CHAPTER I

ASTOUNDING

STORIES

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* * * * *

VOL. VI, No. 1 CONTENTS APRIL, 1931

COVER DESIGN H. W. WESSO

_Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in "Monsters of Mars."_

MONSTERS OF MARS EDMOND HAMILTON 4

_Three Martian-Duped Earth-Men Swing Open the Gates of Space That for

So Long Had Barred the Greedy Hordes of the Red Planet._

(A Complete Novelette.)

THE EXILE OF TIME RAY CUMMINGS 26

_From Somewhere Out of Time Come a Swarm of Robots Who Inflict on

New York the Awful Vengeance of the Diabolical Cripple Tugh._

(Beginning a Four-Part Novel.)

HELL'S DIMENSION TOM CURRY 51

_Professor Lambert Deliberately Ventures into a Vibrational Dimension

to Join His Fiancée in Its Magnetic Torture-Fields._

THE WORLD BEHIND THE MOON PAUL ERNST 64

_Two Intrepid Earth-Men Fight It Out with the Horrific Monsters of

Zeud's Frightful Jungles._

FOUR MILES WITHIN ANTHONY GILMORE 76

_Far Down into the Earth Goes a Gleaming Metal Sphere Whose Passengers

Are Deadly Enemies._ (A Complete Novelette.)

THE LAKE OF LIGHT JACK WILLIAMSON 100

_In the Frozen Wastes at the Bottom of the World Two Explorers Find a

Strange Pool of White Fire--and Have a Strange Adventure._

THE GHOST WORLD SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT 118

_Commander John Hanson Records Another of His Thrilling Interplanetary

Adventures with the Special Patrol Service._

THE READERS' CORNER ALL OF US 134

_A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories._

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N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Francis P. Pace, Secretary. Entered as

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* * * * *

Monsters of Mars

A COMPLETE NOVELETTE

_By Edmond Hamilton_

[Illustration: _The Martian gestured with a reptilian arm toward the

ladder._]

[Sidenote: Three Martian-duped Earth-men swing open the gates of space

that for so long had barred the greedy hordes of the Red Planet.]

Allan Randall stared at the man before him. "And that's why you sent

for me, Milton?" he finally asked.

The other's face was unsmiling. "That's why I sent for you, Allan," he

said quietly. "To go to Mars with us to-night!"

There was a moment's silence, in which Randall's eyes moved as though

uncomprehendingly from the face of Milton to those of the two men

beside him. The four sat together at the end of a roughly furnished

and electric-lit living-room, and in that momentary silence there came

in to them from the outside night the distant pounding of the Atlantic

upon the beach. It was Randall who first spoke again.

"To Mars!" he repeated. "Have you gone crazy, Milton--or is this some

joke you've put up with Lanier and Nelson here?"

[Illustration]

Milton shook his head gravely. "It is not a joke, Allan. Lanier and I

are actually going to flash out over the gulf to the planet Mars

to-night. Nelson must stay here, and since we wanted three to go I

wired you as the most likely of my friends to make the venture."

"But good God!" Randall exploded, rising. "You, Milton, as a physicist

ought to know better. Space-ships and projectiles and all that are but

fictionists' dreams."

"We are not going in either space-ship or projectile," said Milton

calmly. And then as he saw his friend's bewilderment he rose and led

the way to a door at the room's end, the other three following him

into the room beyond.

* * * * *

It was a long laboratory of unusual size in which Randall found

himself, one in which every variety of physical and electrical

apparatus seemed represented. Three huge dynamo-motor arrangements

took up the room's far end, and from them a tangle of wiring led

through square black condensers and transformers to a battery of great

tubes. Most remarkable, though, was the object at the room's center.

It was like a great double cube of dull metal, being in effect two

metal cubes each twelve feet square, supported a few feet above the

floor by insulated standards. One side of each cube was open, exposing

the hollow interiors of the two cubical chambers. Other wiring led

from the big electronic tubes and from the dynamos to the sides of the

two cubes.

The four men gazed at the enigmatic thing for a time in silence.

Milton's strong, capable face showed only in its steady eyes what

feelings were his, but Lanier's younger countenance was alight with

excitement; and so too to some degree was that of Nelson. Randall

simply stared at the thing, until Milton nodded toward it.

"That," he said, "is what will flash us out to Mars to-night."

Randall could only turn his stare upon the other, and Lanier chuckled.

"Can't take it in yet, Randall? Well, neither could I when the idea

was first sprung on us."

* * * * *

Milton nodded to seats behind them, and as the half-dazed Randall sank

into one the physicist faced him earnestly.

"Randall, there isn't much time now, but I am going to tell you what I

have been doing in the last two years on this God-forsaken Maine

coast. I have been for those two years in unbroken communication by

radio with beings on the planet Mars!

"It was when I still held my physics professorship back at the

university that I got first onto the track of the thing. I was

studying the variation of static vibrations, and in so doing caught

steady signals--not static--at an unprecedentedly high wave-length.

They were dots and dashes of varying length in an entirely

unintelligible code, the same arrangement of them being sent out

apparently every few hours.

"I began to study them and soon ascertained that they could be sent

out by no station on earth. The signals seemed to be growing louder

each day, and it suddenly occurred to me that Mars was approaching

opposition with earth! I was startled, and kept careful watch. On the

day that Mars was closest the earth the signals were loudest.

Thereafter, as the red planet receded, they grew weaker. The signals

were from some being or beings on Mars!

"At first I was going to give the news to the world, but saw in time

that I could not. There was not sufficient proof, and a premature

statement would only wreck my own scientific reputation. So I decided

to study the signals farther until I had irrefutable proof, and to

answer them if possible. I came up here and had this place built, and

the aerial towers and other equipment I wanted set up. Lanier and

Nelson came with me from the university, and we began our work.

* * * * *

"Our chief object was to answer those signals, but it proved

heartbreaking work at first. We could not produce a radio wave of

great enough length to pierce out through earth's insulating layer and

across the gulf to Mars. We used all the power of our great

windmill-dynamo hook-ups, but for long could not make it. Every few

hours like clockwork the Martian signals came through. Then at last we

heard them repeating one of our own signals. We had been heard!

"For a time we hardly left our instruments. We began the slow and

almost impossible work of establishing intelligent communication with

the Martians. It was with numbers we began. Earth is the third planet

from the sun and Mars the fourth, so three represented earth and four

stood for Mars. Slowly we felt our way to an exchange of ideas, and

within months were in steady and intelligent communication with them.

"They asked us first concerning earth, its climates and seas and

continents, and concerning ourselves, our races and mechanisms and

weapons. Much information we flashed out to them, the language of our

communication being English, the elements, of which they had learned,

with a mixture of numbers and symbolical dot-dash signals.

"We were as eager to learn about them. They were somewhat reticent, we

found, concerning their planet and themselves. They admitted that

their world was a dying one and that their great canals were to make

life possible on it, and also admitted that they were different in

bodily form from ourselves.

"They told us finally that communication like this was too

ineffective to give us a clear picture of their world, or vice versa.

If we could visit Mars, and then they visit earth, both worlds would

benefit by the knowledge of the other. It seemed impossible to me,

though I was eager enough for it. But the Martians said that while

spaceships and the like were impossible, there was a way by which

living beings could flash from earth to Mars and back by radio waves,

even as our signals flashed!"

* * * * *

Randall broke in in amazement. "By radio!" he exclaimed, and Milton

nodded.

"Yes, so they said, nor did the idea of sending matter by radio seem

too insane, after all. We send sound, music by radio waves across half

the world from our broadcasting stations. We send light, pictures,

across the world from our television stations. We do that by changing

the wave length of the light-vibrations to make them radio vibrations,

flashing them out thus over the world, to receivers which alter their

wave-lengths again and change them back into light-vibrations.

"Why then could not matter be sent in the same way? Matter, it has

been long believed, is but another vibration of the ether, like light

and radiant heat and radio vibrations and the like, having a lower

wave-length than any of the others. Suppose we take matter and by

applying electrical force to it change its wave-length, step it up to

the wave-length of radio vibrations? Then those vibrations can be

flashed forth from the sending station to a special receiver that will

step them down again from radio vibrations to matter vibrations. Thus

matter, living or non-living, could be flashed tremendous distances in

a second!

* * * * *

"This the Martians told us, and said they would set up a

matter-transmitter and receiver on Mars and would aid and instruct us

so that we could set up a similar transmitter and receiver here. Then

part of us could be flashed out to Mars as radio vibrations by the

transmitter, and in moments would have flashed across the gulf to the

red planet and would be transformed back from radio vibrations to

matter-vibrations by the receiver awaiting us there!

"Naturally we agreed enthusiastically to build such a

matter-transmitter and receiver, and then, with their instructions

signalled to us constantly, started the work. Weeks it took, but at

last, only yesterday, we finished it. The thing's two cubical chambers

are one for the transmitting of matter and the other for its

reception. At a time agreed on yesterday we tested the thing, placing

a guinea pig in the transmitting chamber and turning on the actuating

force. Instantly the animal vanished, and in moments came a signal

from the Martians saying that they had received it unharmed in their

receiving chamber.

"Then we tested it the other way, they sending the same guinea pig to

us, and in moments it flashed into being in our receiving chamber. Of

course the step-down force in the receiving chamber had to be in

operation, since had it not been at that moment the radio-vibrations

of the animal would have simply flashed on endlessly in endless space.

And the same would happen to any of us were we flashed forth and no

receiving chamber turned on to receive us.

"We signalled the Martians that all tests were satisfactory, and told

them that on the next night at exactly midnight by our time we would

flash out ourselves on our first visit to them. They have promised to

have their receiving chamber operating to receive us at that moment,

of course, and it is my plan to stay there twenty-four hours,

gathering ample proofs of our visit, and then flash back to earth.

"Nelson must stay here, not only to flash us forth to-night, but above

all to have the receiving chamber operating to receive us at the

destined moment twenty-four hours later. The force required to

operate it is too great to use for more than a few minutes at a time,

so it is necessary above all that that force be turned on and the

receiving chamber ready for us at the moment we flash back. And since

Nelson must stay, and Lanier and I wanted another, we wired you,

Randall, in the hope that you would want to go with us on this

venture. And do you?"

* * * * *

As Milton's question hung, Randall drew a long breath. His eyes were

on the two great cubical chambers, and his brain seemed whirling at

what he had heard. Then he was on his feet with the others.

"Go? Could you keep me from going? Why, man, it's the greatest

adventure in history!"

Milton grasped his hand, as did Lanier, and then the physicist shot a

glance at the square clock on the wall. "Well, there's little enough

time left us," he said, "for we've hardly an hour before midnight, and

at midnight we must be in that transmitting chamber for Nelson to send

us flashing out!"

Randall could never recall but dimly afterward how that tense hour

passed. It was an hour in which Milton and Nelson went with anxious

faces and low-voiced comments from one to another of the pieces of

apparatus in the room, inspecting each carefully, from the great

dynamos to the transmitting and receiving chambers, while Lanier

quickly got out and made ready the rough khaki suits and equipment

they were to take.

It lacked but a quarter-hour of midnight when they had finally donned

those suits, each making sure that he was in possession of the small

personal kit Milton had designated. This included for each a heavy

automatic, a small supply of concentrated foods, and a small case of

drugs chosen to counteract the rarer atmosphere and lesser gravity

which Milton had been warned to expect on the red planet. Each had

also a strong wrist-watch, the three synchronized exactly with the

big laboratory clock.

* * * * *

When they had finished checking up on this equipment the clock's

longer hand pointed almost to the figure twelve, and the physicist

gestured expressively toward the transmitting chamber. Lanier, though,

strode for a moment to one of the laboratory's doors and flung it

open. As Randall gazed out with him they could see far out over the

tossing sea, dimly lit by the great canopy of the summer stars

overhead. Right at the zenith among those stars shone brightest a

crimson spark.

"Mars," said Lanier, his voice a half-whisper. "And they're waiting

out there for us now--out there where we'll be in minutes!"

"And if they shouldn't be waiting--their receiving chamber not

ready--"

But Milton's calm voice came across the room to them: "Zero hour," he

said, stepping up into the big transmitting chamber.

Lanier and Randall slowly followed, and despite himself a slight

shudder shook the latter's body as he stepped into the mechanism that

in moments would send him flashing out through the great void as

impalpable ether-vibrations. Milton and Lanier were standing silent

beside him, their eyes on Nelson, who stood watchfully now at the big

switchboard beside the chambers, his own gaze on the clock. They saw

him touch a stud, and another, and the hum of the great dynamos at the

room's end grew loud as the swarming of angry bees.

The clock's longer hand was crawling over the last space to cover the

smaller hand. Nelson turned a knob and the battery of great glass

tubes broke into brilliant white light, a crackling coming from them.

Randall saw the clock's pointer clicking over the last divisions, and

as he saw Nelson grip a great switch there came over him a wild

impulse to bolt from the transmitting chamber. But then as his

thoughts whirled maelstromlike there came a clang from the clock and

Nelson flung down the switch in his grasp. Blinding light seemed to

break from all the chamber onto the three; Randall felt himself hurled

into nothingness by forces titanic, inconceivable, and then knew no

more.

* * * * *

Randall came back to consciousness with a humming sound in his ears

and with a sharp pain piercing his lungs at every breath. He felt

himself lying on a smooth hard surface, and heard the humming stop and

be succeeded by a complete silence. He opened his eyes, drawing

himself to his feet as Milton and Lanier were doing, and stared about

him.

He was standing with his two friends inside a cubical metal chamber

almost exactly the same as the one they had occupied in Milton's

laboratory a few moments before. But it was not the same, as their

first astounded glance out through its open side told them.

For it was not the laboratory that lay around them, but a vast

conelike hall that seemed to Randall's dazed eyes of dimensions

illimitable. Its dull-gleaming metal walls slanted up for a thousand

feet over their heads, and through a round aperture at the tip far

above and through great doors in the walls came a thin sunlight. At

the center of the great hall's circular floor stood the two cubical

chambers in one of which the three were, while around the chambers

were grouped masses of unfamiliar-looking apparatus.

* * * * *

To Randall's untrained eyes it seemed electrical apparatus of very

strange design, but neither he nor Milton nor Lanier paid it but small

attention in that first breathless moment. They were gazing in

fascinated horror at the scores of creatures who stood silent amid the

apparatus and at its switches, gazing back at them. Those creatures

were erect and roughly man-like in shape, but they were not human

men. They were--the thought blasted to Randall's brain in that

horror-filled moment--crocodile-men.

Crocodile-men! It was only so that he could think of them in that

moment. For they were terribly like great crocodile shapes that had

learned in some way to carry themselves erect upon their hinder limbs.

The bodies were not covered with skin, but with green bony plates. The

limbs, thick and taloned at their paw-ends, seemed greater in size and

stronger, the upper two great arms and the lower two the legs upon

which each walked, while there was but the suggestion of a tail. But

the flat head set on the neckless body was most crocodilian of all,

with great fanged, hinged jaws projecting forward, and with dark

unwinking eyes set back in bony sockets.

Each of the creatures wore on his torso a gleaming garment like a coat

of metal scales, with metal belts in which some had shining tubes.

They were standing in groups here and there about the mechanisms, the

nearest group at a strange big switch-panel not a half-dozen feet from

the three men. Milton and Lanier and Randall returned in a tense

silence the unwinking stare of the monstrous beings around them.

"The Martians!" Lanier's horror-filled exclamation was echoed in the

next instant by Randall's.

"The Martians! God, Milton! They're not like anything we know--they're

reptilian!"

* * * * *

Milton's hand clutched his shoulder. "Steady, Randall," he muttered.

"They're terrible enough, God knows--but remember we must seem just as

grotesque to them."

The sound of their voices seemed to break the great hall's spell of

silence, and they saw the crocodilian Martians before them turning and

speaking swiftly to each other in low hissing speech-sounds that were

quite unintelligible to the three. Then from the small group nearest

them one came forward, until he stood just outside the chamber in

which they were.

Randall felt dimly the momentousness of the moment, in which beings of

earth and Mars were confronting each other for the first time in the

solar system's history. The creature before them opened his great jaws

and uttered slowly a succession of sounds that for the moment puzzled

them, so different were they from the hissing speech of the others,

though with the same sibilance of tone. Again the thing repeated the

sounds, and this time Milton uttered an exclamation.

"He's speaking to us!" he cried. "Trying to speak the English that I

taught them in our communication! I caught a word--listen...."

As the creature repeated the sounds, Randall and Lanier started to

hear also vaguely expressed in that hissing voice familiar words:

"You--are Milton and--others from--earth?"

Milton spoke very clearly and slowly to the creature: "We are those

from earth," he said. "And you are the Martians with whom we have

communicated?"

"We are those Martians," said the other's hissing voice slowly.

"These"--he waved a taloned paw toward those behind him--"have charge

of the matter-transmitter and receiver. I am of our ruler's council."

"Ruler?" Milton repeated. "A ruler of all Mars?"

"Of all Mars," the other said. "Our name for him would mean in your

words the Martian Master. I am to take you to him."

* * * * *

Milton turned to the other two with face alight with excitement.

"These Martians have some supreme ruler they call the Martian Master,"

he said quickly; "and we're to go before him. As the first visitors

from earth we're of immense importance here."

As he spoke, the Martian official before them had uttered a hissing

call, and in answer to it a long shape of shining metal raced into

the vast hall and halted beside them. It was like a fifty-foot

centipede of metal, its scores of supporting short legs actuated by

some mechanism inside the cylindrical body. There was a

transparent-walled control room at the front end of that body, and in

it a Martian at the controls who snapped open a door from which a

metal ladder automatically descended.

The Martian official gestured with a reptilian arm toward the ladder,

and Milton and Lanier and Randall moved carefully out of the

cube-chamber and across the floor to it, each of their steps being

made a short leap forward by the lesser gravity of the smaller planet.

They climbed up into the centipede-machine's control room, their guide

following, and then as the door snapped shut, the operator of the

thing pulled and turned the knob in his grasp and the long machine

scuttled forward with amazing smoothness and speed.

In a moment it was out of the building and into the feeble sunlight of

a broad metal-paved street. About them lay a Martian city, seen by

their eager eyes for the first time. It was a city whose structures

were giant metal cones like that from which they had just come, though

none seemed as large as that titanic one. Throngs of the hideous

crocodilian Martians were moving busily to and fro in the streets,

while among them there scuttled and flashed numbers of the

centipede-machines.

* * * * *

As their strange vehicle raced along, Randall saw that the conelike

structures were for the most part divided into many levels, and that

inside some could be glimpsed ranks of great mechanisms and hurrying

Martians tending them. Away to their right across the vast forest of

cones that was the city the sun's little disk was shining, and he

glimpsed in that direction higher ground covered with a vast tangle of

bright crimson jungle that sloped upward from a great, half-glimpsed

waterway.

The Martian beside them saw the direction of his gaze and leaned

toward him. "No Martians live there," he hissed slowly. "Martians live

only in cities where canals meet."

"Then there's no life in those crimson jungles?" Randall asked,

repeating the question a moment later more slowly.

"No Martians there, but life--living things," the other told him,

searching for words. "But not intelligent, like Martians and you."

He turned to gaze ahead, then pointed. "The Martian Master's cone," he

hissed.

The three saw that at the end of the broad metal street down which

their vehicle was racing there loomed another titanic cone-structure,

fully as large as the mighty one in which they first found themselves.

As the centipede-machine swept up to its great door-opening and

halted, they descended to the metal paving and then followed their

reptilian guide through the opening.

* * * * *

They found themselves in a great hall in which scores of the Martians

were coming and going. At the hall's end stood a row of what seemed

guards, Martians grasping shining tubes such as they had already

glimpsed. These gave way to allow their passage when their conductor

uttered a hissing order, and then they were moving down a shorter hall

at whose end also were guards. As these sprang aside before them, a

great door of massive metal they guarded moved softly upward,

disclosing a mighty circular hall or room inside. Their crocodilian

guide turned to them.

"The hall of the Martian Master," he hissed.

They passed inside with him. The great hall seemed to extend upward to

the giant cone's tip, thin light coming down from an opening there.

Upon the dull metal of its looming walls were running friezes of

lighter metal, grotesque representations of reptilian shapes that they

could but vaguely glimpse. Around the walls stood rank after rank of

guards.

At the hall's center was a low dias, and in a semicircle around and

behind it stood a half-hundred great crocodilian shapes. Randall

guessed even at the moment that they were the council of which their

conductor had named himself a member. But like Milton and Lanier, he

had eyes in that first moment only for the dais itself. For on it

was--the Martian Master.

Randall heard Milton and Lanier choke with the horror that shook his

own heart and brain as he gazed. It was not simply another great

crocodilian shape that sat upon that dais. It was a monstrous thing

formed by the joining of three of the great reptilian bodies! Three

distinct crocodile-like bodies sitting close together upon a metal

seat, that had but a single great head. A great, grotesque crocodilian

head that bulged backward and to either side, and that rested on the

three thick short necks that rose from the triple body! And that head,

that triple-bodied thing, was living, its unwinking eyes gazing at the

three men!

* * * * *

The Martian Master! Randall felt his brain reel as he gazed at that

mind-shattering thing. The Martian Master--this great head with three

bodies! Reason told Randall, even as he strove for sanity, that the

thing was but logical, that even on earth biologists had formed

multiple-headed creatures by surgery, and that the Martians had done

so to combine in one great head, one great brain, the brains of three

bodies. Reason told him that the great triple brain inside that

bulging head needed the bloodstreams of all three bodies to nourish

it, must be a giant intellect indeed, one fitted to be the supreme

Martian Master. But reason could not overcome the horror that choked

him as he gazed at the awful thing.

A hissing voice sounding before him made him aware that the Martian

Master was speaking.

"You are the Earth-beings with whom we communicated, and whom we

instructed to build a matter-transmitter and receiver on earth?" the

slow voice asked. "You have come safely to Mars by means of that

station?"

"We have come safely." Milton's voice was shaken and he could find no

other words.

"That is well. Long had we desired to have such a station built on

earth, since with it there to flash back and forth between the two

worlds is easy. You have come, then, to learn of this world and to

take back what you learn to your races?"

"That is why we came." Milton said, more steadily. "We want to stay

only hours on this first visit, and then flash back to earth as we

came."

* * * * *

The head's awful eyes seemed to consider them. "But when do you intend

to go back?" its strange voice asked. "Unless the one at your earth

station has its receiver operating at the right moment you will simply

flash on endlessly as radio waves--will be annihilated."

Milton found the courage to smile. "We started from earth at our

midnight exactly, and at midnight exactly twenty-four earth hours

later, we are to flash back and the receiver will be awaiting us."

There was silence when he had said that, a silence that seemed to

Randall's strained mind to have become suddenly tense, sinister. The

great triple-bodied creature before them considered them again, its

eyes moving over them, and when it again spoke the hissing words came

very slowly.

"Twenty-four earth hours," it said; "and then your receiver on earth

will be awaiting you. That time we can measure to the moment, and that

is well. For it is not you three Earth-beings who will flash back to

earth when that moment comes! It will be Martians, the first of our

Martian masses who have waited for ages for that moment and who will

begin then our conquest of the earth!

"Yes, Earth-beings, our great plan comes to its end now at last! At

last! Age on age, prisoned on this dying, arid world, we have desired

the earth that by right of power shall be ours, have sought for ages

to communicate with its beings. You finally heard us, you hearkened to

us, you built the matter-transmitting and receiving station on earth

that was the one thing needed for our plan. For when the

matter-receiver of that station is turned on in twenty-four of your

hours, and ready to receive matter flashes from here, it will be the

first of our millions who will flash at last to earth!

"I, the Martian Master, say it. Those first to go shall seize that

matter-receiver on earth when first they appear there, shall build

other and larger receivers, and through them within days all our

Martian hordes shall have been flashed to earth! Shall have poured out

over it and conquered with our weapons your weak races of

Earth-beings, who cannot stand before us, and whose world you have

delivered at last into our hands!"

For a moment, when the great monster's hissing voice had ceased,

Milton and Randall and Lanier gazed toward it as though petrified, the

whole unearthly scene spinning about them. And then, through the thick

silence, the thin sound of Milton's voice:

"Our world--our earth--delivered to the Martians, and by us! God--no!"

With that last cry of agonized comprehension and horror, Milton did

what surely had never any in the great hall expected, leaped onto the

dais with a single spring toward the Martian Master! Randall heard a

hundred wild hissing cries break from about him, saw the crocodilian

forms of guards and council rushing forward even as he and Lanier

sprang after Milton, and then glimpsed shining tubes levelled from

which brilliant shafts of dazzling crimson light or force were

stabbing toward them!

* * * * *

To Randall the moment that followed was but a split-second flash and

whirl of action. As his earthly muscles took him forward with Lanier

after Milton in a great leap to the dais, he was aware of the

brilliant red rays stabbing behind him closely, and knew that only the

tremendous size of his leap had taken him past them. In the succeeding

instant he was made aware of what he had escaped, for the

hastily-loosed rays struck squarely a group of three or four Martian

guards rushing to the dais from the opposite side, and they vanished

from view with a sharp detonation as though clicked out of existence!

Randall was not to know then, that the red rays were ones that

annihilated matter by neutralizing or damping the matter-vibrations in

the ether. But he did know that no more rays were loosed, for by then

he and Milton and Lanier were on the dais and were wrapped in a

hurricane combat with the guards that had rushed between them and the

Martian Master.

Gleaming fangs--great scaled forms--reaching talons--it was all a wild

phantasmagoria of grotesque forms spinning around him as he struck

with all the power of his earthly muscles and felt crocodilian forms

staggering and going down beneath his frenzied blows. He heard the

roar of an automatic close beside him in the melee as Milton

remembered at last through the red haze of his fury the weapon he

carried, but before either Randall or Lanier could reach their own

weapons a new wave of crocodilian forms had poured onto them that by

sheer pressing weight held them helpless, to be disarmed.

* * * * *

Hissing orders sounded, the arms and legs of the three were tightly

grasped by great taloned paws, and the masses of Martians about them

melted back from the dais. Held each by two great creatures, Milton

and Randall and Lanier faced again the triple-bodied Martian Master,

who in all that wild moment of struggle appeared not to have changed

his position. The big monster's black eyes stared unmovedly down at

them.

"You Earth-beings seem of lower intelligence even than we thought,"

his hissing voice informed them. "And those weapons--crude, very

crude."

Milton, his face set, spoke back: "It may be that you will find human

weapons of some power if your hordes reach earth," he said.

"But what compared with the power of ours?" the other asked coldly.

"And since our scientists even now devise new weapons to annihilate

the earth's races, I think they would be glad of three of those races

to experiment with now. The one use we can make of you, certainly."

The creature turned its bulging head a little towards the guards who

held the three men, and uttered a brief hissing order. Instantly the

six Martians, grasping the three tightly, marched them across the

great hall and through a different door than that by which they had

entered.

They were taken down a narrow corridor that turned sharply twice as

they went on. Randall saw that it was lit by squares inset in the

walls that glowed with crimson light. It came to him as they marched

on that night must be upon the Martian city without, since the sun had

been sinking when they had crossed it in the centipede-machine.

* * * * *

Through what seemed an ante-room they were taken, and then into a long

hall instantly recognizable as a laboratory. There were many glowing

squares illuminating it, and narrow windows high in the wall gave them

a glimpse of the city outside, a pattern of crimson lights. Long metal

tables and racks filled the big room's farther end, while along the

walls were ranged shining mechanisms of unfamiliar and grotesque

appearance. Fully a score of the crocodilian Martians were busy in the

room, some intent on their work at the racks and tables, others

operating some of the strange machines.

The guards conducted the three to an open space by the wall, below one

of the high window-openings and between two great cylindrical

mechanisms. Then, while five of their number held the three men

prisoned in that space by the threat of their levelled ray-tubes, the

other moved toward one of the busy Martian scientists and held with

him a brief interchange of hissing speech.

Milton leaned to whisper to the other two: "We've got to get out of

this while we're still living," he whispered. "You heard the Martian

Master--in constructing that matter-receiver on earth, we've opened a

door through which all the Martian millions will pour onto our world!"

"It's useless, Milton," said Randall dully. "Even if we got clear of

this the Martians will be at their matter-transmitter in hordes when

the moment comes to flash back to earth."

"I know that, but we've got to try," the other insisted. "If we or

some of us could get clear of this, we might in some way hide near the

matter-transmitter until the moment came and then fight to it."

"But how to get out of the hands of these, even?" asked Lanier,

nodding toward the alert guards before them.

* * * * *

"There's but one way," Milton whispered swiftly. "Our earthly muscles

would enable us, I think, to get through this window-opening above us

in a leap, if we had a moment's chance. Well, whichever of us they

take to experiment with or examine first, must make a struggle or

disturbance that will turn the guards' attention for a moment and give

the other two a chance to make the attempt!"

"One to stay and the other two to get away...." Randall said slowly;

but Milton's tense whisper interrupted:

"It's the only way, and even then a thousand to one chance! But it's

we who have opened this gate for the Martian invasion of our world and

it's we who must--"

Before he could finish, the approach of hissing voices told them that

the leader of the six guards and the Martian who seemed the chief of

the experimenters in the hall were nearing them. The three men stood

silent and tense as the two crocodilian monsters stopped before them.

The scientist, who carried in his metal-belt, instead of a ray-tube a

compact case of instruments, surveyed them as though in curiosity.

He came closer, his quick reptilian eyes taking in with evident

interest every feature of their bodily appearance. Intuitively the

three knew that one of them was to be chosen for a first investigation

by the Martian scientists, and that that one would have not even the

slender hope of escape open to the other two. A strange lottery of

life and death!

* * * * *

Randall saw the creature's gaze turn from one to another of them, and

then heard the hiss of his voice as he pointed a taloned paw toward

Milton. Instantly two of the guards had seized Milton and had jerked

him out from the wall, the other guards holding back Randall and

Lanier with threatening tubes. It was upon Milton that the fatal

choice had fallen!

Randall and Lanier made together a half-movement forward, but Milton,

a tense message in his eyes, forced them back. The guards who held the

physicist led him, at the direction of the Martian scientist, toward a

great upright frame at the room's far end, upon which were clustered a

score of dial-indicators. From these flexible cords led; and now the

scientists began attaching these by clips to various spots on Milton's

body. Some mechanical examination of his bodily characteristics were

apparently to be made. Milton shot suddenly a glance at the two by the

wall, and his head nodded in an almost imperceptible signal. The

muscles of Lanier and Randall tensed.

Then abruptly Milton seemed to go mad. He shouted aloud in a terrible

voice, and at the same moment tore from him the cords just attached,

his fists striking out then at the amazed Martians around him. As they

leaped back from that sudden explosion of activity and sound on

Milton's part the guards before Randall and Lanier whirled

instinctively for an instant toward it. And in that instant the two

had leaped.

* * * * *

It was upward they leaped, with all the force of their earthly

muscles, toward the big window-opening a half-dozen feet in the wall

above them. Like released steel springs they sat up, and Randall heard

the thump of their feet as they struck the opening's sill, heard wild

cries suddenly coming from beneath them, as the guards turned back

toward them. Crimson rays clove up like light toward them, but the

instant's surprise had been enough, and in it they had leaped on and

through the opening, into the outside night!

As they shot downward and struck the metal paving outside, Randall

heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed

frenziedly around them, then were running with great leaps along the

base of the building from which they had just escaped.

In the darkness of night the Martian city stretched away to their

right, its massive dark cone-structures outlined by points of glowing

ruddy light here and there upon them. Beside the city's metal streets

were illuminated by the brilliant field of stars overhead and by the

soft light of the two moons, one much larger than the other, that

moved among those stars.

Along the street crocodilian Martians were coming and going still,

though in small numbers, there being but few in sight in the dim-lit

street's length. Lanier pointed ahead as they leaped onward.

"Straight onward, Randall!" he jerked. "There seem fewer of the

Martians this way!"

"But the great cone of the matter-station is the other way!" Randall

exclaimed.

"We can't risk making for it now!" cried the other. "We've got to keep

clear of them until the alarm is over. Hear them now?"

For even as they leaped forward a rising clamor of hissing cries and

rush of feet was coming from behind as scores of Martians poured out

into the darkness from the great cone-building. The two fugitives had

passed by then from the shadow of the mighty structure, and as they

ran along the broad metal street toward the shadow of the next cone,

through the light of the moons above, they heard higher cries and then

glimpsed narrow shafts of crimson force cleaving the night around

them.

* * * * *

Randall, as the deadly rays drove past him, heard the low detonating

sound made by their destruction of the air in their path, and the

inrush of new air. But in the misty and uncertain moonlight the rays

could not be loosed accurately, and before they could be swept

sidewise to annihilate the two fleeing men they had gained, with a

last great leap, the shadow of the next building.

On they ran, the clatter of the Martian pursuit growing more noisy

behind them. Randall heard Lanier gasping with each great leap, and

felt himself at every breath a knife of pain stabbing through his

lungs, the rarified atmosphere of the red planet taking its toll.

Again from the darkness behind them the crimson rays clove, but this

time were wide of their mark.

With every moment the clamor of pursuit seemed growing louder, the

alarm spreading out over the Martian city and arousing it. As they

raced past cone after cone, Randall knew even the increased power of

their muscles could not long aid them against the exhaustion which the

thin air was imposing on them. His thoughts spun for a moment to

Milton, in the laboratory behind, and then back to their own desperate

plight.

Abruptly shapes loomed in the misty light before them! A group of

three great Martians, reptilian shapes that had been coming toward

them and had stopped for an instant in amazement at sight of the

running pair. There was no time to halt themselves, to evade the

three, and with a mutual instinct Lanier and Randall seized together

the last expedient open to them. They ran straight forward toward the

astounded three, and when a half-score feet from them, leaped with all

their force upward and toward them, their tensed bodies flying through

the air with feet outstretched before them.

Then they had struck the group of three with feet-foremost, and with

the impetus of that great leap had knocked them sprawling to this side

and that, while with a supreme effort the two kept their balance and

leaped on. The cries of the three added to the din behind them as they

threw themselves forward.

* * * * *

They flung themselves past a last cone building to halt for an instant

in utter amazement despite the nearing pursuit. Before them were no

more streets and structures, but a huge smooth-flowing waterway! It

gleamed in the moonlight and lay at right angles across their path,

seeming to flow along the Martian city's edge.

"A canal!" cried Lanier. "It's one of the canals that meet at this

city and flow around it! We're trapped--we've reached the city's

edge!"

"Not yet!" Randall gasped. "Look!"

As he pointed to the left Lanier shot a glance there; and then both of

them were running in that direction, along the smooth metal paving

that bordered the mighty canal. They came to what Randall had seen, a

mighty metal arch that soared out over the waterway to its opposite

side. A bridge!

They were on it, were racing up the smooth incline of it. Randall

glanced back as they reached the arch's summit. From that height the

city stretched far away behind them, a lace of crimson lights in the

night. He glimpsed the gleam of the giant waterway that encircled the

city completely, one that was fed by other canals from far away that

emptied into it, the great city's vital water-supply brought thus from

this world's melting polar snows.

There were moving lights behind now, too, pouring out onto the metal

paving by the waterway, moving to and fro as though in confusion, with

a babel of hissing cries. It was not until Randall and Lanier were

running down the descending incline of the great arched bridge,

though, that the lights and shouts of their pursuers began to move up

on that bridge after them.

* * * * *

Running off the bridge's smooth way, the two found themselves

stumbling on through the darkness over more metal paving, and then

over soft ground. There were no lights or buildings or sounds of any

sort on this farther side of the great waterway. A tall dark wall

seemed suddenly to loom up out of the darkness some distance ahead of

the two.

"The crimson jungle!" Randall cried. "The jungles we glimpsed from the

city! It's a chance to hide!"

They raced toward the protecting blackness of that wall of vegetation.

They reached it, flung themselves inside, just as the pursuing

Martians, a mass of running crocodilian shapes and of great racing

centipede-machines, swept up over the bridge's arch behind. A moment

the two halted in the thick vegetation's shelter, gasping for breath,

then were moving forward through the jungle's denser darkness.

Thick about them and far above them towered the masses of strange

trees and plant life through which they made their way. Randall could

see but dimly the nature of these plant-forms, but could make out that

they were grotesque and unearthly in appearance, all leafless, and

with masses of thin tendrils branching from them instead of leaves. He

realized that it was only beside the arid planet's great canals that

this profusion of plant life had sufficient moisture for existence,

and that it was the broad bands of jungle bordering the canals that

had made the latter visible to earth's astronomers.

* * * * *

Lanier and he halted for a moment to listen. The thick jungle about

them seemed quite silent. But from behind there came through it a

vague tumult of hissing calls; and then, as they glimpsed red flashes

far behind, they heard the crashing of great masses of the leafless

trees.

"The rays!" whispered Lanier. "They're beating through the jungle with

them and the centipede-machines after us!"

They paused no more, but pushed on through the thick growths with

renewed urgency. Now and then, as they passed through small clearings,

Randall glimpsed overhead the fast-moving nearer moon and slower

sailing farther moon of Mars, moving across the steady stars. In some

of these clearings they saw, too, strange great openings burrowed in

the ground as though by some strange animal.

The crashing clamor of the Martians beating the jungle behind was

coming close, ever closer, and as they came to still another misty-lit

clearing, Lanier paused, with face white and tense.

"They're closing in on us!" he said. "They're hunting us down by

beating the jungle with those centipede-machines, and even if we

escape them we're getting farther from the city and the matter-station

each moment!"

Randall's eyes roved desperately around the clearing; and then, as

they fell on a group of the great burrowed openings that seemed

present everywhere about them, he uttered an exclamation.

"These holes! We can hide in one until they've passed over us, and

then steal back to the city!"

Lanier's eyes lit. "It's a chance!"

* * * * *

They sprang toward the openings. They were each of some four feet

diameter, extending indefinitely downward as though the mouths of

tunnels. In a moment Randall was lowering himself into one, Lanier

after him. The tunnel in which they were, they found, curved to one

side a few feet below the surface. They crawled down this curve until

they were out of sight of the opening above. They crouched silent,

then, listening.

There came down to them the dull, distant clamor of the

centipede-machines crashing through the jungle, cutting a way with

rays, their clamor growing ever louder. Then Randall, who was lowest

in the tunnel, turned suddenly as there came to him a strange rustling

sound from _beneath_ him. It was as though some crawling or creeping

thing was moving in the tunnel below them!

He grasped the arm of Lanier, beside and a little above him, to warn

him, but the words he was about to whisper never were uttered. For at

this moment a big shapeless living thing seemed to flash up toward

them through the darkness from beneath, cold ropelike tentacles

gripped both tightly; and then in an instant they were being dragged

irresistibly down into the lightless tunnel's depths!

* * * * *

As they were pulled swiftly downward into the tunnel by the tentacles

that grasped them an involuntary cry of horror came from Randall and

Lanier alike. They twisted frantically in the cold grip that held

them, but found it of the quality of steel. And as Randall twisted in

it to strike frantically down through the darkness at whatever thing

of horror held them, his clenched fist met but the cold smooth skin

of some big, soft-bodied creature!

Down--down--remorselessly they were being drawn farther into the black

depths of the tunnel by the great thing crawling down below them.

Again and again the two twisted and struck, but could not shake its

hold. In sheer exhaustion they ceased to struggle, dragged helplessly

farther down.

Was it minutes or hours, Randall wondered afterward, of that horrible

progress downward, that passed before they glimpsed light beneath? A

feeble glow, hardly discernible, it was, and as they went lower still

he saw that it was caused by the tunnel passing through a strata of

radio-active rock that gave off the faint light. In that light they

glimpsed for the first time the horror dragging them downward.

It was a huge worm creature! A thing like a giant angleworm, three

feet or more in thickness and thrice that in length, its great body

soft and cold and worm-like. From the end nearest them projected two

long tentacles with which it had gripped the two men and was dragging

them down the tunnel after it! Randall glimpsed a mouth-aperture in

the tentacled end of the worm body also, and two scarlike marks above

it, placed like eyes, although eyes the monstrous thing had not.

* * * * *

But a moment they glimpsed it and then were in darkness again as the

tunnel passed through the radio-active strata and lower. The horror of

that moment's glimpse, though, made them strike out in blind

repulsion, but relentlessly the creature dragged them after it.

"God!" It was Lanier's panting cry as they were dragged on. "This worm

monster--we're hundreds of feet below the surface!"

Randall sought to reply, but his voice choked. The air about them was

close and damp, with an overpowering earthy smell. He felt

consciousness leaving him.

A gleam of soft light--they were passing more radio-active patches. He

felt the wild convulsive struggles of Lanier against the thing; and

then suddenly the tunnel ended, debouched into a far-stretching,

low-ceilinged cavity. It was feebly illuminated by radio-active

patches here and there in walls and ceiling, and as the monster that

held them halted on entering the cavity, Randall and Lanier lay in its

grip and stared across the weird place with intensified horror.

For it was swarming with countless worm monsters! All were like the

one who held them, thick long worm bodies with projecting tentacles

and with black eyeless faces. They were crawling to and fro in this

cavern far beneath the surface, swarming in hordes around and over

each other, pouring in and out of the awful place from countless

tunnels that led upward and downward from it!

* * * * *

A world of worm monsters, beneath the surface of the Martian jungles!

As Randall stared across that swarming, dim-lit cave of horror,

physically sick at sight of it, he remembered the countless tunnel

openings they had glimpsed in their flight through the jungle, and

remembered the remark of the Martian who had first guided them across

the city, that in the jungles were living things, of a sort. These

were the things, worm monsters whose unthinkable networks of tunnels

and burrows formed beneath the surface a veritable worm world!

"Randall!" It was Lanier's thick exclamation. "Randall--those

scar-marks on their--faces--you see--?"

"See?"

"Those marks! These creatures had eyes once but must have been forced

down here by the Martians. These may once have been--ages ago--human!"

At that thought Randall felt horror overcoming his senses. He was

aware that the great worm monster holding them was dragging them

forward through the cavern, that others of the swarms there were

crowding around them, feeling them blindly with their tentacles,

helping to drag them forward.

Half-carried and half-dragged they went, scores of tentacles now

holding them, great worm shapes crawling forward on all sides of them

and accompanying them along the cavern's length. He glimpsed worm

monsters here and there emerging from the upward tunnels with masses

of strange plant stuff in their grasp that others blindly devoured.

His senses reeled from the suffocating air, the great cavity being but

a half-score feet in height, burrowed from the damp earth by these

numberless things.

* * * * *

The faint, strange light of the radio-active patches showed him that

they were approaching the cavern's end. Tunnels opened from its end as

from all its walls and floor, and into one Randall was dragged by the

creatures, one before and one behind, grasping him, and Lanier being

brought behind him in the same way. In the close tunnel the heavy air

was deadly, and he was but partly conscious when again, after moments

of crawling along it, he felt himself dragged out into another cavern.

This earth-walled cavity, though, seemed to extend farther than the

first, though of the same height as the first and with a few

radio-active illuminating patches. In it seethed and swarmed literally

hundreds on hundreds of the worm monsters, a sea of great crawling

bodies. Randall and Lanier saw that they were being carried and

dragged now toward the farther end of this larger cavity.

As they approached it, pushing through the swarming creatures who felt

them with inquisitive tentacles as their captors took them forward,

the two men saw that a great shape was looming up in the faint light

at the cave's far end. In moments they were close enough to discern

its nature, and a horror and awe filled them at sight of it more

intense than they had yet felt.

For the looming shape was a huge earthen image or statue of a worm! It

was shaped with a childish crudeness from the solid earth, a giant

earthen worm shape whose body looped across the cave's end, and whose

tentacled head or front end was reared upward to the cavity's roof.

Before this awful earthen shape was a section of the cave's floor

higher than the rest, and on it a great crudely shaped rectangular

earthen block.

"Lanier--that shape!" whispered Randall in his horror. "That earthen

image, made by these creatures--it's the worm god they've made for

themselves!"

"A worm god!" Lanier repeated, staring toward it as they were dragged

nearer. "Then that block...."

"Its altar!" Randall exclaimed. "These things have some dim spark of

intelligence or memory! They're brought us here to--"

* * * * *

Before he could finish, the clutching tentacles of the worm monsters

about them had dragged them up onto the raised floor beside the block,

beneath the looming earthen worm shape. There they glimpsed for the

first time in the faint light another who stood there held tightly by

the tentacles of two worm monsters. It was a Martian!

The big crocodilian shape was apparently a prisoner like themselves,

captured and brought down from above. His reptilian eyes surveyed

Lanier and Randall quickly as they were dragged up and held beside

him, but he took no other interest. To the two men, at the moment, it

seemed that his great crocodilian shape was human, almost, so much

more man-like was it than the grotesque worm monsters before them.

With a half-dozen of the creatures holding the two men and the Martian

tightly, another great worm monster crawled to the edge of the raised

earth floor in front of the giant worm god's image, and then reared up

the first third of his thick body into the air. By then the great,

faint-lit cavity stretching before them was filled with countless

numbers of the monsters, pouring into it from all the tunnels that

opened into it from above and below, packing it thick with their

grotesque bodies as far as the eye could reach in the dim light.

They were seething and crawling in that great mass; but as the worm

monster on the elevation upreared, all in the cavity seemed suddenly

to quiet. Then the upreared eyeless thing began to move his long

tentacles. Very slowly at first he waved them back and forth, and

slowly the masses of monsters in the cavity, all turned by some sense

toward him, did likewise, the cavity becoming a forest of upraised

tentacles waving rhythmically back and forth in unison with those of

the leader.

* * * * *

Back and forth--back and forth--Randall felt caught in some torturing

nightmare as he watched the countless tentacle-feelers waving thus

from one side to the other. It was a ceremony, he knew--some strange

rite springing perhaps from dim memory alone, that these worm monsters

carried out thus before the looming shape of their worm god. Only the

six that held the three captives never relaxed their grip.

Still on and on went the strange and senseless rite. By then the

close, damp air of that cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking

Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian

beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the

leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying

rhythmically from side to side.

Randall, half-hypnotized by those swaying tentacles and but

semi-conscious by then, could only estimate afterward how long that

grotesque rite went on. Hours it must have endured, he knew, hours in

which each opening of his eyes revealed only the dimly-illuminated

cavern, the worm monsters that filled it, the forest of tentacles

waving in unison. It was only toward the end of those hours that he

noticed vaguely that the tentacles were waving faster and faster.

And as the tentacles of leader and worm horde waved alike ever more

swiftly an atmosphere of growing excitement and expectation seemed to

hold the horde. At last the upstretched feelers were whipping back and

forth almost too swiftly for the eye to follow. Then abruptly the worm

leader ceased the motion himself, and while the horde before him

continued it, turned and crawled to the three captives.

* * * * *

In an instant, as though in answer to a second command, the two worm

monsters who held the Martian dragged him forward toward the great

earthen block before the worm god's image. Two others of the creatures

came from the side, and the four swiftly stretched the Martian flat on

the block's top, each of the four grasping with their tentacles one of

his four taloned limbs. They seemed to hesitate then, the worm leader

beside them, the tentacles of the horde waving swiftly still.

Abruptly the tentacles of the leader flashed up as though in a signal.

There was a dull ripping sound, and in that moment Randall and Lanier

saw the Martian on the block torn literally limb from limb by the four

great worm monsters who had held his four limbs!

The tentacles of the horde waved suddenly with increased, excited

swiftness at that. Randall shrank in horror.

"They've brought us here for that!" he cried. "To sacrifice us on that

altar that way to their worm god!"

But Lanier too had cried out, appalled, as he saw that awful

sacrifice, and both strained madly against the grip of the worm

creatures. Their struggles were in vain, and then in answer to another

unspoken command the two monsters that held Randall were dragging him

also to the earthen altar!

He felt himself gripped by the four great creatures around the block,

felt as he struggled with his last strength that he was being

stretched out on the block, each of the four at one of its corners

grasping one of his limbs. He heard Lanier's mad cries as though from

a great distance, glimpsed as he was held thus on his back the great

shape of the earthen worm god reared over him, and then glimpsed the

leader of the monsters rearing beside him.

* * * * *

The dull sound of the swift-waving tentacles of the horde came to him,

there was a tense moment of agony of waiting, and then the tentacles

of the leader flashed up in the signal!

But at the same moment Randall felt his limbs released by the four

monsters that had held them! There seemed sudden wild confusion in the

great cave. The strange rite broke off; the horde of worm monsters

crawled frantically this way and that in it. Randall slipped off the

block; staggered to his feet.

The worm monsters in the cave were swarming toward the downward tunnel

openings! The two captives forgotten, the creatures were pouring in

crawling, fighting swarms toward those openings. And then, as Randall

and Lanier stared stupefied, there came a red flash from one of the

upward tunnels and a brilliant crimson ray stabbed down and mowed a

path of annihilation in the cave's earthen side!

The two heard great thumping sounds from above, saw the tunnels

leading from above becoming suddenly many times greater in size as red

rays flashed down along them to gouge the tunnel's walls. Then down

from those enlarged tunnels there were bursting long shining shapes,

great centipede-machines crawling down the tunnels which their rays

made larger before them! And as the centipede-machines burst down into

the cavern their crimson rays stabbed right and left to cut paths of

annihilation among the worms.

"The Martians!" Lanier cried. "They didn't find us above--they knew we

must have been taken by these things--and they've come down after us!"

* * * * *

"Back, Lanier!" Randall shouted. "Quick, before they see us, behind

this--"

As he spoke he was jerking Lanier with him behind the looming earthen

statue of the great worm god. Crouched there between the statue and

the cave's wall they were hidden precariously from the view of those

in the cavern. And now that cavern had become a scene of horror

unthinkable as the centipede-machines pouring down into it blasted the

frantically crawling worm monsters with their rays.

The worm monsters attempted no resistance, but sought only to escape

into their downward tunnels, and in moments those not caught by the

rays had vanished in the openings. But the centipede-machines, after

racing swiftly around the cavity, were following them, were going down

into those downward tunnels also, their rays blasting down ahead of

each to make the tunnel large enough for them to follow.

In a moment all but one had vanished down into the openings, the

remaining one having its front or head jammed in one of the openings

from the failure of its operator to blast a large enough opening

before him. As Lanier and Randall watched tensely they saw the

machine's control room door open and a Martian descend. He inspected

the tunnel opening in which his vehicle was jammed, then with a hand

ray-tube began to disintegrate the earth around that opening to free

his machine.

Randall clutched his companion's arm. "That machine!" he whispered.

"If we could capture it, it would give us a chance to get back to the

city--to Milton and the matter-transmitter!"

Lanier started, then nodded swiftly. "We'll chance it," he whispered.

"For our twenty-four hours here must be almost up."

* * * * *

They hesitated a moment, then crept forward from behind the great

earthen statue. The Martian had his back to them, his attention on the

freeing of his mechanism. Across the dim-lit cavern they crept softly,

and were within a dozen feet of the Martian when some sound made him

wheel quickly to confront them with the deadly tube. But even as he

whirled the two had leaped.

The force of their leap sent them flying through that dozen feet of

space to strike the Martian at the moment his tube levelled. One

hissing call he uttered as they struck him, and then with all his

strength Lanier had grasped the crocodilian body and bent it backward.

Something in it snapped, and the Martian collapsed limply. The two

looked wildly around.

Nothing showed that the Martian's call had been heard, and after a

moment's glance that showed the head of the centipede machine already

freed, they were clambering up into its control room, closing the

door. Randall seized the knob with which he had seen the machines

operated. As he pulled it toward him the machine moved across the

tunnel opening and raced smoothly over the cavern's floor. As he

turned the knob the machine turned swiftly in the same direction.

He headed the long mechanism toward one of the upward-curving tunnels

which the Martians had blasted larger in descending. They were almost

to it when there flashed up into the cavity from one of the downward

tunnel openings a centipede-machine, and then another, and another.

The Martians in their transparent-windowed control rooms took in at a

glance the dead crocodilian on the floor, and then the three great

machines were darting toward that of Randall and Lanier.

"The Martian we killed!" Randall cried. "They heard his call and are

coming after us!"

"Turn to the wall!" Lanier shouted to him. "I have the rays--"

* * * * *

At that moment there was a clicking beside Randall and he glimpsed

Lanier pulling forth two small grips he had found, then saw that two

crimson rays were stabbing from tubes in their machine's front toward

the others even as their own rays darted back. The beams that had been

loosed toward them grazed past them as Randall whirled their machine

to the wall, and he saw one of the three attacking mechanisms vanish

as Lanier's beams struck it.

Around--back--with instinctive, lightninglike motions he whirled their

centipede-machine in the great dim-lit cave as the two remaining ones

leapt again to the attack. Their rays shot right and left to catch the

two men's vehicle in a trap of death, and as Randall swung their own

mechanism straight ahead he glimpsed at the cavern's far end the great

earthen worm god still upreared.

On either side of them the red beams burned as they leapt forward, but

as though running a gauntlet of death Randall kept the machine racing

forward in the succeeding second until the two others loomed on either

side of it. Then Lanier's beams were driving in turn to right and left

of them and the two vanished as though by magic as they were struck.

"Up to the surface!" Lanier cried, his eyes on the glowing dial of his

wrist-watch. "We've been held hours here--we've but a half-hour or

more before earth midnight!"

* * * * *

Randall sent their machine racing again toward one of the upward

tunnels, and as the long mechanism began to climb smoothly up the

darkness he heard Lanier agonizing beside him.

"God, if we have only enough time to get to that matter-transmitter

before the Martians start flashing to earth through it!"

"But Milton?" Randall cried. "We don't know whether he's alive or

dead! We can't leave him!"

"We must!" said Lanier solemnly. "Our duty's to the earth now, man, to

the world that we alone can save from the Martian invasion and

conquest! At the hour of twelve Nelson will have the matter-receiver

turned on and at that hour the Martian will start flashing to

earth--unless we prevent!"

Suddenly Randall grasped the knob in his hands more tightly as light

showed above them. They had been climbing upward through the enlarged

tunnel at their machine's highest speed, and now as the tunnel curved

the light grew stronger. Suddenly they were emerging into the thin

sunlight of the Martian day.

In the crimson jungle about them were many Martians, milling excitedly

to and fro, and other centipede-machines that were blasting their way

down through tunnels to the worm world beneath.

Randall and Lanier, breathless, crouched low in the

transparent-windowed control room as they sent their mechanism racing

through this scene of swarming activity. Both gasped as one of the

centipede-machines clashed against their own in passing, its Martian

driver turning to stare after them. But there came no alarm, and in a

moment they had passed out of the swarm of Martians and machines and

were heading through the jungle in the direction of the city.

* * * * *

Through the weird red vegetation their mechanism raced with them,

Randall holding it at its highest speed, and in minutes they came out

of the jungle and were racing over the clear space between it and the

great canal. Beyond that canal loomed into the thin sunlight the

clustering cones of the mighty Martian city, two towering above all

the others--the cone of the Martian Master and the other cone in which

was the matter-transmitter and receiver.

It was toward the latter that Lanier pointed. "Head straight toward

that cone, Randall--we've but minutes left!"

They were racing now up over the great arch of the canal's metal

bridge, and then scuttling smoothly off it and along the broad metal

street through which they had fled in darkness hours before. In it

Martians and centipede-machines were coming and going in great

numbers, but none noticed the human forms of the two crouched low in

their mechanism's control room.

They were rushing then toward the looming cone of the Martian Master.

As they flashed past it Randall saw Lanier's face working, knew the

desire that tore at him even as at himself to burst inside and

ascertain whether or not Milton still lived in the laboratories from

which they had fled. But they were past it, faces white and grim, were

rushing on through the Martian city at reckless speed toward the other

mighty cone.

* * * * *

It seemed that all in the great city were heading toward the same

goal, streams of crocodilian Martians and masses of shining

centipede-machines filling the streets as they moved toward it. As

they came closer to the mighty structure, hearts pounding, they saw

that around it surged a mighty mass of Martians and machines. The

hordes waiting to be released through the matter-transmitter inside

upon the unsuspecting earth!

"Try to get the machine inside!" Lanier whispered tensely. "If we can

smash that transmitter yet...."

Randall nodded grimly. "Keep ready at the ray-tubes," he told the

other.

As unobtrusively as possible he sent their long mechanism worming

forward through the vast throng of machines and Martians, toward the

great cone's door. Crouching low, the hands of their watches closing

fast toward the twelfth figure, they edged forward in the long

machine. At last they were moving through the mighty door, into the

cone's interior.

They moved slowly on through the mass of machines and crocodile forms

inside, then halted. For at the great crowd's center was a clear

circle hundreds of feet across, and as Randall gazed across it his

heart seemed to leap once and then stop.

At the center of that clear circle rose the two cubical metal chambers

of the matter-transmitter and receiver. The transmitting chamber, they

saw, was flooded with humming force, with white light pouring from its

inner walls. It was already in operation, and the masses of Martians

in the great cone were only waiting for the moment to sound when the

receiver on earth would be operating also. Then they would pour into

the chamber to be flashed in masses across the gulf to earth! The eyes

of all in the cone seemed turned toward an erect dial-mechanism beside

the chambers which was clocklike in appearance, and that would mark

the moment when the first Martian could enter the transmitting-chamber

and flash out.

* * * * *

A little distance from the two metal chambers stood a low dais on

which there sat the hideous triple-bodied form of the Martian Master.

Around him were the massed members of his council, waiting like him

for the start of their age-planned invasion of earth. And beside the

dais was a figure between two crocodilian guards at sight of whom

Randall forgot all else.

"Milton! My God, Lanier, it's Milton!"

"Milton! They've brought him here to torture or kill him if they find

he's lied about the moment they could flash to earth!"

Milton! And at sight of him something snapped in Randall's brain.

With a single motion of the knob he sent their centipede-machine

crashing out into the clear circle at the mighty cone's center. A wild

uproar of hissing cries broke from all the thousands in it as he sent

the mechanism whirling toward the dais of the Martian Master. He saw

the crocodilian forms there scattering blindly before him, and then

as his rays drove out and spun and stabbed in mad figures of crimson

death through the astounded Martian masses he saw Milton looking up

toward them, crying out crazily to them as his two guards loosed him

for the moment.

A high call from the Martian Master ripped across the hall and was

answered by a shattering roar of hissing voices as Martians and

machines surged madly toward them. Randall and Lanier in a single leap

were out of the centipede-machine, and in an instant had half-dragged

Milton with them in a great leap up to the edge of the humming

transmitting chamber.

* * * * *

Milton was shouting hoarsely to them over the wild uproar. To enter

that transmitting chamber before the destined moment was annihilation,

to be flashed out with no receiver on earth awaiting them. They

turned, struck with all their strength at the first Martians rushing

up to them. No rays flashed, for a ray loosed would destroy the

chamber behind them that was the one gate for the Martians to the

world they would invade. But as the Martian Master's high call hissed

again all the countless crocodilian forms in the great cone were

rushing toward them.

Braced at the very edge of the humming, light-filled chamber, Randall

and Lanier and Milton struck madly at the Martians surging up toward

them. Randall seemed in a dream. A score of taloned paws clutched him

from beneath; scaled forms collapsed under his insane blows.

The whole vast cone and surging reptilian hordes seemed spinning at

increasing speed around him. As his clenched fists flashed with waning

strength he glimpsed crocodilian forms swarming up on either side of

them, glimpsed Lanier down, talons reaching toward him, Milton

fighting over him like a madman. Another moment would see it

ended--reptilian arms reaching in scores to drag him down--Milton

jerking Lanier half to his feet. The Martian Master's call

sounded--and then came a great clanging sound at which the Martian

hordes seemed to freeze for an instant motionless, at which Milton's

voice reached him in a supreme cry.

_"Randall--the transmitter!"_

For in that instant Milton was leaping back with Lanier, and as

Randall with his last strength threw himself backward with them into

the humming transmitting-chamber's brilliant light, he heard a last

frenzied roar of hissing cries from the Martian hordes about them.

Then as the brilliant light and force from the chamber's walls smote

them, Randall felt himself hurled into blackness inconceivable, that

smashed like a descending curtain across his brain.

The curtain of blackness lifted for a moment. He was lying with Milton

and Lanier in another chamber whose force beat upon them. He saw a

yellow-lit room instead of the great cone--saw the tense, anxious face

of Nelson at the switch beside them. He strove to move, made to Nelson

a gesture with his arm that seemed to drain all strength and life from

him; and then, as in answer to it Nelson drove up the switch and

turned off the force of the matter-receiver in which they lay, the

black curtain descended on Randall's brain once more.

* * * * *

Two hours later it was when Milton and Randall and Lanier and Nelson

turned to the laboratory's door. They paused to glance behind them. Of

the great matter-transmitter and receiver, of the apparatus that had

crowded the laboratory, there remained now but wreckage.

For that had been their first thought, their first task, when the

astounded Nelson had brought the three back to consciousness and had

heard their amazing tale. They had wrecked so completely the

matter-station and its actuating apparatus that none could ever have

guessed what a mechanism of wonder the laboratory a short time before

had held.

The cubical chambers had been smashed beyond all recognition, the

dynamos were masses of split metal and fused wiring, the batteries of

tubes were shattered, the condensers and transformers and wiring

demolished. And it had only been when the last written plans and

blue-prints of the mechanism had been burned that Milton and Randall

and Lanier had stopped to allow their exhausted bodies a moment of

rest.

* * * * *

Now as they paused at the laboratory's door, Lanier reached and swung

it open. Together, silent, they gazed out.

It all seemed to Randall exactly as upon the night before. The shadowy

masses in the darkness, the heaving, dim-lit sea stretching far away

before them, the curtain of summer stars stretched across the heavens.

And, sinking westward amid those stars, the red spark of Mars toward

which as though toward a magnet all their eyes had turned.

Milton was speaking. "Up there it has shone for centuries--ages--a

crimson spot of light. And up there the Martians have been watching,

watching--until at last we opened to them the gate."

Randall's hand was on his shoulder. "But we closed that gate, too, in

the end."

Milton nodded slowly. "We--or the fate that rules our worlds. But the

gate is closed, and God grant, shall never again be opened by any on

this world."

"God grant it," the other echoed.

And they were all gazing still toward the thing. Gazing up toward the

crimson spot of light that burned there among the stars, toward the

planet that shone red, menacing, terrible, but whose menace and whose

terror had been thrust back even as they had crouched to spring at

last upon the earth.

The Exile of Time

BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL

_By Ray Cummings_

CHAPTER I

_Mysterious Girl_

[Illustration: _Presently there was not one Robot, but three!_]

[Sidenote: From somewhere out of Time come a swarm of Robots who

inflict on New York the awful vengeance of the diabolical cripple

Tugh.]

The extraordinary incidents began about 1 A.M. in the night of June

8-9, 1935. I was walking through Patton Place, in New York City, with

my friend Larry Gregory. My name is George Rankin. My business--and

Larry's--are details quite unimportant to this narrative. We had been

friends in college. Both of us were working in New York; and with all

our relatives in the middle west we were sharing an apartment on this

Patton Place--a short crooked, little-known street of not particularly

impressive residential buildings lying near the section known as

Greenwich Village, where towering office buildings of the business

districts encroach close upon it.

This night at 1 A. M. it was deserted. A taxi stood at a corner; its

chauffeur had left it there, and evidently gone to a nearby lunch

room. The street lights were, as always, inadequate. The night was

sultry and dark, with a leaden sky and a breathless humidity that

presaged a thunder storm. The houses were mostly unlighted at this

hour. There was an occasional apartment house among them, but mostly

they were low, ramshackle affairs of brick and stone.

We were still three blocks from our apartment when without warning the

incidents began which were to plunge us and all the city into

disaster. We were upon the threshold of a mystery weird and strange,

but we did not know it. Mysterious portals were swinging to engulf

us. And all unknowing, we walked into them.

Larry was saying, "Wish we would get a storm to clear this air--_what

the devil?_ George, did you hear that?"

* * * * *

We stood listening. There had sounded a choking, muffled scream. We

were midway in the block. There was not a pedestrian in sight, nor any

vehicle save the abandoned taxi at the corner.

"A woman," he said. "Did it come from this house?"

We were standing before a three-story brick residence. All its windows

were dark. There was a front stoop of several steps, and a basement

entryway. The windows were all closed, and the place had the look of

being unoccupied.

"Not in there, Larry," I answered. "It's closed for the summer--" But

I got no further; we heard it again. And this time it sounded, not

like a scream, but like a woman's voice calling to attract our

attention.

"George! Look there!" Larry cried.

The glow from a street light illumined the basement entryway, and

behind one of the dark windows a girl's face was pressed against the

pane.

Larry stood gripping me, then drew me forward and down the steps of

the entryway. There was a girl in the front basement room. Darkness

was behind her, but we could see her white frightened face close to

the glass. She tapped on the pane, and in the silence we heard her

muffled voice:

"Let me out! Oh, let me get out!"

The basement door had a locked iron gate. I rattled it. "No way of

getting in," I said, then stopped short with surprise. "What the

devil--"

I joined Larry by the window. The girl was only a few inches from us.

She had a pale, frightened face; wide, terrified eyes. Even with that

first glimpse, I was transfixed by her beauty. And startled; there was

something weird about her. A low-necked, white satin dress disclosed

her snowy shoulders; her head was surmounted by a pile of snow-white

hair, with dangling white curls framing her pale ethereal beauty. She

called again.

"What's the matter with you?" Larry demanded. "Are you alone in there?

What is it?"

* * * * *

She backed from the window; we could see her only as a white blob in

the darkness of the basement room.

I called, "Can you hear us? What is it?"

Then she screamed again. A low scream; but there was infinite terror

in it. And again she was at the window.

"You will not hurt me? Let me--oh please let me come out!" Her fists

pounded the casement.

What I would have done I don't know. I recall wondering if the

policeman would be at our corner down the block; he very seldom was

there. I heard Larry saying:

"What the hell!--I'll get her out. George, get me that brick.... Now,

get back, girl--I'm going to smash the window."

But the girl kept her face pressed against the pane. I had never seen

such terrified eyes. Terrified at something behind her in the house;

and equally frightened at us.

I call to her: "Come to the door. Can't you come to the door and open

it?" I pointed to the basement gate. "Open it! Can you hear me?"

"Yes--I can hear you, and you speak my language. But you--you will not

hurt me? Where am I? This--this was my house a moment ago. I was

living here."

Demented! It flashed to me. An insane girl, locked in this empty

house. I gripped Larry; said to him: "Take it easy; there's something

queer about this. We can't smash windows. Let's--"

"You open the door," he called to the girl.

"I cannot."

"Why? Is it locked on the inside?"

"I don't know. Because--oh, hurry! If he--if it comes again--!"

* * * * *

We could see her turn to look behind her.

Larry demanded, "Are you alone in there?"

"Yes--now. But, oh! a moment ago he was here!"

"Then come to the door."

"I cannot. I don't know where it is. This is so strange and dark a

place. And yet it was my home, just a little time ago."

Demented! And it seemed to me that her accent was very queer. A

foreigner, perhaps.

She went suddenly into frantic fear. Her fists beat the window glass

almost hard enough to shatter it.

"We'd better get her out," I agreed. "Smash it, Larry."

"Yes." He waved at the girl. "Get back. I'll break the glass. Get away

so you won't get hurt."

The girl receded into the dimness.

"Watch your hand," I cautioned. Larry took off his coat and wrapped

his hand and the brick in it. I gazed behind us. The street was still

empty. The slight commotion we had made had attracted no attention.

The girl cried out again as Larry smashed the pane. "Easy," I called

to her. "Take it easy. We won't hurt you."

The splintering glass fell inward, and Larry pounded around the

casement until it was all clear. The rectangular opening was fairly

large. We could see a dim basement room of dilapidated furniture: a

door opening into a back room; the girl; nearby, a white shape

watching us.

There seemed no one else. "Come on," I said. "You can get out here."

But she backed away. I was half in the window so I swung my legs over

the sill. Larry came after me, and together we advanced on the girl,

who shrank before us.

Then suddenly she ran to meet us, and I had the sudden feeling that

she was not insane. Her fear of us was overshadowed by her terror at

something else in this dark, deserted house. The terror communicated

itself to Larry and me. Something eery, here.

"Come on," Larry muttered. "Let's get her out of here."

* * * * *

I had indeed no desire to investigate anything further. The girl let

us help her through the window. I stood in the entryway holding her

arms. Her dress was of billowing white satin with a single red rose at

the breast; her snowy arms and shoulders were bare; white hair was

piled high on her small head. Her face, still terrified, showed parted

red lips; a little round black beauty patch adorned one of her

powdered cheeks. The thought flashed to me that this was a girl in a

fancy dress costume. This was a white wig she was wearing!

I stood with the girl in the entryway, at a loss what to do. I held

her soft warm arms; the perfume of her enveloped me.

"What do you want us to do with you?" I demanded softly. McGuire, the

policeman on the block, might at any moment pass. "We might get

arrested! What's the matter with you? Can't you explain? Are you

hurt?"

She was staring as though I were a ghost, or some strange animal. "Oh,

take me away from this place! I will talk--though I do not know what

to say--"

Demented or sane, I had no desire to have her fall into the clutches

of the police. Nor could we very well take her to our apartment. But

there was my friend Dr. Alten, alienist, who lived within a mile of

here.

"We'll take her to Alten's," I said to Larry, "and find out what this

means. She isn't crazy."

A sudden wild emotion swept me, then. Whatever this mystery, more than

anything in the world I did not want the girl to be insane!

Larry said, "There was a taxi down the street."

* * * * *

It came, now, slowly along the deserted block. The chauffeur had

perhaps heard us, and was cruising past to see if we were possible

fares. He halted at the curb. The girl had quieted; but when she saw

the taxi her face registered wildest terror, and she shrank against

me.

"No! No! Don't let it kill me!"

Larry and I were pulling her forward. "What the devil's the matter

with you?" Larry demanded again.

She was suddenly wildly fighting with us. "No! That--that mechanism--"

"Get her in it!" Larry panted. "We'll have the neighborhood on us!"

It seemed the only thing to do. We flung her, scrambling and fighting,

into the taxi. To the half-frightened, reluctant driver, Larry said

vigorously:

"It's all right; we're just taking her to a doctor. Hurry and get us

away from here. There's good money in it for you!"

The promise--and the reassurance of the physician's address--convinced

the chauffeur. We whirled off toward Washington Square.

Within the swaying taxi I sat holding the trembling girl. She was

sobbing now, but quieting.

"There," I murmured. "We won't hurt you; we're just taking you to a

doctor. You can explain to him. He's very intelligent."

"Yes," she said softly. "Yes. Thank you. I'm all right now."

She relaxed against me. So beautiful, so dainty a creature.

Larry leaned toward us. "You're better now?"

"Yes."

"That's fine. You'll be all right. Don't think about it."

* * * * *

He was convinced she was insane. I breathed again the vague hope that

it might not be so. She was huddled against me. Her face, upturned to

mine, had color in it now; red lips; a faint rose tint in the pale

cheeks.

She murmured, "Is this New York?"

My heart sank. "Yes," I answered. "Of course it is."

"But when?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what year?"

"Why, 1935!"

She caught her breath. "And your name is--"

"George Rankin."

"And I,"--her laugh had a queer break in it--"I am Mistress Mary

Atwood. But just a few minutes ago--oh, am I dreaming? Surely I'm not

insane!"

Larry again leaned over us. "What are you talking about?"

"You're friendly, you two. Like men; strange, so very strange-looking

young men. This--this carriage without any horses--I know now it won't

hurt me."

She sat up. "Take me to your doctor. And then to the general of your

army. I must see him, and warn him. Warn you all." She was turning

half hysterical again. She laughed wildly. "Your general--he won't be

General Washington, of course. But I must warn him."

She gripped me. "You think I am demented. But I am not. I am Mary

Atwood, daughter of Major Charles Atwood, of General Washington's

staff. That was my home, where you broke the window. But it did not

look like that a few moments ago. You tell me this is the year 1935,

but just a few moments ago I was living in the year 1777!"