained uncovered, we dropped down again nearer to the upper level of the smoke clouds, and then completely circumnavigated the planet. It was thought possible that on the night side no smoke would be found and that it would be practicable for us to make a descent there. But when we had arrived on that side of Mars which was turned away from the sun, we no longer saw beneath us, as we had done on our previous visit to the night hemisphere of the planet, brilliant groups and clusters of electric lights beneath us. All was dark. In fact, so completely did the great shell of smoke conceal the planet that the place occupied by the latter seemed to be simply a vast black hole in the firmament. The sun was hidden behind it, and so dense was the smoke that even the solar rays were unable to penetrate it, and consequently there was no atmospheric halo visible around the concealed planet. All the sky around was filled with stars, but their countless host suddenly disappeared when our eyes turned in the direction of Mars. The great black globe blotted them out without being visible itself. "Apparently we can do nothing here," said Mr. Edison. "Let us return to the daylight side." When we had arrived near the point where we had been when the wonderful phenomenon first made its appearance, we paused, and then, at the suggestion of one of the chemists, dropped close to the surface of the smoke curtain which had now settled down into comparative quiescence, in order that we might examine it a little more critically. The flagship was driven into the smoke cloud so deeply that for a minute we were again enveloped in night. A quantity of the smoke was entrapped in a glass jar. Rising again into the sunlight, the chemists began an examination of the constitution of the smoke. They were unable to determine its precise character, but they found that its density was astonishingly slight. This accounted for the rapidity with which it had risen, and the great height which it had attained in the comparatively light atmosphere of Mars. "It is evident," said one of the chemists, "that this smoke does not extend down to the surface of the planet. From what the astronomers say as to the density of the air on Mars, it is probable that a clear space of at least a mile in height exists between the surface of Mars and the lower limit of the smoke curtain. Just how deep the latter is we can only determine by experiment, but it would not be surprising if the thickness of this great blanket which Mars has thrown around itself should prove to be a quarter or half a mile." "Anyhow," said one of the United States army officers, "they have dodged out of sight, and I don't see why we should not dodge in and get at them. If there is clear air under the smoke, as you think, why couldn't the ships dart down through the curtain and come to a close tackle with the Martians?" "It would not do at all," said the commander. "We might simply run ourselves into an ambush. No; we must stay outside, and if possible fight them from here." "They can't keep this thing up forever," said the officer. "Perhaps the smoke will clear off after a while, and then we will have a chance." "Not much hope of that, I am afraid," said the chemist who had originally spoken. "This smoke could remain floating in the atmosphere for weeks, and the only wonder to me is how they ever expect to get rid of it, when they think their enemies have gone and they want some sunshine again." "All that is mere speculation," said Mr. Edison; "let us get at something practical. We must do one of two things; either attack them shielded as they are, or wait until the smoke has cleared away. The only other alternative, that of plunging blindly down through the curtain is at present not to be thought of." "I am afraid we couldn't stand a very long siege ourselves," suddenly remarked the chief commissary of the expedition, who was one of the members of the flagship's company. "What do you mean by that?" asked Mr. Edison sharply, turning to him. "Well, sir, you see," said the commissary, stammering, "our provisions wouldn't hold out." "Wouldn't hold out?" exclaimed Mr. Edison, in astonishment, "why we have compressed and prepared provisions enough to last this squadron for three years." "We had, sir, when we left the earth," said the commissary, in apparent distress, "but I am sorry to say that something has happened." "Something has happened! Explain yourself!" "I don't know what it is, but on inspecting some of the compressed stores, a short time ago, I found that a large number of them were destroyed, whether through leakage of air, or what, I am unable to say. I sent to inquire as to the condition of the stores in the other ships in the squadron and I found that a similar condition of things prevailed there. "The fact is," continued the commissary, "we have only provisions enough, in proper condition, for about ten days' consumption." "After that we shall have to forage on the country, then," said the army officer. "Why did you not report this before?" demanded Mr. Edison. "Because, sir," was the reply, "the discovery was not made until after we arrived close to Mars, and since then there has been so much excitement that I have hardly had time to make an investigation and find out what the precise condition of affairs is; besides, I thought we should land upon the planet and then we would be able to renew our supplies." I closely watched Mr. Edison's expression in order to see how this most alarming news would affect him. Although he fully comprehended its fearful significance, he did not lose his self-command. "Well, well," he said, "then it will become necessary for us to act quickly. Evidently we cannot wait for the smoke to clear off, even if there was any hope of its clearing. We must get down on Mars now, having conquered it first if possible, but anyway we must get down there, in order to avoid starvation." "It is very lucky," he continued, "that we have ten days' supply left. A great deal can be done in ten days." A few hours after this the commander called me aside, and said: "I have thought it all out. I am going to reconstruct some of our disintegrators, so as to increase their range and their power. Then I am going to have some of the astronomers of the expedition locate for me the most vulnerable points upon the planet, where the population is densest and a hard blow would have the most effect, and I am going to pound away at them, through the smoke, and see whether we cannot draw them out of their shell." With his expert assistants Mr. Edison set to work at once to transform a number of the disintegrators into still more formidable engines of the same description. One of these new weapons having been distributed to each of the members of the squadron, the next problem was to decide where to strike. When we first examined the surface of the planet it will be remembered that we had regarded the Lake of the Sun and its environs as being the very focus of the planet. While it might also be a strong point of defence, yet an effective blow struck there would go to the enemy's heart and be more likely to bring the Martians promptly to terms than anything else. The first thing, then, was to locate the Lake of the Sun on the smoke hidden surface of the planet beneath us. This was a problem that the astronomers could readily solve. Fortunately, in the flagship itself there was one of the star-gazing gentlemen who had made a specialty of the study of Mars. That planet, as I have already explained, was now in opposition to the earth. The astronomer had records in his pocket which enabled him, by a brief calculation, to say just when the Lakes of the Sun would be on the meridian of Mars as seen from the earth. Our chronometers still kept terrestrial time; we knew the exact number of days and hours that had elapsed since we had departed, and so it was possible by placing ourselves in a line between the earth and Mars to be practically in the situation of an astronomer in his observatory at home. Then it was only necessary to wait for the hour when the Lake of the Sun would be upon the meridian of Mars in order to be certain what was the true direction of the latter from the flagship. Having thus located the heart of our foe behind its shield of darkness, we prepared to strike. "I have ascertained," said Mr. Edison, "the vibration period of the smoke, so that it will be easy for us to shatter it into invisible atoms. You will see that every stroke of the disintegrators will open a hole through the black curtain. If their field of destruction could be made wide enough, we might in that manner clear away the entire covering of smoke, but all that we shall really be able to do will be to puncture it with holes, which will, perhaps, enable us to catch glimpses of the surface beneath. In that manner we may be able more effectually to concentrate our fire upon the most vulnerable points." Everything being prepared, and the entire squadron having assembled to watch the effect of the opening blow and be ready to follow it up, Mr. Edison himself poised one of the new disintegrators, which was too large to be carried in the hand, and, following the direction indicated by the calculations of the astronomers, launched the vibratory discharge into the ocean of blackness beneath. Instantly there opened beneath us a huge well-shaped hole from which the black clouds rolled violently back in every direction. Through this opening we saw the gleam of brilliant lights beneath. We had made a hit. "It's the Lake of the Sun!" shouted the astronomer who furnished the calculation by means of which its position had been discovered. And, indeed, it was the Lake of the Sun. While the opening in the clouds made by the discharge was not wide, yet it sufficed to give us a view of a portion of the curving shore of the lake, which was ablaze with electric lights. Whether our shot had done any damage, beyond making the circular opening in the cloud curtain, we could not tell, for almost immediately the surrounding black smoke masses billowed in to fill up the hole. But in the brief glimpse we had caught sight of two or three large airships hovering in space above that part of the Lake of the Sun and its bordering city which we had beheld. It seemed to me in the brief glance I had that one ship had been touched by the discharge and was wandering in an erratic manner. But the clouds closed in so rapidly that I could not be certain. Anyhow, we had demonstrated one thing, and that was that we could penetrate the cloud shield and reach the Martians in their hiding place. It had been prearranged that the first discharge from the flagship should be a signal for the concentration of the fire of all the other ships upon the same spot. A little hesitation, however, occurred, and a half a minute had elapsed before the disintegrators from the other members of the squadron were got into play. Then, suddenly we saw an immense commotion in the cloud beneath us. It seemed to be beaten and hurried in every direction and punctured like a sieve with nearly a hundred great circular holes. Through these gaps we could see clearly a large region of the planet's surface, with many airships floating above it and the blaze of innumerable electric lights illuminating it. The Martians had created an artificial day under the curtain. This time there was no question that the blow had been effective. Four or five of the airships, partially destroyed, tumbled headlong toward the ground, while even from our great distance there was unmistakable evidence that fearful execution had been done among the crowded structures along the shore of the lake. As each of our ships possessed but one of the new disintegrators, and since a minute or so was required to adjust them for a fresh discharge, we remained for a little while inactive after delivering the blow. Meanwhile the cloud curtain, though rent to shreds by the concentrated discharge of the disintegrators, quickly became a uniform black sheet again, hiding everything. We had just had time to congratulate ourselves on the successful opening of our bombardment, and the disintegrator of the flagship was poised for another discharge, when suddenly out of the black expanse beneath, quivered immense electric beams, clear cut and straight as bars of steel, but dazzling our eyes with unendurable brilliance. It was the reply of the Martians to our attack. Three or four of the electrical ships were seriously damaged, and one, close beside the flagship, changed color, withered and collapsed, with the same sickening phenomena that had made our hearts shudder when the first disaster of this kind occurred during our brief battle over the asteroid. Another score of our comrades were gone, and yet we had hardly begun the fight. Glancing at the other ships which had been injured, I saw that the damage to them was not so serious, although they were evidently _hors de combat_ for the present. Our fighting blood was now boiling and we did not stop long to count our losses. "Into the smoke!" was the signal, and the ninety and more electric ships which still remained in condition for action immediately shot downward. CHAPTER ELEVEN _THE EARTH GIRL_ It was a wild plunge. We kept off the decks while rushing through the blinding smoke, but the instant we emerged below, where we found ourselves still a mile above the ground, we were out again, ready to strike. I have simply a confused recollection of flashing lights beneath, and a great, dark arch of clouds above, out of which our ships seemed dropping on all sides, and then the fray burst on and around us, and no man could see or notice anything except by half-comprehended glances. Almost in an instant, it seemed, a swarm of airships surrounded us, while from what, for lack of a more descriptive name, I shall call the forts about the Lake of the Sun, leaped tongues of electric fire, before which some of our ships, were driven like bits of flaming paper in a high wind, gleaming for a moment, then curling up and gone forever! It was an awful sight; but the battle fever was raging within us, and we, on our part, were not idle. Every man carried a disintegrator, and these hand instruments, together with those of heavier caliber on the ship poured their resistless vibrations in every direction through the quivering air. The airships of the Martians were destroyed by the score, and yet they flocked upon us thicker and faster. We dropped lower and our blows fell upon the forts, and upon the wide spread city bordering the Lake of the Sun. We almost entirely silenced the fire of one of the forts; but there were forty more in full action within reach of our eyes! Some of the metallic buildings were partly unroofed by the disintegrators and some had their walls riddled and fell with thundering crashes, whose sound rose to our ears above the hellish din of battle. I caught glimpses of giant forms struggling in the ruins and rushing wildly through the streets, but there was no time to see anything clearly. Our flagship seemed charmed. A crowd of airships hung upon it like a swarm of angry bees, and, at times, one could not see for the lightning strokes--yet we escaped destruction, while ourselves dealing death on every hand. It was a glorious fight, but it was not war; no, it was not war. We really had no more chance of ultimate success amid that multitude of enemies than a prisoner running the gauntlet in a crowd of savages has of escape. A conviction of the hopelessness of the contest finally forced itself upon our minds, and the shattered squadron, which had kept well together amid the storm of death, was signalled to retreat. Shaking off their pursuers, as a hunted bear shakes off the dogs, sixty of the electrical ships rose up through the clouds where more than ninety had gone down! Madly we rushed upward through the vast curtain and continued our flight to a great elevation, far beyond the reach of the awful artillery of the enemy. Looking back it seemed the very mouth of hell from which we had escaped. The Martians did not for an instant cease their fire, even when we were far beyond their reach. With furious persistence they blazed away through the cloud curtain, and the vivid spikes of lightning shuddered so swiftly on one another's track that they were like a flaming halo of electric lances around the frowning helmet of the War Planet. But after a while they stopped their terrific sparring, and once more the immense globe assumed the appearance of a vast ball of black smoke still widely agitated by the recent disturbance, but exhibiting no opening through which we could discern what was going on beneath. Evidently the Martians believed they had finished us. At no time since the beginning of our adventure had it appeared to me quite so hopeless, reckless and mad as it seemed at present. We had suffered fearful losses, and yet what had we accomplished? We had won two fights on the asteroid, it is true, but then we had overwhelming numbers on our side. Now we were facing millions on their own ground, and our very first assault had resulted in a disastrous repulse, with the loss of at least thirty electric ships and 600 men! Evidently we could not endure this sort of thing. We must find some other means of assailing Mars or else give up the attempt. But the latter was not to be thought. It was no mere question of self-pride, however, and no consideration of the tremendous interests at stake, which would compel us to continue our apparently vain attempt. Our provisions could last only a few days longer. The supply would not carry us one-quarter of the way back to earth, and we must therefore remain here and literally conquer or die. In this extremity a consultation of the principal officers was called upon the deck of the flagship. Here the suggestion was made that we should attempt to effect by strategy what we had failed to do by force. An old army officer who had served in many wars against the cunning Indians of the West, Colonel Alonzo Jefferson Smith, was the author of this suggestion. "Let us circumvent them," he said. "We can do it in this way. The chances are that all of the available fighting force of the planet Mars is now concentrated on this side and in the neighborhood of The Lake of the Sun. "Possibly, by some kind of X-ray business, they can only see us dimly through the clouds, and if we get a little further away they will not be able to see us at all. "Now, I suggest that a certain number of the electrical ships be withdrawn from the squadron to a great distance, while the remainder stay here; or, better still, approach to a point just beyond the reach of those streaks of lightning, and begin a bombardment of the clouds without paying any attention to whether the strokes reach through the clouds and do any damage or not. "This will induce the Martians to believe that we are determined to press our attack at this point. "In the meantime, while these ships are raising a hulabaloo on this side of the planet, and drawing their fire, as much as possible, without running into any actual danger, let the others which have been selected for the purpose, sail rapidly around to the other side of Mars and take them in the rear." It was not perfectly clear what Colonel Smith intended to do after the landing had been effected in the rear of the Martians, but still there seemed a good deal to be said for his suggestion, and it would, at any rate, if carried out, enable us to learn something about the condition of things on the planet, and perhaps furnish us with a hint as to how we could best proceed in the further prosecution of the siege. Accordingly it was resolved that about twenty ships should be told off for this movement, and Colonel Smith himself was placed in command. At my desire I accompanied the new commander in his flagship. Rising to a considerable elevation in order that there might be no risk of being seen, we began our flank movement while the remaining ships, in accordance with the understanding, dropped nearer the curtain of cloud and commenced a bombardment with the disintegrators, which caused a tremendous commotion in the clouds, opening vast gaps in them, and occasionally revealing a glimpse of the electric lights on the planet, although it was evident that the vibratory currents did not reach the ground. The Martians immediately replied to this renewed attack, and again the cloud covered globe bristled with lightning, which flashed so fiercely out of the blackness below that the stoutest hearts among us quailed, although we were situated well beyond the danger. But this sublime spectacle rapidly vanished from our eyes when, having attained a proper elevation, we began our course toward the opposite hemisphere of the planet. We guided our flight by the stars, and from our knowledge of the rotation period of Mars, and the position which the principal points on its surface must occupy at certain hours, we were able to tell what part of the planet lay beneath us. Having completed our semi-circuit we found ourselves on the night side of Mars, and determined to lose no time in executing our coup. But it was deemed best that an exploration should first be made by a single electrical ship, and Colonel Smith naturally wished to undertake the adventure with his own vessel. We dropped rapidly through the black cloud curtain, which proved to be at least half a mile in thickness, and then suddenly emerged, as if suspended at the apex of an enormous dome, arching above the surface of the planet a mile beneath us, which sparkled on all sides with innumerable lights. These lights were so numerous and so brilliant as to produce a faint imitation of daylight, even at our immense height above the ground, and the dome of cloud out of which we had emerged assumed a soft fawn color which produced an indescribably beautiful effect. For a moment we recoiled from our undertaking, and arrested the motion of the electric ship. But on closely examining the surface beneath us we found that there was a broad region, where comparatively few bright lights were to be seen. From my knowledge of the geography of Mars I knew that this was a part of the Land of Ausonia, situated a few hundred miles northeast of Hellas, where we had first seen the planet. Evidently it was not so thickly populated as some of the other parts of Mars, and its comparative darkness was an attraction to us. We determined to approach within a few hundred feet of the ground with the electric ship, and then, in case no enemies appeared, to visit the soil itself. "Perhaps we shall see or hear something that will be of use to us," said Colonel Smith, "and for the purposes of this first reconnaissance it is better that we should be few in number. The other ships will await our return, and at any rate we shall not be gone long." As our car approached the ground we found ourselves near the tops of some lofty trees. "This will do," said Colonel Smith to the electrical steersman, "Stay right here." He and I then lowered ourselves into the branches of the trees, each carrying a small disintegrator, and cautiously clambered down to the ground. We believed we were the first of the descendants of Adam to set foot on the planet of Mars. At first we suffered somewhat from the effects of the rare atmosphere. It was so lacking in density that it resembled the air on the summits of the loftiest terrestrial mountains. Having reached the foot of the tree in safety, we lay down for a moment on the ground to recover ourselves and to become accustomed to our new surroundings. A thrill, born half of wonder, half of incredulity, ran through me at the touch of the soil of Mars. Here was I, actually on that planet, which had seemed so far away, so inaccessible, and so full of mysteries when viewed from the earth. And yet, surrounding me, were things--gigantic, it is true--but still resembling and recalling the familiar sights of my own world. After a little while our lungs became accustomed to the rarity of the atmosphere and we experienced a certain stimulation in breathing. We then got upon our feet and stepped out from under the shadow of the gigantic tree. High above we could faintly see our electrical ship, gently swaying in the air close to the tree top. There were no electric lights in our immediate neighborhood, but we noticed that the whole surface of the planet around us was gleaming with them, producing an effect like the glow of a great city seen from a distance at night. The glare was faintly reflected from the vast dome of clouds above, producing the general impression of a moonlight night upon the earth. It was a wonderfully quiet and beautiful spot where we had come down. The air had a delicate feel and a bracing temperature, while a soft breeze soughed through the leaves of the tree above our heads. Not far away was the bank of a canal, bordered by a magnificent avenue shaded by a double row of immense umbrageous trees. We approached the canal, and, getting upon the road, turned to the left to make an exploration in that direction. The shadow of the trees falling upon the roadway produced a dense gloom, in the midst of which we felt that we should be safe, unless the Martians had eyes like those of cats. As we pushed along, our hearts, I confess, beating a little quickly, a shadow stirred in front of us. Something darker than the night itself approached. As it drew near it assumed the appearance of an enormous dog, as tall as an ox, which ran swiftly our way with a threatening motion of its head. But before it could even utter a snarl, the whirr of Colonel Smith's disintegrator was heard and the creature vanished in the shadow. "Gracious, did you ever see such a beast?" said the Colonel. "Why he was as big as a grizzly." "The people he belonged to must be near by," I said. "Very likely he was a watch on guard." "But I see no signs of a habitation." "True, but you observe there is a thick hedge on the side of the road opposite the canal. If we get through that perhaps we shall catch sight of something." Cautiously we pushed our way through the hedge, which was composed of shrubs as large as small trees, and very thick at the bottom, and, having traversed it, found ourselves in a great meadow-like expanse which might have been a lawn. At a considerable distance, in the midst of a clump of trees, a large building towered skyward, its walls of some red metal, gleaming like polished copper in the soft light that fell from the cloud dome. There were no lights around the building itself, and we saw nothing corresponding to windows on that side which faced us, but toward the right a door was evidently open, and out of this streamed a brilliant shaft of illumination, which lay bright upon the lawn, then crossed the highway through an opening in the hedge, and gleamed on the water of the canal beyond. Where we stood the ground had evidently been recently cleared, and there was no obstruction, but as we crept closer to the house--for our curiosity had now become irresistible--we found ourselves crawling through grass so tall that if we had stood erect it would have risen well above our heads. "This affords good protection," said Colonel Smith, recalling his adventures on the western plains. "We can get close in to the Indians--I beg pardon, I mean the Martians--without being seen." Heavens, what an adventure was this! To be crawling about in the night on the face of another world and venturing, perhaps, into the jaws of a danger which human experience could not measure! But on we went, and in a little while we had emerged from the tall grass and were somewhat startled by the discovery that we had got close to the wall of the building. Carefully we crept around to the open door. As we neared it we suddenly stopped as if we had been stricken with instantaneous paralysis. Out of the door floated, on the soft night air, the sweetest music to which I have ever listened. It carried me back in an instant to my own world. It was the music of the earth. It was the melodious expression of a human soul. It thrilled us both to the heart's core. "My God!" exclaimed Colonel Smith. "What can that be? Are we dreaming, or where in heaven's name are we?" Still the enchanting harmony floated out upon the air. What the instrument was I could not tell, but the sound seemed more nearly to resemble that of a violin than anything else of which I could think. When we first heard it the strains were gentle, sweet, caressing and full of an infinite depth of feeling, but in a little while its tone changed, and it became a magnificent march, throbbing upon the air in stirring notes that set our hearts beating in unison with its stride and inspiring in us a courage that we had not felt before. Then it drifted into a wild fantasia, still inexpressibly sweet, and from that changed again into a requiem or lament, whose mellifluous tide of harmony swept our thoughts back again to the earth. "I can endure this no longer," I said. "I must see who it is that makes that music. It is the product of a human heart and must come from the touch of human fingers." We carefully shifted our position until we stood in the blaze of light that poured out of the door. The doorway was an immense arched opening, magnificently ornamented, rising to a height of, I should say, not less than twenty or twenty-five feet and broad in proportion. The door itself stood widely open and it, together with all of its fittings and surroundings, was composed of the same beautiful red metal. Stepping out a little way into the light I could see within the door an immense apartment, glittering on all sides with metallic ornaments and gems and lighted from the center by a great chandelier of electric candles. In the middle of the great floor, holding the instrument delicately poised, and still awaking its ravishing voice, stood a figure, the sight of which almost stopped my breath. It was a slender sylph of a girl! A girl of my own race; a human being here upon the planet Mars! [Illustration: _"In the middle of the great floor, holding the instrument delicately poised, and still awaking its ravishing voice, stood a figure, the sight of which almost stopped my breath! It was a slender sylph of a girl! A girl of my own race; a human being here on Mars!"_] Her hair was loosely coiled and she was attired in graceful white drapery. "By God!" cried Colonel Smith, "she's human!" CHAPTER TWELVE _RETREAT TO DEIMOS_ Still the Bewildering Strains of the music came to our ears, and yet we stood there unperceived, though in the full glare of the chandelier. The girl's face was presented in profile. It was exquisite in beauty, pale, delicate with a certain pleading sadness which stirred us to the heart. An element of romance and a touch of personal interest such as we had not looked for suddenly entered into our adventure. Colonel Smith's mind still ran back to the perils of the plains. "She is a prisoner," he said, "and by the Seven Devils of Dona Ana we'll not leave her here. But where are the hellhounds themselves?" Our attention had been so absorbed by the sight of the girl that we had scarcely thought of looking to see if there was any one else in the room. Glancing beyond her, I now perceived sitting in richly decorated chairs three or four gigantic Martians. They were listening to the music as if charmed. The whole story told itself. This girl, if not their slave, was at any rate under their control, and she was furnishing entertainment for them by her musical skill. The fact that they could find pleasure in music so beautiful was, perhaps, an indication that they were not really as savage as they seemed. Yet our hearts went out to the girl, and were turned against them with an uncontrollable hatred. They were of the same remorseless race with those who had so lately lain waste our fair earth and who would have completed its destruction had not Providence interferred in our behalf. Singularly enough, although we stood full in the light, they had not yet seen us. Suddenly the girl, moved by what impulse I know not, turned her face in our direction. Her eyes fell upon us. She paused abruptly in her playing, and her instrument dropped to the floor. Then she uttered a cry, and with extended arms ran toward us. But when she was near she stopped abruptly, the glad look fading from her face, and started back with terror-stricken eyes, as if, after all, she had found us not what she expected. Then for an instant she looked more intently at us, her countenance cleared once more, and, overcome by some strange emotion, her eyes filled with tears, and, drawing a little nearer, she stretched forth her hands to us appealingly. Meanwhile the Martians had started to their feet. They looked down upon us in astonishment. We were like pygmies to them; like little gnomes which had sprung out of the ground at their feet. One of the giants seized some kind of a weapon and started forward with a threatening gesture. The girl sprang to my side and grasped my arm with a cry of fear. This seemed to throw the Martian into a sudden frenzy, and he raised his arms to strike. But the disintegrator was in my hand. My rage was equal to his. I felt the concentrated vengeance of the earth quivering through me as I pressed the button of the disintegrator and, sweeping it rapidly up and down, saw the gigantic form that confronted me melt into nothingness. There were three other giants in the room, and they had been on the point of following up the attack of their comrade. But when he disappeared from before their eyes, they paused, staring in amazement at the place where, but a moment before, he had stood, but where now only the metal weapon he had wielded lay on the floor. At first they started back, and seemed on the point of fleeing; then, with a second glance, perceiving again how small and insignificant we were, all three together advanced upon us. The girl sank trembling on her knees. In the meantime I had readjusted my disintegrator for another discharge, and Colonel Smith stood by me with the light of battle upon his face. "Sweep the discharge across the three," I exclaimed. "Otherwise there will be one left and before we can fire again he will crush us." The whirr of the two instruments sounded simultaneously, and with a quick horizontal motion we swept the lines of force around in such a manner that all three of the Martians were caught by the vibratory streams and actually cut in two. Long gaps were opened in the wall of the room behind them, where the destroying currents had passed, for with wrathful fierceness, we had ran the vibrations through half a gamut on the index. The victory was ours. There were no other enemies, that we could see, in the house. Yet at any moment others might make their appearance, and what more we did must be done quickly. The girl evidently was as much amazed as the Martians had been by the effects which we had produced. Still she was not terrified, and continued to cling to us and glance beseechingly into our faces, expressing in her every look and gesture the fact that she knew we were of her own race. But clearly she could not speak our tongue, for the words she uttered were unintelligible. Colonel Smith, whose long experience in Indian warfare had made him intensely practical, did not lose his military instincts, even in the midst of events so strange. "It occurs to me," he said, "that we have got a chance at the enemies' supplies. Suppose we begin foraging right here. Let's see if this girl can't show us the commissary department." He immediately began to make signs to the girl to indicate that he was hungry. A look of comprehension flitted over her features, and, seizing our hands, she led us into an adjoining apartment, and pointed to a number of metallic boxes. One of these she opened, taking out of it a kind of cake, which she placed between her teeth, breaking off a very small portion and then handing it to us, motioning that we should eat, but at the same time showing us that we ought to take only a small quantity. "Thank God! It's compressed food," said Colonel Smith. "I thought these Martians with their wonderful civilization would be up to that. And it's mighty lucky for us, because, without overburdening ourselves, if we can find one or two more caches like this we shall be able to reprovision the entire fleet. But we must get reinforcements before we can take possession of the fodder." Accordingly we hurried out into the night, passed into the roadway, and, taking the girl with us, ran as rapidly as possible to the foot of the tree where we had made our descent. Then we signalled to the electric ship to drop down to the level of the ground. This was quickly done, the girl was taken aboard, and a dozen men, under our guidance, hastened back to the house, where we loaded ourselves with the compressed provisions and conveyed them to the ship. On this second trip to the mysterious house we had discovered another apartment containing a very large number of the metallic boxes, filled with compressed food. "By Jove, it is a storehouse," said Colonel Smith. "We must get more force and carry it all off. Gracious, but this is a lucky night. We can reprovision the whole fleet from this room." "I thought it singular," I said, "that with the exception of the girl whom we have rescued no women were seen in the house. Evidently the lights over yonder indicate the location of a considerable town, and it is quite probable that this building, without windows, and so strongly constructed, is the common storehouse, where the provisions for the town are kept. The fellows we killed must have been the watchmen in charge of the storehouse, and they were treating themselves to a little music from the slave girl when we happened to come upon them." With the utmost haste several of the other electrical ships, waiting above the cloud curtain, were summoned to descend, and, with more than a hundred men, we returned to the building, and this time almost entirely exhausted its stores, each man carrying as much as he could stagger under. Fortunately our proceedings had been conducted without much noise, and the storehouse being situated at a considerable distance from other buildings, none of the Martians, except those who would never tell the story, had known of our arrival or of our doings on the planet. "Now, we'll return and surprise Edison with the news," said Colonel Smith. Our ship was the last to pass up through the clouds, and it was a strange sight to watch the others as one after another they rose toward the great dome, entered it, though from below it resembled a solid vault of grayish-pink marble, and disappeared. We quickly followed them, and having penetrated the enormous curtain, were considerably surprised on emerging at the other side to find that the sun was shining brilliantly upon us. It will be remembered that it was night on this side of Mars when we went down, but our adventure had occupied several hours, and now Mars had so turned upon its axis that the portion of its surface over which we were had come around into the sunlight. We knew that the squadron which we had left besieging the Lake of the Sun must also have been carried around in a similar manner, passing into the night while the side of the planet where we were was emerging into day. Our shortest way back would be by traveling westward, because then we should be moving in a direction opposite to that in which the planet rotated, and the main squadron, sharing that rotation, would be continually moving in our direction. But to travel westward was to penetrate once more into the night side of the planet. The prows, if I may so call them, of our ships were accordingly turned in the direction of the vast shadow which Mars was invisibly projecting into space behind it, and on entering that shadow the sun disappeared from our eyes, and once more the huge hidden globe beneath us became a black chasm among the stars. Now that we were in the neighborhood of a globe capable of imparting considerable weight to all things under the influence of its attraction that peculiar condition which I have before described as existing in the midst of space, where there was neither up nor down for us, had ceased. Here where we had weight "up" and "down" had resumed their old meanings. "Down" was toward the center of Mars, and "up" was away from that center. Standing on the deck, and looking overhead as we swiftly ploughed our smooth way at a great height through the now imperceptible atmosphere of the planet, I saw the two moons of Mars meeting in the sky exactly above us. Before our arrival at Mars, there had been considerable discussion among the learned men as to the advisability of touching at one of their moons, and when the discovery was made that our provisions were nearly exhausted, it had been suggested that the Martian satellites might furnish us with an additional supply. But it had appeared a sufficient reply to this suggestion that the moons of Mars are both insignificant bodies, not much larger than the asteroid we had fallen in with, and that there could not possibly be any form of vegetation or other edible products upon them. This view having prevailed, we had ceased to take an interest in the satellites, further than to regard them as objects of great curiosity on account of their motions. The nearer of these moons, Phobos, is only 3,700 miles from the surface of Mars, and we watched it traveling around the planet three times in the course of every day. The more distant one, Deimos, 12,500 miles away, required considerably more than one day to make its circuit. It now happened that the two had come into conjunction, as I have said, just over our heads, and, throwing myself down on my back on the deck of the electrical ship, for a long time I watched the race between the two satellites, until Phobos, rapidly gaining upon the other, had left its rival far behind. Suddenly Colonel Smith, who took very little interest in these astronomical curiosities, touched me, and pointing ahead, said: "There they are." I looked, and sure enough there were the signal lights of the principal squadron, and as we gazed we occasionally saw, darting up from the vast cloud mass beneath, an electric bayonet, fiercely thrust into the sky, which showed that the siege was still actively going on, and that the Martians were jabbing away at their invisible enemies outside the curtain. In a short time the two fleets had joined, and Colonel Smith and I immediately transferred ourselves to the flagship. "Well, what have you done?" asked Mr. Edison, while others crowded around with eager attention. "If we have not captured their provision train," said Colonel Smith, "we have done something just about as good. We have foraged on the country, and have collected a supply that I reckon will last this fleet for at least a month." "What's that? What's that?" "It's just what I say," and Colonel Smith brought out of his pocket one of the square cakes of compressed food. "Set your teeth in that, and see what you think of it, but don't take too much, for its powerful strong." "I say," he continued, "we have got enough of that stuff to last us all for a month, but we've done more than that; we have got a surprise for you that will make you open your eyes. Just wait a minute." Colonel Smith made a signal to the electrical ship which we had just quitted to draw near. It came alongside, so that one could step from its deck onto the flagship. Colonel Smith disappeared for a minute in the interior of his ship, then re-emerged, leading the girl whom we had found upon the planet. "Take her inside, quick," he said, "for she is not used to this thin air." In fact, we were at so great an elevation that the rarity of the atmosphere now compelled us all to wear our air-tight suits, and the girl, not being thus attired, would have fallen unconscious on the deck if we had not instantly removed her to the interior of the car. There she quickly recovered from the effects of the deprivation of air and looked about her, pale, astonished, but yet apparently without fear. Every motion of this girl convinced me that she not only recognized us as members of her own race, but that she felt that her only hope lay in our aid. Therefore, strange as we were to her in many respects, nevertheless she did not think that she was in danger while among us. The circumstances under which we had found her were quickly explained. Her beauty, her strange fate and the impenetrable mystery which surrounded her excited universal admiration and wonder. "How did she get on Mars?" was the question that everybody asked, and that nobody could answer. But while all were crowding around and overwhelming the poor girl with their staring, suddenly she burst into tears, and then, with arms outstretched in the same appealing manner which had so stirred our sympathies when we first saw her in the house of the Martians, she broke forth in a wild recitation, which was half a song and half a wail. As she went on I noticed that a learned professor of languages from the University of Heidelberg was listening to her with intense attention. Several times he appeared to be on the point of breaking in with an exclamation. I could plainly see that he was becoming more and more excited as the words poured from the girl's lips. Occasionally he nodded and muttered, smiling to himself. Her song finished, the girl sank half-exhausted upon the floor. She was lifted and placed in a reclining position at the side of the car. Then the Heidelberg professor stepped to the center of the car, in the sight of all, and in a most impressive manner said: "Gentlemen, our sister. "I have her tongue recognized! The language that she speaks, the roots of the great Indo-European, or Aryan stock, contains. "This girl, gentlemen, to the oldest family of the human race belongs. Her language every tongue that now upon the earth is spoken antedates. Convinced am I that it that great original speech is from which have all the languages of the civilized world sprung. "How she here came, so many millions of miles from the earth, a great mystery is. But it shall be penetrated, and it is from her own lips that we shall the truth learn, because not difficult to us shall it be the language that she speaks to acquire since to our own it is akin." This announcement of the Heidelberg professor stirred us all most profoundly. It not only deepened our interest in the beautiful girl whom we had rescued, but, in a dim way, it gave us reason to hope that we should yet discover some means of mastering the Martians by dealing them a blow from within. It had been expected, the reader will remember, that the Martian whom we had made prisoner on the asteroid, might be of use to us in a similar way, and for that reason great efforts had been made to acquire his language, and considerable progress had been effected in that direction. But from the moment of our arrival at Mars itself, and especially after the battles began, the prisoner had resumed his savage and uncommunicative disposition, and had seemed continually to be expecting that we would fall victims to the prowess of his fellow beings, and that he would be released. How an outlaw, such as he evidently was, who had been caught in the act of robbing the Martian gold mines, could expect to escape punishment on returning to his native planet it was difficult to see. Nevertheless, so strong are the ties of race we could plainly perceive that all his sympathies were for his own people. In fact, in consequence of his surly manner, and his attempts to escape, he had been more strictly bound than before and to get him out of the way had been removed from the flagship, which was already overcrowded, and placed in one of the other electric ships, and this ship--as it happened--was one of those which were lost in the great battle beneath the clouds. So after all, the Martian had perished, by a vengeful stroke launched from his native globe. But Providence had placed in our hands a far better interpreter than he could ever have been. This girl of our own race would need no urging, or coercion, on our part in order to induce her to reveal any secrets of the Martians that might be useful in our further proceedings. But one thing was first necessary to be done. We must learn to talk with her. But for the discovery of the store of provisions it would have been impossible for us to spare the time needed to acquire the language of the girl, but now that we had been saved from the danger of starvation, we could prolong the siege for several weeks, employing the intervening time to the best advantage. The terrible disaster which we had suffered in the great battle above the Lake of the Sun, wherein we had lost nearly a third of our entire force, had been quite sufficient to convince us that our only hope of victory lay in dealing the Martians some paralyzing stroke that at one blow would deprive them of the power of resistance. A victory that cost us the loss of a single ship would be too dearly purchased now. How to deal that blow, and first of all, how to discover the means of dealing it, were at present the uppermost problems in our minds. The only hope for us lay in the girl. If, as there was every reason to believe, she was familiar with the ways and secrets of the Martians, then she might be able to direct our efforts in such a manner as to render them effective. "We can spare two weeks for this," said Mr. Edison. "Can you fellows of many tongues learn to talk with the girl in that time?" "We'll try it," said several. "It shall we do," cried the Heidelberg professor more confidently. "Then there is no use of staying here," continued the commander. "If we withdraw the Martians will think that we have either given up the earth's moon, always keep the same face toward their master. By blanket and let us see their face once more. That will give us a better opportunity to strike effectively when we are again ready." "Why not rendezvous at one of the moons?" said an astronomer. "Neither of the two moons is of much consequence, as far as size goes, but still it would serve as sort of an anchorage ground, and while there, if we were careful to keep on the side away from Mars, we should escape detection." This suggestion was immediately accepted, and the squadron having been signalled to assemble quickly bore off in the direction of the more distant moon of Mars, Deimos. We knew that it was slightly smaller than Phobos, but its greater distance gave promise that it would better serve our purpose of temporary concealment. The moons of Mars, like the earth's moon, always kept the same face toward their master. By hiding behind Deimos we should escape the prying eyes of the Martians, even when they employed telescopes, and thus be able to remain comparatively close at hand, ready to pounce down upon them again, after we had obtained, as we now had good hope of doing, information that would make us masters of the situation. CHAPTER THIRTEEN _THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE EARTH_ Deimos proved to be, as we had expected, about six miles in diameter. Its mean density is not very great so that the acceleration of gravity did not exceed one-two-thousandths of the earth's. Consequently the weight of a man turning the scales at 150 pounds at home was here only about one ounce. The result was that we could move about with greater ease than on the golden asteroid, and some of the scientific men eagerly resumed their interrupted experiments. But the attraction of this little satellite was so slight that we had to be very careful not to move too swiftly in going about lest we should involuntarily leave the ground and sail out into space, as, it will be remembered, happened to the fugitives from the fight on the asteroid. Not only would such an adventure have been an uncomfortable experience, but it might have endangered the success of our scheme. Our present distance from the surface of Mars did not exceed 12,500 miles, and we had reasons to believe the Martians possessed telescopes powerful enough to enable them not merely to see the electrical ships at such a distance, but to also catch sight of us individually. Although the cloud curtain still rested on the planet it was probable that the Martians would send some of their airships up to its surface in order to determine what our fate had been. From that point of vantage with their exceedingly powerful glasses, we feared that they might be able to detect anything unusual upon or in the neighborhood of Deimos. Accordingly strict orders were given, not only that the ships should be moored on that side of the satellite which is perpetually turned away from Mars, but that, without orders, no one should venture around on the other side of the little globe or even on the edge of it, where he might be seen in profile against the sky. Still, of course, it was essential that we, on our part, should keep a close watch, and so a number of sentinels were selected, whose duty it was to place themselves at the edge of Deimos, where they could peep over the horizon, so to speak, and catch sight of the globe of our enemies. The distance of Mars from us was only about three times its own diameter, consequently it shut off a large part of the sky, as viewed from our position. But in order to see its whole surface it was necessary to go a little beyond the edge of the satellite, on that side which faced Mars. At the suggestion of Colonel Smith, who had so frequently stalked Indians that devices of this kind readily occurred to his mind, the sentinels all wore garments corresponding in color to that of the soil of the asteroid, which was of a dark, reddish brown hue. This would tend to conceal them from the prying eyes of the Martians. The commander himself frequently went around the edge of the planet in order to take a look at Mars, and I often accompanied him. I shall never forget one occasion, when, lying flat on the ground, and cautiously worming our way around on the side toward Mars, we had just begun to observe it with our telescopes, when I perceived, against the vast curtain of smoke, a small, glinting object, which I instantly suspected to be an airship. I called Mr. Edison's attention to it, and we both agreed that it was, undoubtedly, one of the Martian's aerial vessels, probably on the lookout for us. A short time afterward a large number of airships made their appearance at the upper surface of the clouds, moving to and fro, and although, with our glasses, we could only make out the general form of the ships, without being able to discern the Martians upon them, yet we had not the least doubt but they were sweeping the sky in every direction in order to determine whether we had been completely destroyed or had retreated to a distance from the planet. Even when that side of Mars on which we were looking had passed into night, we could still see the guardships circling above the clouds, their presence being betrayed by the faint twinkling of the electric lights that they bore. Finally, after about a week had passed, the Martians evidently made up their minds that they had annihilated us, and that there was no longer danger to be feared. Convincing evidence that they believed we should not be heard from again was furnished when the withdrawal of the great curtain of cloud began. This phenomenon first manifested itself by a gradual thinning of the vaporous shield, until, at length, we began to perceive the red surface of the planet dimly shining through it. Thinner and rarer it became, and, after the lapse of about eighteen hours, it had completely disappeared, and the huge globe shone out again, reflecting the light of the sun from its continents and oceans with a brightness that, in contrast with the all-enveloping night to which we had so long been subjected, seemed unbearable to our eyes. Indeed, so brilliant was the illumination which fell upon the surface of Deimos that the number of persons who had been permitted to pass around on the exposed side of the satellite was carefully restricted. In the blaze of light which had been suddenly poured upon us we felt somewhat like malefactors unexpectedly enveloped in the illumination of a policeman's dark lantern. Meanwhile, the object which we had in view in retreating to the satellite was not lost sight of, and the services of the chief linguists of the expedition were again called into use for the purpose of acquiring a new language. The experiment was conducted in the flagship. The fact that this time it was not a monster belonging to an utterly alien race upon whom we were to experiment, but a beautiful daughter of our common Mother Eve, added zest and interest as well as the most confident hopes of success to the efforts of those who were striving to understand the accents of her tongue. Still the difficulty was very great, notwithstanding the conviction of the professors that her language would turn out to be a form of the great Indo-European speech from which the many tongues of civilized men upon the earth had been derived. The learned men, to tell the truth, gave the poor girl no rest. For hours at a time they would ply her with interrogations by voice and by gesture, until, at length, wearied beyond endurance, she would fall asleep before their faces. Then she would be left undisturbed for a little while, but the moment her eyes opened again the merciless professors flocked about her once more, and resumed the tedious iteration of their experiments. Our Heidelberg professor was the chief inquisitor, and he revealed himself to us in a new and entirely unexpected light. No one could have anticipated the depth and variety of his resources. He placed himself in front of the girl and gestured and gesticulated, bowed, nodded, shrugged his shoulders, screwed his face into an infinite variety of expressions, smiled, laughed, scowled and accompanied all these dumb shows with posturings, exclamations, queries, only half expressed in words and cadences which, by some ingenious manipulation of the tones of the voice, he managed to make expressive of his desires. He was a universal actor--comedian, tragedian, buffoon--all in one. There was no shade of human emotions to which he did not seem capable of giving expression. His every attitude was a symbol, and all his features became in quick succession types of thought and exponents of hidden feelings, while his inquisitive nose stood forth in the midst of their ceaseless play like a perpetual interrogation point that would have electrified the Sphinx into life, and set its stone lips gabbling answers and explanations. The girl looked on, partly astonished, partly amused, and partly comprehending. Sometimes she smiled, and then the beauty of her face became most captivating. Occasionally she burst into a cherry laugh when the professor was executing some of his extraordinary gyrations before her. It was a marvelous exhibition of what the human intellect, when all its powers are concentrated upon a single object, is capable of achieving. It seemed to me, as I looked at the performance, that if all the races of men, who had been stricken asunder at the foot of the Tower of Babel by the miracle which made the tongues of each to speak a language unknown to the others, could be brought together again at the foot of the same tower, with all the advantages which thousands of years of education had in the meantime imparted to them, they would be able, without any miracle, to make themselves mutually understood. And it was evident that an understanding was actually growing between the girl and the professor. Their minds were plainly meeting, and when both had become focused upon the same point, it was perfectly certain that the object of the experiment would be attained. Whenever the professor got from the girl an intelligent reply to his pantomimic inquiries, or whenever he believed that he got such a reply, it was immediately jotted down in the ever open note book which he carried in his hand. And then he would turn to us standing by, and with one hand on his heart, and the other sweeping grandly through the air, would make a profound bow and say: "The young lady and I great progress make already. I have her words comprehended. We shall wondrous mysteries solve. Jawohl! Wunderlich! Make yourselves gentlemen easy. Of the human race the ancestral stem have I here discovered." Once I glanced over a page of his notebook and there I read this: "Mars--Zahmor "Copper--Hayez "Sword--Anz "I jump--Altesna "I slay--Amoutha "I cut off a head--Ksutaskofa "I sleep--Zlcha "I love--Levza" When I saw this last entry I looked suspiciously at the professor. Was he trying to make love without our knowing it to the beautiful captive from Mars? If so, I felt certain that he would get himself into difficulty. She had made a deep impression upon every man in the flagship, and I knew that there was more than one of the younger men who would promptly have called him to account if they had suspected him of trying to learn from those beautiful lips the words, "I love." I pictured to myself the state of mind of Colonel Alonzo Jefferson Smith if, in my place, he had glanced over the notebook and read what I had read. And then I thought of another handsome young fellow in the flagship--Sydney Phillips--who, if mere actions and looks could make him so, had become exceedingly devoted to this long lost and happily recovered daughter of Eve. In fact, I had already questioned within my own mind whether the peace would be strictly kept between Colonel Smith and Mr. Phillips, for the former had, to my knowledge, noticed the young fellow's adoring glances, and had begun to regard him out of the corners of his eyes as if he considered him no better than an Apache. "But what," I asked myself, "would be the vengeance that Colonel Smith would take upon this skinny professor from Heidelberg if he thought that he, taking advantage of his linguistic powers, had stepped in between him and the damsel whom he had rescued?" However, when I took a second look at the professor, I became convinced that he was innocent of any such amorous intentions, and that he had learned, or believed he had learned, the word for "love" simply in pursuances of the method by which he meant to acquire the language of the girl. There was one thing which gave some of us considerable misgivings, and that was the question whether, after all, the language the professor was acquiring was really the girl's own tongue or one that she had learned from the Martians. But the professor bade us rest easy on that point. He assured us, in the first place, that this girl could not be the only human being living upon Mars, but that she must have friends and relatives there. That being so, they unquestionably had a language of their own, which they spoke when they were among themselves. Here finding herself among beings belonging to her own race, she would naturally speak her own tongue and not that which she had acquired from the Martians. "Moreover, gentlemen," he added, "I have in her speech many roots of the great Aryan tongue already recognized." We were greatly relieved by this explanation, which seemed to all of us perfectly satisfactory. Yet, really, there was no reason why one language should be any better than the other for our present purpose. In fact, it might be more useful to us to know the language of the Martians themselves. Still, we all felt that we should prefer to know her language rather than that of the monsters among whom she had lived. Colonel Smith expressed what was in all our minds when, after listening to the reasoning of the Professor, he blurted out: "Thank God, she doesn't speak any of their blamed lingo! By Jove, it would soil her pretty lips." "But also that she speaks, too," said the man from Heidelberg, turning to Colonel Smith with a grin. "We shall both of them eventually learn." Three entire weeks were passed in this manner. After the first week the girl herself materially assisted the linguists in their efforts to ac-quire her speech. At length the task was so far advanced that we could, in a certain sense, regard it as practically completed. The Heidelberg professor declared that he had mastered the tongue of the ancient Aryans. His delight was unbounded. With prodigious industry he set to work, scarcely stopping to eat or sleep, to form a grammar of the language. "You shall see," he said, "it will the speculations of my countrymen vindicate." No doubt the Professor had an exaggerated opinion of the extent of his acquirements, but the fact remained that enough had been learned of the girl's language to enable him and several others to converse with her quite as readily as a person of good capacity who has studied under the instructions of a native teacher during a period of six months can converse in a foreign tongue. Immediately almost every man in the squadron set vigorously at work to learn the language of this fair creature for himself. Colonel Smith and Sydney Phillips were neck and neck in the linguistic race. One of the first bits of information which the Professor had given out was the name of the girl. It was Aina (pronounced Ah-ee-na). This news was flashed throughout the squadron, and the name of our beautiful captive was on the lips of all. After that came her story. It was a marvelous narrative. Translated into our tongue it ran as follows: "The traditions of my fathers, handed down for generations so many that no one can number them, declare that the planet of Mars was not the place of our origin. "Ages and ages ago our forefathers dwelt on another and distant world that was nearer the sun than this one is, and enjoyed brighter daylight than we have here. "They dwelt--as I have often heard the story from my father, who had learned it by heart from his father, and he from his--in a beautiful valley that was surrounded by enormous mountains towering into the clouds and white about their tops with snow that never melted. In the valley were lakes, around which clustered the dwellings of our race. "It was, the traditions say, a land wonderful for its fertility, filled with all things that the heart could desire, splendid with flowers and rich with luscious fruits. "It was a land of music, and the people who dwelt in it were very happy." While the girl was telling this part of her story the Heidelberg professor became visibly more and more excited. Presently he could keep quiet no longer, and suddenly exclaimed, turning to us who were listening, as the words of the girl were interpreted for us by one of the other linguists: "Gentlemen, it is the Vale of Cashmere! Has not my great countryman, Adelung, so declared? Has he not said that the Valley of Cashmere was the cradle of the human race already?" "From the Valley of Cashmere to the planet Mars--what a romance!" exclaimed one of the bystanders. Colonel Smith appeared to be particularly moved, and I heard him humming under his breath, greatly to my astonishment, for this rough soldier was not much given to poetry or music: "Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave; Its temples, its grottoes, its fountains as clear, As the love-lighted eyes that hang 'oer the wave." Mr. Sydney Phillips, standing by, and also catching the murmur of Colonel Smith's words, showed in his handsome countenance some indications of distress, as if he wished he had thought of those lines himself. The girl resumed her narrative: "Suddenly there dropped down out of the sky strange gigantic enemies, armed with mysterious weapons, and began to slay and burn and make desolate. Our forefathers could not withstand them. They seemed like demons, who had been sent from the abodes of evil to destroy our race. "Some of the wise men said that this thing had come upon our people because they had been very wicked, and the Gods in Heaven were angry. Some said they came from the moon, and some from the far-away stars. But of these things my forefathers knew nothing for a certainty. "The destroyers showed no mercy to the inhabitants of the beautiful valley. Not content with making it a desert, they swept over other parts of the earth. "The tradition says that they carried off from the valley, which was our native land, a large number of our people, taking them first into a strange country, where there were oceans of sand, but where a great river, flowing through the midst of the sands, created a narrow land of fertility. Here, after having slain and driven out the native inhabitants, they remained for many years, keeping our people, whom they had carried into captivity, as slaves. "And in this Land of Sand, it is said, they did many wonderful works. "They had been astonished at the sight of the great mountains which surrounded our valley, for on Mars there are no mountains, and after they came into the Land of Sand they built there, with huge blocks of stone, mountains in imitation of what they had seen, and used them for purposes my people did not understand. "Then, too, it is said they left there at the foot of these mountains that they had made a gigantic image of the great chief who led them in their conquest of our world." At this point in the story the Heidelberg professor again broke in, fairly trembling with excitement: "Gentlemen, gentlemen," he cried, "is it that you do not understand? This Land of Sand and of a wonderful fertilizing river--what can it be? Gentleman, it is Egypt! These mountains of rock that the Martians have erected, what are they? Gentlemen, they are the great mystery of the land of the Nile, the Pyramids. The gigantic statue of their leader that they at the foot of their artificial mountains have set up--gentlemen, what is that? It is the Sphinx!" [Illustration: _"Gentlemen," exclaimed the Professor, "these mountains of rock that the Martians built are the Pyramids of Egypt. The gigantic statue of their leader is THE GREAT SPHINX!"_] The professor's agitation was so great that he could not go on further. And indeed there was not one of us who did not fully share his excitement. To think that we should have come to the planet Mars to solve one of the standing mysteries of the earth, which had puzzled mankind and defied all their efforts at solution for so many centuries! Here, then, was the explanation of how those gigantic blocks that constitute the great Pyramid of Cheops had been swung to their lofty elevation. It was not the work of puny man, as many an engineer had declared that it could not be, but the work of these giants of Mars. At length, our traditions say, a great pestilence broke out in the Land of Sand, and a partial vengeance was granted to us in the destruction of the larger number of our enemies. At last the giants who remained, fleeing before this scourge of the gods, used the mysterious means at their command, and, carrying our ancestors with them, returned to their own world, in which we have ever since lived. "Then there are more of your people in Mars?" said one of the professors. "Alas, no," replied Aina, her eyes filling with tears, "I alone am left." For a few minutes she was unable to speak. Then she continued: "What fury possessed them I do not know, but not long ago an expedition departed from the planet, the purpose of which, as it was noised about over Mars, was the conquest of a distant world. After a time a few survivors of that expedition returned. The story they told caused great excitement among our masters. They had been successful in their battles with the inhabitants of the world they had invaded, but as in the days of our forefathers, in the Land of Sand, a pestilence smote them, and but few survivors escaped. "Not long after that, you, with your mysterious ships, appeared in the sky of Mars. Our masters studied you with their telescopes, and those who had returned from the unfortunate expedition declared that you were inhabitants of the world which they had invaded, come, doubtless, to take vengeance upon them. "Some of my people who were permitted to look through the telescopes of the Martians, saw you also, and recognized you as members of their own race. There were several thousand of us all together, and we were kept by the Martians to serve them as slaves, and particularly to delight their ears with music, for our people have always been especially skillful in the playing of musical instruments, and in songs, and while the Martians have but little musical skill themselves, they are exceedingly fond of these things. "Although Mars had completed not less than five thousand circuits about the sun since our ancestors were brought as prisoners to its surface, yet the memory of our distant home had never perished from the hearts of our race, and when we recognized you, as we believed, our own brothers, come to rescue us from long imprisonment, there was great rejoicing. The news spread from mouth to mouth, wherever we were in houses and families of our masters. We seemed to be powerless to aid you or to communicate with you in any manner. Yet our hearts went out to you, as in your ships you hung above the planet, and preparations were secretly made by all the members of our race for your reception when, as we believed, would occur, you should effect a landing upon the planet and destroy our enemies. "But in some manner the fact that we had recognized you, and were preparing to welcome you, came to the ears of the Martians." At this point the girl suddenly covered her eyes with her hands, shuddering and falling back in her seat. "Oh, you do not know them as I do!" at length she exclaimed. "The monsters! Their vengeance was too terrible! Instantly the order went forth that we should all be butchered, and that awful command was executed!" "How, then, did you escape?" asked the Heidelberg professor. Aina seemed unable to speak for a while. Finally mastering her emotion, she replied: "One of the chief officers of the Martians wished me to remain alive. He, with his aides, carried me to one of the military depots of supplies, where I was found and rescued," and as she said this she turned toward Colonel Smith with a smile that reflected on his ruddy face and made it glow like a Chinese lantern. "By God!" muttered Colonel Smith, "that was the fellow we blew into nothing! Blast him, he got off too easy!" The remainder of Aina's story may be briefly told. When Colonel Smith and I entered the mysterious building which, as it now proved, was not a storehouse belonging to a village, as we had supposed, but one of the military depots of the Martians, the girl, on catching sight of us, immediately recognized us as belonging to the strange squadron in the sky. As such she felt that we must be her friends, and saw in us her only possible hope of escape. For that reason she had instantly thrown herself under our protection. This accounted for the singular confidence which she had manifested in us from the beginning. Her wonderful story had so captivated our imaginations that for a long time after it was finished we could not recover from the spell. It was told over and over again, from mouth to mouth, and repeated from ship to ship, everywhere exciting the utmost astonishment. Destiny seemed to have sent us on this expedition into space for the purpose of clearing off mysteries that had long puzzled the minds of men. When on the moon we had unexpectedly to ourselves settled the question that had been debated from the beginning of astronomical history of the former habitability of that globe. Now, on Mars, we had put to rest no less mysterious questions relating to the past history of our own planet. Adelung, as the Heidelberg professor asserted, had named the Vale of Cashmere, as the probable site of the Garden of Eden, and the place of origin of the human race, but later investigators had taken issue with this opinion and the question where the Aryans originated on the earth had long been one of the most puzzling that science presented. This question seemed now to have been settled. Aina had said that Mars had completed 5,000 circuits about the sun since her people were brought to it as captives. One circuit of Mars occupies 687 days. More than 9000 years had therefore elapsed since the first invasion of the earth by the Martians. Another great mystery--that of the origin of those gigantic and inexplicable monuments, the great pyramids and the Sphinx, on the banks of the Nile, had also apparently been solved by us, although these Egyptian wonders had been the furthest things from our thoughts when we set out for the planet Mars. We had traveled more than thirty millions of miles in order to get answers to questions which could not be solved at home. But from these speculations and retrospects we were recalled by the commander of the expedition. "This is all very interesting and very romantic, gentlemen," he said, "but now let us get at the practical side of it. We have learned Aina's language and heard her story. Let us next ascertain whether she can not place in our hands some key which will place Mars at our mercy. Remember what we came here for, and remember that the earth expects every man of us to do his duty." This Nelson-like summons again changed the current of our thoughts, and we instantly set to work to learn from Aina if Mars, like Achilles, had not some vulnerable point where a blow would be mortal. CHAPTER FOURTEEN _THE FLOOD GATES OF MARS_ It was a curious scene when the momentous interview which was to determine our fate and that of Mars began. Aina had been warned of what was coming. We in the flagship had all learned to speak her language with more or less ease, but it was deemed best that the Heidelberg professor, assisted by one of his colleagues, should act as interpreter. The girl, flushed with excitement of the novel situation, fully appreciating the importance of what was about to occur, and looking more charming than before, stood at one side of the principal apartment. Directly facing her were the interpreters, and the rest of us, all with ears intent and eyes focused upon Aina, stood in a double row behind them. As heretofore, I am setting down her words translated into our own tongue, having taken only so much liberty as to connect the sentences into a stricter sequence than they had when falling from her lips in reply to the questions which were showered upon her. "You will never be victorious," she said, "if you attack them openly as you have been doing. They are too strong and too numerous. They are well prepared for such attacks, because they have had to resist them before. "They have waged war with the inhabitants of the asteroid Ceres, whose people are giants greater than themselves. Their enemies from Ceres have attacked them here. Hence these fortifications, with weapons pointing skyward, and the great air fleets which you have encountered." "But there must be some point," said Mr. Edison, "where we can." "Yes, yes," interrupted the girl quickly, "there is one blow you can deal them which they could not withstand." "What is that?" eagerly inquired the commander. "You can drown them out." "How? With the canals?" "Yes, I will explain to you. I have already told you, and, in fact, you must have seen for yourselves, that there are almost no mountains on Mars. A very learned man of my race used to say that the reason was because Mars is so very old a world that the mountains it once had have been almost completely leveled, and the entire surface of the planet had become a great plain. There are depressions, however, most of which are occupied by the seas. The greater part of the land lies below the level of the ocean. In order at the same time to irrigate the soil and make it fruitful, and to protect themselves from overflows by the ocean breaking in upon them, the Martians have constructed the immense and innumerable canals which you see running in all directions over the continents. "There is one period in the year, and that period has now arrived when there is special danger of a great deluge. Most of the oceans of Mars lie in the southern hemisphere. When it is Summer in that hemisphere, the great masses of ice and snow collected around the south pole melt rapidly away." "Yes, that is so," broke in one of the astronomers, who was listening attentively. "Many a time I have seen the vast snow fields around the southern pole of Mars completely disappear as the Summer sun rose high upon them." "With the melting of these snows," continued Aina, "a rapid rise in the level of the water in the southern oceans occurs. On the side facing these oceans the continents of Mars are sufficiently elevated to prevent an overflow, but nearer the equator the level of the land sinks lower. "With your telescopes you have no doubt noticed that there is a great bending sea connecting the oceans of the south with those of the north and running through the midst of the continents." "Quite so," said the astronomer who had spoken before, "we call it the Syrtis Major." "That long narrow sea," Aina went on, "forms a great channel through which the flood of waters caused by the melting of the southern polar snows flows swiftly toward the equator and then on toward the north until it reaches the sea basins which exist there. At that point it is rapidly turned into ice and snow, because, of course, while it is Summer in the southern hemisphere it is Winter in the northern. "The Syrtis Major (I am giving our name to the channel of communication in place of that by which the girl called it) is like a great safety valve, which, by permitting the waters to flow northward, saves the continents from inundation. "But when mid-Summer arrives, the snows around the pole, having been completely melted away, the flood ceases and the water begins to recede. At this time, but for a device which the Martians have employed, the canals connected with the oceans would run dry, and the vegetation left without moisture under the Summer sun, would quickly perish. "To prevent this they have built a series of enormous gates extending completely across the Syrtis Major at its narrowest point (latitude 25 degrees south). These gates are all controlled by machinery collected at a single point on the shore of the strait. As soon as the flood in the Syrtis Major begins to recede, the gates are closed, and, the water being thus restrained, the irrigating canals are kept full long enough to mature the harvests." "The clue! The clue at last!" exclaimed Mr. Edison. "That is the place where we shall nip them. If we can close those gates now at the moment of high tide we shall flood the country. Did you say," he continued, turning to Aina, "that the movement of the gates was all controlled from a single point?" "Yes," said the girl. "There is a great building (power house) full of tremendous machinery which I once entered when my father was taken there by his master, and where I saw one Martian, by turning a little handle, cause the great line of gates, stretching a hundred miles across the sea, to slowly shut in, edge to edge, until the flow of the water toward the north had been stopped." "How is the building protected?" "So completely," said Aina, "that my only fear is that you may not be able to reach it. On account of the danger from their enemies on Ceres, the Martians have fortified it strongly on all sides, and have even surrounded it and covered it overhead with a great electrical network, to touch which would be instant death." "Ah," said Mr. Edison, "they have got an electric shield, have they? Well, I think we shall be able to manage that." "Anyhow," he continued, "we have got to get into that power house, and we have got to close those gates, and we must not lose much time in making up our minds how it is to be done. Evidently this is our only chance. We have not force enough to contend in open battle with the Martians, but if we can flood them out, and thereby render the engines contained in their fortifications useless, perhaps we shall be able to deal with the airships, which will be all the means of defense that will then remain to them." This idea commended itself to all the leaders of the expedition. It was determined to make a reconnaissance at once. But it would not do for us to approach the planet too hastily, and we certainly could not think of landing upon it in broad daylight. Still, as long as we were yet a considerable distance from Mars, we felt that we should be safe from observation because so much time had elapsed while we were hidden behind Deimos that the Martians had undoubtedly concluded that we were no longer in existance. So we boldly quitted the little satellite with our entire squadron and once more rapidly approached the red planet of war. This time it was to be a death grapple and our chances of victory still seemed good. As soon as we arrived so near the planet that there was danger of our being actually seen, we took pains to keep continually in the shadow of Mars, and the more surely to conceal our presence all lights upon the ships were extinguished. The precaution of the commander even went so far as to have the smooth metallic sides of the cars blackened over so that they should not reflect light, and thus become visible to the Martians as shining specks, moving suspiciously among the stars. The precise location of the great power house on the shores of the Syrtis Major having been carefully ascertained, the squadron dropped down one night into the upper limits of the Martian atmosphere, directly over the gulf. Then a consultation was called on the flagship and a plan of campaign was quickly devised. It was deemed wise that the attempt should be made with a single electric ship, but that the others should be kept hovering near, ready to respond on the instant to any signal for aid which might come from below. It was thought that, notwithstanding the wonderful defences, which, according to Aina's account surrounded the building, a small party would have a better chance of success than a large one. Mr. Edison was certain that the electrical network which was described as covering the power house would not prove a serious obstruction to us, because by carefully sweeping the space where we intended to pass with the disintegrators before quitting the ship, the netting could be sufficiently cleared away to give us uninterrupted passage. At first the intention was to have twenty men, each armed with two disintegrators (that being the largest number one person could carry to advantage) descend from the electrical ship and make the venture. But, after further discussion, this number was reduced; first to a dozen, and finally, to only four. These four consisted of Mr. Edison, Colonel Smith, Mr. Sydney Phillips and myself. Both by her own request and because we could not help feeling that her knowledge of the locality would be indispensable to us, Aina was also included in our party, but not, of course, as a fighting member of it. It was about an hour after midnight when the ship in which we were to make the venture parted from the remainder of the squadron and dropped cautiously down. The blaze of electric lights running away in various directions indicated the lines of innumerable canals with habitations crowded along their banks, which came to a focus at a point on the continent of Aeria, westward from the Syrtis Major. We stopped the electrical ship at an elevation of perhaps three hundred feet above the vast roof of a structure which Aina assured us was the building of which we were in search. Here we remained for a few minutes, cautiously reconnoitering. On that side of the power house which was opposite to the shore of the Syrtis Major there was a thick grove of trees, lighted beneath, as was apparent from the illumination which here and there streamed up through the cover of leaves, but, nevertheless, dark and gloomy above the tree tops. "The electric network extends over the grove as well as over the building," said Aina. This was lucky for us, because we wished to descend among the trees, and, by destroying part of the network over the tree tops, we could reach the shelter we desired and at the same time pass within the line of electric defenses. With increased caution, and almost holding our breath lest we should make some noise that might reach the ears of the sentinels below, we caused the car to settle gently down until we caught sight of a metallic net stretched in the air between us and the trees. After our first encounter with the Martians on the asteroid, where, as I have related, some metal which was included in their dress resisted the action of the disintegrators, Mr. Edison had readjusted the range of vibrations covered by the instruments, and since then we had found nothing that did not yield to them. Consequently, we had no fear that the metal of the network would not be destroyed. There was danger, however, of arousing attention by shattering holes through the tree tops. This could be avoided by first carefully ascertaining how far away the network was and then with the adjustable mirrors attached to the disintegrators focusing the vibratory discharge at that distance. So successful were we that we opened a considerable gap in the network without doing any perceptible damage to the trees beneath. The ship was cautiously lowered through the opening and brought to rest among the upper branches of one of the tallest trees. Colonel Smith, Mr. Phillips, Mr. Edison and myself at once clambered out upon a strong limb. For a moment I feared our arrival had been betrayed on account of the altogether too noisy contest that arose between Colonel Smith and Mr. Phillips as to which of them should assist Aina. To settle the dispute I took charge of her myself. At length we were all safely in the tree. Then followed the still more dangerous undertaking of descending from this great height to the ground. Fortunately, the branches were very close together and they extended down within a short distance of the soil. So the actual difficulties of the descent were not very great after all. The one thing that we had particularly to bear in mind was the absolute necessity of making no noise. At length the descent was successfully accomplished, and we all five stood together in the shadow at the foot of the great tree. The grove was so thick around that while there was an abundance of electric lights among the trees, their illumination did not fall upon us where we stood. Peering cautiously through the vistas in various directions, we ascertained our location with respect to the wall of the building. Like all the structures which we had seen on Mars, it was composed of polished red metal. "Where is the entrance?" inquired Mr. Edison, in a whisper. "Come softly this way, and look out for the sentinel," replied Aina. Gripping our disintegrators firmly, and screwing up our courage, with noiseless steps we followed the girl among the shadows of the trees. We had one-very great advantage. The Martians had evidently placed so much confidence in the electric network which surrounded the power house that they never dreamed of enemies being able to penetrate it--at least, without giving warning of their coming. But the hole which we had blown in this network with the disintegrators had been made noiselessly, and Mr. Edison believed, since no enemies had appeared, that our operations had not been betrayed by any automatic signal to watchers inside the building. Consequently, we had every reason to think that we now stood within the line of defense, in which they reposed the greatest confidence, without their having the least suspicion of our presence. Aina assured us that on the occasion of her former visit to the power house there had been but two sentinels on guard at the entrance. At the inner end of a long passage leading to the interior, she said, there were two more. Besides these there were three or four Martian engineers watching the machinery in the interior of the building. A number of airships were supposed to be on guard around the structure, but possibly their vigilance had been relaxed, because not long ago the Martians had sent an expedition against Ceres which had been so successful that the power of that planet to make any attack upon Mars had, for the present been destroyed. Supposing us to have been annihilated in the recent battle among the clouds, they would have no fear or cause for vigilance on our account. The entrance to the great structure was low--at least, when measured by the stature of the Martians. Evidently the intention was that only one person at a time should find room to pass through it. Drawing cautiously near, we discerned the outlines of two gigantic forms, standing in the darkness, one on either side of the door. Colonel Smith whispered to me: "If you will take the fellow on the right, I will attend to the other one." Adjusting our aim as carefully as was possible in the gloom, Colonel Smith and I simultaneously discharged our disintegrators, sweeping them rapidly up and down in the manner which had become familiar to us when endeavoring to destroy one of the gigantic Martians with a single stroke. And so successful were we that the two sentinels disappeared as if they were ghosts of the night. Instantly we all hurried forward and entered the door. Before us extended a long, straight passage, brightly illuminated by a number of electric candles. Its polished sides gleamed with blood-red reflections, and the gallery terminated, at a distance of two or three hundred feet, with an opening into a large chamber beyond, on the further side of which we could see part of a gigantic and complicated mass of machinery. Making as little noise as possible, we pushed ahead along the passage, but when we had arrived within the distance of a dozen paces from the inner end, we stopped, and Colonel Smith, getting down upon his knees, crept forward, until he had reached the inner end of the passage. There he peered cautiously around the edge into the chamber, and, turning his head a moment later, beckoned us to come forward. We crept to his side, and, looking out into the vast apartment, could perceive no enemies. What had become of the sentinels supposed to stand at the inner end the passage we could not imagine. At any rate, they were not at their posts. The chamber was an immense square room at least a hundred feet in height and 400 feet on a side, and almost filling the wall opposite to us was an intricate display of machinery, wheels, levers, rods and polished plates. This we had no doubt was one end of the engine which opened and shut the great gates that could dam an ocean. "There is no one in sight," said Colonel Smith. "Then we must act quickly," said Mr. Edison. "Where," he said, turning to Aina, "is the handle by turning which you saw the Martian close the gates?" Aina looked about in bewilderment. The mechanism before us was so complicated that even an expert mechanic would have been excusable for finding himself unable to understand it. There were scores of knobs and handles, all glistening in the electric light, any one of which, so far as the uninstructed could tell, might have been the master key that controlled the whole complex apparatus. "Quick," said Mr. Edison, "where is it?" The girl in her confusion ran this way and that, gazing hopelessly upon the machinery, but evidently utterly unable to help us. To remain here inactive was not merely to invite destruction for ourselves, but was sure to bring certain failure upon the purpose of the expedition. All of us began instantly to look about in search of the proper handle, seizing every crank and wheel in sight and striving to turn it. "Stop that!" shouted Mr. Edison, "you may set the whole thing wrong. Don't touch anything until we have found the right lever." But to find that seemed to most of us now utterly beyond the power of man. It was at this critical moment that the wonderful depth and reach of Mr. Edison's mechanical genius displayed itself. He stepped back, ran his eyes quickly over the whole immense mass of wheels, handles, bolts, bars and levers, paused for an instant, as if making up his mind, then said decidedly, "There it is," and stepping quickly forward, selected a small wheel amid a dozen others, all furnished at the circumference with handles like those of a pilot's wheel, and giving it a quick wrench, turned it half-way around. At this instant, a startling shout fell upon our ears. There was a thunderous clatter behind us, and, turning, we saw three gigantic Martians rushing forward. CHAPTER FIFTEEN _VENGEANCE IS OURS_ "Sweep them! sweep them!" shouted Colonel Smith, as he brought his disintegrator to bear. Mr. Phillips and I instantly followed his example, and thus we swept the Martians into eternity, while Mr. Edison coolly continued his manipulations of the wheel. The effect of what he was doing became apparent in less than half a minute. A shiver ran through the mass of machinery and shook the entire building. "Look! Look!" cried Sydney Phillips, who had stepped a little apart from the others. We all ran to his side and found ourselves in front of a great window which opened through the side of the engine, giving a view of what lay in front of it. There, gleaming in the electric lights, we saw Syrtis Major, its waters washing high against the walls of the vast power house. Running directly out from the shore, there was an immense metallic gate at least 400 yards in length and rising three hundred feet above the present level of the water. This great gate was slowly swinging upon an invisible hinge in such a manner that in a few minutes it would evidently stand across the current of the Syrtis Major at right angles. Beyond was a second gate, which was moving in the same manner. Further on was a third gate, and then another, and another, as far as the eye could reach, evidently extending in an unbroken series completely across the great strait. As the gates, with accelerated motion when the current caught them, clanged together, we beheld a spectacle that almost stopped the beating of our hearts. The great Syrtis seemed to gather itself for a moment, and then it leaped upon the obstruction and buried its waters into one vast foaming geyser that seemed to shoot a thousand feet skyward. But the metal gates withstood the shock, though buried from our sight in the seething white mass, and the baffled waters instantly swirled around in ten thousand gigantic eddies, rising to the level of our window and beginning to inundate the power house before we fairly comprehended our peril. "We have done the work," said Mr. Edison, smiling grimly. "Now we had better get out of this before the flood bursts upon us." The warning came none too soon. It was necessary to act upon it at once if we would save our lives. Even before we could reach the entrance to the long passage through which we had come into the great engine room, the water had risen half-way to our knees. Colonel Smith, catching Aina under his arm, led the way. The roar of the maddened torrent behind deafened us. As we ran through the passage the water followed us, with a wicked swishing sound, and within five seconds it was above our knees; in ten seconds up to our waists. The great danger now was that we should be swept from our feet, and once down in that torrent there would have been little chance of our ever getting our heads above its level. Supporting ourselves as best we could with the aid of the walls, we partly ran, and were partly swept along, until when we reached the outer end of the passage and emerged into the open air, the flood was swirling about our shoulders. Here there was an opportunity to clutch some of the ornamental work surrounding the doorway, and thus we managed to stay our mad progress, and gradually to work out of the current until we found that the water, having now an abundance of room to spread, had fallen again as low as our knees. But suddenly we heard the thunder of the banks tumbling behind us, and to the right and left, and the savage growl of the released water as it sprang through the breaches. To my dying day, I think, I shall not forget the sight of a great fluid column that burst through the dike at the edge of the grove of trees, and, by the tremendous impetus of its rush, seemed turned into a solid thing. Like an enormous ram, it plowed the soil to a depth of twenty feet, uprooting acres of the immense trees like stubble turned over by the plowshare. The uproar was so awful that for an instant the coolest of us lost our self-control. Yet we knew that we had not the fraction of a second to waste. The breaking of the banks had caused the water again rapidly to rise about us. In a little while it was once more as high as our waists. In the excitement and confusion, deafened by the noise and blinded by the flying foam, we were in danger of becoming separated in the flood. We no longer knew certainly in what direction was the tree by whose aid we had ascended from the electrical ship. We pushed first one way and then another, staggering through the rushing waters in search of it. Finally we succeeded in locating it, and with all our strength hurried toward it. Then there came a noise as if the globe of Mars had been split asunder, and another great head of water hurled itself down upon the soil before us, and, without taking time to spread, bored a vast cavity in the ground, and scooped out the whole of the grove before our eyes as easily as a gardener lifts a sod with his spade. Our last hope was gone. For a moment the level of the water around us sank again, as it poured into the immense excavation where the grove had stood, but in an instant it was reinforced from all sides and began once more rapidly to rise. We gave ourselves up for lost, and, indeed, there did not seem any possible hope of salvation. Even in the extremity I saw Colonel Smith lifting the form of Aina, who had fainted, above the surface of the surging water, while Sydney Phillips stood by his side and aided him in supporting the unconscious girl. "We stayed a little too long," was the only sound I heard from Mr. Edison. The huge bulk of the power house partially protected us against the force of the current, and the water spun us around in great eddies. These swept us this way and that, but yet we managed to cling together, determined not to be separated in death if we could avoid it. Suddenly a cry rang out directly above our heads: "Jump for your lives, and be quick!" At the same instant the ends of several ropes splashed into the water. We glanced upward, and there, within three or four yards of our heads, hung the electrical ship, which we had left moored at the top of the tree. Tom, the expert electrician from Mr. Edison's shop, who had remained in charge of the ship, had never once dreamed of such a thing as deserting us. The moment he saw the water bursting over the dam, and evidently flooding the building which we had entered, he cast off his moorings, as we subsequently learned, and hovered over the entrance to the power house, getting as low down as possible and keeping a sharp watch for us. But most of the electric lights in the vicinity had been carried down by the first rush of water, and in the darkness he did not see us when we emerged from the entrance. It was only after the sweeping away of the grove of trees had allowed a flood of light to stream upon the scene from a cluster of electric lamps on a distant portion of the bank on the Syrtis that had not yet given way that he caught sight of us. Immediately he began to shout to attract our attention, but in the awful uproar we could not hear him. Getting together all the ropes that he could lay his hands on, he steered the ship to a point directly over us, and then dropped down within a few yards of the boiling flood. Now as he hung over our heads, and saw the water up to our very necks and still swiftly rising, he shouted again: "Catch hold, for God's sake!" The three men who were with him in the ship seconded his cries. But by the time we had fairly grasped the ropes, so rapidly was the flood rising, we were already afloat. With the assistance of Tom and his men we were rapidly drawn up, and immediately Tom reversed the electric polarity, and the ship began to rise. At that same instant, with a crash that shivered the air, the immense metallic power house gave way and was swept tumbling, like a hill torn loose from its base, over the very spot where a moment before we had stood. One second's hesitation on the part of Tom, and the electrical ship would have been battered into a shapeless wad of metal by the careening mass. When we had attained a considerable height, so that we could see a great distance on either side, the spectacle became even more fearful than it was when we were close to the surface. On all sides banks and dykes were going down; trees were being uprooted; buildings were tumbling, and the ocean was achieving that victory over the land which had long been its due, but which the ingenuity of the inhabitants of Mars had postponed for ages. Far away we could see the front of the advancing wave crested with foam that sparkled in the electric lights, and as it swept on it changed the entire aspect of the planet--in front of it all life, behind it all death. Eastward our view extended across the Syrtis Major toward the land of Libya and the region of Isidis. On that side also the dykes were giving way under the tremendous pressure, and the floods were rushing toward the sunrise, which had just began to streak the eastern sky. The continents that were being overwhelmed on the western side of the Syrtis were Meroc, Aeria, Arabia, Edom and Eden. The water beneath us continually deepened. The current from the melting snows around the southern pole was at its strongest, and one could hardly have believed that any obstruction put in its path would have been able to arrest it and turn it into these two all-swallowing deluges, sweeping east and west. But, as we now perceived, the level of the land over a large part of its surface was hundreds of feet below the ocean, so that the latter, when once the barriers were broken, rushed into depressions that yawned to receive it. The point where we had dealt our blow was far removed from the great capitol of Mars, around the Lake of the Sun, and we knew that we should have to wait for the floods to reach that point before the desired effect could be produced. By the nearest way, the water had at least 5,000 miles to travel. We estimated that its speed where we hung above it was as much as a hundred miles an hour. Even if that speed were maintained, more than two days and nights would be required for the floods to reach the Lake of the Sun. But as the water rushed on it would break the banks of all the canals intersecting the country, and these, being also elevated above the surface, would add the impetus of their escaping waters to hasten the advance of the flood. We calculated, therefore, that about two days would suffice to place the planet at our mercy. Half way from the Syrtis Major to the Lake of the Sun another great connecting link between the Southern and Northern ocean basins, called on our maps of Mars the Indus, existed, and through this channel we knew that another great current must be setting from the south toward the north. The flood that we had started would reach and break the banks of the Indus within one day. The flood traveling in the other direction, toward the east, would have considerably further to go before reaching the neighborhood of the Lake of the Sun. It, too, would involve hundreds of great canals as it advanced and would come plunging upon the Lake of the Sun and its surrounding forts and cities, probably about half a day later than the arrival of the deluge that traveled toward the west. Now that we had let the awful destroyer loose we almost shrank from the thought of the consequences which we had produced. How many millions would perish as the result of our deed we could not even guess. Many of the victims, so far as we knew, might be entirely innocent of enmity toward us, or of the evil which had been done to our native planet. But this was a case in which the good--if they existed--must suffer with the bad on account of the wicked deeds of the latter. I have already remarked that the continents of Mars were higher on their northern and southern borders where they faced the great oceans. These natural barriers bore to the main mass of land somewhat the relation of the edge of a shallow dish to its bottom. Their rise on the land side was too gradual to give them the appearance of hills, but on the side toward the sea they broke down in steep banks and cliffs several hundred feet in height. We guessed that it would be in the direction of these elevations that the inhabitants would flee, and those who had timely warning might thus be able to escape in case the flood did not--as it seemed possible it might in its first mad rush--overtop the highest elevations on Mars. As day broke and the sun slowly rose upon the dreadful scene beneath us, we began to catch sight of some of the fleeing inhabitants. We had shifted the position of the fleet toward the south, and were now suspended above the southeastern corner of Aeria. Here a high bank of reddish rock confronted the sea, whose waters ran lashing and roaring along the bluffs to supply the rapid drought produced by the emptying of Syrtis Major. Along the shore there was a narrow line of land, hundreds of miles in length, but less than a quarter of a mile broad, which still rose slightly above the surface of the water, and this land of refuge was absolutely packed with the monstrous inhabitants of the planet who had fled hither on the first warning that the water was coming. In some places it was so crowded that the later comers could not find standing ground on dry land, but were continually slipping back and falling into the water. It was an awful sight to look at them. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of the deluge in the days of Noah, when the waters had risen to the mountain tops, and men, women and children were fighting for a foothold upon the last dry spots the earth contained. We were all moved by a desire to help our enemies, for we were overwhelmed with feelings of pity and remorse, but to aid them was now utterly beyond our power. The mighty floods were out, and the end was in the hands of God. Fortunately, we had little time for these thoughts, because no sooner had the day begun to dawn around us than the airships of the Martians appeared. Evidently the people in them were dazed by the disaster and uncertain what to do. It is doubtful whether at first they comprehended the fact that we were the agents who had produced the cataclysm. But as the morning advanced the airships came flocking in greater and greater numbers from every direction, many swooping down close to the flood in order to rescue those who were drowning. Hundreds gathered along the slip of land which was crowded as I have described, with refugees, while other hundreds rapidly assembled about us, evidently preparing for an attack. We had learned in our previous contests with the airships of the Martians that our electrical ships had a great advantage over them, not merely in rapidity and facility of movement, but in the fact that our disintegrators could sweep in every direction, while it was only with much difficulty that the Martian airships could discharge their electrical strokes at an enemy poised directly above their heads. Accordingly, orders were instantly flashed to all the squadrons to rise vertically to an elevation so great that the rarity of the atmosphere would prevent the airships from attaining the same level. This maneuver was executed so quickly that the Martians were unable to deal us a blow before we were poised above them in such a position that they could not easily reach us. Still they did not mean to give up the conflict. Presently we saw one of the largest of their ships maneuvering in a very peculiar manner, the purpose of which we did not at first comprehend. Its forward portion commenced slowly to rise, until it pointed upward like the nose of a fish approaching the surface of the water. The moment it was in this position, an electrical bolt was darted from its prow, and one of our ships received a shock which, although it did not prove fatal to the vessel itself, killed two or three men aboard it, disarranged its apparatus, and rendered it for the time being useless. "Ah, that's their trick, is it?" said Mr. Edison. "We must look out for that. Whenever you see one of the airships beginning to stick its nose up after that fashion blaze away at it." An order to this effect was transmitted throughout the squadron. At the same time several of the most powerful disintegrators were directed upon the ship which had executed the stratagem and, reduced to a wreck, it dropped, whirling like a broken kite until it fell into the flood beneath. Still the Martian ships came flocking in ever greater numbers from all directions. They made desperate attempts to attain the level at which we hung above them. This was impossible, but many, getting an impetus by a swift run in the denser portion of the atmosphere beneath, succeeded in rising so high that they could discharge their electric artillery with considerable effect. Others, with more or less success, repeated the maneuver of the ship which had first attacked us, and thus the battle gradually became more general and more fierce, until, in the course of an hour or two, our squadron found itself engaged with probably a thousand airships, which blazed with incessant lightning strokes, and were able, all too frequently, to do us serious damage. But on our part the battle was waged with a cool determination and a consciousness of insuperable advantage which boded ill for the enemy. Only three or four of our sixty electrical ships were seriously damaged, while the work of the disintegrators upon the crowded fleet that floated beneath us was terrible to look upon. Our strokes fell thick and fast on all sides. It was like firing into a flock of birds that could not get away. Notwithstanding all their efforts they were practically at our mercy. Shattered into unrecognizable fragments, hundreds of the airships continually dropped from their great height to be swallowed up in the boiling waters. Yet they were game to the last. They made every effort to get at us, and in their frenzy they seemed to discharge their bolts without much regard to whether friends or foes were injured. Our eyes were nearly blinded by the ceaseless glare beneath us, and the uproar was indescribable. At length, after this fearful contest had lasted for at least three hours, it became evident that the strength of the enemy was rapidly weakening. Nearly the whole of their immense fleet of airships had been destroyed, or so far damaged that they were barely able to float. Just so long, however, as they showed signs of resistance we continued to pour our merciless fire upon them, and the signal to cease was not given until the airships, which had escaped serious damage began to flee in every direction. "Thank God, the thing is over," said Mr. Edison. "We have got the victory at last, but how we shall make use of it is something that at present I do not see." "But will they not renew the attack?" asked someone. "I do not think they can," was the reply. "We have destroyed the very flower of their fleet." "And better than that," said Colonel Smith, "we have destroyed their clan; we have made them afraid. Their discipline is gone." But this was only the beginning of our victory. The floods below were achieving a still greater triumph, and now that we had conquered the airships we dropped within a few hundred feet of the surface of the water and then turned our faces westward in order to follow the advance of the deluge and see whether, as we hoped, it would overwhelm our enemies in the very center of their power. In a little while we had overtaken the first wave, which was still devouring everything. We saw it bursting the banks of the canal, sweeping away forests of gigantic trees, and swallowing cities and villages, leaving nothing but a broad expanse of swirling and eddying waters, which, in consequence of the prevailing red hue of the vegetation and the soil, looked, as shuddering we gazed down upon it, like an ocean of blood flecked with foam and steaming with the escaping life of the planet from whose veins it gushed. As we skirted the southern borders of the continent the same dreadful scenes which we had beheld on the coast of Aeria presented themselves. Crowds of refugees thronged the high borders of the land and struggled with one another for a foothold against the continually rising flood. We saw, too, flitting in every direction, but rapidly fleeing before our approach, many airships, evidently crowded with Martians, but not armed either for offense or defense. These, of course, we did not disturb, for merciless as our proceedings seemed even to ourselves, we had no intention of making war upon the innocent, or upon those who had no means to resist. What we had done it had seemed to us necessary to do, but henceforth we were resolved to take no more lives if it could be avoided. Thus, during the remainder of that day, all of the following night and all of the next day, we continued upon the heels of the advancing flood. CHAPTER SIXTEEN _THE WOMAN FROM CERES_ The second night we could perceive ahead of us the electric lights covering the land of Thaumasia, in the midst of which lay the Lake of the Sun. The flood would be upon it by daybreak, and, assuming that the demoralization produced by the news of the coming of the waters, which we were aware had hours before been flashed to the capitol of Mars, would prevent the Martians from effectively manning their forts, we thought it safe to hasten on with the flagship, and one or two others, in advance of the waters, and to hover over the Lake of the Sun, in the darkness, in order that we might watch the deluge perform its awful work in the morning. Thaumasia, as we have before remarked, was a broad, oval-shaped land, about 1,800 miles across, having the Lake of the Sun exactly in its center. From this lake, which was four or five hundred miles in diameter, and circular in outline, many canals radiated, as straight as the spokes of a wheel, in every direction, and connected it with the surrounding seas. Like all the other Martian continents, Thaumasia lay below the level of the sea, except toward the south, where it fronted the ocean. Completely surrounding the lake was a great ring of cities constituting the capitol of Mars. Here the genius of the Martians had displayed itself to the full. The surrounding country was irrigated until it fairly bloomed with gigantic vegetation and flowers; the canals were carefully regulated with locks so that the supply of water was under complete control; the display of magnificent metallic buildings of all kinds and sizes produced a most dazzling effect, and the protection against enemies afforded by the innumerable fortifications surrounding the ringed city, and guarding the neighboring lands, seemed complete. Suspended at a height of perhaps two miles from the surface, near the southern edge of the lake, we waited for the oncoming flood. With the dawn of day we began to perceive more clearly the effects which the news of the drowning of the planet had produced. It was evident that many of the inhabitants of the cities had already fled. Airships on which the fugitives hung as thick as swarms of bees were seen, elevated but a short distance above the ground, and making their way rapidly toward the south. The Martians knew that their only hope of escape lay in reaching the high southern border of the land before the floods were upon them. But they must have known also that that narrow beach would not suffice to contain one in ten of those who sought refuge there. The density of the population around the Lake of the Sun seemed to us incredible. Again our hearts sank within us at the sight of the fearful destruction of life for which we were responsible. Yet we comforted ourselves with the reflection that it was unavoidable. As Colonel Smith put it: "You couldn't trust these coyotes. The only thing to do was to drown them out. I am sorry for them, but I guess there will be as many left as will be good for us, anyhow." We had not long to wait for the flood. As the dawn began to streak the east, we saw its awful crest moving out of the darkness, bursting across the canals and plowing its way into the direction of the crowded shores of the Lake of the Sun. The supply of water behind that great wave seemed inexhaustible. Five thousand miles it had traveled, and yet its power was as great as when it started from the Syrtis Major. We caught sight of the oncoming water before it was visible to the Martians beneath us. But while it was yet many miles away, the roar of it reached them, and then arose a chorus of terrified cries, the effect of which, coming to our ears out of the half gloom of the morning, was most uncanny and horrible. Thousands upon thousands of the Martians still remained here to become victims of the deluge. Some, perhaps, had doubted the truth of the reports that the banks were down and the floods were out; others, for one reason or another had been unable to get away; others, like the inhabitants of Pompeii, had lingered too long, or had returned after beginning their flight to secure abandoned treasures, and now it was too late to get away. With a roar that shook the planet the white wall rushed upon the great city beneath our feet, and in an instant it had been engulfed. On went the flood, swallowing up the Lake of the Sun itself, and in a little while, as far as our eyes could range, the land of Thaumasia had been turned into a raging sea. We now turned our ships toward the southern border of the land, following the direction of the airships carrying the fugitives, a few of which were still navigating the atmosphere a mile beneath us. In their excitement and terror the Martians paid little attention to us, although, as the morning brightened, they must have been aware of our presence over their heads. But, apparently, they no longer thought of resistance; their only object was escape from the immediate and appalling danger. When we had progressed to a point about half way from the Lake of the Sun to the border of the sea, having dropped down within a few hundred feet of the surface, there suddenly appeared, in the midst of the raging waters, a sight so remarkable that at first I rubbed my eyes in astonishment, not crediting their report of what they beheld. Standing on the apex of a sandy elevation, which still rose a few feet above the gathering flood, was a figure of a woman, as perfect in form and in classic beauty of feature as the Venus of Milo--a magnified human being not less than forty feet in height! But for her swaying and the wild motions of her arms, we should have mistaken her for a marble statue. Aina, who happened to be looking, instantly exclaimed: "It is the woman from Ceres. She was taken prisoner by the Martians during their last invasion of that world, and since then has been a slave in the palace of the emperor." Apparently her great stature had enabled her to escape, while her masters had been drowned. She had fled like the others, toward the south, but being finally surrounded by the rising waters, had taken refuge on the hillock of sand, where we saw her. This was fast giving way under the assault of the waves, and even while we watched the water rose to her knees. "Drop lower," was the order of the electrical steersman of the flagship, and as quickly as possible we approached the place where the towering figure stood. She had realized the hopelessness of her situation, and quickly ceased those appalling and despairing gestures, which had at first served to convince us that it was indeed a living being on whom we were looking. There she stood, with a light, white garment thrown about her, erect, half-defiant, half yielding to her fear, more graceful than any Greek statue, her arms outstretched, yet motionless, and her eyes upcast, as if praying to her God to protect her. Her hair, which shone like gold in the increasing light of day, streamed over her shoulders, and her great eyes were astare between terror and supplication. So wildly beautiful a sight not one of us had ever beheld. For a moment sympathy was absorbed in admiration. Then: "Save her! Save her!" was the cry that arose throughout the ship. Ropes were instantly thrown out, and one or two men prepared to let themselves down in order better to aid her. But when we were almost within reach, and so close that we could see the very expression of her eyes, which appeared to take no note of us, but to be fixed, with a far away look upon something beyond human ken, suddenly the undermined bank on which she stood gave way, the blood red flood swirled in from right to left, and then: "The waters closed above her face With many a ring." "If but for that woman's sake, I am sorry we drowned the planet," exclaimed Sydney Phillips. But a moment afterward I saw that he regretted what he had said, for Aina's eyes were fixed upon him. Perhaps, however, she did not understand his remark, and perhaps if she did it gave her no offence. After this episode we pursued our way rapidly until we arrived at the shore of the Southern Ocean. There, as we had expected, was to be seen a narrow strip of land with the ocean on one side and the raging flood seeking to destroy it on the other. In some places it had already broken through, so that the ocean was flowing in to assist in the drowning of Thaumasia. But some parts of the coast were evidently so elevated that no matter how high the flood might rise it would not completely cover them. Here the fugitives had gathered in dense throngs and above them hovered most of the airships, loaded down with others who were unable to find room upon the dry land. On one of the loftiest and broadest of these elevations we noticed indications of military order in the alignment of the crowds and the shore all around was guarded by gigantic pickets, who mercilessly shoved back into the flood all the later comers, and thus prevented too great crowding upon the land. In the center of this elevation rose a palatial structure of red metal which Aina informed us was one of the residences of the Emperor, and we concluded that the monarch himself was now present there. The absence of any signs of resistance on the part of the airships, and the complete drowning of all of the formidable fortifications on the surface of the planet, convinced us that all we had to do in order to complete our conquest was to get possession of the person of the chief ruler. The fleet was, accordingly, concentrated, and we rapidly approached the great Martian palace. As we came down within a hundred feet of them and boldly made our way among their airships, which retreated at our approach, the Martians gazed at us with mingled fear and astonishment. We were their conquerors and they knew it. We were coming to demand their surrender, and they evidently understood that also. As we approached the palace signals were made from it with brilliant colored banners which Aina informed us were intended as a token of truce. "We shall have to go down and have a confab with them, I suppose," said Mr. Edison. "We can't kill them off now that they are helpless, but we must manage somehow to make them understand that unconditional surrender is their only chance." "Let us take Aina with us," I suggested, "and since she can speak the language of the Martians we shall probably have no difficulty in arriving at an understanding." Accordingly the flagship was carefully brought further down in front of the entrance to the palace, which had been kept clear by the Martian guards, and while the remainder of the squadron assembled within a few feet directly over our heads with the disintegrators turned upon the palace and the crowd below, Mr. Edison and myself, accompanied by Aina, stepped out upon the ground. There was a forward movement in the immense crowd, but the guards sternly kept everybody back. A party of a dozen giants, preceded by one who seemed to be their commander, gorgeously attired in jewelled garments, advanced from the entrance of the palace to meet us. Aina addressed a few words to the leader, who replied sternly, and then, beckoning us to follow, retraced his steps into the palace. Notwithstanding our confidence that all resistance had ceased, we did not deem it wise actually to venture into the lion's den without having taken every precaution against a surprise. Accordingly, before following the Martian into the palace, we had twenty of the electrical ships moored around it in such a position that they commanded not only the entrance but all of the principal windows, and then a party of forty picked men, each doubly armed with powerful disintegrators, were selected to attend us into the building. This party was placed under the command of Colonel Smith, and Sydney Phillips insisted on being a member of it. In the meantime the Martian with his attendants who had first invited us to enter, finding that we did not follow him, had returned to the front of the palace. He saw the disposition that we had made of our forces, and instantly comprehended its significance, for his manner changed somewhat, and he seemed more desirous than before to conciliate us. When he again beckoned us to enter, we unhesitatingly followed him, and passing through the magnificent entrance, found ourselves in a vast ante-chamber, adorned after the manner of the Martians in the most expensive manner. Thence we passed into a great circular apartment, with a dome painted in imitation of the sky, and so lofty that to our eyes it seemed like the firmament itself. Here we found ourselves approaching an elevated throne situated in the center of the apartment, while long rows of brilliantly armored guards flanked us on either side, and grouped around the throne, some standing and others reclining upon the flights of steps which appeared to be of solid gold, was an array of Martian woman, beautifully and becomingly attired, all of whom greatly astonished us by the singular charm of their faces and bearing, so different from the aspect of most of the Martians whom we had encountered. Despite their stature--for these women averaged twelve or thirteen feet in height--the beauty of their complexions--of a dark olive tint--was no less brilliant than that of the women of Italy or Spain. At the top of the steps on a magnificent golden throne, sat the Emperor himself. There are some busts of Caracalla which I have seen that are almost as ugly as the face of the Martian ruler. He was of gigantic stature, larger than the majority of his subjects, and as near as I could judge must have been between fifteen and sixteen feet in height. As I looked at him I understood a remark which had been made by Aina to the effect that the Martians were not all alike, and that the peculiarities of their minds were imprinted on their faces and expressed in their forms in a very wonderful, and sometimes terrible manner. I had also learned from her that Mars was under a military government, and that the military class had absolute control of the planet. I was somewhat startled, then, in looking at the head and center of the great military system of Mars, to find in his appearance a striking conformation of the speculations of our terrestrial phrenologists. His broad, mis-shapen head bulged in those parts where they had placed the so-called organs of combativeness, destructiveness, etc. Plainly, this was an effect of his training and education. His very brain had become a military engine; and the aspect of his face, the pitiless lines of his mouth and chin, the evil glare of his eyes, the attitude and carriage of his muscular body, all tended to complete the warlike ensemble. He was magnificently dressed in some vesture that had the luster of a polished plate of gold, and the suppleness of velvet. As we approached he fixed his immense, deep-set eyes sternly upon our faces. The contrast between his truly terrible countenance and the Eve-like features of the women which surrounded his throne was as great as if Satan after his fall had here re-enthroned himself in the midst of angels. Mr. Edison, Colonel Smith, Sydney Phillips, Aina and myself advanced at the head of the procession, our guard following in close order behind us. It had been evident from the moment that we entered the palace that Aina was regarded with aversion by all of the Martians. Even the women about the throne gazed scowlingly at her as we drew near. Apparently, the bitterness of feeing which had led to the massacre of all of her race had not yet vanished. And, indeed, since the fact that she remained alive could have been known only to the Martian who had abducted her and to his immediate companions, her reappearance with us must have been a great surprise to all those who now looked upon her. It was clear to me that the feeling aroused by her appearance was every moment becoming more intense. Still, the thought of a violent outbreak did not occur to me, because our recent triumph had seemed so complete that I believed the Martians would be awed by our presence, and would not undertake actually to injure the girl. I think we all had the same impression, but as the event proved, we were mistaken. Suddenly one of the gigantic guards, as if actuated by a fit of ungovernable hatred, lifted his foot and kicked Aina. With a loud shriek she fell to the floor. The blow was so unexpected that for a second we all stood riveted to the spot. Then I saw Colonel Smith's face turn livid, and at the same instant heard the whirr of his disintegrator, while Sydney Phillips, forgetting the deadly instrument he carried in his hand, sprung madly toward the brute who had kicked Aina, as if he intended to throttle him, colossus that he was. But Colonel Smith's aim, though instantaneously taken, as he had been accustomed to shoot on the plains, was true, and Phillips, plunging madly forward, seemed wreathed in a faint blue mist--all that the disintegrator had left of the gigantic Martian. Who could adequately describe the scene that followed? I remember that the Martian emperor sprang to his feet, looking tenfold more terrible than before. I remember that there instantly burst from the line of guards on either side crinkling beams of death-fire that seemed to sear the eyeballs. I saw a half a dozen of our men fall in heaps of ashes, and even at that terrible moment I had time to wonder that a single one of us remained alive. Rather by instinct than in consequence of any order given, we formed ourselves in a hollow square, with Aina lying apparently lifeless in the center, and then with gritted teeth we did our work. The lines of guards melted before the disintegrators like rows of snow men before a licking flame. The discharge of the lightning engines in the hands of the Martians in that confined space made an uproar so tremendous that it seemed to pass the bounds of human sense. More of our men fell before their awful fire, and for the second time since our arrival on this deadful planet of war our annihilation seemed inevitable. But in a moment the whole scene changed. Suddenly there was a discharge into the room which I knew came from one of the disintegrators of the electrical ships. It swept through the crowded throng like a destroying blast. Instantly from another side, swished a second discharge, no less destructive, and this was quickly followed by a third. Our ships were firing through the windows. Almost at the same moment I saw the flagship, which had been moored in the air close to the entrance and floating only three or four feet above the ground, pushing its way through the gigantic doorway from the ante-room, with its great disintegrators pointed upon the crowd like the muzzles of a cruiser's guns. And now the Martians saw that the contest was hopeless for them, and their mad struggle to get out of the range of the disintegrators and to escape from the death chamber was more appalling to look upon than anything that had yet occurred. [Illustration: _"Suddenly there was a discharge into the room which I knew came from one of the disintegrators of the electrical ships. It swept through the crowded throng like a destroying blast. It was a panic of giants!"_] It was a panic of giants. They trod one another under foot; they yelled and screamed in their terror; they tore each other with their claw-like fingers. They no longer thought of resistance. The battle spirit had been blown out of them by a breath of terror that shivered their marrow. Still the pitiless disintegrators played upon them until Mr. Edison, making himself heard, now that the thunder of their engines had ceased to reverberate through the chamber, commanded that our fire should cease. In the meantime the armed Martians outside the palace, hearing the uproar within, seeing our men pouring their fire through the windows, and supposing that we were guilty at once of treachery and assassination, had attempted an attack upon the electrical ships stationed round the building. But fortunately they had none of their larger engines at hand, and with their hand arms alone they had not been able to stand up against the disintegrators. They were blown away before the withering fire of the ships by the hundreds until, fleeing from destruction, they rushed madly, driving their unarmed companions before them into the seething waters of the flood close at hand. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN _THE FEARFUL OATHS OF COLONEL SMITH_ Through all this terrible contest the emperor of the Martians had remained standing upon his throne, gazing at the awful spectacle, and not moving from the spot. Neither he nor the frightened woman gathered upon the steps of the throne had been injured by the disintegrators. Their immunity was due to the fact that the position and elevation of the throne were such that, it was not within the range of fire of the electrical ships which had poured their vibratory discharges through the windows, and we inside had only directed our fire toward the warriors who had attacked us. Now that the struggle was over we turned our attention to Aina. Fortunately the girl had not been seriously injured and she was quickly restored to consciousness. Had she been killed, we would have been practically helpless in attempting further negotiations, because the knowledge which we had acquired of the language of the Martians from the prisoner captured on the golden asteroid, was not sufficient to meet the requirements of the occasion. When the Martian monarch saw that we ceased the work of death, he sank upon his throne. There he remained, leaning his chin upon his two hands and staring straight before him like that terrible doomed creature who fascinates the eyes of every beholder standing in the Sistine Chapel and gazing at Micheal Angeleo's dreadful painting of "The Last Judgement." This wicked Martian also felt that he was in the grasp of pitiless and irresistible fate, and that a punishment too well deserved, and from which there was no possible escape, now confronted him. There he remained in a hopelessness which almost compelled our sympathy, until Aina had so far recovered that she was once more able to act as our interpreter. Then we made short work of the negotiations. Speaking through Aina, the commander said: "You know who we are. We have come from the earth, which, by your command, was laid waste. Our commission was not revenge, but self-protection. What we have done has been accomplished with that in view. You have just witnessed an example of our power, the exercise of which was not dictated by our wish, but compelled by the attack wantonly made upon a helpless member of our own race under our protection. "We have laid waste your planet, but it is simply a just retribution for what you did with ours. We are prepared to complete the destruction, leaving not a living being in this world of yours, or to grant you peace, at your choice. Our condition of peace is simply this: All resistance must cease absolutely." "Quite right," broke in Colonel Smith; "let the scorpion pull out his sting or we shall do it for him." "Nothing that we could do now," continued the commander, "would in my opinion save you from ultimate destruction. The forces of nature which we have been compelled to let loose upon you will complete their own victory. But we do not wish, unnecessarily, to stain our hands further with your blood. We shall leave you in possession of your lives. Preserve them if you can. But, in case the flood recedes before you have all perished from starvation, remember that you here take an oath, solemnly binding yourself and your descendants forever never again to make war upon the earth." "That's really the best we can do," said Mr. Edison, turning to us. "We can't possibly murder these people in cold blood. The probability is that the flood has hopelessly ruined all their engines of war. I do not believe that there is one chance in ten that the waters will drain off in time to enable them to get at their stores of provisions before they have perished from starvation." "It is my opinion," said Lord Kelvin, who had joined us (his pair of disintegrators hanging by his side, attached to a strap running over the back of his neck, very much as a farmer sometimes carries his big mittens), "it is my opinion that the flood will recede more rapidly than you think, and that the majority of these people will survive. But I quite agree with your merciful view of the matter. We must be guilty of no wanton destruction. Probably more than nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Mars have perished in the deluge. Even if all the others survived ages would elapse before they could regain the power to injure us." I need not describe in detail how our propositions were received by the Martian monarch. He knew, and his advisors, some of whom he had called in consultation, also knew, that everything was in our hands to do as we pleased. They readily agreed, therefore, that they would make no more resistance and that we and our electrical ships should be undisturbed while we remained upon Mars. The monarch took the oath prescribed after the manner of his race; thus the business was completed. But through it all there had been a shadow of a sneer on the emperor's face which I did not like. But I said nothing. And now we began to think of our return home, and of the pleasure we should have in recounting our adventures to our friends on the earth, who undoubtedly were eagerly awaiting news from us. We knew that they had been watching Mars with powerful telescopes, and we were also eager to learn how much they had seen and how much they had been able to guess of our proceedings. But a day or two at least would be required to overhaul the electrical ships and examine the state of our provisions. Those which we had brought from the earth, it will be remembered, had been spoiled and we had been compelled to replace them from the compressed provisions found in the Martian's storehouse. This compressed food had proved not only exceedingly agreeable to the taste, but very nourishing, and all of us had grown extremely fond of it. A new supply, however, would be needed in order to carry us back to the earth. At least sixty days would be required for the homeward journey, because we could hardly expect to start from Mars with the same initial velocity which we had been able to generate on leaving home. In considering the matter of provisioning the fleet it finally became necessary to take an account of our losses. This was a thing that we had all shrunk from, because they had seemed to us almost too terrible to be borne. But now the facts had to be faced. Out of the one hundred ships, carrying something more than two thousand souls, with which we had quitted the earth, there remained only fifty-five ships and 1085 men! All the others had been lost in our terrible encounters with the Martians, and particularly in our first disastrous battle beneath the clouds. Among the lost were many men whose names were famous upon the earth, and whose death would be widely deplored when the news of it was received upon their native planet. Fortunately this number did not include any of those whom I have had occasion to mention in the course of this narrative. The venerable Lord Kelvin, who, notwithstanding his age, and his pacific disposition, proper to a man of science, had behaved with the courage and coolness of a veteran in every crisis; Monsieur Moissan, the eminent chemist; Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, and the Heidelberg professor, to whom we all felt under special obligations because he had opened to our comprehension the charming lips of Aina--all these had survived, and were about to return with us to the earth. It seemed to some of us almost heartless to deprive the Martians who still remained alive of any of the provisions which they themselves would require to tide them over the long period which must elapse before the recession of the flood should enable them to discover the sites of their ruined homes, and to find the means of sustenance. But necessity was now our only law. We learned from Aina that there must be stores of provisions in the neighborhood of the palace, because it was the custom of the Martians to lay up such stores during the harvest time in each Martian year in order to provide against the contingency of an extraordinary drought. It was not with very good grace that the Martian emperor acceded to our demands that one of the storehouses should be opened, but resistance was useless and of course we had our way. The supplies of water which we brought from the earth, owing to a peculiar process invented by Monsieur Moissan, had been kept in exceedingly good condition, but they were now running low and it became necessary to replenish them also. This was easily done from the Southern Ocean, for on Mars, since the levelling of the continental elevations, brought about many years ago, there is comparatively little salinity in the sea waters. While these preparations were going on Lord Kelvin and the other men of science entered with the utmost eagerness upon those studies, the prosecution of which had been the principal inducement leading them to embark on the expedition. But, almost all of the face of the planet being covered with the flood, there was comparatively little that they could do. Much, however, could be learned with the aid of Aina from the Martians, now crowded on the land above the palace. The results of these discoveries will in due time appear, fully elaborated in learned and authoratative treatises prepared by these savants' themselves. I shall only call attention to one, which seemed to me very remarkable. I have already said that there were astonishing differences in the personal appearance of the Martians evidently arising from differences of character and education, which had impressed themselves in the physical aspect of the individuals. We now learned that these differences were more completely the result of education than we had at first supposed. Looking about among the Martians by whom we were surrounded, it soon became easy for us to tell who were the soldiers and who were the civilians, simply by the appearance of their bodies, and particularly of their heads. All members of the military class resembled, to a greater or less extent, the monarch himself, in that those parts of their skulls which our phrenologists had designated as the bumps of destructiveness, combativeness and so on were enormously and disproportionately developed. And all this, we were assured, was completely under the control of the Martians themselves. They had learned, or invented, methods by which the brain itself could be manipulated, so to speak, and any desired portions of it could be especially developed, while other parts of it were left to their normal growth. The consequence was that in the Martian schools and colleges there was no teaching in our sense of the word. It was all brain culture. A Martian youth selected to be a soldier had his fighting faculties especially developed, together with those parts of the brain which impart courage and steadiness of nerve. He who was intended for scientific investigation had his brain developed into a mathematical machine, or an instrument of observation. Poets and literary men had their heads bulging with the imaginative faculties. The heads of the inventors were developed into a still different shape. "And so," said Aina, translating for us the words of a professor in the Imperial University of Mars, from whom we derived the greater part of our information on this subject, "the Martian boys do not study a subject; they do not have to learn it, but, when their brains have been sufficiently developed in the proper direction, they comprehend it instantly, by a kind of divine instinct." But among the women of Mars, we saw none of these curious, and to our eyes, monstrous differences of development. While the men received, in addition to their special education, a broad general culture also, with the women there was no special education. It was all general in its character, yet thorough enough in that way. The consequence was that only female brains upon Mars were entirely well balanced. This was the reason why we invariably found the Martian women to be remarkably charming creatures, with none of those physical exaggerations and uncouth developments which disfigured their masculine companions. All the books of the Martians, we ascertained, were books of history and of poetry. For scientific treatises they had no need, because, as I have explained, when the brains of those intended for scientific pursuits had been developed in the proper way the knowledge of nature's laws came to them without effort, as a spring bubbles from the rocks. One word of explanation may be needed concerning the failure of the Martians, with all their marvelous powers, to invent electrical ships like those of Mr. Edison's and engines of destruction comparable with our disintegrators. This failure was simply due to the fact that on Mars there did not exist the peculiar metals by the combination of which Mr. Edison had been able to effect his wonders. The theory involved by our inventions was perfectly understood by them and had they possessed the means, doubtless they would have been able to carry it into practice even more effectively than we had done. After two or three days all the preparations having been completed the signal was given for our departure. The men of science were still unwilling to leave this strange world, but Mr. Edison decided we could linger no longer. At the moment of starting a most tragic event occured. Our fleet was assembled around the palace, and the signal was given to rise slowly to a considerable height before imparting a great velocity to the electrical ships. As we slowly rose we saw the immense crowd of giants beneath us, with upturned faces, watching our departure. The Martian monarch and all his suite had come out upon the terrace of the palace to look at us. At a moment when he probably supposed himself to be unwatched he shook his fist at the retreating fleet. My eyes and those of several others in the flagship chanced to be fixed upon him. Just as he made the gesture one of the women of his suite, in her eagerness to watch us, apparently lost her balance and stumbled against him. Without a moment's hesitation, with a tremendous blow, he felled her like an ox at his feet. A fearful oath broke from the lips of Colonel Smith, who was one of those looking on. It chanced that he stood near the principal disintegrator of the flagship. Before anybody could interfere he had sighted and discharged it. The entire force of the terrible engine, almost capable of destroying a fort, fell upon the Martian emperor and not merely blew him into a cloud of atoms but opened a great cavity in the ground on the spot where he had stood. A shout arose from the Martians, but they were too much astounded at what had occurred to make any hostile demonstrations, and, anyhow, they knew well that they were completely at our mercy. Mr. Edison was on the point of rebuking Colonel Smith for what he had done, but Aina interposed. "I am glad it was done," said she "for now only can you be safe. That monster was more directly responsible than any other inhabitant of Mars for all the wickedness of which they have been guilty. "The expedition against the earth was inspired solely by him. There is a tradition among the Martians--which my people, however, could never credit--that he possessed a kind of immortality. They declared that it was he who led the former expedition against the earth when my ancestors were brought away prisoners from their happy home, and that it was his image which they had set up in stone in the midst of the Land of Sand. He prolonged his existence, according to this legend, by drinking the waters of a wonderful fountain, the secret of whose precise location was known to him alone but which was situated at that point where in your maps of Mars the name of the Fons Juventae occurs. He was personified wickedness, that I know; and he never would have kept his oath if power had returned to him again to injure the earth. In destroying him, you have made your victory secure." CHAPTER EIGHTEEN _THE GREAT OVATION_ When at length we once more saw our native planet, with its well-remembered features of land and sea, rolling beneath our eyes, the feeling of joy that came over us transcended all powers of expression. In order that all the nations which had united in sending out the expedition should have visual evidence of its triumphal return, it was decided to make the entire circuit of the earth before seeking our starting point and disembarking. Brief accounts in all known languages, telling the story of what we had done was accordingly prepared, and then we dropped down through the air until again we saw the well-loved blue dome over our heads, and found ourselves suspended directly above the white topped cone of Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan. Shifting our position toward the northeast, we hung above the city of Tokyo and dropped down into the crowds which had assembled to watch us, the prepared accounts of our journey, which, the moment they had been read and comprehended, led to such an outburst of rejoicing as it would be quite impossible to describe. One of the ships containing the Japanese members of the expedition, dropped to the ground, and we left them in the midst of their rejoicing countrymen. Before we started--and we remained but a short time suspended above the Japanese capitol--millions had assembled to greet us with their cheers. We now repeated what we had done during our first examination of the surface of Mars. We simply remained suspended in the atmosphere, allowing the earth to turn beneath us. As Japan receded in the distance we found China beginning to appear. Shifting our position a little toward the south, we again came to rest over the city of Pekin, where once more we parted with some of our companions, and where the outburst of universal rejoicing was repeated. From Asia, crossing the Caspian Sea, we passed over Russia, visiting in turn Moscow and St. Petersburg. Still the great globe rolled steadily beneath, and still we kept the sun with us. Now Germany appeared, and now Italy, and then France, and England, as we shifted our position, first north then south, in order to give all the world the opportunity to see that its warriors had returned victorious from its far conquest. And in each country as it passed beneath our feet, we left some of the comrades who had shared our perils and our adventures. At length the Atlantic had rolled away under us, and we saw the spires of the new New York. The news of our coming had been flashed ahead from Europe and our countrymen were prepared to welcome us. We had originally started, it will be remembered, at midnight, and now again as we approached the new capitol of the world the curtain of night was just beginning to be drawn over it. But our signal lights were ablaze, and through these they were aware of our approach. Again the air was filled with bursting rockets and shaken with the roar of cannon, and with volleying cheers, poured from millions of throats, as we came to rest directly above the city. Three days after the landing of the fleet, and when the first enthusiasm of our reception had a little passed, I received a beautifully engraved card inviting me to be present in Trinity Church at the wedding of Aina and Sydney Phillips. When I arrived at the church, which had been splendidly decorated, I found there Mr. Edison, Lord Kelvin, and all the other members of the crew of the flagship, and, considerably to my surprise, Colonel Smith, appropriately attired, and with a grace for the possession of which I had not given him credit, gave away the beautiful bride. But Alonzo Jefferson Smith was a man and a soldier, every inch of him. "I asked her for myself," he whispered to me after the ceremony, swallowing a great lump in his throat, "but she has had the desire of her heart. I am going back to the plains. I can get a command again, and I still know how to fight." And thus was united, for all future time, the first stem of the Aryan race, which had been long lost, but not destroyed, with the latest offspring of that great family, and the link which had served to bring them together was the far-away planet of Mars. * * * * * _BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GARRETT PUTMAN SERVISS_ Compiled by Elizabeth Dew Searles _Non-Fiction: Magazine Articles_ Achievements of astronomical photography. Outlook _79_, 787-96 (April 1, 1905) Alexander Graham Bell. Cosmopolitan _33_, 42-44 (May 1902) Alpha Centauri. Harper's Weekly _38_, 413 (May 5, 1894) Among the stars with an opera-glass. Sidereal Messenger _10_, 244-47 (May 1891) Another theory about Mars. Harper's Weekly _41_, 518-19 (May 22, 1897) Arcturus, the greatest of all suns. Scientific American _70_, 327 (May 26, 1894) Are there planets among the stars? Popular Science Monthly _52_, 171-77 (December 1897) Artificial creation of life. Cosmopolitan _39_, 459-68 (September 1905) Astronomy with an opera-glass: (This series was enlarged and published in book form; see the following section.) Stars of spring. Popular Science Monthly _30_, 743-56 (April 1887) Stars of summer. ibid. _31_, 187-207 (June 1887) Moon and the sun. ibid. _31_, 478-92 (August 1887) Stars of autumn. ibid. _32_, 53-71 (November 1887) Stars of winter. ibid. _32_, 511-29 (February 1888) Astronomy in the 20th century. Popular Astronomy _9_, 286-87 (May 1901) Auriga's wonderful star. Harper's Weekly _41_, 471 (May 8, 1897) A Belt of sun-spots. Popular Science Monthly _24_, 180-86 (December 1883) Can we always count upon the sun? Popular Science Monthly _39_, 658-64 (September 1891) Celebrated American astronomers. Harper's Weekly _38_, 1143-46 (Dec. 1, 1894) Digging up Cæsar's camp. Harper's Weekly _54_, 12-13 (Dec. 31, 1910) The Dimensions of the universe. Chautaquan _21_, 143-48 (May 1895) Edelweiss. Nature Magazine _10_, 25 (July 1927) Facts and fancies about Mars. Harper's Weekly _40_, 926 (Sept. 19, 1896) From chaos to man; illustrated lecture in the Urania scientific theater, at Carnegie Hall. Scientific American _66_, 399, 405-07 (June 25, 1892) Greenland's icy mountains. Mentor _15_, 33-34 (February 1927) How Burbank produces new flowers and fruit. Cosmopolitan _40_, 163-70 (December 1905) Is Mars inhabited? Harper's Weekly _39_, 712 (July 27, 1895) The Kite principle in aerial navigation. Scientific American _88_, 484 (June 27, 1903) Latest marvels of astronomy. Mentor _9_, 2-12 (October 1921) Luther Burbank. Chautaquan _50_, 406-16 (May 1908) New conquest of the heavens. Cosmopolitan _52_, 584-93 (April 1912) New light on a lunar mystery. Popular Science Monthly _34_, 158-61 (December 1888) New philosopher's stone. Cosmopolitan _44_, 632-36 (May 1908) New Shakespeare--Bacon controversy. Cosmopolitan _32_, 554-58 (March 1902) Opposition of Mars. Harper's Weekly _36_, 810 (Aug. 20, 1892) Pleasures of the telescope: (Cf. the book "_Pleasures of the Telescope_" listed in the following section.) The selection and testing of a glass. Popular Science Monthly _45_, 213-24 (June 1894) In the starry heavens. ibid. _46_, 289-301 (January 1895) The starry heavens (cont'd). ibid. _46_, 466-78 (February 1895) Virgo and her neighbors. ibid. _46_, 738-50 (April 1895) In summer starlands. ibid. _47_, 194-208 (June 1895) From Lyra to Eridanus. ibid. _47_, 508-21 (August 1895) Pisces, Aries, Taurus, and the northern stars. ibid. _47_, 783-97 (October 1895) Progress of science. Cosmopolitan _33_, 357-60 (July 1902) Recent magnetic storms and sun-spots. Popular Science Monthly _23_, 163-69 (June 1883) Riding through space. Mentor _11_, 3-16 (November 1923) Rome of the gravel walk. Harper's Weekly _54_, 9-11 (July 30, 1910) Scenes on the planets. Popular Science Monthly _56_, 337-49 (January 1900) The Sky from Pike's Peak. Astronomy and Astrophysics _13_, 150-51 (February 1894) Soaring flight. Scientific American _90_, 345 (April 30, 1904) Solving the mystery of the stars. Cosmopolitan _39_, 395-404 (August 1905) Star streams and nebulæ. Popular Science Monthly _38_, 338-41 (January 1891) Strange markings on Mars. Popular Science Monthly _35_, 41-56 (May 1889) Studies in astronomy. Chautaquan _12_, 38-43, 184-88, 330-34, 463-67, 596-601, 735-39; _13_, 34-39, 170-75, 304-09 (October 1890-June 1891) The Sun and his family. Outlook _200_, 656-65 (March 23, 1912) Transforming the world of plants. Cosmopolitan _40_, 63-70 (November 1905) What a five-inch telescope will show. Popular Astronomy _1_, 372-73 (April 1894) What is astronomy? Chautaquan _18_, 541-45 (February 1894) What is the music of the spheres? Mentor _15_, 18-20 (December 1927) What the stars are made of. Chautaquan _21_, 9-13 (April 1895) What we know about the planets. Chautaquan _20_, 526-31 (February 1895) When shall we have another glacial epoch? Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 4, 15-19 (Jan. 30, 1892) _Non-Fiction: Books, Pamphlets, Etc._ Astronomy in a nutshell, the chief facts and principles explained in popular language for the general reader and for schools. New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1912. xi, 261p. front., illus., plates, diagrs. 19cm. Astronomy with an opera-glass: a popular introduction to the study of the starry heavens with the simplest of optical instruments, with maps and directions to facilitate the recognition of the constellations and the principal stars visible to the naked eye. New York and London: D. Appleton and Co., 1888. vi, 154 p. incl. illus., maps. 23cm. (Enlarged from a series of articles in _Popular Science Monthly_; see the preceding section.) Astronomy with the naked eye; a new geography of the heavens, with descriptions and charts of constellations, stars, and planets. New York and London: Harper and brothers, 1908. xiii, (l)p., 1 1., 246p., 1 1. illus., xiv charts (12 double). 21cm. Curiosities of the sky; a popular presentation of the great riddles and mysteries of astronomy. New York and London: Harper & brothers, 1909. xvi p., 2 1., 267, (1) p. incl. front., plates, charts. 21cm. The Einstein theory of relativity ... with illustrations and photos taken directly from the Einstein relativity film, illustrations by R. D. Crandall. New York: E. M. Fadman, inc., (c1923). 96p. front., illus. 19cm. ----. London: American Book Supply, 1923. 96p. 19cm. Eloquence, counsel on the art of public speaking; with many illustrative examples showing the style and method of famous orators. New York and London: Harper & brothers, 1912. iv p., 31., 2l4p. front, (port.). 19-1/2cm. How to use the Popular science library ... (and) History of science, by Arthur Selwyn-Brown; General index. New York: P. F. Collier & son co., (c1922). 2p.l., 3-384p. front., plates, ports. 20-1/2cm. (added t.-p.: Popular science library, editor-in-chief, G. P. Serviss, vol. XVI). The Moon; a popular treatise. New York: D. Appleton and co., 1907. xii, 248p. front., illus., 26 pl. 20cm. ----. London: D. Appleton and co., 1908. 260p. illus. 20cm. The Moon _in_ Frederick H. Law (ed.), Science in literature. New York: Harper and brothers, 1929. p. 69-83. Napoleon Bonaparte _in_ Thomas B. Reed (ed.), Modern eloquence. Philadelphia: John D. Morris and co., 1901. vol. 6, p. 983-1009. Other worlds; their nature, possibilities and habitability in the light of the latest discoveries. New York: D. Appleton and co., 1901. xv, 282p. front. (chart), illus., plates. 19-1/2cm. ----. London: Hirschfeld brothers, 1902. 298p. charts, illus. 19-1/2cm. Pleasures of the telescope; an illustrated guide for amateur astronomers and a popular description of the chief wonders of the heavens for general readers. New York: D. Appleton and co., 1901. viii, 200p. illus. (incl. maps). 23cm. ----. London: Hirschfeld brothers, 1901. 208p. 23cm. Round the year with the stars; the chief beauties of the starry heavens as seen with the naked eye ... with maps showing the aspect of the sky in each of the four seasons and charts revealing the outlines of the constellations. New York and London: Harper & brothers, 1910. 19, (1) p., 1 1., 21-146, (1) p. incl. charts. 21cm. Solar and planetary evolution _in_ Evolution; popular lectures and discussions before the Brooklyn ethical association. Boston: James H. West, 1889. p. 55-70; discussion, p. 71-75. The Story of the moon; a description of the scenery of the lunar world as it would appear to a visitor spending a month on the moon ... illustrated with a complete series of photographs taken at the Yerkes observatory. New York, London: D. Appleton and co., (c1928). xii, 247, (1) p. front., illus., plates, diagrs. 20cm. (First published under the title: The Moon) Wonders of the lunar world, or A Trip to the moon. (New York): publisher not given, c1892. 20p. 201/2cm. (Urania series. No.l) _Fiction_ A Columbus of space. New York and London: D. Appleton and co., 1911. vii p., 1 1., 297, (1) p. col. front., col. plates. 20cm. ----. All-Story _13_, 1-16, 238-57, 418-32, 644-58; 14, 79-89, 300-12 (January-June 1909) ----. Amazing Stories _1_, 388-409, 474-75, 490-509, 596-615, 669 (August-October 1926) Edison's conquest of Mars. New York Evening Journal, Jan. 12-Feb. 10, 1898. The Moon Maiden. Argosy _79_, 258-351 (May 1915) The Moon metal. New York and London: Harper & brothers, 1900. 2 p.l., 163, (1) p. 17-1/2cm. ----. All-Story _2_, 118-53 (May 1905) ----. Amazing Stories _1_, 322-45, 381 (July 1926) ----. Famous Fantastic Mysteries _1_, 40-74 (November 1939). The Second deluge. New York: McBride, Nast & co., 1912. 6p.l., 3-399p. front., plates. 191/2cm. ----. London: Grant Richards, 1912. 410p. 191/2cm. ----. Amazing Stories _1_, 676-701, 767-68, 844-66, 944-67, 1059-73 (November 1926-February 1927). ----. Amazing Stories Quarterly _7_, 2-73 (Winter 1933). ----. Cavalier _9_, 193-210, 481-501, 693-708; _10_, 88-103, 300-15, 546-58, 739-52 (July 1911-January 1912). The Sky pirate. Scrap Book _7_, 595-606, 835-45, 1079-91; _8_, 105-17, 294-304, 562-70 (April-September 1909). Note: In addition to his books and magazine articles, Garrett P. Serviss wrote extensively for newspapers, having been a staff writer on the New York _Sun_ at the beginning of his career and having written later for a newspaper syndicate. This bibliography does not include any of Serviss' newspaper writings, with the exception of _Edison's Conquest of Mars_, since the effort involved in compiling a list of his writings from so ephemeral a medium would not be warranted by the questionable completeness of such a list, much of his writing for newspapers having been anonymous. 
61199	----	_A Bad Town For Spacemen_ BY ROBERT SCOTT There was a reason why the city acted the way it did ... and we were the reason! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I stepped back out of the gutter and watched the tight clot of men disappear around the corner. They hadn't really been menacing, just had made it obvious they weren't going to break up. And that I had better get out of their way. I got. We were well trained. The neon of the bar across the street flickered redly on my uniform. I watched the slush trickle off my boots for a while, then made up my mind and headed into the bar. It was a mistake. New York had always been considered safe for us. Of course there were many parts of the country that were absolutely forbidden "for your own good" and others that were "highly dangerous" or at least "doubtful." But New York had always been a haven. The stares there had even been admiring sometimes, especially in the beginning. But things had changed. I had realized that about half an hour after touchdown, when we were being herded through Health Check, Baggage Check, Security Check ... you know the lot. Before, there had been friendly questions, genuine interest in the Mars colony, speculations about the second expedition to Venus, even a joke or two. This time the examiners' only interest seemed to be in fouling us up as much as possible. And when we finally got through the rat race, New York was bleak. I should have stayed with the rest, I guess, and of course a public bar was the last place any smart spaceboy would have gone to. But I had some nice memories of bars, memories from the early days. The whole room went silent, as though a tube had blown, when I shoved through the door. I got over to an empty table as quickly as I could and inspected the list of drinks on the dispenser. This one had a lot of big nickel handles sticking up over the drink names and the whole job was shaped like one of those beer kegs you used to see pictures of. What I mean is, this was an _authentic_ bar. Phony as hell. * * * * * From the way this sounds, you can guess the kind of mood I'd gotten in. The noise had picked up again right after I sat down and some of the drunker drunks were knocking the usual words around, in loud whispers and with lots of glances at me. One of the pro-girls (her hair was green and her blouse covered her breasts--another change while I was out) gave me a big wink and then jabbed the man next to her and squawked with laughter. I fed a bill into the change machine at the table and then dribbled several coins (prices had gone up too) into the dispenser. I guess I must have had several, because after a while I began to feel cheerful. The noise that was coming out of the box in the corner started to sound like music, and I got to tapping and rocking. And smiling, I guess. And that's what triggered it. People had been coming and going, but mainly coming. And the crowd at the bar had been getting louder, and one guy there had been getting louder than the rest. All of a sudden, he slammed down his glass and headed for my table. He orbited around it for a while, staring at me, and then settled jerkily down in the chair across from me. "Why all the hilarity, spaceboy? Feeling proud of yourself?" He looked pretty wobbly and pretty soft and pretty old. And very angry. But I was kind of wobbly myself by that time. And anyway there are strict rules about us and violence. _Very_ strict. So I just tried to make the smile bigger and said, "I'm just feeling good. We had a good run and we brought in some nice stuff." "Nice stuff," he said, kind of mincing. "Buddy, do you know what you can do with your sandgems and your windstones?" "We brought back some other things too. There was a good bit of uranium and--" "We don't need it!" He was getting purple. "We don't need anything from you." "And maybe _we_ don't need you." I was getting sort of fired up myself. "Carversville is self-sufficient now. You can't give us anything." "Well, why the hell don't you stay there? Why don't all of you stay off Earth? There's no place for you here." I could have pointed out that we brought things that Earth really needed, that Mars and Venus had literally worlds of natural resources, while Earth had almost finished hers. But he began to quiet down then and I began to feel the loneliness again, the sense of loss. You can't go home again ... that phrase kept poking around in my skull. Suddenly he sat up and looked straight at me, and his eyes really focused for the first time. "What lousy luck. What incredibly lousy luck. And how could anyone have known?" It wasn't hard to peg what he was talking about. "It was probably _good_ luck that the first space crew was selected the way it was," I said. "Otherwise you'd have had a dead ship full of dead men and no knowing why. But that one man brought the ship back." "Yeah, yeah. I know. And the scientists figured everything out. About radiation in space being lethal to almost all types of man. But there was one thing that made a man immune. One thing." "The scientists tried to find a protective covering that would be practicable. They tried to synthesize slaves that would protect you. It wasn't our fault that they couldn't." "No, not your fault." His eyes had begun to dull again. "Just a matter of enough melanin in the skin. That's all...." Then he straightened up and slammed his fist on the table. "Damn you, did you know I was a jet pilot a long time ago? Did you know I was going to be one of the space pioneers? Open up brave new worlds for Man...." He sat there staring at me for a minute or so and the last thing he said was, "Don't you come here again--nigger." I got up and left the table and walked out of the bar. I wasn't provoked. As I said before, we were well trained. * * * * * The first time I realized where I was was when I bumped into the fence around the spacefield. I must have walked all the way over there from the bar. I had a memory of crumbling buildings and littered streets. Things had changed while I had been out there. They were letting the city run down. As I started to walk along the fence to the gate, I saw the ship towering against the stars. The stars and the ship. And tomorrow there would be colonists getting aboard. I stopped and looked till I knew where home was and who the real exiles were. I stopped feeling sorry for myself. And started feeling sorry for them. 
60591	----	_The ship went out safely, came back safely. The pilot was unaware of anything wrong. Somewhere in the depths of his brain was locked the secret that made him_ MAN ALONE BY DON BERRY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] _Phoenix I_ belled out smoothly in the region of a G-type star. There was a bright flare as a few random hydrogen atoms were destroyed by the ship's sudden appearance. One moment space had been empty except for the few drifting atoms, and the next--the ship was there, squat and ugly. Inside, a bell chimed sweetly, signalling the return to a universe of mass and gravitation and a limiting velocity called C. Colonel Richard Harkins glanced briefly out his forward port, and saw no more than he had expected to see. At this distance the G-type star was no brighter or yellower than many another he had seen. For a man it might have been hard to tell which star it was. But the ship knew. Within one of the ungainly bulges that sprouted along the length of _Phoenix I_, a score of instruments mindlessly swung to focus their receptors on the nearest body of star-mass. Harkins leaned contentedly back in the padded control seat and watched while the needles gradually found their final position on dials. A few scattered lights bloomed on the console ahead of him. He grunted once with satisfaction as the thermoneedle steadied at 6,000° C. After that he was silent. He leaned forward and flipped up two switches, and a faint sound of a woodpecker came into the control room as the spectrograph punched its data on a tape. The end of the tape began to come out of a slot. Harkins tore it off when the spectrograph was finished with it, threaded it on the feeder spool of the ship's calculator, and inserted the free end in the input slot. The calculator blinked once at him, as if surprised, and spat out a little card with the single word SOL neatly printed in the center. Harkins whistled softly to himself, happily. _I had a true wife but I left her_, he whistled. Old song. Old when he first heard it. _Had a true...._ He wondered vaguely what a "wife" was, but decided it probably didn't matter. _Had a true wife but I left her_, he whistled. He was glad to be home. The direction finder gave him a fix on Earth and he tried to isolate the unimportant star from the others in the same general direction, but he couldn't do it, visually. The ship would do it, though, he wasn't worried about that. He wished he could use the Skipdrive to get a little closer. It would take a long time to get in close on the atomic rockets. Several days, maybe. Well, he had to do it. The Skipdrive wasn't dependable in mass-space. You couldn't tell what it was going to do when you got it too close to a large mass. He'd have to go in on the chemical. _Mass-space_, he thought. _Molasses-space, I call it._ Too slow, everything too slow, that was the trouble. Reluctantly he switched off the Skipdrive's complacent purr. The sudden lack of noise in the cabin made him squint his eyes, and he thought he was going to get a headache for some reason. Abruptly, all the cabin furniture seemed very harsh and angular, distorted in some strange way so as to be distinctly irritating to him. He brushed his foot across the deck and the sound of his boot was rasping and annoying. He didn't like this space much. It wasn't soft, it wasn't restful, it was all full of clutter and junk. He grimaced with distaste at the suddenly ugly console. He looked down at the floor, frowning, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger, flirting with the idea of turning the drive back on. But for some reason he couldn't quite think of at the moment, he couldn't do that. He frowned more severely, but it didn't help; he still couldn't think of the reason he couldn't do it. That headache was coming on strong, now. He'd have to take something for it. _Well, well_, he thought resignedly. _Home again, home again._ He was sure he was glad to be home. _Home is the hunter, home from something something...._ He couldn't remember any of the rest. What the hell was a hunter, anyway? They irritated him, these nonsense songs. He didn't know why he kept thinking about them. Hunters and wifes. Nonsense. Babble. He keyed the directional instruments into the course-control and armed the starting charge for the chemical motors. When he had checked everything carefully, as he had been taught, he strapped himself into the control chair with his hand on the arm-rest over the firing button. He knew it was going to hurt him. He fired, and it did hurt him, the sense of explosive pressure, the abrupt thundering vibration. It was not the same as the soft, enfolding purr of the Skipdrive, comforting, assuring, loving.... _What's that? Loving?_ _A wife is a Martha_, he thought. _A Martha is a wife._ It seemed to mean something, but he didn't have time to decipher it before he passed out. * * * * * When he came to he immediately switched off the chemical drive. It had given him a good shove in the right direction, and that was all that was necessary. He would coast in now, and he had to save his fuel for maneuvering in atmosphere. After that, he rested, trying to accustom himself to the harshness of things in mass-space. His time-to-destination indicator gave him ten hours, when he began to feel uneasy. He couldn't pin-point the source of unease at first. He was fidgety, impatient. Or something that resembled those feelings. It was like when he couldn't remember why he wasn't supposed to turn the Skipdrive back on. It occurred to him that he wasn't thinking clearly, somehow. He noticed to his surprise he had switched on his transmitter. Probably while he was drumming his fingers or something. He switched it off. Thirty minutes later he found himself toying with the same switch. He had turned it on again. This was getting ridiculous. He shouldn't be so nervous. He grinned wryly to himself. The transmitter switch, indeed. If ever a useless piece of junk had been put in _Phoenix I_, that was it. Transmitter switch! He laughed aloud. And left the switch open. He found himself staring with fascination at the microphone. It was pretty interesting, he had to admit that. It was mounted on the back of the control chair, on swivel arms. It could easily be pulled into position right in front of his face. Just as if it had been meant to. He fiddled with it interestedly, swinging it back and forth, seeing how it moved on the swivel arms. He was interested in the way it moved so smoothly, that was all. By coincidence, when he let go of it, it was directly in front of him. There was something picking at him, something was nagging at the back of his mind. He whistled under his breath and knuckled his eyes. He scrubbed at the top of his head with his right hand, as if he could rub the annoying thought. Suddenly he heard his own voice saying: "Earth Control, this is _Phoenix I_. Come in please." He looked up, startled. Now why would he say a thing like that? And then, in the midst of his surprise, he repeated it! "Earth Control, this is _Phoenix I_. Come in please." He flipped the Receive switch without volition. His hands had suddenly developed a life of their own. He began to breathe more rapidly, and his forehead felt cool. He swallowed twice, quickly. There was no answer on the receiver. _No what? Answer? What is "answer"?_ "Estimate arrival four hundred seventy-two minutes," he said loudly, looking at the time-to-destination indicator. There was a sudden flood of relief, washing away the irritation that had been picking away at the back of his mind. He felt at ease again. He turned off both transmitter and receiver and stood out of the control chair. He felt better now, but he was a little worried about what had happened. He couldn't understand it. Suddenly he had lost control of himself, of his voice and his hands. He was doing meaningless things, saying things, making motions stupidly. Every movement he made, every act, was without pattern or sense. He had a sudden thought, and it made his whole body grow cold and prickly, and he almost choked. _Maybe I'm going Nova._ He was near the edge of panic for a minute. _Nova Nova Nova Nova._ Brightly flaring, burning out, lighting space around for billions of light years.... That was how it started, he knew. Unpredictability, variation without explanation.... He sat back down in the control chair, feeling shaky and weak and frightened. By the time he had regained his balance, time-to-destination told him 453 minutes. * * * * * He guided _Phoenix I_ into an orbit around Earth. He circled three times, braking steadily with his forward rockets until he entered atmosphere. On his fifth pass he spotted his landing place. How he knew, he didn't quite understand, but he knew it when he saw it. There was a sense of satisfaction somewhere in him that told him, "That's it. That's the right place." Each succeeding pass was lower and slower, until finally he was maneuvering the ungainly bulk of the ship like a plane, wholly in atmosphere. _Like a what?_ But he was too busy to worry about it. Fighting the _Phoenix I_ down in atmosphere required all his attention. Absently he noted the amazingly regular formations of rock surrounding his landing place. His hands flew over the console automatically, a skilled performer playing a well-learned fugue without conscious attention to detail. The overall pattern was clear in his mind, and he knew with absolute confidence he could depend on his hands to take care of the necessary small motions that went to make up the large pattern. He did not think: Upper left button third from end right bank rockets three-quarters correct deviation. He thought: _Straight_. And his hand darted out. The ground was near below him, now. He could see parts of the landscape through the port, wavering uncertainly in the heat waves from his landing blast. Slower ... slower ... slower.... The roar was reflected loud off the flat below.... Touch. _Perfect_, he thought happily. _Perfect perfect perfect._ He leaned contentedly back in the control chair and watched the needles of the console gauges fall lifeless back to the pins. He whistled a little tune under his breath and smiled. _Now what?_ Get out. He couldn't think of the reason for it, but he would do it. While he waited for the hull to cool, he dropped the exit ladder, listened to the whine of the servomotors. He opened the port and stood at the edge, looking out. His headache had come back again, worse than ever, and he grimaced at the sudden pain. Before him stretched the flat black plane of the landing pad, ending abruptly in the regular formations he had noted before. They were mostly white, and contrasted strongly with the black of the pad. They weren't, he realized, rock formations at all, they were-- They were--buildings, they-- His mind shied away from the thought. It was silent. His headache seemed to be affecting his vision, somehow. Either that or the landing pad wasn't cool yet. When he looked toward the--toward the white formations at the edge of the pad, they seemed to waver slightly near the ground. Heat waves still, he decided. Nimbly, and with a pleasant sense of being home again, he scrambled down the ladder and stood on the ground, tiny beneath the clumsy shape of _Phoenix I_. About halfway between the edge of the pad and his ship stood a tiny cluster of thin, upright poles. From their bases he could see black, snakelike cables twisting off toward the edge, shifting in his uncertain vision. He walked toward them. The silence was so complete it was unnatural. It was almost as if his ears were plugged, rather than the simple absence of sound. Well, he supposed that was natural, after all. He had lived with the buzzing purr of the Skipdrive and the thunder of the rockets so long, any silence would seem abnormal. As he drew closer to the upright rods, he saw each one was topped with a bulge, a vaguely familiar.... They were microphones! They were just like the microphone in _Phoenix I_, the one he had fooled with. He was sincerely puzzled. All that transmit-receive gadgetry in the ship had been foolish, but what was he to think of finding it here on his landing pad? It didn't make any sense. He was getting the uneasy sense of confusion again. The headache was becoming almost unbearable. He walked over to the cluster of microphones. That was probably the place to start. He took the neck of one in his hand and pulled it, but it didn't move smoothly, as the one on his control chair had. It simply tipped awkwardly toward him. Suddenly he felt something on his shoulder, and looked around quickly, but could see nothing. The pressure on his shoulder remained, and he vaguely brushed at it with his hand. It went away. He set the microphone back upright and looked back at his ship. There was another pressure on his opposite shoulder, sudden and harder than the first had been. He slapped at it, and stepped back, uncertainly. One of the microphones tipped toward him, but he hadn't touched it. He took another step backwards, and felt something close tightly around his left arm. He snapped his head to the left, but there was nothing there. He twisted sharply away to the right, and the motion freed him, but his shoulder hit something solid. He gasped, and his throat tightened again. He raised his hand to his head. The headache was getting worse all the time. Something touched him on the back. He spun, crouching. Nothing. He stood straight again, his eyes wide, panting from the fear that was beginning to choke him. His fists clenched and unclenched as he tried to puzzle out what was happening to him. The air closed abruptly around both arms simultaneously, gripping so tightly it hurt. He shouted and twisted loose and started to run back toward the ship. He stumbled against an invisible something, fell against another, but it kept him upright and prevented his falling. Several times as he ran, things he could not see brushed him, touched him on the shoulders and back. By the time he scrambled up the ladder, his breath was short, and coming in little whimpers. The headache was the greatest pain he thought he could ever have known, and he wondered if he were dying. He had to kick at invisible things that clutched at his feet on the ladder, and when he reached the edge of the port he stood kicking and flailing at nothing until he was certain none of the--creatures, things were there. He shut the port swiftly and ran breathlessly up to the control room. He threw himself into the padded chair. Finally he lowered his head into his hands and began to weep. 2. Night. The land turned gray and silver and white under the chill light of the rising moon. The buildings of Gila Lake Base IV were sharp and distinct, glowing faintly in the moonlight as if lit somehow inside the concrete walls. On the landing pad, _Phoenix I_ squatted darkly, clumsily. The moon washed its bulbous flanks with cascading light that flowed down the long surfaces of the hull and disappeared into the absorbent blackness without trace. Tiny prickling reflections of stars glinted from the once-polished metal. At the edges of the Base, where wire meshes stretched up out of the desert dividing the things of the desert from the things of men, nervous patrols paced forlornly in the night. One of the blockhouses at the inner edge of the landing area presented two yellow rectangles of windows to the night. Inside the blockhouse were two men, talking. One of the men was in uniform, and his collar held the discreet star-and-comet of a staff officer, SpaServ. He was young for his rank, perhaps in his early forties, with gray eyes that now were harried. He sat on the edge of his desk regarding the other man. The second of the two was a civilian. He was slumped in an oddly incongruous overstuffed chair, with his legs stretched out straight before him. He held the bowl of an unlit pipe in both hands and sucked morosely on the stem as the SpaServ brigadier talked. He was slightly younger than the other, but his hair was beginning to thin at the temples. He had sharp blue eyes that regarded the tips of his shoes without apparent interest. Colin Meany was his name, and he was a psychiatrist. Finally General Banning finished his account of the afternoon, raised his hands in a shrug, and said, "That's it. That's all we have." Colin Meany took his pipe out of his mouth and regarded the tooth-marked bit curiously. He shoved it in his coat pocket and walked over to the window, looking out across the moon-flooded flat to the looming, ominous shape of _Phoenix I_. He stood with his hands clasped behind him, rocking gently back and forth on his toes. "Ugly thing," he said casually. Banning shrugged. The psychiatrist turned away from the window and sat down again. He began to fill his pipe. "Where is he now?" he asked. "In the ship," the general told him. "What's he doing?" Banning laughed bitterly. "Broadcasting a distress signal." "Voice?" "Does it matter?" the general asked. "I don't know." "No, it's code. It's an automatic tape. The kind all passenger vessels carry." Colin considered this for a moment. "And he didn't say anything." "Absolutely nothing," said General Banning. "He got out of the ship, walked over to the reception committee, slapped a few people and ran back to the ship and locked himself in." "It doesn't make any sense." "You're telling me?" After a second the general added almost wistfully, "He knocked Senator Gilroy down." Colin laughed. "Good for him." "Yeah," the general agreed. "That bastard fought us tooth and nail all the way down the line, cutting appropriations, taking our best men.... Then when we get a ship back, he's the first in line for the newsreels." Colin looked up. "You have newsreels?" "Sure, but I don't think they're processed yet." "Why didn't you tell me that in the first place? Check them, will you?" The general made a short phone call. When he hung up he looked embarrassed. "You want to see them?" "Very much." "There's a viewing room in Building Three," Banning said. "We can walk." * * * * * When the lights had come on again, Colin sat staring at the blank screen for a long time. Finally he sighed, stood and stretched. "Well," Banning said. "What do you think?" "I'll want to see it again. But it's pretty clear, I think." The general looked up in surprise. "Clear? It's just the same thing I told you." "Oh, no," Colin said. "You left out the most important part." "What was that?" "Your boy is blind and deaf." "Blind and deaf! You're crazy. The ship, he looked at the ship, and the microphone, and...." "Oh, it's pretty selective blindness," Colin said. He filled his pipe with maddening slowness and lit it before he spoke again. "People," he said finally. "He doesn't see people. At all." * * * * * Harkins fell asleep leaning forward in the control chair with his head on his arms. When he wakened, the sky outside the viewport was turning dark. With a sense of sudden danger, he clamped down the metal shutters over the port. Methodically he climbed down catwalks the length of the ship, making certain all ports were secured both from entry and from sight. He didn't want to see outside. When he had done this, he felt easier. Walking to the galley, he put a can of soup in the heater, and took it back up to the control room with him. He sat there, absently eating his soup and staring ahead at the console. He noted he was beginning to get used to the harsh outlines it presented in this space. Suddenly he realized there was a red light on the board. He put the bowl of soup carefully on the deck and went over to the transmitter where a loop of tape was endlessly repeating itself, apparently broadcasting. He could not remember having inserted it. The empty spool lying beside the transmitter read AUTOMATIC DISTRESS CODE. He understood all the words, all right, but put together they didn't seem to make any sense. AUTOMATIC DISTRESS CODE. What would it be for? Why would such a thing be broadcast? If you were in distress, you surely knew it without transmitting it. He shook his head. Things were very bad with him. He was profoundly disturbed by his loss of control. Performing all sorts of meaningless actions without volition.... And now, with this tape, he had not even been conscious of the act, could not remember it. He went back to the control chair and finished his bowl of soup. Thinking about it, his meaningless activities had all been centered around one thing, this odd transmit-receive apparatus, this radio. He had looked at it before, and he realized it was very carefully constructed, and complicated. The wiring itself confused him. And more than that, he could not determine any possible use such a thing might have. Thinking about it gave him the same prickly sensation at the back of his neck as when he thought about the nonsense words in the songs he knew. "Wife." Things like that. He rubbed the back of his neck hard, until it hurt. He realized his headache had almost gone away when he secured the ports, but now it was coming back again. Another light flashed on the console, and a melodic "beep--beep" began to sound from somewhere behind the panel. Automatically he reached forward and flipped a switch, and the "beep--beep" stopped. Without surprise, he noticed it was the switch marked Receive. So. When the light flashed and the "beep--beep" sounded he was supposed to throw that Receive switch. Presumably, then, he should receive something. Was that right? He looked around the control room, but nothing happened. Just on the edge of his consciousness there was a faint sussuration, but when he turned his attention to it, it disappeared. There was no sound. But when he thought of something else, it came back again. It was like an image caught in the corner of his eye. There was nothing there, but sometimes you thought you caught just a flash of something out of the corner of your eye. Like this afternoon.... He shuddered at the recollection. In all his life, he could not remember anything that had driven him into such pure panic as the loathsome invisible touches he had felt. What kind of creatures were these? This was Earth. This was his home, it was where he belonged, and he couldn't remember anything about invisible.... Yes! Yes, he did remember! But there was still something wrong because--he couldn't think why. He remembered walking on a grassy meadow on a spring day. The grass was rich and luxuriant and the sun was hot copper in the sky. He was walking toward the top of a hill. Right at the top there was a single small, green tree. He was going to go up and lie down under that tree and look down in the valley at the meadow. And beside him there was--a presence. He remembered turning to look, and--nothing. There was nothing there. But the feeling of the presence next to him made him pleased, somehow. It was right. It was not menacing, like this afternoon, it was more--comforting. As the sound the Skipdrive made was comforting. It made him feel fine. But when he turned to look, there was nothing. He could not remember. What kind of presence? Like the ship? No, much smaller. Smaller even than himself. Compared to the ship, he was small, quite small. He was infinitely smaller than even planetary mass. And there were things on the ship that were smaller than he. But he couldn't quite place himself with assurance on the scale of size. He was larger than some things, like the bowl of soup, and he was smaller than other things, like planets. He must be of a sort of medium size. But closer to the bowl of soup than the planet. _A wife is a Martha._ He remembered thinking that just as the rockets had fired. It was in the song.... He whistled a few bars. _I had a good wife but I left her, oh, oh, oh, oh._ And it had something to do with the remembered--presence, when he was walking in the meadow. But what was a Martha? You can't define a nonsense word in terms of another nonsense word. Or perhaps, he thought ruefully, you can't define it any _other_ way. _A wife is a Martha. A wife is a Martha. A Martha is a wife._ Nothing. But he felt the headache coming on again. He went down to the galley again, and took the soup bowl with him. He put it in the washer, and rummaged around in the cabinets until he found the little white pills that helped his headaches. He took three of them before he went back up to the control room. He had to make some kind of plans for--for what? Escape? He didn't want to escape. He was home. He wanted to stay here. But he had to deal with the--things, somehow. He wondered if they could be killed. There was no way to tell. If you killed one you couldn't see its body. And he didn't have any weapons, at any rate. He would simply have to outsmart them. He wondered how smart they were. And how large. That would make a good deal of difference, how large they were. He went to the viewport and cracked the shutter, just a little. It was dark. He didn't want to go out in the dark, that was too much. It would be too much risk. He would wait until morning. In spite of the pills, the headache was getting worse, almost to the insane level it had been in the afternoon. He decided he'd better try to sleep. 3. Colin and General Banning stood at the shoulder of the radio operator in Gila Base IV Central Control. It was just past midnight. Banning's fatigue was evident; Colin, having been involved a shorter time, still looked reasonably fresh. Monotonously the radio tech droned: "Gila Control to _Phoenix I_ come in please. Gila Control to _Phoenix I_ come in please. Gila Control to _Phoenix I_ come in please." After every third repetition of the chant, he switched to Receive and briefly listened to the buzz and crackle from the overhead speakers. "Gila Control to _Phoenix I_...." "Is he still transmitting the distress code?" Colin asked. "Yes, sir," the tech said. "But he could still reply if he wanted to. Distress operates from a separate transmitter on a single fixed frequency. The ordinary transmitter isn't tied up." "Is he receiving?" "I think so. When we gave him the 'Message coming' impulse, he switched to receive. That was hours ago." "Maybe he's tuned to the wrong frequency," Banning suggested. The tech looked up in surprise, then resumed his respectful attitude toward the brass. "No, sir. His rig is a self-tuner. The signal automatically tunes the receiver to the right frequency. He's getting it, all right." "In other words," Colin said, "your voice is being broadcast on the ship's speakers." "As far as I can tell." "Mm." Colin leaned back against a chart table and pulled on his pipe for a few moments. "Please go on, sergeant," he said finally. "Keep trying. But change the patter to 'please reply,' would you?" "What difference does that make?" Banning asked. "That's what 'come in' means, anyway. Same thing." "Just an idea," Colin said. "Why don't you get some rest? You look beat." "What kind of an idea?" Banning said, rubbing his forehead. "Can you get a couple of cots brought to your office?" "Yes, but what's your idea?" "Come on along and I'll tell you about it," Colin said. They left Central Control, with the voice of the sergeant sounding behind them, "_Gila Control to Phoenix I please reply. Gila Control...._" Reaching Banning's office, Colin sent one of the ubiquitous armed guards after two cots. "You can't shoot all your energy at once," he pointed out, when Banning protested he didn't need the sleep. "If we're going to get Harkins out of that ship, we're going to have to stay in pretty good shape ourselves." "All right," Banning grumbled. He made coffee on the hot plate from the bottom drawer of his desk, grinning at Colin like a small boy caught stealing cookies. "I like a little coffee once in a while," he explained unnecessarily. When they had settled themselves with the coffee, Banning asked, "All right, now. Why'd you change 'come in please' to 'please reply'?" "It's less ambiguous," Colin said. "'Come in please' could mean several things." "So? Anybody with as much radio experience as Harkins knows what 'Come in please' means." "You're going to have to get used to the idea you're not dealing with Harkins in this. Take the point of view, this is somebody you've never seen before. Somebody you have to figure out from scratch." "Mm. I suppose so. Okay, why the change?" "Well--" Colin hesitated. "First of all, this--blindness is purely a functional block of some kind. There's nothing organically wrong with his vision." "I'm still not sure I go along with your blind-deaf idea," the General said dubiously. "I'm virtually certain, after seeing the film strip again. Your Colonel Harkins behaves exactly like a man being molested by something he can't see." "For the sake of argument, then...." Banning nodded. "All right. Presupposing he does not want to see human beings--for whatever reason--there are several mechanisms he could use." "He didn't even have to come back," Banning pointed out. "That's one of the mechanisms. But he _did_ come back. Why? Problem one, for the future. Mechanism two: Catalepsy. Suspension of _all_ sensation and consciousness." "Obviously not the case." "Right. Mechanism three," Colin went on, ticking the points off on his fingers, "_partial_ disorientation. Loss of perception of a single class of objects, human beings." "Even that isn't entirely true," Banning said. "He _felt_ people." "That's right. And I think this is our opening wedge. Of the possible means of avoidance I named, partial disorientation is the _least_ successful of all. It involves too many contradictions. He was disturbed by the microphones, for example. Why? Because they are meaningful only in a context of human beings. Communication. He would have to do some fancy twisting to avoid the notion of human beings. The same goes for any other human artifact. Somehow, in order to make the world 'reasonable' in his own terms, he has to explain the existence of these things, without admitting the existence of people who made and use them." "Impossible." "Very nearly. It means that some facet of his personality must be continually making decisions about what can be recognized and what cannot. His censoring mechanism is in a constant scramble to prevent certain data from reaching his conscious mind. It has to justify and explain away _all_ data which would eventually point to the existence of human beings." "What the hell does he think _he_ is?" Banning asked angrily. "I have no idea. Maybe that's problem two for the future. At any rate, as you pointed out, this is an impossible job. It must be infinitely more difficult now that he's on Earth, where there are so many more things to explain away. This is going to set up a terrific strain inside. It may break him." "What would do that to a man?" "I don't know that, either," Colin admitted. "Our first problem now is to get him out of the ship. And to do that, we have to contact him." "This is why you changed to 'please reply'? What good is it going to do if he can't hear it, anyway?" "That's the point. I think he _can_ hear it. He can't _recognize_ it, but that isn't quite the same thing. His eardrums still vibrate, the data gets in, all right. But it doesn't reach the conscious level. Fortunately, it isn't always necessary to be consciously aware of a stimulus before you can respond to it. Frequently a persistent stimulation just below the threshold of awareness will produce a response in the organism. Sub-threshold stimulation, it's called." "Yeah," Banning said, "I've heard of it. Used it in advertising, didn't they?" "For a while. Before Congress passed the Privacy Amendment." "Okay. Now what?" "Now we wait and see if it works. I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up if anything happens." Colin stretched out on one of the cots, put his hands behind his head and soon was breathing deeply in an excellent imitation of sleep. * * * * * The clock on Banning's desk said 4:33 when his communicator chimed. Banning was off his cot and at the desk before the first soft echoes faded. "Banning. Yes ... yes ... all right, right away." "What is it?" Colin asked. "They've got something from the _Phoenix_ at Control." When they reached the radio room again, a different technician was on shift. He was intently watching an oscilloscope face on the board in front of him. "What happened, did he answer?" the general asked. "No, sir. But a few minutes ago we started getting a carrier wave on his transmission frequency." Banning sighed disgustedly. "Is that all? Dammit!" "What does that mean?" Colin asked. "Not a damned thing," Banning said angrily. "He just threw the transmission switch, is all." "Look, sir." The radioman pointed to the oscilloscope. The smooth sine of the carrier was slightly modulated now, uneven dips and jogs appearing rhythmically. "There's something coming through, but it's awfully damned faint, Sir." "Run your sensitivity up," Banning ordered. The radioman slowly twisted a knob, and the hiss-and-crackle coming through the speakers increased in volume until each snap was like a gunshot in the radio room. Colin winced at the noise. "Maximum, sir." "Increase your gain, then." The technician did. The speakers were roaring now, filling the room. Very faintly behind the torrent of sound another sound could be heard, more regular. The rhythm corresponded with the jogging of the oscilloscope. "That's it," Banning said. "But what the hell is it?" "I don't--wait a minute," said Colin. "He's whistling! It's a tune." "You recognize it?" "No--no, it's vaguely familiar, but--" "I know it, sir," the radioman said. "It's an old folksong, _The Quaker's Wooing_." "Why is it so faint?" asked Colin. "He must be a hell of a ways off-mike," said the tech. "Clear at the other end of the control room, I'd say." "Turn down that damned noise," said Banning. The radioman twisted his controls back to medium range, and the thunderous hissing roar of the speakers died away. "Well," said Banning, "nothing. We shoulda stood in bed." "I'm not so sure," Colin answered. "After all, he _did_ start to transmit, and that's more than we've had since he landed. I think we'd better keep it up." "All right. Keep at it, sergeant." "Yes, sir." As Colin and Banning turned away, the psychiatrist heard the sergeant begin to sing softly to himself. Suddenly Colin stopped and turned back to the man. "What'd you say?" he demanded. "Nothing, sir." "What you were singing, that song." "Oh, it was the one the colonel was whistling, sir. It gets to running around in your head. I'm sorry, it won't happen again." "No, I want to know what the words are. What you just said." "Well, it goes, I mean it starts out, I can't remember the whole--" "Come _on_, man! Sing it!" In an uncertain voice the radioman began to sing: "_I had a true wife but I left her, oh, oh, oh, oh. And now I'm broken hearted, oh, oh, oh, oh. Well, if she's gone, I wouldn't mind her, Foldy roldy hey ding di do, Soon find one--_" "That's enough, sergeant," Colin said, relaxing. He turned to Banning. "Well, General, that's it. The wedge goes in a little deeper." "What do you mean?" "Is Harkins married?" "Yes, yes, I think so. She lives in the officer's quarters on base." "Get her," Colin said. "Now? My God man, it isn't even five--" "Get her," Colin repeated. "Harkins has her on his mind. Maybe we can get to him through her." * * * * * Martha Harkins was a small brunette, too plain ever to be called pretty. Almost mousy, Colin thought. But intelligent, and quick to understand the situation, in spite of her nervousness. She sat on the opposite side of Banning's desk, her hands folded quietly in her lap, fingers twined, while Colin explained what they wanted her to do. Her still-sleepy eyes were fixed on her fingers while the psychiatrist talked. "I--I think I see," she said hesitantly. "What it comes down to is that you want me to try to talk Dick out of _Phoenix I_." Colin nodded. "It may not be easy. I've told you as much as we know about the condition of his mind. He will not consciously hear you, in all likelihood. We hope to appeal to deep-seated emotions below the conscious level. Are you willing to try?" "Of course," she said with real surprise, looking up at him for the first time. "Good," Colin said warmly. He stood from behind the desk. "We'll take you over to radio, now." Banning was waiting for them in Central Control. "Any change?" Colin asked. "No. Same thing. Sometimes he comes closer to the mike. We can hear his footsteps. He seems to be wandering around the control room pretty aimlessly. Or maybe he's just carrying on the in-flight routine, we can't tell." "This is Mrs. Harkins," Colin said. "General Banning." "Thank you for coming, Mrs. Harkins," the general said. "I hope this isn't too difficult for you." He took her small hand in his own. Martha Harkins smiled faintly. "A service wife gets used to just about everything, general." "Unfortunately true. If you'll come with me, I'll introduce you to your technician. Has Dr. Meany explained what we want you to do?" "Yes, I think so." "Good." "Just one thing, Mrs. Harkins," Colin put in. "This may take some time. It may be we'll want you to cut a tape with a request to leave the ship, if we can't get any response from live voice. Repetition is the important thing, and the sound of your voice." "All right. I'll do whatever you say." She turned away briefly, but not before Colin saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes. Banning led her over to the radio console, saw her seated and instructed in the use of the equipment, and returned to Colin. "What do you think?" he said. "She'll do." "Will it work?" "How the hell do I know?" the psychiatrist answered roughly. They were silent for a moment, watching the small figure of the woman leaning forward tensely over the microphone, as if by her nearness she might make her husband hear. "You know," Banning said musingly, "I get the feeling this is all the fault of SpaServ, somehow. Some little thing we overlooked. A little more training, maybe." The woman's soft voice droned on, not quite carrying distinctly to the two men, though the warmth and urgency of it was evident in her tone. "I think you did all right with your training," Colin said finally. "He came back, didn't he?" 4. Harkins slept only lightly, turning restlessly in the large control chair. Finally the pain of his headache increased to the point he could no longer sleep at all, even lightly. Just before he wakened, he thought he heard a sound at once intolerably loud and somehow soothing. Which was impossible, of course. Opening the viewport shutter a crack, he found the land outside lit ambiguously by the false dawn that was beginning to spread against the eastern hills. He took several more of the white pills for his headache. Briefly he considered eating something, but abandoned the idea. The pain was so intense, he didn't think he could keep anything down. He found the illusion he had noted yesterday--the whispering sound he could not hear when he tried--was still there. It was even worse now. All about him was the flickering shadow of a sound, demanding his attention, requesting. And still--when he tried to hear it, it was gone. He pressed his knuckles against his forehead and clenched his eyes tightly shut. If only he had something to do to take his mind off the headache and the elusive sound.... But there was nothing to do. With neither the Skipdrive nor the atomics operating, he had not even the routine powerchecks to keep him occupied. _Then why am I here?_ His function was to operate the ship. That much he knew without doubt. And he was well suited to operate it. His hands were properly shaped to manipulate the controls, and he could do it automatically, without thinking about it. He was Ship-Operator. But the ship was not operating.... What was his function then, when the ship was not operating? The other control devices, when not controlling, automatically shut off. Perhaps something had gone wrong in his shut-off relay. That was not it, either. He was not the same as the other controlling mechanisms. He was different. Different materials, different potential functions in his structure, all kinds of differences. But even if it were true that he was _not_ intended to switch off when not functioning as Ship-Operator, what was he to do? _Think it out. Think this thing out very carefully._ Pain was a signal of improper functioning. All right. He was not functioning properly, then, and he knew it because of the level of pain in his head. If he could get rid of the headache, he would at the same time be finding his proper function. Step one, then: Get rid of the headache. And he had to do that anyway, because he was unable to think clearly while he had it. The headache had alleviated several times, then come back again. That meant he had performed properly, then drifted away into--into--Wrong was the word that came to his mind. Wrong. He had drifted into improper functioning, and the word for that was Wrong, and his headache had come back as a result. All right. _When_ had the headache alleviated? He tried to think back. The first time, the first time was when he had found himself speaking the meaningless words into the microphone, announcing his estimated time-to-destination. And then, when he had closed the viewports. And throwing that Receive switch.... What did these actions have in common? What factor did they share? Only one thing. Two, really. First, they had some connection with the transmit-receive apparatus. Or two of the three did, at any rate. The other factor, shared by all three acts, was that they were done almost without his conscious will. This, then, might be the critical factor. That he act without volition. Relax. Completely. _Allow_ yourself to act. He leaned back in the control chair and tried to blank his mind, tried not to give his body any commands. _Without volition, without willing._ He closed his eyes. For a long while there was nothing. Then he heard the whir of servomotors. He opened his eyes, delicately probed with his mind ... and the headache had lessened. He glanced up at the console, to see what he had done. A red bulb glowed over the label AIRLOCK. He had thrown the airlock switch, then. And it had been the "proper function" for him, because the headache had lessened. But the out-of-range whispering had not diminished. The airlock? He shook his head in puzzlement. But the technique seemed to be working. What now? He closed his eyes again, and this time the delay was shorter. He knew before he looked what had happened. He had lowered the landing ladder. Well, this began to be obvious. He was to leave the ship. And yet, the headache had been worst when he _had_ left the ship. What did that mean? It seemed to mean leaving the ship was a Wrong function. But it was certainly indicated this time, from his opening of the airlock and lowering the ladder. Well, what was Wrong function at one time might well be Right function another time. That could happen. _Leave the ship...._ There was an edge of pleasantness and warmth to that thought, and the headache diminished. "_Please leave the ship, Dick...._" It was almost as if he could hear a warmth in the air saying that to him. Try the alternative. Deliberately he thought: _Stay in the ship_. A flash of pain soared up the back of his head and across the top to settle swirling and agonizingly in his temples. _Leave the ship_, he thought quickly, and the pain abated. Clear enough. He got to his feet and carefully made his way out of the control room down the catwalk toward the airlock that stood open and waiting to let him out of _Phoenix I_.... * * * * * An excited non-com slammed open the door to the radio room and shouted, "The airlock's opening!" Banning and Colin dashed to the broad window and stared out at the bulky shape of _Phoenix I_, resting monolithic on the landing pad. Banning took the proffered binoculars from the non-com, focussed them on the broad flank of the ship. "It's open, all right," he said. "Here." He handed the binoculars to Colin. After a long delay, the landing ladder slid down the side of the ship. "I think he's going to come out." "There he is." "What's he doing?" "Standing in the airlock, looking around. Now he's starting to come down. Now he's at the bottom of the ladder, looking around again.... Now he's walking this way." "Give me the glasses," Banning said. He looked for a long moment, making sure the colonel's direction did not change. "Still coming this way," he said, putting the glasses carefully on the table by the window. He turned to look at the psychiatrist. "What now?" Colin shrugged. "Get him." "Sergeant!" Banning called. "Sergeant, take five men...." * * * * * The room in which they put him was comfortable and secure. Very secure. The bed was firmly welded to the wall, the table bolted to the floor. There was nothing movable or detachable in the room. The three microphones picked up little but the shuffle of feet; cameras dutifully imprinted on film the image of a man pacing restlessly back and forth, examining the fixtures of the room without apparent anxiety or curiosity. "No trouble at all," Banning answered Colin's question. "He didn't even see the patrol. Spray shot of Somnol in the arm and that was it." "He doesn't seem particularly upset," Colin mused, watching the screen on which the lean figure of Colonel Harkins paced. "Nervous," Banning said. "Not as badly as the situation would warrant. I don't think it's getting through to him. He's apathetic." "How did he react to seeing his wife?" Banning asked. "Bewildered him. Gave him a hell of a headache." "That all?" "That's all." "What now?" Colin sighed. "Get through to him some way." He tamped tobacco in his pipe, his eyes still on the spyscreen. Harkins was now sitting on the bed, his hands immobile on his knees, staring straight ahead. "How do you intend to do that?" Colin reached for a pad of paper and began scribbling, talking as he wrote. "How are you feeding him?" "Double door compartment. Put the food in, close the outside door, open the inside." "Put this on his tray next time, will you?" Colin handed the general a slip of paper. On it was written a single sentence: _Richard Harkins, I want to talk to you._ "All right," Banning said, reading it. "He's due for lunch in about an hour." * * * * * On the screen, Colin could see the light come on over the food compartment, and the microphones picked up the sound of a bell. Harkins, who had not moved from the bed since his initial examination of the cubicle, looked up. The inner door of the compartment opened, revealing a tray with several steaming dishes, a pitcher of milk and a pot of coffee on a self-warm pad. Harkins stood up. He looked at the food, walked over to the tiny open door and picked up the tray. Calmly he carried it over to the table, sat down, unfolded the napkin and put it in his lap. "My God," Banning whispered, "you'd think he'd eaten this way all his life." "Apathetic," Colin said shortly. "He refuses to admit anything unusual." "How the hell could he rationalize losing consciousness and waking up in a windowless room?" Colin shrugged. "Brain's a funny thing," was his only comment. His eyes were fixed intently on the screen. Suddenly Harkins noticed the slip of paper tucked under the corner of one of the dishes. Colin leaned forward, took his pipe out of his mouth. Harkins withdrew the paper and looked at it. Even on the screen, Colin could see the writing, almost make out the words. Harkins stared briefly at the paper, turned it over and looked at the other side in puzzlement. He rubbed the back of his neck and frowned. Finally he gave a little shrug, put the message back on the tray and resumed eating. Colin sat heavily back in his chair. He sighed. "He didn't even see it," Banning said disgustedly. "He saw the paper, not the message." "Why?" "Personal communication. It implies the existence of another communicating--entity. He won't admit it." Colin re-lit his pipe. "Ah, hell!" "I guess we'll have to take the direct approach," Colin said thoughtfully. * * * * * He lay relaxed on the bed in the little room, his eyes closed, his face calm and quiet. Pulse normal, temperature normal. Above and in the walls recorders and cameras purred almost silently with the bland indifference of omniscience. _Harkins._ _Yes._ _Can you hear me?_ ... _no_ ... The strain of the question twisted the man's face into a grimace of pain. Pause. Then: _You are Richard Harkins._ _Yes._ _Colonel...._ _Yes._ _Can you hear me?_ _I.... No._ Anxious contortion. _All right. It's all right._ The man's face returned to relaxation. _How old are you?_ _Thirty-two._ _Have you always been thirty-two?_ ... _Have you always been thirty-two?_ ... _no_ ... Hesitantly. _You were once younger._ _Yes._ _You were once a child and grew to be a young man and grew to be thirty-two._ ... _yes_ ... _Why do you hesitate?_ _I don't understand all the words you say._ _What words don't you understand?_ _Well--Man._ The expression of pain and anxiety flitted across his relaxed features. _I will explain the words later. Don't worry about them now._ _All right._ _Richard Harkins, we are going to move back to a time when you were nineteen. You are nineteen years old. You are nineteen._ _How old are you?_ _Nineteen._ _What are you doing?_ _I--I'm a cadet, I--_ _What kind of cadet?_ ... _SpaServ_ ... _All right, now we'll move ahead two years. You are twenty-one years old. Twenty-one. How old are you?_ * * * * * Gradually Colin brought Harkins forward in time, carefully, feeling his way gingerly along the dark corridors of his mind. He brought him through cadets, graduation, his marriage to Martha (touchy: gently, gently)--his service in the planetary fleet. Then: a mysterious phrase; rumors--Phoenix Project. --_nobody seems to know. Something secret, but no telling. Everything's secret this year. Testing officers right and left and up and down. But nobody knows what for...._ ... _card waiting for me at breakfast_ ... Months of testing. Still nobody knows, but the rumors are running fast and heavy. Whole base preoccupied with the misty Phoenix Project. Secret construction hangar, security precautions to the point of absurdity.... ... _I'm it!_ ... ... _it's faster-than-light drive, that's what Phoenix Project is. Faster-than-light. The big dream, the dream of the stars_ ... Training. Slower through the two years of intensive training. This may be a critical phase. Two years, endless repetitive drill, drill practice drill drill drill.... Colin's forehead feels cool as he sits beside the bed. Perspiration. A glance at his watch shows him two hours since they began. _How did you take to this intensive training?_ _All right. It was all right. Dull, you know, but it was all right generally. After the first year it was pretty automatic. Conditioned response, I didn't have to think. If and when such and such happens, press this button, throw that switch. Automatic._ Automatic, Colin thought. That's why he came back then. Without volition, responding to given signals according to training. ... _walking toward the ship. She's big and bulky, but we're friends by now. Now I'm climbing the ladder up to the lock_ ... ... _listening to the count down ... two ... one ... fire!_ ... Harkins grunted as the re-lived acceleration slammed him back in the control chair with a relentless and unabating pressure. He was silent for thirty seconds. ... _blacked out, not long. Report in to Gila Base, launching successful. They acknowledge, give me course. I'm moving "up", at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic. Fastest way to get away from large mass bodies_ ... Time then on atomic rockets, almost a full day. Colin brushed over this phase, which was routine. As far as he could tell, Harkins' duties had been designed principally to keep him from getting bored before it was time to cut in the Skipdrive, and this corresponded with what General Banning had told him. As he approached the time of the Skip, he moved more slowly, taking in detail. ... _three minute bell. The bell is a pretty sound. I am checking the controls again. Everything is fine. I am sitting down in the control chair with my hands relaxed over the ends of the arms. When my fingers brush against the buttons, they tingle, or seem to. We're all ready. There's the two minute bell_ ... Pause. _One minute bell_ ... Suddenly Harkins sat stiffly upright on the bed. His eyes snapped open, staring with fear and disbelief at something Colin could not see. _Oh, my God_, he whispered. _What is it?_ But there was no direct answer. Harkins repeated: _Oh, my God, my God, my God_ ... _What do you see? What is there?_ _Oh Jesus the stars the stars the stars God in heaven I can't Jesus make them go make them go make them go_ ... His voice had risen almost to a scream, his eyes open wide and staring, his body rigid. With a whimper, he clenched his eyes shut and fell back on the bed. He drew his knees slowly and jerkily up to his chest, as if resisting the movement, clasped his arms around his legs tightly. He began to rock back and forth, gently, gently, as if immersed in water, his breath making an involuntary whining sound as it passed his constricted throat. _Move forward in time. Move ahead. You are coming out of the Skip. You are coming out of the Skip. You are returning to normal space._ Colin's voice was steady and calm over the high-pitched whines coming from the throat of the man on the bed. Suddenly his face relaxed. The eyes remained closed, but closed as if in sleep, rather than anguish. His arms and shoulder released their clenched grip around his knees. Evenly, smoothly, his legs straightened on the bed, his feet digging into the covers and pushing them into a roll at the bottom. He finally lay as he had begun, stretched straight with his hands beside his thighs and his face relaxed. When he spoke, it was in a normal, almost conversational tone. ... _belled out. I like the sound of that bell, it is relaxing. It's a good signal and I'm glad it happens that way. I stand up from the control chair and stretch. I have the strong notion something very pleasant has happened._ _How do you feel? Do you feel strange?_ _No, I feel fine. Everything is fine. I check the instruments, and they show that a Skip has been completed. That's good. I don't--I don't--somehow I can't remember why I wanted to_ ... His voice broke off, puzzled. Colin waited, and in a minute Harkins began to speak again. ... _hear the sound of the Skipdrive. It comforts me. Funny, I don't remember ever hearing it before_ ... _Go back before. Go back. You hear the one minute bell. You can hear the one minute bell and you are ready to make your Skip. You are getting ready to make your Skip._ Harkins snapped upright again and repeated his actions. He shouted and screamed, his body was forced into the foetal position jerkily.... _OH GOD THE STARS THE STARS THE STARS_ Whimpering. _Go forward. You are returning to normal space...._ _I feel fine, everything is fine. I check the instruments_ ... _Go back...._ There was no lessening. Colin's shirt was slick on his body with sweat, his face looked old, older, his breath came in almost imperceptible quaverings, but his voice remained calm and assured, in violent and distinct contrast to the strain that showed plainly as age in his face-- _Move ahead...._ _Move back...._ Twenty-three minutes later, Colin closed his eyes and said: _In ten minutes from this time you will waken feeling refreshed and relaxed, as after a good sleep. You will be alert and fresh when you waken. You will feel as if you have just had a pleasant nap. You will remember nothing of what has happened while you were asleep, but you will feel fresh and relaxed when you waken ten minutes from this time._ He finished the waking-formula mechanically and left the little room. He walked slowly and deliberately to his quarters on the base, as though holding himself rigidly in control. He did not answer Banning's excited questions except to say, "I can't talk about it now." Reaching his room he fell full length on the bed and was asleep nearly before the swaying of the bed had quieted. 5. Several hours later he was again in General Banning's office. "Look," Banning said, "I'm sorry to press this, and I know you took a hell of a beating in there. But we've got to know." Colin nodded morosely. "I know. I'm sorry about the delay." "You looked more dead than alive when you came out." "I'm afraid I'm too long on empathy and too short on objectivity to fool with that kind of thing. One of the reasons I don't often trigger these big discharges in my own practice. I get--inside, I guess, somehow. No detachment, or not enough." "What was there? Inside, if that's the way you want to put it." Colin sighed, absently pulled his pipe from his jacket pocket. "Specifically, I don't think I can tell you. He saw--or experienced as seeing--something when he went into the Skip. It was something so damned big it stripped him of his orientation as a human being." "The films show him assuming a foetal position. That what you mean?" "Well--basically this kind of regression is a denial of responsibility. 'I'm not a man,' he says. 'I'm just an unborn child. Take care of me.' The individual wants no part of the problems and responsibilities of adulthood. Harkins came out of that, or he never could have got the ship back. But he couldn't face being a man. The only way he could carry out his responsibilities, and survive, was to abolish the category, man." Colin leaned back and sighed. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "Harkins must be the loneliest human being that ever lived. God!" After a moment he looked up. "Ever read any Emerson?" "The philosopher Emerson? No, not much. Some maybe, when I was in college. Why?" "Nothing in particular. I was just thinking of an essay of his on Nature." "No, haven't read it. Well," he continued, standing, "where do we go from here?" "More of the same, I'm afraid. We have to find out what he saw. What was so--immense, that it could make a man deny the existence of other men." * * * * * Night came to Gila Base IV; the second night after the _Phoenix I_'s landing. Darkness climbed out of the eastern hills and spread itself upward into the sky and across the plane of the desert. _Phoenix I_ was still on the landing pad, but its sides were hidden by a webwork of gantries and scaffolding as base technicians clambered over it, testing, checking, examining. Colin insisted on leaving the base, making the twenty-mile drive into town and his home. Banning was too tired to argue about it. He gave the psychiatrist a security gate-pass and went to bed in his own office. Colin's car buzzed down the wide concrete toward the little cluster of lights that marked Gila City. He slowed when he reached the outskirts, watching the blue glare of the overhead sodium lamps slide along the hood and up over the windshield. Reaching his apartment, he flicked on the lights and went in. It was a single room, two walls covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases; there was a desk, one overstuffed chair. Automatically his eyes swept the room with the questioning glance of a man returning home; they lingered apprehensively on the neat stack of unopened mail the cleaning woman had put on the exact corner of the desk. He sighed. No matter how preoccupied a man got, the rest of the world went on just the same. He went into the little kitchenette and made himself a cup of instant coffee, returned to the main room stirring it absently. He seated himself heavily in the overstuffed chair. Struck by a sudden thought, he put the coffee down on the edge of his desk and went over to one book-wall. He scanned the multi-colored spines until he found the thin paperback he was looking for. He took it down and went back to the chair. "Nature," the cover said, "by Ralph Waldo Emerson." Laying the little pamphlet open in his lap, he pulled pipe and tobacco out of his jacket pocket, tamped the bowl full and lit it. He shifted himself easily in the chair, settling himself. _Our Age is retrospective_, the introduction began. _It builds the sepulchers of the fathers...._ He read on, gliding over the familiar words with a pleasant sense of acquaintanceship, the sense of sharing an idea with a respected friend. _To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me._ The next line of the essay made him sit up straight in the chair. He read it over twice, then closed the pamphlet and carefully put it back in the bookcase with a vague feeling of having been either betrayed or helped, he couldn't tell which. As he was turning out the lights to go to bed, his com buzzed. Answering it, he recognized the voice of Banning's secretary. "Mr. Meany, can you get back to the base right away? Something's happened." "What is it?" Colin snapped. "The Colonel has gotten back into _Phoenix I_." * * * * * "... understand exactly _how_ it happened," Banning said. "He seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and one of the men went in the room to take out his garbage, for Christ's sake. When the door opened, he made a dash for it." The two men stood in the control room before the wide window-wall looking out on the landing pad. _Phoenix I_, still surrounded by scaffolding, was brightly lit in the glaring beams of a dozen searchlights playing from the Gila Base buildings and trucks on the field. "Can he take it off?" Colin asked. "I don't think so," Banning said. "Sergeant, is there fuel in those tanks?" "Yes, sir," said one of the men in the group that crowded in front of the window. "But the feed valve is off. It can't get into the firing chambers." "What would happen if he tried?" Colin asked. "Nothing," Banning said. "It wouldn't fire. Unless--unless he didn't pay any attention to the board, and left his hotpoints on after he saw it wouldn't fire." "What are hotpoints?" "The ignition elements. They'd melt down under continuous heating and--well, then we wouldn't have any more problem. The tanks would go." "You'd better clear the field," Colin said quietly after a minute. "Sergeant," he said to the radioman, "would you give the _Phoenix_ a 'message coming' beep?" The radioman did, then said to Colin, "Go ahead." "Is he receiving?" "Yes, sir." "Colonel Harkins," Colin said. "Colonel Harkins, can you hear me?" The loudspeakers buzzed. "Colonel Harkins, please reply." The speakers snapped once. The sound of Harkins' whistle came over, loud at first, then drifting away. He was whistling the same tune as before. "... _had a true wife but I left her, oh, oh, oh, oh_ ..." "Do you want her back again?" Banning asked, recognizing the melody. "Colonel Harkins, please reply," Colin said. Switching the mike off, he turned to Banning. "Better get her," he said. "We may have to go through the whole thing again." * * * * * It took twelve minutes by the control clock before they heard the door of the room open, and the light tapping of Martha Harkins' feet. Banning and Colin turned away from the window to greet her. Suddenly their shadows were thrown violently ahead of them, leaping across the floor and up the opposite wall like frightened animals trying to escape. They swung back to the window, their words of greeting still unspoken. For perhaps a half second they could make out the upper part of _Phoenix I_, standing above the ugly glare like the nose of a whale thrusting up through a sea of boiling flame. Then it disappeared, and the fire-ball climbed suddenly into the night sky, rolling and twisting in on itself. A gantry tipped and fell out of the flame with ponderous slowness, twisted and melted before it crashed to the pad. Then the unbearable glare died, and the searchlights played on an opaque black column of smoke, redly lit from within, standing where _Phoenix I_ had stood. The roar that shook the building seemed to come much too late. * * * * * Colin slumped disconsolately in the control room, staring blankly out at the clusters of beetle-like trucks clustered around the landing pad, with their feathery antennae caressing the stack of still-burning wreckage. Washed down by the foam trucks, the fire would soon be out. But there would be little advantage to it, except to clear the pad. "How's Mrs. Harkins?" he asked without turning as he heard footsteps behind him. "Under sedation," General Banning said. He came to stand beside the psychiatrist, looked with him at the firecrew's activity, so disorganized and insect-like at a distance. "They'll have it out pretty soon," he said unnecessarily. "Mm." Both men were silent. After a while, Colin tamped in fresh tobacco and lit his pipe, sending up cottony puffs of smoke. "What do we do now?" he said absently. General Banning sighed. "See that hangar?" he asked, gesturing to a tall building perhaps a quarter mile away down the edge of the field. Colin nodded. "_Phoenix II_," the General said, and his voice was flat and expressionless. "Send another man into it, knowing no more than we know?" "We have to know," Banning said. "Men have died before without as good reason." "I'm going home. Call me if you need me." Colin stood, and the general made a silent gesture of helplessness. They wouldn't need him. Not until _Phoenix II_ came home. Then they would need him. Colin spoke, quietly, as if thinking of something else. "I didn't hear you," Banning said. "Quoting Emerson. The essay on Nature I mentioned." "What did he say?" "'But if a man would be alone,'" Colin quoted, "'let him look at the stars.' Good night, General." "Good night." Colin walked outside into the cold desert air. The night was clear and crisp, and the Milky Way hurled itself like a mass of vapor across the sky. ... _if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars_ ... He looked up, and was alone in the night. 
63130	----	Mr. Meek Plays Polo By CLIFFORD D. SIMAK Mr. Meek was having his troubles. First, the _educated_ bugs worried him; then the welfare worker tried to stop the Ring Rats' feud by enlisting his aid. And now, he was a drafted space-polo player--a fortune bet on his ability at a game he had never played in his cloistered life. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The sign read: _Atomic Motors Repaired. Busted Plates Patched Up. Rocket Tubes Relined. Wheeze In, Whiz Out!_ It added, as an afterthought, in shaky, inexpert lettering: _We Fix Anything._ Mr. Oliver Meek stared owlishly at the sign, which hung from an arm attached to a metal standard sunk in solid rock. A second sign was wired to the standard just below the metal arm, but its legend was faint, almost illegible. Meek blinked at it through thick-lensed spectacles, finally deciphered its scrawl: ASK ABOUT EDUCATED BUGS A bit bewildered, but determined not to show it, Meek swung away from the sign-post and gravely regarded the settlement. On the chart it was indicated by a fairly sizeable dot, but that was merely a matter of comparison. Out Saturn-way even the tiniest outpost assumes importance far beyond its size. The slab of rock was no more than five miles across, perhaps even less. Here in its approximate center, were two buildings, both of almost identical construction, semi-spherical and metal. Out here, Meek realized, shelter was the thing. Architecture merely for architecture's sake was still a long way off. One of the buildings was the repair shop which the sign advertised. The other, according to the crudely painted legend smeared above its entrance lock, was the _Saturn Inn_. The rest of the rock was landing field, pure and simple. Blasters had leveled off the humps and irregularities so spaceships could sit down. Two ships now were on the field, pulled up close against the repair shop. One, Meek noticed, belonged to the Solar Health and Welfare Department, the other to the Galactic Pharmaceutical Corporation. The Galactic ship was a freighter, ponderous and slow. It was here, Meek knew, to take on a cargo of radiation moss. But the other was a puzzler. Meek wrinkled his brow and blinked his eyes, trying to figure out what a welfare ship would be doing in this remote corner of the Solar System. Slowly and carefully, Meek clumped toward the squat repair shop. Once or twice he stumbled, hoping fervently he wouldn't get the feet of his cumbersome spacesuit all tangled up. The gravity was slight, next to non-existent, and one who wasn't used to it had to take things easy and remember where he was. Behind him Saturn filled a tenth of the sky, a yellow, lemon-tinged ball, streaked here and there with faint crimson lines and blotched with angry, bright green patches. To right and left glinted the whirling, twisting, tumbling rocks that made up the Inner Ring, while arcing above the horizon opposed to Saturn were the spangled glistening rainbows of the other rings. "Like dewdrops in the black of space," Meek mumbled to himself. But he immediately felt ashamed of himself for growing poetic. This sector of space, he knew, was not in the least poetic. It was hard and savage and as he thought about that, he hitched up his gun belt and struck out with a firmer tread that almost upset him. After that, he tried to think of nothing except keeping his two feet under him. Reaching the repair shop's entrance lock, he braced himself solidly to keep his balance, reached out and pressed a buzzer. Swiftly the lock spun outward and a moment later Meek had passed through the entrance vault and stepped into the office. A dungareed mechanic sat tilted in a chair against a wall, feet on the desk, a greasy cap pushed back on his head. Meek stamped his feet gratefully, pleased at feeling Earth gravity under him again. He lifted the hinged helmet of his suit back on his shoulders. "You are the gentleman who can fix things?" he asked the mechanic. * * * * * The mechanic stared. Here was no hell-for-leather freighter pilot, no be-whiskered roamer of the outer orbits. Meek's hair was white and stuck out in uncombed tufts in a dozen directions. His skin was pale. His blue eyes looked watery behind the thick lenses that rode his nose. Even the bulky spacesuit failed to hide his stooped shoulders and slight frame. The mechanic said nothing. Meek tried again. "I saw the sign. It said you could fix anything. So I...." The mechanic shook himself. "Sure," he agreed, still slightly dazed. "Sure I can fix you up. What you got?" He swung his feet off the desk. "I ran into a swarm of pebbles," Meek confessed. "Not much more than dust, really, but the screen couldn't stop it all." He fumbled his hands self-consciously. "Awkward of me," he said. "It happens to the best of them," the mechanic consoled. "Saturn sweeps in clouds of the stuff. Thicker than hell when you reach the Rings. Lots of ships pull in with punctures. Won't take no time." Meek cleared his throat uneasily. "I'm afraid it's more than a puncture. A pebble got into the instruments. Washed out some of them." The mechanic clucked sympathetically. "You're lucky. Tough job to bring in a ship without all the instruments. Must have a honey of a navigator." "I haven't got a navigator," Meek said, quietly. The mechanic stared at him, eyes popping. "You mean you brought it in alone? No one with you?" Meek gulped and nodded. "Dead reckoning," he said. The mechanic glowed with sudden admiration. "I don't know who you are, mister," he declared, "but whoever you are, you're the best damn pilot that ever took to space." "Really I'm not," said Meek. "I haven't done much piloting, you see. Up until just a while ago, I never had left Earth. Bookkeeper for Lunar Exports." "Bookkeeper!" yelped the mechanic. "How come a bookkeeper can handle a ship like that?" "I learned it," said Meek. "You learned it?" "Sure, from a book. I saved my money and I studied. I always wanted to see the Solar System and here I am." Dazedly, the mechanic took off his greasy cap, laid it carefully on the desk, reached out for a spacesuit that hung from a wall hook. "Afraid this job might take a while," he said. "Especially if we have to wait for parts. Have to get them in from Titan City. Why don't you go over to the _Inn_. Tell Moe I sent you. They'll treat you right." "Thank you," said Meek, "but there's something else I'm wondering about. There was another sign out there. Something about educated bugs." "Oh, them," said the mechanic. "They belong to Gus Hamilton. Maybe belong ain't the right word because they were on the rock before Gus took over. Anyhow, Gus is mighty proud of them, although at times they sure run him ragged. First year they almost drove him loopy trying to figure out what kind of game they were playing." "Game?" asked Meek, wondering if he was being hoaxed. "Sure, game. Like checkers. Only it ain't. Not chess, neither. Even worse than that. Bugs dig themselves a batch of holes, then choose up sides and play for hours. About the time Gus would think he had it figured out, they'd change the rules and throw him off again." "That doesn't make sense," protested Meek. "Stranger," declared the mechanic, solemnly, "there ain't nothing about them bugs that make sense. Gus' rock is the only one they're on. Gus thinks maybe the rock don't even belong to the Solar system. Thinks maybe it's a hunk of stone from some other solar system. Figures maybe it crossed space somehow and was captured by Saturn, sucked into the Ring. That would explain why it's the only one that has the bugs. They come along with it, see." "This Gus Hamilton," said Meek. "I'd like to see him. Where could I find him?" "Go over to the _Inn_ and wait around," advised the mechanic. "He'll come in sooner or later. Drops around regular, except when his rheumatism bothers him, to pick up a bundle of papers. Subscribes to a daily paper, he does. Only man out here that does any reading. But all he reads is the sports section. Nuts about sports, Gus is." II Moe, bartender at Saturn Inn, leaned his elbow on the bar and braced his chin in an outspread palm. His face wore a melancholy, hang-dog look. Moe liked things fairly peaceable, but now he saw trouble coming in big batches. "Lady," he declared mournfully, "you sure picked yourself a job. The boys around here don't take to being uplifted and improved. They ain't worth it, either. Just ring-rats, that's all they are." Henrietta Perkins, representative for the public health and welfare department of the Solar government, shuddered at his suggestion of anything so low it didn't yearn for betterment. "But those terrible feuds," she protested. "Fighting just because they live in different parts of the Ring. It's natural they might feel some rivalry, but all this killing! Surely they don't enjoy getting killed." "Sure they enjoy it," declared Moe. "Not being killed, maybe ... although they're willing to take a chance on that. Not many of them get killed, in fact. Just a few that get sort of careless. But even if some of them are killed, you can't go messing around with that feud of theirs. If them boys out in sectors Twenty-Three and Thirty-Seven didn't have their feud they'd plain die of boredom. They just got to have somebody to fight with. They been fighting, off and on, for years." "But they could fight with something besides guns," said the welfare lady, a-smirk with righteousness. "That's why I'm here. To try to get them to turn their natural feelings of rivalry into less deadly and disturbing channels. Direct their energies into other activities." "Like what?" asked Moe, fearing the worst. "Athletic events," said Miss Perkins. "Tin shinny, maybe," suggested Moe, trying to be sarcastic. She missed the sarcasm. "Or spelling contests," she said. "Them fellow can't spell," insisted Moe. "Games of some sort, then. Competitive games." "Now you're talking," Moe enthused. "They take to games. Seven-toed Pete with the deuces wild." The inner door of the entrance lock grated open and a spacesuited figure limped into the room. The spacesuit visor snapped up and a brush of grey whiskers spouted into view. It was Gus Hamilton. He glared at Moe. "What in tarnation is all this foolishness?" he demanded. "Got your message, I did, and here I am. But it better be important." He hobbled to the bar. Moe reached for a bottle and shoved it toward him, keeping out of reach. "Have some trouble?" he asked, trying to be casual. "Trouble! Hell, yes!" blustered Gus. "But I ain't the only one that's going to have trouble. Somebody sneaked over and stole the injector out of my space crate. Had to borrow Hank's to get over here. But I know who it was. There ain't but one other ring-rat got a rocket my injector will fit." "Bud Craney," said Moe. It was no secret. Every man in the two sectors of the Ring knew just exactly what kind of spacecraft the other had. "That's right," said Gus, "and I'm fixing to go over into Thirty-seven and yank Bud up by the roots." He took a jolt of liquor. "Yes, sir, I sure aim to crucify him." His eyes lighted on Miss Henrietta Perkins. "Visitor?" he asked. "She's from the government," said Moe. "Revenuer?" "Nope. From the welfare outfit. Aims to help you fellows out. Says there ain't no sense in you boys in Twenty-three all the time fighting with the gang from Thirty-seven." Gus stared in disbelief. Moe tried to be helpful. "She wants you to play games." Gus strangled on his drink, clawed for air, wiped his eyes. "So that's why you asked me over here. Another of your danged peace parleys. Come and talk things over, you said. So I came." "There's something in what she says," defended Moe. "You ring-rats been ripping up space for a long time now. Time you growed up and settled down. You're aiming on going over right now and pulverizing Bud. It won't do you any good." "I'll get a heap of satisfaction out of it," insisted Gus. "And, besides, I'll get my injector back. Might even take a few things off Bud's ship. Some of the parts on mine are wearing kind of thin." Gus took another drink, glowering at Miss Perkins. "So the government sent you out to make us respectable," he said. "Merely to help you, Mr. Hamilton," she declared. "To turn your hatreds into healthy competition." "Games, eh?" said Gus. "Maybe you got something, after all. Maybe we could fix up some kind of game...." "Forget it, Gus," warned Moe. "If you're thinking of energy guns at fifty paces, it's out. Miss Perkins won't stand for anything like that." * * * * * Gus wiped his whiskers and looked hurt. "Nothing of the sort," he denied. "Dang it, you must think I ain't got no sportsmanship at all. I was thinking of a real sport. A game they play back on Earth and Mars. Read about it in my papers. Follow the teams, I do. Always wanted to see a game, but never did." Miss Perkins beamed. "What game is it, Mr. Hamilton?" "Space polo," said Gus. "Why, how wonderful," simpered Miss Perkins. "And you boys have the spaceships to play it with." Moe looked alarmed. "Miss Perkins," he warned, "don't let him talk you into it." "You shut your trap," snapped Gus. "She wants us to play games, don't she. Well, polo is a game. A nice, respectable game. Played in the best society." "It wouldn't be no nice, respectable game the way you fellows would play it," predicted Moe. "It would turn into mass murder. Wouldn't be one of you who wouldn't be planning on getting even with someone else, once you got him in the open." Miss Perkins gasped. "Why, I'm sure they wouldn't!" "Of course we wouldn't," declared Gus, solemn as an owl. "And that ain't all," said Moe, warming to the subject. "Those crates you guys got wouldn't last out the first chukker. Most of them would just naturally fall apart the first sharp turn they made. You can't play polo in ships tied up with haywire. Those broomsticks you ring-rats ride around on are so used to second rate fuel they'd split wide open first squirt of high test stuff you gave them." The inner locks grated open and a man stepped through into the room. "You're prejudiced," Gus told Moe. "You just don't like space polo, that is all. You ain't got no blueblood in you. We'll leave it up to this man here. We'll ask his opinion of it." The man flipped back his helmet, revealing a head thatched by white hair and dominated by a pair of outsize spectacles. "My opinion, sir," said Oliver Meek, "seldom amounts to much." "All we want to know," Gus told him, "is what you think of space polo." "Space polo," declared Meek, "is a noble game. It requires expert piloting, a fine sense of timing and...." "There, you see!" whooped Gus, triumphantly. "I saw a game once," Meek volunteered. "Swell," bellowed Gus. "We'll have you coach our team." "But," protested Meek, "but ... but." "Oh, Mr. Hamilton," exulted Miss Perkins, "you are so wonderful. You think of everything." "Hamilton!" squeaked Meek. "Sure," said Gus. "Old Gus Hamilton. Grow the finest dog-gone radiation moss you ever clapped your eyes on." "Then you're the gentleman who has bugs," said Meek. "Now, look here," warned Gus, "you watch what you say or I'll hang one on you." "He means your rock bugs," Moe explained, hastily. "Oh, them," said Gus. "Yes," said Meek, "I'm interested in them. I'd like to see them." "See them," said Gus. "Mister, you can have them if you want them. Drove me out of house and home, they did. They're dippy over metal. Any kind of metal, but alloys especially. Eat the stuff. They'll tromp you to death heading for a spaceship. Got so I had to move over to another rock to live. Tried to fight it out with them, but they whipped me pure and simple. Moved out and let them have the place after they started to eat my shack right out from underneath my feet." Meek looked crestfallen. "Can't get near them, then," he said. "Sure you can," said Gus. "Why not?" "Well, a spacesuit's metal and...." "Got that all fixed up," said Gus. "You come back with me and I'll let you have a pair of stilts." "Stilts?" "Yeah. Wooden stilts. Them danged fool bugs don't know what wood is. Seem to be scared of it, sort of. You can walk right among them if you want to, long as you're walking on the stilts." Meek gulped. He could imagine what stilt walking would be like in a place where gravity was no more than the faintest whisper. III The bugs had dug a new set of holes, much after the manner of a Chinese checker board, and now were settling down into their respective places preparatory to the start of another game. For a mile or more across the flat surface of the rock that was Gus Hamilton's moss garden, ran a string of such game-boards, each one different, each one having served as the scene of a now-completed game. Oliver Meek cautiously wedged his stilts into two pitted pockets of rock, eased himself slowly and warily against the face of a knob of stone that jutted from the surface. Even in his youth, Meek remembered, he never had been any great shakes on stilts. Here, on this bucking, weaving rock, with slick surfaces and practically no gravity, a man had to be an expert to handle them. Meek knew now he was no expert. A half-dozen dents in his space armor was ample proof of that. Comfortably braced against the upjutting of stone, Meek dug into the pouch of his space gear, brought out a notebook and stylus. Flipping the pages, he stared, frowning, at the diagrams that covered them. None of the diagrams made sense. They showed the patterns of three other boards and the moves that had been made by the bugs in playing out the game. Apparently, in each case, the game had been finished. Which, Meek knew, should have meant that some solution had been reached, some point won, some advantage gained. But so far as Meek could see from study of the diagrams there was not even a purpose or a problem, let alone a solution or a point. The whole thing was squirrely. But, Meek told himself, it fitted in. The whole Saturnian system was wacky. The rings, for example. Debris of a moon smashed up by Saturn's pull? Sweepings of space? No one knew. Saturn itself, for that matter. A planet that kept Man at bay with deadly radiations. But radiations that, while they kept Man at a distance, at the same time served Man. For here, on the Inner Ring, where they had become so diluted that ordinary space armor filtered them out, they made possible the medical magic of the famous radiation moss. One of the few forms of plant life found in the cold of space, the moss was nurtured by those mysterious radiations. Planted elsewhere, on kindlier worlds, it wilted and refused to grow. The radiations had been analyzed, Meek knew, and reproduced under laboratory conditions, but there still was something missing, some vital, elusive factor that could not be analyzed. Under the artificial radiation, the moss still wilted and died. And because Earth needed the moss to cure a dozen maladies and because it would grow nowhere else but here on the Inner Ring, men squatted on the crazy swirl of spacial boulders that made up the ring. Men like Hamilton, living on rocks that bucked and heaved along their orbits like chips riding the crest of a raging flood. Men who endured loneliness, dared death when crunching orbits intersected or, when rickety spacecraft flared, who went mad with nothing to do, with the mockery of space before them. Meek shrugged his shoulders, almost upsetting himself. * * * * * The bugs had started the game and Meek craned forward cautiously, watching eagerly, stylus poised above the notebook. Crawling clumsily, the tiny insect-like creatures moved about, solemnly popping in and out of holes. If there were opposing sides ... and if it were a game, there'd have to be ... they didn't seem to alternate the moves. Although, Meek admitted, certain rules and conditions which he had failed to note or recognize, might determine the number and order of moves allowed each side. Suddenly there was confusion on the board. For a moment a half-dozen of the bugs raced madly about, as if seeking the proper hole to occupy. Then, as suddenly, all movement had ceased. And in another moment, they were on the move again, orderly again, but retracing their movements, going back several plays beyond the point of confusion. Just as one would do when one made a mistake working a mathematical problem ... going back to the point of error and going on again from there. "Well, I'll be...." Mr. Meek said. Meek stiffened and the stylus floated out of his hand, settled softly on the rock below. A mathematical problem! His breath gurgled in his throat. He knew it now! He should have known it all the time. But the mechanic had talked about the bugs playing games and so had Hamilton. That had thrown him off. Games! Those bugs weren't playing any game. They were solving mathematical equations! Meek leaned forward to watch, forgetting where he was. One of the stilts slipped out of position and Meek felt himself start to fall. He dropped the notebook and frantically clawed at empty space. The other stilt went, then, and Meek found himself floating slowly downward, gravity weak but inexorable. His struggle to retain his balance had flung him forward, away from the face of the rock and he was falling directly over the board on which the bugs were arrayed. He pawed and kicked at space, but still floated down, course unchanged. He struck and bounced, struck and bounced again. On the fourth bounce he managed to hook his fingers around a tiny projection of the surface. Fighting desperately, he regained his feet. Something scurried across the face of his helmet and he lifted his hand before him. It was covered with the bugs. Fumbling desperately, he snapped on the rocket motor of his suit, shot out into space, heading for the rock where the lights from the ports of Hamilton's shack blinked with the weaving of the rock. Oliver Meek shut his eyes and groaned. "Gus will give me hell for this," he told himself. * * * * * Gus shook the small wooden box thoughtfully, listening to the frantic scurrying within it. "By rights," he declared, judiciously, "I should take this over and dump it in Bud's ship. Get even with him for swiping my injector." "But you got the injector back," Meek pointed out. "Oh, sure, I got it back," admitted Gus. "But it wasn't orthodox, it wasn't. Just getting your property back ain't getting even. I never did have a chance to smack Bud in the snoot the way I should of smacked him. Moe talked me into it. He was the one that had the idea the welfare lady should go over and talk to Bud. She must of laid it on thick, too, about how we should settle down and behave ourselves and all that. Otherwise Bud never would have given her that injector." He shook his head dolefully. "This here Ring ain't ever going to be the same again. If we don't watch out, we'll find ourselves being polite to one another." "That would be awful," agreed Meek. "Wouldn't it, though," declared Gus. Meek squinted his eyes and pounced on the floor, scrabbling on hands and knees after a scurrying thing that twinkled in the lamplight. "Got him," yelped Meek, scooping the shining mote up in his hand. Gus inched the lid of the wooden box open. Meek rose and popped the bug inside. "That makes twenty-eight of them," said Meek. "I told you," Gus accused him, "that we hadn't got them all. You better take another good look at your suit. The danged things burrow right into solid metal and pull the hole in after them, seems like. Sneakiest cusses in the whole dang system. Just like chiggers back on Earth." "Chiggers," Meek told him, "burrow into a person to lay eggs." "Maybe these things do, too," Gus contended. The radio on the mantel blared a warning signal, automatically tuning in on one of the regular newscasts from Titan City out on Saturn's biggest moon. The syrupy, chamber of commerce voice of the announcer was shaky with excitement and pride. "Next week," he said, "the annual Martian-Earth football game will be played at Greater New York on Earth. But in the Earth's newspapers tonight another story has pushed even that famous classic of the sporting world down into secondary place." He paused and took a deep breath and his voice practically yodeled with delight. "The sporting event, ladies and gentlemen, that is being talked up and down the streets of Earth tonight, is one that will be played here in our own Saturnian system. A space polo game. To be played by two unknown, pick-up, amateur teams down in the Inner Ring. Most of the men have never played polo before. Few if any of them have even seen a game. There may have been some of them who didn't, at first, know what it was. "But they're going to play it. The men who ride those bucking rocks that make up the Inner Ring will go out into space in their rickety ships and fight it out. And ladies and gentlemen, when I say fight it out, I really mean fight it out. For the game, it seems, will be a sort of tournament, the final battle in a feud that has been going on in the Ring for years. No one knows what started the feud. It has gotten so it really doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that when men from sector Twenty-three meet those from sector Thirty-seven, the feud is taken up again. But that is at an end now. In a few days the feud will be played out to its bitter end when the ships from the Inner Ring go out into space to play that most dangerous of all sports, space polo. For the outcome of that game will decide, forever, the supremacy of one of the two sectors." * * * * * Meek rose from his chair, opened his mouth as if to speak, but sank back again when Gus hissed at him and held a finger to his lips for silence. "The teams are now in training," went on the newscaster, the happy lilt in his voice still undimmed, "and it is understood that sector Twenty-three has the advantage, at the start at least, of having a polo expert as its coach. Just who this expert is no one can say. Several names have been mentioned, but...." "No, no," yelped Meek, struggling to his feet, but Gus shushed him, poking a finger toward him and grinning like a bearded imp. "... Bets are mounting high throughout the entire Saturnian system," the announcer was saying, "but since little is known about the teams, the odds still are even. It is likely, however, that odds will be demanded on the sector of Thirty-seven team on the basis of the story about the expert coach. "The very audacity of such a game has attracted solar-wide attention and special fleets of ships will leave both Earth and Mars within the next few days to bring spectators to the game. Newsmen from the inner worlds, among them some of the system's most famous sports writers, are already on their way. "Originally intended to be no more than a recreation project under the supervision of the department of health and welfare, the game has suddenly become a solar attraction. The _Daily Rocket_ back on Earth is offering a gigantic loving cup for the winning team, while the _Morning Spaceways_ has provided another loving cup, only slightly smaller, to be presented the player adjudged the most valuable to his team. We may have more to tell you about the game before the newscast is over, but in the meantime we shall go on to other news of Solar int...." Meek leaped up. "He meant me," he whooped. "That was me he meant when he was talking about a famous coach!" "Sure," said Gus. "He couldn't have meant anyone else but you." "But I'm not a famous coach," protested Meek. "I'm not even a coach at all. I never saw but one space polo game in all my life. I hardly know how it's played. I just know you go up there in space and bat a ball around. I'm going to...." "You ain't going to do a blessed thing," said Gus. "You ain't skipping out on us. You're staying right here and give us all the fine pointers of the game. Maybe you ain't as hot as the newscaster made out, but you're a dang sight better than anyone else around here. At least you seen a game once and that's more than any of the rest of us have." "But I...." "I don't know what's the matter with you," declared Gus. "You're just pretending you don't know anything about polo, that's all. Maybe you're a fugitive from justice. Maybe that's why you're so anxious to make a getaway. Only reason you stopped at all was because your ship got stoved up." "I'm no fugitive," declared Meek, drawing himself up. "I'm just a bookkeeper out to see the system." "Forget it," said Gus. "Forget it. Nobody around here's going to give you away. If they even so much as peep, I'll plain paralyze them. So you're a bookkeeper. That's good enough for me. Just let anyone say you ain't a bookkeeper and see what happens to him." Meek opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. What was the use? Here he was, stuck again. Just like back on Juno when that preacher had thought he was a gunman and talked him into taking over the job of cleaning up the town. Only this time it was a space polo game and he knew even less about space polo than he did about being a lawman. Gus rose and limped slowly across the room. Ponderously, he hauled a red bandanna out of his back pocket and carefully dusted off the one uncrowded space on the mantel shelf, between the alarm clock and the tarnished silver model of a rocket ship. "Yes, sir," he said, "she'll look right pretty there." He backed away and stared at the place on the shelf. "I can almost see her now," he said. "Glinting in the lamplight. Something to keep me company. Something to look at when I get lonesome." "What are you talking about?" demanded Meek. "That there cup the radio was talking about," said Gus. "The one for the most valuable team member." Meek stammered. "But ... but...." "I'm going to win her," Gus declared. IV Saturn Inn bulged. Every room was crowded, with half a dozen to the cubicle, sleeping in relays. Those who couldn't find anywhere else to sleep spread blankets in the narrow corridors or dozed off in chairs or slept on the barroom floor. A few of them got stepped on. Titan City's Junior Chamber of Commerce had done what it could to help the situation out, but the notice had been short. A half-dozen nearby rocks which had been hastily leveled off for parking space, now were jammed with hundreds of space vehicles, ranging from the nifty two man job owned by Billy Jones, sports editor of the _Daily Rocket_, to the huge excursion liners sent out by the three big transport companies. A few hastily-erected shelters helped out to some extent, but none of these shelters had a bar and were mostly untenanted. Moe, the bartender at the Inn, harried with too many customers, droopy with lack of sleep, saw Oliver Meek bobbing around in the crowd that surged against the bar, much after the manner of a cork caught in a raging whirlpool. He reached out a hand and dragged Meek against the bar. "Can't you do something to stop it?" Meek blinked at him. "Stop what?" "This game," said Moe. "It's awful, Mr. Meek. Honestly. The crowd has got the fellers so worked up, it's apt to be mass murder." "I know it," Meek agreed, "but you can't stop it now. The Junior Chamber of Commerce would take the hide off anyone who even said he would like to see it stopped. It's more publicity than Saturn has gotten since the first expeditions were lost here." "I don't like it," declared Moe, stolidly. "I don't like it either," Meek confessed. "Gus and those other fellows on his team think I'm an expert. I told them what I knew about space polo, but it wasn't much. Trouble is they think it's everything there is to know. They figure they're a cinch to win and they got their shirts bet on the game. If they lose, they'll more than likely space-walk me." Fingers tapped Meek's shoulders and he twisted around. A red face loomed above him, a cigarette drooping from the corner of its lips. "Hear you say you was coaching the Twenty-three bunch?" Meek gulped. "Billy Jones, that's me," said the lips with the cigarette. "Best damn sports writer ever pounded keys. Been trying to find out who you was. Nobody else knows. Treat you right." "You must be wrong," said Meek. "Never wrong," insisted Jones. "Nose for news. Smell it out. Like this. _Sniff. Sniff._" His nose crinkled in imitation of a bloodhound, but his face didn't change otherwise. The cigarette still dangled, pouring smoke into a watery left eye. "Heard the guy call you Meek," said Jones. "Name sounds familiar. Something about Juno, wasn't it? Rounded up a bunch of crooks. Found a space monster of some sort." Another hand gripped Meek by the shoulder and literally jerked him around. "So you're the guy!" yelped the owner of the hand. "I been looking for you. I've a good notion to smack you in the puss." "Now, Bud," yelled Moe, in mounting fear, "you leave him alone. He ain't done a thing." Meek gaped at the angry face of the hulking man, who still had his shoulder in the grip of a monstrous paw. Bud Craney! The ring-rat that had stolen Gus' injector! The captain of the Thirty-seven team. "If there was room," Craney grated, "I'd wipe up the floor with you. But since there ain't, I'm just plain going to hammer you down about halfway into it." "But he ain't done nothing!" shrilled Moe. "He's an outsider, ain't he?" demanded Craney. "What business he got coming in here and messing around with things?" "I'm not messing around with things, Mr. Craney," Meek declared, trying to be dignified about it. But it was hard to be dignified with someone lifting one by the shoulder so one's toes just barely touched the floor. [Illustration: _"Ulp!" ulped Mr. Meek shakily._] "All that's the matter with you," insisted the dangling Meek, "is that you know Gus and his men will give you a whipping. They'd done it, anyhow. I haven't helped them much. I haven't helped them hardly at all." Craney howled in rage. "Why ... you ... you...." And then Oliver Meek did one of those things no one ever expected him to do, least of all himself. "I'll bet you my spaceship," he said, "against anything you got." Astonished, Craney opened his hand and let him down on the floor. "You'll what?" he roared. "I'll bet you my spaceship," said Meek, the madness still upon him, "that Twenty-three will beat you." He rubbed it in. "I'll even give you odds." Craney gasped and sputtered. "I don't want any odds," he yelped. "I'll take it even. My moss patch against your ship." Someone was calling Meek's name in the crowd. "Mr. Meek! Mr. Meek!" "Here," said Meek. "What about that story?" demanded Billy Jones, but Meek didn't hear him. A man was tearing his way through the crowd. It was one of the men from Twenty-three. "Mr. Meek," he panted, "you got to come right away. It's Gus. He's all tangled up with rheumatiz!" * * * * * Gus stared up with anguished eyes at Meek. "It sneaked up on me while I slept," he squeaked. "Laid off of me for years until just now. Limped once in a while, of course, and got a few twinges now and then, but that was all. Never had me tied up like this since I left Earth. One of the reasons I never did go back to Earth. Space is good climate for rheumatiz. Cold but dry. No moisture to get into your bones." Meek looked around at the huddled men, saw the worry that was etched upon their faces. "Get a hot water bottle," he told one of them. "Hell," said Russ Jensen, a hulking framed spaceman, "there ain't no such a thing as a hot water bottle nearer than Titan City." "An electric pad, then." Jensen shook his head. "No pads, neither. Only thing we can do is pour whiskey down him and if we pour enough down him to cure the rheumatiz, we'll get him drunk and he won't be no more able to play in that game than he is right now." Meek's weak eyes blinked behind his glasses, staring at Gus. "We'll lose sure if Gus can't play," said Jensen, "and me with everything I got bet on our team." Another man spoke up. "Meek could play in Gus' place." "Nope, he couldn't," declared Jensen. "The rats from Thirty-seven wouldn't stand for it." "They couldn't do a thing about it," declared the other man. "Meek's been here six weeks today. That makes him a resident. Six Earth weeks, the law says. And all that time he's been in sector Twenty-three. They wouldn't have a leg to stand on. They might squawk but they couldn't make it stick." "You're certain of that?" demanded Jensen. "Dead certain," said the other. Meek saw them looking at him, felt a queasy feeling steal into his stomach. "I couldn't," he told them. "I couldn't do it. I ... I...." "You go right ahead, Oliver," said Gus. "I wanted to play, of course. Sort of set my heart on that cup. Had the mantel piece all dusted off for it. But if I can't play, there ain't another soul I'd rather have play in my place than you." "But I don't know a thing about polo," protested Meek. "You taught it to us, didn't you?" bellowed Jensen. "You pretended like you knew everything there was to know." "But I don't," insisted Meek. "You wouldn't let me explain. You kept telling me all the time what a swell coach I was and when I tried to argue with you and tell you that I wasn't you yelled me down. I never saw more than one game in all my life and the only reason I saw it then was because I found the ticket. It was on the sidewalk and I picked it up. Somebody had dropped it." "So you been stringing us along," yelped Jensen. "You been making fools of us! How do we know but you showed us wrong. You been giving us the wrong dope." He advanced on Meek and Meek backed against the wall. Jensen lifted his fist, held it in front of him as if he were weighing it. "I ought to bop you one," he decided. "All of us had ought to bop you one. Every danged man in this here room has got his shirt bet on the game because we figured we couldn't lose with a coach like you." "So have I," said Meek. But it wasn't until he said it that he really realized he did have his shirt bet on Twenty-three. His spaceship. It wasn't all he had, of course, but it was the thing that was nearest to his heart ... the thing he had slaved for thirty years to buy. He suddenly remembered those years now. Years of bending over account books in the dingy office back on Earth, watching other men go out in space, longing to go himself. Counting pennies so that he could go. Spending only a dime for lunch and eating crackers and cheese instead of going out for dinner in the evening. Piling up the dollars, slowly through the years ... dollars to buy the ship that now stood out on the field, all damage repaired. Sitting, poised for space. But if Thirty-seven won it wouldn't be his any longer. It would be Craney's. He'd just made a bet with Craney and there were plenty of witnesses to back it up. "Well?" demanded Jensen. "I will play," said Meek. "And you really know about the game? You wasn't kidding us?" Meek looked at the men before him and the expression on their faces shaped his answer. He gulped ... gulped again. Then slowly nodded. "Sure, I know about it," he lied. They didn't look quite satisfied. He glanced around, but there was no way of escape. He faced them again, back pressed against the wall. He tried to make his voice light and breezy, but he couldn't quite keep out the croak. "Haven't played it much in the last few years," he said, "but back when I was a kid I was a ten-goal man." They were satisfied at that. V Hunched behind the controls, Meek slowly circled Gus' crate, waiting for the signal, half fearful of what would happen when it came. Glancing to left and right, he could see the other ships of Sector Twenty-three, slowly circling too, red identification lights strung along their hulls. Ten miles away a gigantic glowing ball danced in the middle of the space-field, bobbing around like a jigging lantern. And beyond it were the circling blue lights of the Thirty-seven team. And beyond them the glowing green space-buoys that marked the Thirty-seven goal line. Meek bent an attentive ear to the ticking of the motor, listening intently for the alien click he had detected a moment before. Gus' ship, to tell the truth, was none too good. It might have been a good ship once, but now it was worn out. It was sluggish and slow to respond to the controls, it had a dozen little tricks that kept one on the jump. It had followed space trails too long, had plumped down to too many bumpy landings in the maelstrom of the Belt. Meek sighed gustily. It would have been different if they had let him take his own ship, but it was only on the condition that he use Gus' ship that Thirty-seven had agreed to let him play at all. They had raised a fuss about it, but Twenty-three had the law squarely on its side. He stole a glance toward the sidelines and saw hundreds of slowly cruising ships. Ships crammed with spectators out to watch the game. Radio ships that would beam a play by play description to be channeled to every radio station throughout the Solar system. Newsreel ships that would film the clash of opposing craft. Ships filled with newsmen who would transmit reams of copy back to Earth and Mars. Looking at them, Meek shuddered. How in the world had he ever let himself get into a thing like this? He was out to see the solar system, not to play a polo game ... especially a polo game he didn't want to play. It had been the bugs, of course. If it hadn't been for the bugs, Gus never would have had the chance to talk him into that coaching business. He should have spoken out, of course. Told them, flat out, that he didn't know a thing about polo. Made them understand he wasn't going to have a thing to do with this silly scheme. But they had shouted at him and laughed at him and bullied him. Been nice to him, too. That was the biggest trouble. He was a sucker, he knew, for anyone who was nice to him. Not many people had been. Maybe he should have gone to Miss Henrietta Perkins and explained. She might have listened and understood. Although he wasn't any too sure about that. She probably had plenty to do with starting the publicity rolling. After all, it was her job to make a showing on the jobs she did. If it hadn't been for Gus dusting off the place on the mantelpiece. If it hadn't been for the Titan City Junior Chamber of Commerce. If it hadn't been for all the ballyhoo about the mystery coach. But more especially, if he'd kept his fool mouth shut and not made that bet with Craney. * * * * * Meek groaned and tried to remember the few things he did know about polo. And he couldn't think of a single thing, not even some of the things he had made up and told the boys. Suddenly a rocket flared from the referee's ship and with a jerk Meek hauled back the throttle. The ship gurgled and stuttered and for a moment, heart in his throat, Meek thought it was going to blow up right then and there. But it didn't. It gathered itself together and leaped, forcing Meek hard against the chair, snapping back his head. Dazed, he reached out for the repulsor trigger. Ahead the glowing ball bounced and quivered, jumped this way and that as the ships spun in a mad melee with repulsor beams whipping out like stabbing knives. Two of the ships crashed and fell apart like matchboxes. A third, trying a sharp turn above the field of play, came unstuck and strewed itself across fifty miles of space. Substitute ships dashed in from the sidelines, signalled by the referee's blinking light. Rescue ships streaked out to pick up the players, salvage ships to clear away the pieces. For a fleeting moment, Meek got the bobbing sphere in the cross-hairs and squeezed the trigger. The ball jumped as if someone had smacked it with his fist, sailed across the field. Fighting to bring the ship around, Meek yelled in fury at its slowness. Desperately pouring on the juice, he watched with agony as a blue-lighted ship streamed down across the void, heading for the ball. The ship groaned in every joint, protesting and twisting as if in agony, as Meek forced it around. Suddenly there was a snap and the sudden swoosh of escaping air. Startled, Meek looked up. Bare ribs stood out against star-spangled space. A plate had been ripped off! Face strained behind the visor of his spacesuit, hunched over the controls, he waited for the rest of the plates to go. By some miracle they hung on. One worked loose and flapped weirdly as the ship shivered in the turn. But the turn had taken too long and Meek was too late. The blue-lamped ship already had the ball, was streaking for the goal line. Jensen somehow had had sense enough to refuse to be sucked out of goalie position, and now he charged in to intercept. But he muffed his chance. He dived in too fast and missed with his repulsor beam by a mile at least. The ball sailed over the lighted buoys and the first chukker was over with Thirty-seven leading by one score. The ships lined up again. The rocket flared from the starter's ship and the ships plunged out. One of Thirty-seven's ships began to lose things. Plates broke loose and fell away, a rocket snapped its moorings and sailed off at a tangent, spouting gouts of flame, the structural ribs came off and strewed themselves along like spilling toothpicks. Battered by repulsor beams, the ball suddenly bounced upward and Meek, trailing the field, waiting for just such a chance, played a savage tune on the tube controls. The ship responded with a snap, executing a half roll and a hairpin turn that shook the breath from Meek. Two more plates tore off in the turn, but the ship plowed on. Now the ball was dead ahead and Meek gave it the works. The beam hit squarely and Meek followed through. The second chukker was over and the score was tied. Not until he was curving back above the Thirty-seven goal line, did Meek have time to wonder what had happened to the ship. It was sluggish no longer. It was full of zip. Almost like driving his own sleek craft. Almost as if, the ship knew where he wanted it to go and went there. A hint of motion on the instrument panel caught his eye and he bent close to see what it was. He stiffened. The panel seemed to be alive. Seemed to be crawling. He bent closer and froze. It was crawling. There was no doubt of that. Crawling with rock-bugs. * * * * * Breath whistling between his teeth, Meek ducked his head under the panel. Every wire, every control was oozing bugs! For a moment he sat paralyzed by the thoughts that flickered through his brain. Gus, he knew, would have his scalp for this. Because he was the one that had brought the bugs over to the rock where Gus lived and kept the ship. They thought, of course, they had caught all of them that were on his suit, but now it was clear they hadn't. Some of them must have gotten away and found the ship. They would have made straight for it, of course, because of the alloys that were in it. Why bother with a spacesuit or anything else when there was a ship around. Only there were too many of them. There were thousands in the instrument panel and other thousands in the controls and he couldn't have brought back that many. Not if he'd hauled them back in pails. What was it Gus had said about them burrowing into metal just like chiggers burrow into human flesh? Chiggers attacked humans to lay their eggs. Maybe ... maybe.... A battalion of the bugs trooped across the face of an indicator and Meek saw they were smaller than the ones he had seen back on Gus' rock. There was no doubt about it. They were young bugs. Bugs that has just hatched out. Thousands of them ... millions of them, maybe! And they wouldn't be in the instruments and controls alone, but all through the ship. They'd be in the motors and the firing mechanisms ... all the places where the best alloys were used. Meek wrung his hands, watching them play tag across the panel. If they'd had to hatch, why couldn't they have waited. Just until the game was over, anyhow. That would have been all he'd asked. But they hadn't and here he was, with a couple of million bugs or so right smack in his lap. The rocket flared again and the ships shot out. Bitterness chewing at him, Meek flung the ship out savagely. What did it matter what happened now. Gus would take the hide off him, rheumatism or no rheumatism, as soon as he found out about the bugs. For a wild moment, he hoped he would crack up. Maybe the ship would fall apart like some of the others had. Like the old one hoss shay the poet had written about centuries ago. The ship had lost so many plates that even now it was like flying a space-going box-kite. Suddenly a ship loomed directly ahead, diving from the zenith. Meek, forgetting his half-formed hope of a crackup a second before, froze in terror, but his fingers acted by pure instinct, stabbing at keys. Although in the petrified second that seemed half an eternity, Meek knew the ships would crash before he even touched the keys. And even as he thought it, the ship ducked in a nerve-rending jerk and they were skinning past, hulls almost touching. Another jerk and more plates gone and there was the ball, directly ahead, with the repulsor beam already licking out. Meek's jaw fell and a chill ran through his body and he couldn't move a muscle. For he hadn't even touched the trigger and yet the repulsor beam was flaring out, driving the ball ahead of it while the ship twisted and squirmed its way through a mass of fighting craft. Hands dangling limply at his side, Meek gaped in terror and disbelief. He wasn't touching the controls, and yet the ship was like a thing bewitched. A split second later the ball was over the goal and the ship was curving back, repulsor beam snapped off. "It's the bugs!" Meek whispered to himself, lips scarcely moving. "The bugs have taken over!" The craft he was riding, he knew, was no longer just a ship, but a collection of rock-bugs. Bugs that could work out mathematical equations. And now were playing polo! For what was polo, anyhow, except a mathematical equation, a problem of using certain points of force at certain points in space to arrive at a predetermined end? Back on Gus' rock the bugs had worked as a unit to solve equations ... and the new hatch in the ship was working as a unit, too, to solve another kind of problem ... the problem of taking a certain ball to a certain point despite certain variable and random factors in the form of opposing spaceships. Tentatively, half fearfully, Meek stabbed cautiously at a key which should have turned the ship. The ship didn't turn. Meek snatched his hand away as if the key had burned his finger. * * * * * Back on the line the ship wheeled into position of its own accord and a moment later was off again. Meek clung to his chair with shaking hands. There was, he knew, no use of even pretending he was trying to operate the ship. There was just one thing that he was glad of. No one could see him sitting there, doing nothing. But the time would come ... and soon ... when he would have to do something. For he couldn't let the ship return to the Ring. To do that would be to infest the other ships parked there, spread the bugs throughout the solar system. And those bugs definitely were something the solar system cold get along without. The ship shuddered and twisted, weaving its way through the pack of players. More plates ripped loose. Glancing up, Meek could see the glory of Saturn through the gleaming ribs. Then the ball was over the line and Meek's team mates were shrieking at him over the radio in his spacesuit ... happy, glee-filled yells of triumph. He didn't answer. He was too busy ripping out the control wires. But it didn't help. Even while he was doing it the ship went on unhampered and piled up another score. Apparently the bugs didn't need the controls to make the ship do what they wanted. More than likely they were in control of the firing mechanism at its very source. Maybe, and the thought curled the hair on Meek's neck, they were the firing mechanism. Maybe they had integrated themselves with the very structure of the entire mechanism of the ship. That would make the ship alive. A living chunk of machinery that paid no attention to the man who sat at the controls. Meanwhile, the ship made another goal.... There was a way to stop the bugs ... only one way ... but it was dangerous. But probably not half as dangerous, Meek told himself, as Gus or the Junior Chamber or the Thirty-seven team ... especially the Thirty-seven team ... if any of them found out what was going on. He found a wrench and crawled back along the shivering ship. Working in a frenzy of fear and need for haste, Meek took off the plate that sealed the housing of the rear rocket assembly. Breath hissing in his throat, he fought the burrs that anchored the tubes. There were a lot of them and they didn't come off easily. Rockets had to be anchored securely ... securely enough so the blast of atomic fire within their chambers wouldn't rip them free. Meanwhile, the ship piled up the score. Loose burrs rolled and danced along the floor and Meek knew the ship was in the thick of play again. Then they were curving back. Another goal! Suddenly the rocket assembly shook a little, began to vibrate. Wielding the wrench like a madman, knowing he had seconds at the most, Meek spun two or three more bolts, then dropped the wrench and ran. Leaping for a hole from which a plate had been torn, he caught a rib, swung with every ounce of power he had, launching himself into space. His right hand fumbled for the switch of the suit's rocket motor, found it, snapped it on to full acceleration. Something seemed to hit him on the head and he sailed into the depths of blackness. VI Billy Jones sat in the office of the repair shop, cigarette dangling from his lip, pouring smoke into his watery eye. "Never saw anything like it in my life," he declared. "How he made that ship go at all with half the plates ripped off is way beyond me." The dungareed mechanic sighted along the toes of his shoes, planted comfortably on the desk. "Let me tell you, mister," he declared, "the solar system never has known a pilot like him ... never will again. He brought his ship down here with the instruments knocked out. Dead reckoning." "Wrote a great piece about him," Billy said. "How he died in the best tradition of space. Stuff like that. The readers will eat it up. The way that ship let go he didn't have a chance. Seemed to go out of control all at once and went weaving and bucking almost into Saturn. Then blooey ... that's the end of it. One big splash of flame." The mechanic squinted carefully at his toes. "They're still out there, messing around," he said, "But they'll never find him. When that ship blew up he was scattered halfway out to Pluto." The inner lock swung open ponderously and a spacesuited figure stepped in. They waited while he snapped back his helmet. "Good evening, gentlemen," said Oliver Meek. They stared, slack-jawed. Jones was the first to recover. "But it can't be you! Your ship ... it exploded!" "I know," said Meek. "I got out just before it went. Turned on my suit rocket full blast. Knocked me out. By the time I come to I was halfway out to the second Ring. Took me awhile to get back." He turned to the mechanic. "Maybe you have a second hand suit you would sell me. I have to get rid of this one. Has some bugs in it." "Bugs? Oh, yes, I see. You mean something's wrong with it." "That's it," said Meek. "Something's wrong with it." "I got one I'll let you have, free for nothing," said the mechanic. "Boy, that was a swell game you played!" "Could I have the suit now?" asked Meek. "I'm in a hurry to get away." Jones bounced to his feet. "But you can't leave. Why, they think you're dead. They're out looking for you. And you won the cup ... the cup as the most valuable team member." "I just can't stay," said Meek. He shuffled his feet uneasily. "Got places to go. Things to see. Stayed too long already." "But the cup...." "Tell Gus I won the cup for him. Tell him to put it on that mantelpiece. In the place he dusted off for it." Meek's blue eyes shone queerly behind his glasses. "Tell him maybe he'll think of me sometimes when he looks at it." The mechanic brought the suit. Meek bundled it under his arm, started for the lock. Then turned back. "Maybe you gentlemen...." "Yes," said Jones. "Maybe you can tell me how many goals I made. I lost count, you see." "You made nine," said Jones. Meek shook his head. "Must be getting old," he said. "When I was a kid I was a _ten goal_ man." Then he was gone, the lock swinging shut behind him.