CHAPTER VII

The Vengeance of Tugh

A myriad individual scenes of horror were enacted. Metal travesties of

the human form ran along the city streets, overturning stalled

vehicles, climbing into houses, roaming dark hallways, breaking into

rooms.

There was a woman who afterward told that she crouched in a corner,

clutching her child, when the door of her room was burst in. Her

husband, who had kept them there thinking it was the safest thing to

do, fought futilely with the great thing of iron. Its sword slashed

his head from his body with a single stroke. The woman and the little

child screamed, but the monster ignored them. They had a radio, tuned

to a station in New Jersey which was broadcasting the events. The

Robot seized the instrument as though in a frenzy of anger, tore it

apart, then rushed from the room.

No one could give a connected picture of the events of that horrible

night. It was a series of disjointed incidents out of which the

imagination must construct the whole.

The panics were everywhere. The streets were stalled with traffic and

running, shouting, fighting people. And the area around Greenwich

Village brought reports of continued horror.

The Robots were of many different forms; some pseudo-human; others,

great machines running amuck--things more monstrous, more horrible

even, than those which mocked humanity. There was a great pot-bellied

monster which forced its way somehow to a roof. It encountered a

crouching woman and child in a corner of the parapet, seized them, one

in each of its great iron hands, and whirled them out over the

housetops.

* * * * *

By dawn it seemed that the Robots had mounted several projectors of

the giant red beam on the roofs of Patton Place. They held a full

square mile, now, around Tugh's house. The police and firemen had long

since given up fighting them. They were needed elsewhere--the police

to try and cope with the panics, and the firemen to fight the

conflagrations which everywhere began springing up. Fires, the natural

outcome of chaos; and fires, incendiary--made by criminals who took

advantage of the disaster to fatten like ghouls upon the dead. They

prowled the streets. They robbed and murdered at will.

The giant beams of the Robots carried a frigid blast for miles. By

dawn of that June 10th, the south wind was carrying from the enemy

area a perceptible wave of cold even as far as Westchester. Allen,

flying over the city, saw the devastated area clearly. Ice in the

streets--smashed vehicles--the gruesome litter of sword-slashed human

bodies. And other human bodies, plucked apart; strewn....

Alten's plane flew at an altitude of some two thousand feet. In the

growing daylight the dark prowling figures of the metal men were

plainly seen. There were no humans left alive in the captured area.

The plane dropped a bomb into Washington Square where a dozen or two

of the Robots were gathered. It missed them. The plane's pilot had not

realized that they were grouped around a projector; its red shaft

sprang up, caught the plane and clung to it. Frigid blast! Even at

that two thousand feet altitude, for a few seconds Alten and the

others were stiffened by the cold. The motor missed; very nearly

stopped. Then an intervening rooftop cut off the beam, and the plane

escaped.

* * * * *

All this I have pictured from what Dr. Alten subsequently told me. He

leaves my narrative now, since fate hereafter held him in the New York

City of 1935. But he has described for me three horrible days, and

three still more horrible nights. The whole world now was alarmed.

Every nation offered its forces of air and land and sea to overcome

these gruesome invaders. Warships steamed for New York harbor.

Soldiers were entrained and brought to the city outskirts. Airplanes

flew overhead. On Long Island, Staten Island, and in New Jersey,

infantry, tanks and artillery were massed in readiness.

But they were all very nearly powerless to attack. Manhattan Island

still was thronged with refugees. It was not possible for the millions

to escape; and for the first day there were hundreds of thousands

hiding in their homes. The city could not be shelled. The influx of

troops was hampered by the outrush of civilians.

By the night of the tenth, nevertheless, ten thousand soldiers were

surrounding the enemy area. It embraced now all the mid-section of the

island. The soldiers rushed in. Machine-guns were set up.

But the Robots were difficult to find. With this direct attack they

began fighting with an almost human caution. Their bodies were

impervious to bullets, save perhaps in the orifices of the face which

might or might not be vulnerable. But when attacked, they skulked in

the houses, or crouched like cautious animals under the smashed

vehicles. Then there were times when they would wade forward directly

into machine-gun fire--unharmed--plunging on until the gunners fled

and the Robots wreaked their fury upon the abandoned gun.

The only hand-to-hand conflicts took place on the afternoon of June

10th. A full thousand soldiers were killed--and possibly six or eight

of the Robots. The troops were ordered away after that; they made

lines across the island to the north and to the south, to keep the

enemy from increasing its area. Over Greenwich Village now, the

circling planes--at their highest altitude, to avoid the upflung

crimson beams--dropped bombs. Hundreds of houses there were wrecked.

Tugh's house could not be positively identified, though the attack was

directed at it most particularly. Afterward, it was found by chance to

have escaped.

* * * * *

The night of June 10th brought new horrors. The city lights failed.

Against all the efforts of the troops and the artillery fire which now

was shelling the Washington Square area, the giant mechanisms pushed

north and south. By midnight, with their dull-red beams illumining the

darkness of the canyon streets, they had reached the Battery, and

spread northward beyond the northern limits of Central Park.

It is estimated that by then there were still a million people on

Manhattan Island.

The night of the 11th, the Robots made their real attack. Those who

saw it, from planes overhead, say that upon a roof near Washington

Square a machine was mounted from which a red beam sprang. It was not

of parallel rays, like the others; this one spread. And of such power

it was, that it painted the leaden clouds of the threatening, overcast

night. Every plane, at whatever high altitude, felt its frigid blast

and winged hastily away to safety.

Spreading, dull-red beam! It flashed with a range of miles. Its light

seemed to cling to the clouds, staining like blood; and to cling to

the air itself with a dull lurid radiance.

It was a hot night, that June 11th, with a brewing thunderstorm. There

had been occasional rumbles of thunder and lightning flashes. The

temperature was perhaps 90° F.

Then the temperature began falling. A million people were hiding in

the great apartment houses and homes of the northern sections, or

still struggling to escape over the littered bridges or by the

paralyzed transportation systems--and that million people saw the

crimson radiance and felt the falling temperature.

80°. Then 70°. Within half an hour it was at 30°! In unheated houses,

in midsummer, in the midst of panic, the people were swept by chilling

cold. With no adequate clothing available they suffered greatly--and

then abruptly they were freezing. Children wailing with the cold; then

asleep in numbed, last slumber....

Zero weather in midsummer! And below zero! How cold it got, there is

no one to say. The abandoned recording instrument in the Weather

Bureau was found, at 2:16 A.M., the morning of June 12, 1935, to have

touched minus 42° F.

The gathering storm over the city burst with lightning and thunder

claps through the blood-red radiance. And then snow began falling. A

steady white downpour, a winter blizzard with the lightning flashing

above it, and the thunder crashing.

With the lightning and thunder and snow, crazy winds sprang up. They

whirled and tossed the thick white snowflakes; swept in blasts along

the city streets. It piled the snow in great drifts against the

houses; whirled and sucked it upward in white powdery geysers.

* * * * *

At 2:30 A.M. there came a change. The dull-red radiance which swept

the city changed in color. Through the shades of the spectrum it swung

up to violet. And no longer was it a blast of cold, but of heat! Of

what inherent temperature the ray of that spreading beam may have

been, no one can say. It caught the houses, and everything inflammable

burst into flame. Conflagrations were everywhere--a thousand spots of

yellow-red flames, like torches, with smoke rolling up from them to

mingle with the violet glow overhead.

The blizzard was gone. The snow ceased. The storm clouds rolled away,

blasted by the pendulum winds which lashed the city.

By 3 A.M. the city temperature was over 100° F--the dry, blistering

heat of a midsummer desert. The northern city streets were littered

with the bodies of people who had rushed from their homes and fallen

in the heat, the wild winds and the suffocating smoke outside.

And then, flung back by the abnormal winds, the storm clouds crashed

together overhead. A terrible storm, born of outraged nature, vent

itself on the city. The fires of the burning metropolis presently died

under the torrent of falling water. Clouds of steam whirled and tossed

and hissed close overhead, and there was a boiling hot rain.

By dawn the radiance of that strange spreading beam died away. The

daylight showed a wrecked, dead city. Few humans indeed were left

alive on Manhattan that dawn. The Robots and their apparatus had

gone....

The vengeance of Tugh against the New York City of 1935 was

accomplished.

(_To be continued._)

[Illustration: Advertisement.]

Hell's Dimension

_By Tom Curry_

[Illustration: _Just as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she stepped

across the plate._]

[Sidenote: Professor Lambert deliberately ventures into a Vibrational

Dimension to join his fiancee in its magnetic torture-fields.]

"Now, Professor Lambert, tell us what you have done with the body of

your assistant Miss Madge Crawford. Her car is outside your door, has

stood there since early yesterday morning. There are no footprints

leading away from the house and you can't expect us to believe that an

airplane picked her off the roof. It will make it a lot easier if you

tell us where she is. Her parents are greatly worried about her. When

they telephoned, you refused to talk to them, would not allow them to

speak to Miss Crawford. They are alarmed as to her fate. While you are

not the sort of man who would injure a young woman, still, things look

bad for you. You had better explain fully."

John Lambert, a man of about thirty-six, tall, spare, with black hair

which was slightly tinged with gray at the temples in spite of his

youth, turned large eyes which were filled with agony upon his

questioners.

Lambert was already internationally famous for his unique and

astounding experiments in the realm of sound and rhythm. He had been

endowed by one of the great electrical companies to do original work,

and his laboratory, in which he lived, was situated in a large tract

of isolated woodland some forty miles from New York City. It was

necessary for the success of his work that as few disturbing noises as

possible be made in the neighborhood. Many of his experiments with

sound and etheric waves required absolute quiet and freedom from

interrupting noises. The delicate nature of some of the machines he

used would not tolerate so much as the footsteps of a man within a

hundred yards, and a passing car would have disrupted them entirely.

* * * * *

Lambert was terribly nervous; he trembled under the gaze of the stern

detective, come with several colleagues from a neighboring town at the

call of Madge Crawford's frightened family. The girl, whose picture

stood on a working table nearby, looked at them from the photograph as

a beautiful young woman of twenty-five, light of hair, with large eyes

and a lovely face.

Detective Phillips pointed dramatically to the likeness of the missing

girl. "Can you," he said, "look at her there, and deny you loved her?

And if she did not love you in return, then we have a motive for what

you have done--jealousy. Come, tell us what you have done with her.

Our men will find her, anyway; they are searching the cellar for her

now. You can't hope to keep her, alive, and if she is dead--"

Lambert uttered a cry of despair, and put his face in his long

fingers. "She--she--don't say she's dead!"

"Then you did love her!" exclaimed Phillips triumphantly, and

exchanged glances with his companions.

"Of course I love her. And she returned my love. We were secretly

engaged, and were to be married when we had finished these extremely

important experiments. It is infamous though, to accuse me of having

killed her; if I have done so, then it was no fault of mine."

"Then you did kill her?"

"No, no. I cannot believe she is really gone."

"Why did you evade her parents' inquiries?"

"Because ... I have been trying to bring her ... to re-materialize

her."

"You mean to bring her back to life?"

"Yes."

"Couldn't a doctor do that better than you, if she is hidden somewhere

about here?" asked Phillips gravely.

"No, no. You do not understand. She cannot be seen, she has

dematerialized. Oh, go away. I'm the only man, save, possibly, my

friend Doctor Morgan, who can help her now. And Morgan--I've thought

of calling him, but I've been working every instant to get the right

combination. Go away, for God's sake!"

"We can't go away until we have found out Miss Crawford's fate," said

Phillips patiently.

* * * * *

Another sleuth entered the immense laboratory. He made his way through

the myriad strange machines, a weird collection of xylophones, gongs,

stone slabs cut in peculiar patterns to produce odd rhythmic sounds,

electrical apparatus of all sorts. Near Phillips was a plate some feet

square, of heavy metal, raised from the floor on poles of a different

substance. About the ceiling were studs thickly set of the same sort

of metal as was the big plate.

One of the sleuths tapped his forehead, pointing to Lambert as the

latter nervously lighted a cigarette.

The newcomer reported to Phillips. He held in his hand two or three

sheets of paper on which something was written.

"The only other person here is a deaf mute," said the sleuth to

Phillips, his superior. "I've got his story. He writes that he takes

care of things, cooks their meals and so on. And he writes further

that he thinks the woman and this guy Lambert were in love with each

other. He has no idea where she has gone to. Here, you read it."

Phillips took the sheets and continued: "'Yesterday morning about ten

o'clock I was passing the door of the laboratory on my way to make up

Professor Lambert's bed. Suddenly I noticed a queer, shimmering,

greenish-blue light streaming down from the walls and ceiling of the

laboratory. I was right outside the place and though I cannot hear

anything, I was knocked down and I twisted and wriggled around like a

snake. It felt like something with a thousand little paws but with

great strength was pushing me every way. When there was a lull, and

the light had stopped for a few moments, I staggered to my feet and

ran madly for my own quarters, scared out of my head. As I went by the

kitchen, I saw Miss Crawford at the sink there, filling some vases and

arranging flowers as she usually did every morning.

"'If she called to me, I did not hear her or notice her lips moving. I

believe she came to the door.

"'I was going to quit, when I recovered myself, angry at what had

occurred; but then, I began to feel ashamed for being such a baby, for

Professor Lambert has been very good to me. About fifteen minutes

after I went to my room, I was able to return to the kitchen. Miss

Crawford was not there, though the flowers and vases were. Then, as I

started to work, still a little alarmed, Professor Lambert came

rushing into the kitchen, an expression of terror on his face. His

mouth was open, and I think he was calling. He then ran out, back to

the laboratory, and I have not seen Miss Madge since. Professor

Lambert has been almost continuously in the work-room since then,

and--I kept away from it, because I was afraid.'"

* * * * *

Two more members of Phillips' squad broke into the laboratory and came

toward the chief. They had been working at physical labor, for they

were still perspiring and one regarded his hands with a rueful

expression.

"Any luck?" asked Phillips eagerly.

"No, boss. We been all over the place, and we dug every spot we could

get to earth in the cellar. Most of it's three-inch concrete, without

a sign of a break."

"Did you look in the furnace?"

"We looked there the first thing. She ain't there."

There were several closets in the laboratory, and Phillips opened all

of them and inspected them. As he moved near the big plate, Lambert

uttered a cry of warning. "Don't disturb that, don't touch anything

near it!"

"All right, all right," said Phillips testily.

The skeptical sleuths had classified Lambert as a "nut," and were

practically sure he had done away with Madge Crawford because she

would not marry him.

Still, they needed better evidence than their mere beliefs. There was

no corpus delicti, for instance.

"Gentlemen," said Lambert at last, controlling his emotions with a

great effort. "I will admit to you that I am in trepidation and a

state of mental torture as to Miss Crawford's fate. You are delaying

matters, keeping me from my work."

"He thinks about work when the girl he claims he loves has

disappeared," said Doherty, in a loud whisper to Phillips. Doherty was

one of the sleuths who had been digging in the cellar, and the hard

work had made his temper short.

"You must help us find Miss Crawford before we can let you alone,"

said Phillips. "Can't you understand that you are under grave

suspicion of having injured her, hidden her away? This is a serious

matter, Professor Lambert. Your experiments can wait."

"This one cannot," shouted Lambert, shaking his fists. "You are

fools!"

"Steady now," said Doherty.

* * * * *

"Perhaps you had better come with us to the district attorney's

office," went on Phillips. "There you may come to your senses and

realize the futility of trying to cover up your crime--if you have

committed one. If you have not, why do you not tell us where Miss

Crawford is?"

"Because I do not know myself," replied Lambert. "But you can't take

me away from here. I beg of you, gentlemen, allow me a little more

time. I must have it."

Phillips shook his head. "Not unless you tell us logically what has

occurred," he said.

"Then I must, though I do not think you will comprehend or even

believe me. Briefly, it is this: yesterday morning I was working on

the final series of experiments with a new type of harmonic overtones

plus a new type of sinusoidal current which I had arranged with a

series of selenium cells. When I finally threw the switch--remember, I

was many weeks preparing the apparatus, and had just put the final

touches on early that morning--there was a sound such as never had

been heard before by human ears, an indescribable sound, terrifying

and mysterious. Also, there was a fierce, devouring verditer blue

light, and this came from the plates and studs you see, but so great

was its strength that it got out of control and leaped about the room

like a live thing. For some moments, while it increased in intensity

as I raised the power of the current by means of the switch I held in

my hand, I watched and listened in fascination. My instruments had

ceased to record, though they are the most delicate ever invented and

can handle almost anything which man can even surmise."

* * * * *

The perspiration was pouring from Lambert's face, as he recounted his

story. The detectives listened, comprehending but a little of the

meaning of the scientist's words.

"What has this to do with Miss Crawford?" asked Doherty impatiently.

Phillips held up his hand to silence the other sleuth. "Let him

finish," he ordered. "Go on, professor."

"The sensations which I was undergoing became unendurable," went on

Lambert, in a low, hoarse voice. "I was forced to cry out in pain and

confusion.

"Miss Crawford evidently heard my call, for a few moments later, just

as the terrific unknown force reached its apex, she dashed into the

laboratory, and stepped across the plate you see there.

"I was powerless. Though I shut off the current by a superhuman

effort, she--she was gone!"

Lambert put his face in his hands, a sob shook his broad shoulders.

"Gone?" repeated Phillips. "What do you mean, gone?"

"She disappeared, before my very eyes," said the professor shakily.

"Torn into nothingness by the fierce force of the current or sound.

Since then, I have been trying to reproduce the conditions of the

experiment, for I wish to bring her back. If I cannot do so, then I

want to join her, wherever she has gone. I love her, I know now that I

cannot possibly live without her. Will you please leave me alone, now,

so that I can continue?"

Doherty laughed derisively. "What a story," he jeered.

"Keep quiet, Doherty," ordered Phillips. "Now, Professor Lambert, your

explanation of Miss Crawford's disappearance does not sound logical to

us, but still we are willing to give you every chance to bring her

back, if what you say is true. We cannot leave you entirely alone,

because you might try to escape or you might carry out your threat of

suicide. Therefore, I am going to sit over there in the corner,

quietly, where I can watch you but will not interfere with your work.

We will give you until midnight to prove your story. Then you must go

with us to the district attorney. Do you agree to that?"

* * * * *

Lambert nodded, eagerly. "I agree. Let me work in peace, and if I do

not succeed then you may take me anywhere you wish. If you can," he

added, in an undertone.

Doherty and the others, at Phillips' orders, filed from the

laboratory. "One thing more, professor," said Phillips, when they were

alone and the professor was preparing to work. "How do you explain the

fact, if your story is true, that Miss Crawford was killed and made to

disappear, while you yourself, close by, were uninjured?"

"Do you see these garments?" asked Lambert, indicating some black

clothes which lay on a bench nearby. "They insulated me from the

current and partially protected me from the sound. Though the force

was very great, great enough to penetrate my insulation, it was

handicapped in my case because of the garments."

"I see. Well, you may go on."

Phillips moved in the chair he had taken, from time to time. He could

hear the noises of his men, still searching the premises for Madge

Crawford, and Professor Lambert heard them, too.

"Will you tell your men to be quiet?" he cried at last.

There were dark circles under Lambert's eyes. He was working in a

state of feverish anxiety. When the girl he loved had dematerialized

from under his very eyes, panic had seized him; he had ripped away

wires to break the current and lost the thread of his experiment, so

that he could not reproduce it exactly without much labor.

The scientist put on the black robes, and Phillips wished he too had

some protective armor, even though he did believe that Lambert had

told them a parcel of lies. The deaf mute's story was not too

reassuring. Phillips warned his companions to be more quiet, and he

himself sat quite still.

* * * * *

Lambert knew that the sleuths thought he was stark mad. He was aware

of the fact that he had but a few hours in which to save the girl who

had come at his cry to help him, who had loved him and whom he loved,

only to be torn into some place unknown by the forces which were

released in his experiment. And he knew he would rather die with her

than live without her.

He labored feverishly, though he tried to keep his brain calm in order

to win. His notes helped him up to a certain point, but when he had

made the final touches he had not had time to bring the data up to the

moment, being eager to test out his apparatus. It was while testing

that the awful event had occurred and he had seen Madge Crawford

disappear before his very eyes.

Her eyes, large and frightened, burned in his mind.

The deaf mute, Felix, a small, spare man of about fifty, sent the

professor some food and coffee through one of the sleuths. Lambert

swallowed the coffee, but waved away the rest, impatiently. Phillips,

watching his suspect constantly, was served a light supper at the end

of the afternoon.

There seemed to be a million wires to be touched, tested, and various

strange apparatus. Several times, later on in the evening. Lambert

threw the big switch with an air of expectancy, but little happened.

Then Lambert would go to work again, testing, testing--adjusting this

and that till Phillips swore under his breath.

"Only an hour more, professor," said Phillips, who was bored to death

and cramped from trying to obey the professor's orders to keep still.

A circle of cigarette-ends surrounded the sleuth.

"Only an hour," agreed Lambert. "Will you please be quiet, my man?

This is a matter of my fiancée's life or death."

Phillips was somewhat disgruntled, for he felt he had done Lambert

quite a favor in allowing him to remain in the laboratory for so long,

to prove his story.

"I wish Doctor Morgan were here; I ought to have sent for him, I

suppose," said Lambert, a few minutes later. "Will you allow me to get

him? I cannot seem to perfect this last stage."

"No time, now," declared Phillips. "I said till midnight."

It was obvious to Lambert that the detective had become certain during

the course of the evening that the scientist was mad. The ceaseless

fiddling and the lack of results or even spectacular sights had

convinced Phillips that he had to do with a crank.

"I think I have it now," said Lambert coolly.

"What?" asked Phillips.

"The original combination. I had forgotten one detail in the

excitement, and this threw me off. Now I believe I will succeed--in

one way or another. I warn you, be careful. I am about to release

forces which may get out of my control."

"Well, now, don't get reckless," begged Phillips nervously. The array

of machines had impressed him, even if Lambert did seem a fool.

"You insist upon remaining, so it is your own risk," said Lambert

coolly.

Lambert, in the strange robes, was a bizarre figure. The hood was

thrown back, exposing his pale, black-bearded face, the wan eyes with

dark circles under them, and the twitching lips.

"If you find yourself leaving this vale of tears," went on the

scientist, ironically, to the sleuth, "you will at least have the

comfort of realizing that as the sound-force disintegrates your mortal

form you are among the first of men to be attuned to the vibrations of

the unknown sound world. All matter is vibration; that has been

proven. A building of bricks, if shaken in the right manner, falls

into its component parts; a bridge, crossed by soldiers in certain

rhythmic time, is torn from its moorings. A tuning fork, receiving the

sound vibrations from one of a similar size and shape begins to

vibrate in turn. These are homely analogies, but applied to the less

familiar sound vibrations, which make up our atomic world, they may

help you to understand how the terrific forces I have discovered can

disintegrate flesh."

The scientist looked inquiringly at Phillips. As the sleuth did not

move, but sat with folded arms, Lambert shrugged and said, "I am

ready."

Lambert raised his hood, and Phillips said, in a spirit of bravado,

"You can't scare me out of here."

"Here goes the switch," cried Lambert.

He made the contact, as he had before. He stood for a moment, and this

time the current gained force. The experimenter pushed his lever all

the way over.

* * * * *

A terrible greenish-blue light suddenly illuminated the laboratory,

and through the air there came sound vibrations which seemed to tear

at Phillips' body. He found himself on the floor, knocked from his

chair, and he writhed this way and that, speechless, suffering a

torment of agony. His whole flesh seemed to tremble in unison with the

waves which emanated from the machines which Lambert manipulated.

After what seemed hours to the suffering sleuth, the force diminished,

and soon Phillips was able to rise. Trembling, the detective cursed

and yelled for help in a high-pitched voice.

Lambert had thrown back his hood, and was rocking to and fro in agony.

"Madge, Madge," he cried, "what have I done! Come back to me, come

back!"

Doherty and the others came running in at their chief's shouts.

"Arrest him," ordered Phillips shakily. "I've stood enough of this

nonsense."

The detectives started for Lambert. He saw them coming, and swiftly

threw off the protective garments he wore.

"Stand back!" he cried, and threw the switch all the way over. The

verditer green light smashed through the air, and the queer sound

sensations smacked and tore them; Doherty, who had drawn a revolver

when he was answering Phillips' cries, fired the gun into the air, and

the report seemed to battle with the vibrating ether.

Lambert, as he threw the switch, leaped forward and landed on the

metal plate under the ceiling studs, in the very center of the awful

disturbance and unprotected from its force.

For a few moments, Lambert felt racking pain, as though something were

tearing at his flesh, separating the very atoms. The scientist saw the

wriggling figures of the sleuths, in various strange positions, but his

impressions were confused. His head whirled round and round, he swayed

to and fro, and, finally, he thought he fell down, or rather, that he

had melted, as a lump of sugar dissolves in water.

"He's gone--gone--"

In the heart of nothingness was Lambert, his body torn and racked in a

shrieking chaos of sound and a blinding glare of iridescent light

which seemed too much to bear.

His last conscious thought was a prayer, that, having failed to bring

back his sweetheart, Madge Crawford, he was undergoing a step toward

the same destination to which he had sent her.

* * * * *

John Lambert came to with a shudder. But it was not a mortal shudder.

He could sense no body; had no sense of being confined by matter. He

was in a strange, chilly place--a twilight region, limitless, without

dimensions.

Yet he could feel something, in an impersonal way, vaguely

indifferent. He had no pain now.

He was moving, somehow. He had one impelling desire, and that was to

discover Madge Crawford. Perhaps it was this thought which directed

his movements.

Intent upon finding the girl, if she was indeed in this same strange

world that he was, he did not notice for some time--how long, he had

no way of telling--that there were other beings which tried to impede

his progress. But as he grew more accustomed to the unfamiliar

sensations he was undergoing, he found his path blocked again and

again by queer beings.

They were living, without doubt, and had intelligence, and evinced

hostility toward him. But they were shapeless, shapeless as amoebas.

He heard them in a sort of soundless whisper, and could see them

without the use of eyes. And he shuddered, though he could feel no

body in which he might be confined. Still, when he pinched viciously

with invisible fingers at the spot where his face should have been, a

twinge of pain registered on the vague consciousness which appeared to

be all there was to him.

He was not sure of his substance, though he could evidently experience

human sensations with his amorphous body. He did not know whether he

could see; yet, he was dodging this way and that, as the beings who

occupied this world tried to stop him.

They gave him the impression of gray shapes, and in coppery shadows

things gleamed and closed in on him.

He seemed to hear a cry, and he knew that he was receiving a call for

help from Madge Crawford. He tried to run, pushed determinedly toward

the spot, impelled by his love for the girl.

* * * * *

Now, as he hurried, he occasionally was stopped short by collision

with the formless shapes which were all about him. He was hampered by

them, for they followed him, making a sound like wind heard in a

dream. Whatever medium he was in was evidently thickly inhabited by

the hostile beings who claimed this world as their own. Though he

could not actually feel the medium, he could sense that it was heavy.

He leaped and ran, fighting his way through the increasing hosts, and

the roar of their voice-impressions increased in his consciousness.

Yet there seemed to be nothing, nothing tangible save vagueness. He

felt he was in a blind spot in space, a place of no dimensions, no

time, where beings abhorred by nature, things which had never

developed any dimensional laws, existed.

The cry for help struck him, with more force this time. Lambert,

whatever form he was in, realised that he was close to the end of his

journey to Madge Crawford.

He tried to speak, and had the impression that he said something

reassuring. He then bumped into some vibrational being which he knew

was Madge. His ears could not hear, nor could his flesh feel, but his

whole form or cerebrum sensed he held the woman he loved in his arms.

And she was speaking to him, in accents of fear, begging him to save

her.

"John, John, you have come at last. They have been torturing me

terribly. Save me."

"Darling Madge, I will do everything I can. Now I have found you, and

we are together and will never part. Can you hear me?"

"I know what you are thinking, and what you wish to say. I can't

exactly hear; it all seems vague, and impossible. Yet I can suffer.

They have been hitting me with something which makes me shudder and

shake--there, they are at it again."

* * * * *

Lambert felt the sensations, now, which the girl had made known to

him. He felt crowded by gray beings, and his existence was troubled by

spasms of pain-impressions. He knew Madge was crying out, too.

He could not comprehend the attacks, or guess their meaning. But the

situation was unendurable.

Anger shook him, and he began to fight, furiously but vaguely. They

were closely hemmed in, but when Lambert began to strike out with

hands and legs, the beings gave way a little. The scientist tried to

shout, and though he could actually hear nothing, the result was

gratifying. The formless creatures seemed to scatter and draw back in

confusion as he yelled his defiance.

"They hate that," Madge said to him. "I have screamed myself hoarse

and that is why they have not killed me--if I can be killed."

"I do not believe we can. But they can torture us," replied Lambert.

"It is an everlasting half-life or quarter-life, and these creatures

who call this Hell's Dimension home, have nothing but hatred for us in

their consciousness."

The inhabitants of the imperfect world had closed in once again and

the sharp instruments of torture they used were being thrust into the

invisible bodies of the two humans. Each time, Lambert was unable to

restrain his cries, for it seemed that he was being torn to pieces by

vibrations.

He yelled until he could not speak above a whisper, or at least until

the impressions of speech he gave forth did not trouble the beings.

The two humans, still bound to some extent by their mortal beliefs,

were chivvied to and fro, and struck and bullied. The creatures seemed

to delight in this sport.

The two felt they could not die; yet they could suffer terribly. Would

this go on through eternity? Was there no release?

* * * * *

They were trying to tear Madge away from him. She was fighting them,

and Lambert, in a frenzy of rage, made a determined effort to get away

with the girl from their tormentors.

They retreated before his onslaughts. Drawing Madge after him, Lambert

put down his head--or believed he was doing so--and ran as fast as he

could at the beings.

He bumped into some invisible forms and was slowed in his rush, but he

shouted and flailed about with his arms, and tried to kick. Madge

helped by screaming and striking out. They made some distance in this

way, or so they thought, and the horrid creatures gave way before

them.

All about them was the coppery sensation of the medium in which they

moved: Lambert as he became more used to the form he was inhabiting,

he began to think he could discern dreadful eyes which stared

unblinkingly at the couple.

He fought on, and believed they had come to a spot where the beings

did not molest them, though they still sensed the things glaring at

them.

Were they on some invisible eminence, above the reach of these queer

creatures?

"We might as well stop here, for if we try to go farther we may come

to a worse place," said Lambert.

They rested there, in temporary peace, together at last.

* * * * *

"I seem to be happy now," said Madge, clinging close. "I feared I

would never see you again. John dear. I ran to you when you called out

that day and when I crossed the plate, I was torn and racked and

knocked down. When I next experienced sensation, it was in this

terrible form. I am becoming more used to it, but I kept crying out

for you: the beings, as soon as they discovered my presence, began to

torment me. More and more have been collecting, and I have a sensation

of seeing them as horrible, revolting beasts. Oh, John, I don't think

I could have stood it much longer, if you hadn't come to me. They were

driving me on, on, on, ceaselessly torturing me."

"Curse them," said Lambert. "I wish I could really get hold of some of

them. Perhaps, Madge, I will be able to think of some escape for us

from this Hell's Dimension."

"Yes, darling. I could not bear to think that we are eternally damned

to exist among these beings, hurt by them and unable to get away. How

I wish we were back in the laboratory, at the tea table. How happy we

were there!"

"And we will be again, Madge." Lambert was far from feeling hopeful,

but he tried to encourage the girl into thinking they might get away.

However, he was unable to dissimulate. She felt his anguish for her

safety. "But I know now that you love me. I can feel it stronger than

ever before, John. It seems like a great rock to which I can always

cling, your love. It projects me from the hatred that these beasts

pour out against us."

Since they had no sense of time, they could not tell how long they

were allowed to remain unmolested. But in each other's company they

were happy, though each one was afraid for the safety of the loved

one.

They spoke of the mortal life they had lived, and their love. They

felt no need of food or water, but clung together in a dimensionless

universe, held up by love.

* * * * *

The lull came to an end, at last. There was no change in the coppery

vagueness about them which they sensed as the surrounding ether, but

all was changeless, boundless. Lambert, close to Madge Crawford, felt

that they were about to be attacked.

He had swift, temporary impressions of seeing saucerlike, unblinking

eyes, and then hordes of bizarre inhabitants started to climb up to

their perch.

For a short while, Lambert and Madge fought them off, thrusting at

them, seeming to push them backward down the intangible slope; the

cries which the dematerialized humans uttered also helped to hold the

leaders of the attacking army partially in check, but the vast number

of beings swept forward.

The thrusts of the torture-fields they emanated became more and more

racking, as the two unfortunates shuddered in horror and pain.

The power to demonstrate loud noise was evidently impossible to the

creatures, for their only sounds came to Madge Crawford and John

Lambert as long-drawn out, almost unbearable squeaks, mouse-like in

character. Perhaps they had never had the faculty of speech, since

they did not need it to communicate with one another; perhaps they

realized that the racket they could make would hurt them as much as it

did their enemies.

Lambert, Madge clinging to him, was forced backward down the slope,

and the beings had the advantage of height. He could not again reach

the eminence, but the way behind seemed to clear quickly enough,

though thrusts were made at him, innumerable times with the

torture-fields.

The hordes pushed them backward, and ever back.

* * * * *

They were forced on for some distance. As they retreated, the way

become easier, and fewer and fewer of the beings impeded the channel

along which they moved, though in front of them and on all sides,

above, beneath, they were pressed by the hordes.

"They are forcing us to some place they want us to go," said Lambert

desperately.

"We can do nothing more," replied the girl.

Lambert felt her quiet confidence in him, and that as long as they

were together, all was well.

"Maybe they can kill us, somehow," he said.

And now, Lambert felt the way was clear to the rear. There was a

sudden rush of the creatures, and needlelike fields were impelled

viciously into the spaces the two humans occupied.

Madge cried out in pain, and Lambert shouted. The throng drew away

from them as suddenly as it had surged forward, and an instant later

the pair, clinging together, felt that they were falling, falling,

falling....

"Are you all right, Madge?"

"Yes, John."

But he knew she was suffering. How long they fell he did not know, but

they stopped at last. No sooner had they come to rest than they were

assailed with sensations of pain which made both cry out in anguish.

There, in the spot where they had been thrust by the hordes, they felt

that there was some terrific vibration which racked and tore at their

invisible forms continuously, sending them into spasms of sharp

misery.

They both were forced to give vent to their feelings by loud cries.

But they could not command their movements any longer. When they tried

to get away, their limbs moved but they felt that they remained in the

same spot.

* * * * *

The pain shook every fraction of their souls.

"We--we are in some pit of hell, into which they have thrown us,

John," gasped Madge.

He knew she was shivering with the torture of that great vibration

from which there was no escape, that they were in a prison-pit of

Hell's Dimension.

"I--oh--John--I'm dying!"

But he was powerless to help her. He suffered as much as she. Yet

there was no weakening of his sensations; he was in as much torture as

he had been at the start. He knew that they could not die and could

never escape from this misery of hell.

Their cries seemed to disturb the vacuum about. Lambert, shivering and

shaking with pain, was aware that great eyes, similar to those which

they had thought they saw above, were now upon them. Squeaks were

impressed upon him, squeaks which expressed disapprobation. There were

some of the beings in the pit with them.

Madge knew they were there, too. She cried out in terror, "Will they

add to our misery?"

But the creatures in the vacuum were pinned to the spots they

occupied, as were Madge and Lambert. From their squeaks it was evident

they suffered, too, and were fellow prisoners of the mortals.

"Probably the cries we make disturb them," said Lambert. "Vibrations

to which we and they are not attuned are torture to the form we are

in. Evidently the inhabitants of this hell world punish offenders by

condemning them to this eternal torture."

"Why--why did they treat us so?"

"Perhaps we jarred upon them, hurt them, because we were not of their

kind exactly," said Lambert. "Perhaps it was just their natural hatred

of us as strangers."

* * * * *

They did not grow used to the terrible eternity of torments. No, if

anything, it grew worse as it went on. Still, they could visualize no

end to the existence to which they were bound. Throbs of awful

intensity rent them, tore them apart myriad times, yet they still felt

as keenly as before and suffered just as much. There was no death for

them, no release from the intangible world in which they were.

Their fellow prisoners squeaked at them, as though imploring them not

to add to the agony by uttering discordant cries. But it was

impossible for Madge to keep quiet, and Lambert shouted in anguish

from time to time.

There seemed to be no end to it.

And yet, after what was eternity to the sufferers, Madge spoke

hopefully.

"Darling John, I--I fear I am really going to die. I am growing

weaker. I can feel the pain very little now. It is all vague, and is

getting less real to me. Good-by, sweetheart, I love you, and I always

will--"

Lambert uttered a strangled cry, "No, no. Don't leave me, Madge."

He clung to her, yet she was becoming extremely intangible to him. She

was melting away from his embrace, and Lambert felt that he, too, was

weaker, even less real than he had been. He hoped that if it was the

end, they would go together.

Desperately, he tried to hold her with him, but he had little ability

to do so. The torture was still racking his consciousness, but was

becoming more dreamlike.

There was a terrific snap, suddenly, and Lambert lost all

consciousness....

* * * * *

"Water, water!"

Lambert, opening his eyes, felt his body writhing about, and

experienced pain that was--mortal. A bluish-green light dazzled his

pupils and made him blink.

Something cut into his flesh, and Lambert rolled about, trying to

escape. He bumped into something, something soft; he clung to this

form, and knew that he was holding on to a human being. Then the light

died out, and in its stead was the yellow, normal glow of the electric

lights. Weak, famished, almost dead of thirst, Lambert looked about

him at the familiar sights of his laboratory. He was lying on the

floor, close by the metal plate, and at his side, unconscious but

still alive to judge by her rising and falling breast, was Madge

Crawford.

Someone bent over him, and pressed a glass of water against his lips.

He drank, watching while a mortal whom Lambert at last realized was

Detective Phillips bathed Madge Crawford's temples with water from a

pitcher and forced a little between her pale, drawn lips.

Lambert tried to rise, but he was weak, and required assistance. He

was dazed, still, and they sat him down in a chair and allowed him to

come to.

He shuddered from time to time, for he still thought he could feel the

torture which he had been undergoing. But he was worried about Madge,

and watched anxiously as Phillips, assisted by another man, worked

over the girl.

At last, Madge stirred and moaned faintly. They lifted her to a bench,

where they gently restored her to full consciousness.

When she could sit up, she at once cried out for Lambert.

The scientist had recovered enough to rise to his feet and stagger

toward her. "Here I am, darling," he said.

"John--we're alive--we're back in the laboratory!"

"Ah, Lambert. Glad to see you." A heavy voice spoke, and Lambert for

the first time noticed the black-clad figure which stood to one side,

near the switchboard, hidden by a large piece of apparatus.

"Dr. Morgan!" cried Lambert.

Althaus Morgan, the renowned physicist, came forward calmly, with

outstretched hand. "So, you realized your great ambition, eh?" he said

curiously. "But where would you be if I had not been able to bring you

back?"

"In Hell--or Hell's Dimension, anyway," said Lambert.

He went to Madge, took her in his arms. "Darling, we are safe. Morgan

has managed to re-materialize us. We will never again be cast into the

void in this way. I shall destroy the apparatus and my notes."

Doherty, who had been out of the room on some errand, came into the

laboratory. He shouted when he saw Lambert standing before him.

"So you got him," he cried. "Where was he hidin'?"

His eyes fell upon Madge Crawford, then, and he exclaimed in

satisfaction. "You found her, eh?"

"No," said Phillips. "They came back. They suddenly appeared out of

nothing, Doherty."

"Don't kid me," growled Doherty. "They were hidin' in a closet

somewhere. Maybe they can fool you guys, but not me."

Lambert spoke to Phillips. "I'm starving to death and I think Miss

Crawford must be, too. Will you tell Felix to bring us some food,

plenty of it?"

One of the sleuths went to the kitchen to give the order. Lambert

turned to Morgan.

"How did you manage to bring us back?" he asked.

* * * * *

Morgan shrugged. "It was all guess work at the last. I at first could

check the apparatus by your notes, and this took some time. You know

you have written me in detail about what you were working on, so when

I was summoned by Detective Phillips, who said you had mentioned my

name to him as the only one who could help, I could make a good

conjecture as to what had occurred. I heard the stories of all

concerned, and realized that you must have dematerialized Miss

Crawford by mistake, and then, unable to bring her back, had followed

her yourself.

"I put on your insulation outfit, and went to work. I have not left

here for a moment, but have snatched an hour or two of sleep from time

to time. Detective Phillips has been very good and helpful.

"Finally, I had everything in shape, but I reversed the apparatus in

vital spots, and tried each combination until suddenly, a few minutes

ago, you were re-materialized. It was a desperate chance, but I was

forced to take it in an endeavor to save you."

Lambert held out his hand to his friend. "I can never thank you

enough," he said gratefully. "You saved us from a horrible fate. But

you speak as though we had been gone a long while. Was it many hours?"

"Hours?" repeated Morgan, his lips parting under his black beard.

"Man, it was eight days! You have been gone since a week ago last

night!"

Lambert turned to Phillips. "I must ask you not to release this story

to the newspapers," he begged.

Phillips smiled and turned up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder.

"Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen

myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget

it. They'd kid me out of the department."

"Aw, they were hidin' in a closet," growled Doherty. "Come on, we've

wasted too much time on this job already. Just a couple of nuts, says

I."

* * * * *

The sleuths, after Phillips had shaken hands with Lambert, left the

laboratory. Morgan, a large man of middle age, joined them in a meal

which Felix served to the three on a folding table brought in for the

purpose. Felix was terribly glad to see Madge and Lambert again, and

manifested his joy by many bobs and leaps as he waited upon them. A

grin spread across his face from ear to ear.

Morgan asked innumerable questions. They described as best they could

what they could recall of the strange dominion in which they had been,

and the physicist listened intently.

"It is some Hell's Dimension, as you call it," he said at last.

"Where it is, or exactly what, I cannot say," said Lambert. "I surely

have no desire to return to that world of hate."

Madge, happy now, smiled at him and he leaned over and kissed her

tenderly.

"We have come from Hell, together," said Lambert, "and now we are in

Heaven!"

* * * * *

[Illustration: Advertisement]

The World Behind the Moon

_By Paul Ernst_

[Illustration: _They fell, for hours, into a deep chasm._]

[Sidenote: Two intrepid Earth-men fight it out with the horrific

monsters of Zeud's frightful jungles.]

Like pitiless jaws, a distant crater opened for their ship.

Helplessly, they hurtled toward it: helplessly, because they were

still in the nothingness of space, with no atmospheric resistance on

which their rudders, or stern or bow tubes, could get a purchase to

steer them.

Professor Dorn Wichter waited anxiously for the slight vibration that

should announce that the projectile-shaped shell had entered the new

planet's atmosphere.

"Have we struck it yet?" asked Joyce, a tall blond young man with the

shoulders of an athlete and the broad brow and square chin of one who

combines dreams with action. He made his way painfully toward

Wichter. It was the first time he had attempted to move since the

shell had passed the neutral point--that belt midway between the moon

and the world behind it, where the pull of gravity of each satellite

was neutralized by the other. They, and all the loose objects in the

shell, had floated uncomfortably about the middle of the chamber for

half an hour or so, gradually settling down again; until now it was

possible, with care, to walk.

"Have we struck it?" he repeated, leaning over the professor's

shoulder and staring at the resistance gauge.

"No." Absently Wichter took off his spectacles and polished them.

"There's not a trace of resistance yet."

They gazed out the bow window toward the vast disc, like a serrated,

pock-marked plate of blue ice, that was the planet Zeud--discovered

and named by them. The same thought was in the mind of each. Suppose

there were no atmosphere surrounding Zeud to cushion their descent

into the hundred-mile crater that yawned to receive them?

"Well," said Joyce after a time, "we're taking no more of a chance

here than we did when we pointed our nose toward the moon. We were

almost sure that was no atmosphere there--which meant we'd nose dive

into the rocks at five thousand miles an hour. On Zeud there might be

anything." His eyes shone. "How wonderful that there should be such a

planet, unsuspected during all the centuries men have been studying

the heavens!"

Wichter nodded agreement. It was indeed wonderful. But what was more

wonderful was its present discovery: for that would never have

transpired had not he and Joyce succeeded in their attempt to fly to

the moon. From there, after following the sun in its slow journey

around to the lost side of the lunar globe--that face which the earth

has never yet observed--they had seen shining in the near distance

the great ball which they had christened Zeud.

* * * * *

Astronomical calculations had soon described the mysterious hidden

satellite. It was almost a twin to the moon; a very little smaller,

and less than eighty thousand miles away. Its rotation was nearly

similar, which made its days not quite sixteen of our earthly days. It

was of approximately the weight, per cubic mile, of Earth. And there

it whirled, directly in a line with the earth and the moon, moving as

the moon moved so that it was ever out of sight beyond it, as a dime

would be out of sight if placed in a direct line behind a penny.

Zeud, the new satellite, the world beyond the moon! In their

excitement at its discovery, Joyce and Wichter had left the

moon--which they had found to be as dead and cold as it had been

surmised to be--and returned summarily to Earth. They had replenished

their supplies and their oxygen tanks, and had come back--to circle

around the moon and point the sharp prow of the shell toward Zeud. The

gift of the moon to Earth was a dubious one; but the gift of a

possibly living planet-colony to mankind might be the solution of the

overcrowded conditions of the terrestial sphere!

"Speed, three thousand miles an hour," computed Wichter. "Distance to

Zeud, nine hundred and eighty miles. If we don't strike a few atoms of

hydrogen or something soon we're going to drill this nearest crater a

little deeper!"

Joyce nodded grimly. At two thousand miles from Earth there had still

been enough hydrogen traces in the ether to give purchase to the

explosions of their water-motor. At six hundred miles from the moon

they had run into a sparse gaseous belt that had enabled them to

change direction and slow their speed. They had hoped to find hydrogen

at a thousand or twelve hundred miles from Zeud.

"Eight hundred and thirty miles," commented Wichter, his slender,

bent body tensed. "Eight hundred miles--ah!"

A thrumming sound came to their ears as the shell quivered,

imperceptibly almost, but unmistakeably, at the touch of some faint

resistance outside in space.

"We've struck it, Joyce. And it's much denser than the moon's, even as

we'd hoped. There'll be life on Zeud, my boy, unless I'm vastly

mistaken. You'd better look to the motor now."

* * * * *

Joyce went to the water-motor. This was a curious, but extremely

simple affair. There was a glass box, ribbed with polished steel,

about the size and shape of a cigar box, which was full of water.

Leading away from this, to the bow and stern of the shell, were two

small pipes. The pipes were greatly thickened for a period of three

feet or so, directly under the little tank, and were braced by

bed-plates so heavy as to look all out of proportion. Around the

thickened parts of the pipes were coils of heavy, insulated copper

wire. There were no valves nor cylinders, no revolving parts: that was

all there was to the "motor."

Joyce didn't yet understand the device. The water dripped from the

tank, drop by drop, to be abruptly disintegrated, made into an

explosive, by being subjected to a powerful magnetic field induced in

the coils by a generator in the bow of the shell. As each drop of

water passed into the pipes, and was instantaneously broken up, there

was a violent but controlled explosion--and the shell was kicked

another hundred miles ahead on its journey. That was all Joyce knew

about it.

He threw the bow switch. There was a soft shock as the motor exhausted

through the forward tube, slowing their speed.

"Turn on the outside generator propellers," ordered Wichter. "I think

our batteries are getting low."

Joyce slipped the tiny, slim-bladed propellers into gear. They began

to turn, slowly at first in the almost non-existent atmosphere.

"Four hundred miles," announced Wichter. "How's the temperature?"

Joyce stepped to the thermometer that registered the heat of the outer

wall. "Nine hundred degrees," he said.

"Cut down to a thousand miles an hour," commanded Wichter. "Five

hundred as soon as the motor will catch that much. I'll keep our

course straight toward this crater. It's in wells like that, that

we'll find livable air--if we're right in believing there is such a

thing on Zeud."

* * * * *

Joyce glanced at the thermometer. It still registered hundreds of

degrees, though their speed had been materially reduced.

"I guess there's livable air, all right," he said. "It's pretty thick

outside already."

The professor smiled. "Another theory vindicated. I was sure that

Zeud, swinging on the outside of the Earth-moon-Zeud chain and hence

traveling at a faster rate, would pick up most of the moon's

atmosphere over a period of millions of years. Also it must have been

shielded by the moon, to some extent, against the constant small

atmospheric leakage most celestial globes are subject to. Just the

same, when we land, we'll test conditions with a rat or two."

At a signal from him, Joyce checked their speed to four hundred miles

an hour, then to two hundred, and then, as they descended below the

highest rim of the circular cliffs of the crater, almost to a full

stop. They floated toward the surface of Zeud, watching with

breathless interest the panorama that unfolded beneath them.

They were nosing toward a spot that was being favored with the Zeudian

sunrise. Sharp and clear the light rays slanted down, illuminating

about half the crater's floor and leaving the cliff protected half in

dim shadow.

The illuminated part of the giant pit was as bizarre as the landscape

of a nightmare. There were purplish trees, immense beyond belief.

There were broad, smooth pools of inky black fluid that was oily and

troubled in spots as though disturbed by some moving things under the

surface. There were bare, rocky patches where the stones, the long

drippings of ancient lava flow, were spread like bleaching gray

skeletons of monsters. And over all, rising from pools and bare ground

and jungle alike, was a thin, miasmic mist.

* * * * *

Sustained by the slow, steady exhaust of the motor, rising a little

with each partly muffled explosion and sinking a little further in

each interval, they settled toward a bare, lava strewn spot that

appealed to Wichter as being a good landing place. With a last hiss,

and a grinding jar, they grounded. Joyce opened the switch to cut off

the generator.

"Now let's see what the air's like," said Wichter, lifting down a

small cage in which was penned an active rat.

He opened a double panel in the shell's hull, and freed the little

animal. In an agony of suspense they watched it as it leaped onto the

bare lava and halted a moment....

"Seems to like it," said Joyce, drawing a great breath.

The rat, as though intoxicated by its sudden freedom, raced away out

of sight, covering eight or ten feet at a bound, its legs scurrying

ludicrously in empty air during its short flights.

"That means that we can dispense with oxygen helmets--and that we'd

better take our guns," said Wichter, his voice tense, his eyes

snapping behind his glasses.

He stepped to the gun rack. In this were half a dozen air-guns. Long

and of very small bore, they discharged a tiny steel shell in which

was a liquid of his invention that, about a second after the heat of

its forced passage through the rifle barrel, expanded instantly in

gaseous form to millions of times its liquid bulk. It was the most

powerful explosive yet found, but one that was beautifully safe to

carry inasmuch as it could be exploded only by heat.

"Are we ready?" he said, handing a gun to Joyce. "Then--let's go!"

* * * * *

But for a breath or two they hesitated before opening the heavy double

door in the side of the hull, savoring to the full the immensity of

the moment.

The rapture of the explorer who is the first to set foot on a vast new

continent was theirs, magnified a hundredfold. For they were the first

to set foot on a vast new planet! An entire new world, containing

heaven alone knew what forms of life, what monstrous or infinitesimal

creatures, lay before them. Even the profound awe they had experienced

when landing on the moon was dwarfed by the solemnity of this

occasion; just as it is less soul stirring to discover an arctic

continent which is perpetually cased in barren ice, than to discover a

continent which is warmly fruitful and, probably, teeming with life.

Still wordless, too stirred to speak, they opened the vault-like door

and stepped out--into a humid heat which was like that of their own

tropical regions, but not so unendurable.

In their short stay on the moon, during which they had taken several

walks in their insulated suits, they had become somewhat accustomed to

the decreased weight of their bodies due to the lesser gravity, so

that here, where their weight was even less, they did not make any

blunders of stepping twenty feet instead of a yard.

Walking warily, glancing alertly in all directions to guard against

any strange animals that might rush out to destroy them, they moved

toward the nearest stretch of jungle.

* * * * *

The first thing that arrested their attention was the size of the

trees they were approaching. They had got some idea of their hugeness

from the shell, but viewed from ground level they loomed even larger.

Eight hundred, a thousand feet they reared their mighty tops, with

trunks hundreds of feet in circumference; living pyramids whose bases

wove together to make an impenetrable ceiling over the jungle floor.

The leaves were thick and bloated like cactus growths, and their color

was a pronounced lavender.

"We must take back several of those leaves," said Wichter, his

scientific soul filled with cold excitement.

"I wish we could take back some of this air, too." Joyce filled his

lungs to capacity. "Isn't it great? Like wine! It almost counteracts

the effects of the heat."

"There's more oxygen in it than in our own," surmised Wichter. "My

God! What's that!"

They halted for an instant. From the depths of the lavender jungle had

come an ear shattering, screaming hiss, as though some monstrous

serpent were in its death agony.

They waited to hear if the noise would be repeated. It wasn't.

Dubiously they started on again.

"We'd better not go in there too far," said Joyce. "If we didn't come

out again it would cost Earth a new planet. No one else knows the

secret of your water-motor."

"Oh, nothing living can stand against these guns of ours," replied

Wichter confidently. "And that noise might not have been caused by

anything living. It might have been steam escaping from some volcanic

crevice."

They started cautiously down a well defined, hard packed trail through

thorny lavender underbrush. As they went, Joyce blazed marks on

various tree trunks marking the direction back to the shell. The tough

fibres exuded a bluish liquid from the cuts that bubbled slowly like

blood.

* * * * *

To the right and left of them were cup-shaped bushes that looked like

traps; and that their looks were not deceiving was proved by a

muffled, bleating cry that rose from the compressed leaves of one of

them they passed. Sluggish, blind crawling things like three-foot

slugs flowed across their path and among the tree trunks, leaving

viscous trails of slime behind them. And there were larger things....

"Careful," said Wichter suddenly, coming to a halt and peering into

the gloom at their right.

"What did you see?" whispered Joyce.

Wichter shook his head. The gigantic, two-legged, purplish figure he

had dimly made out in the steamy dark, had moved away. "I don't know.

It looked a little like a giant ape."

They halted and took stock of their situation, mechanically wiping

perspiration from their streaming faces, and pondering as to whether

or not they should turn back. Joyce, who was far from being a coward,

thought they should.

"In this undergrowth," he pointed out, "we might be rushed before we

could even fire our guns. And we're nearly a mile from the shell."

But Wichter was like an eager child.

"We'll press on just a little," he urged. "To that clear spot in front

of us." He pointed along the trail to where sunlight was blazing down

through an opening in the trees. "As soon as we see what's there,

we'll go back."

With a shrug, Joyce followed the eager little man down the weird trail

under the lavender trees. In a few moments they had reached the

clearing which was Wichter's goal. They halted on its edge, gazing at

it with awe and repulsion.

* * * * *

It was a circular quagmire of festering black mud about a hundred

yards across. Near at hand they could see the mud heaving, very

slowly, as though abysmal forms of life were tunneling along just

under the surface. They glanced toward the center of the bog, which

was occupied by one of the smooth black pools, and cried aloud at

what they saw.

At the brink of the pool was lying a gigantic creature like a great,

thick snake--a snake with a lizard's head, and a series of

many-jointed, scaled legs running down its powerful length. Its mouth

was gaping open to reveal hundreds of needle-sharp, backward pointing

teeth. Its legs and thick, stubbed tail were threshing feebly in the

mud as though it were in distress; and its eyes, so small as to be

invisible in its repulsive head, were glazed and dull.

"Was that what we heard back a ways?" wondered Joyce.

"Probably," said Wichter. His eyes shone as he gazed at the nightmare

shape. Impulsively he took a step toward the stirring mud.

"Don't be entirely insane," snapped Joyce, catching his arm.

"I must see it closer," said Wichter, tugging to be free.

"Then we'll climb a tree and look down on it. We'll probably be safer

up off the ground anyway."

* * * * *

They ascended the nearest jungle giant--whose rubbery bark was so

ringed and scored as to be as easy to climb as a staircase--to the

first great bough, about fifty feet from the ground, and edged out

till they hung over the rim of the quagmire. From there, with the aid

of their binoculars, they expected to see the dying monster in every

detail. But when they looked toward the pool it was not in sight!

"Were we seeing things?" exclaimed Wichter, rubbing his glasses. "I'd

have sworn it was lying there!"

"It was," said Joyce grimly. "Look at the pool. That'll tell you where

it went."

The black, secretive surface was bubbling and waving as though, down

in its depths, a terrific fight were taking place.

"Something came up and dragged our ten-legged lizard down to its den.

Then that something's brothers got onto the fact that a feast was

being held, and rushed in. That pool would be no place for a

before-breakfast dip!"

* * * * *

Wichter started to say something in reply, then gazed, hypnotized, at

the opposite wall of the jungle.

From the dense screen of lavender foliage stretched a glistening,

scale-armored neck, as thick as a man's body at its thinnest point,

which was just behind a tremendous-jawed crocodilian head. It tapered

back for a distance of at least thirty feet, to merge into a body as

big as that of a terrestial whale, that was supported by four squat,

ponderous legs.

Moving with surprising rapidity, the enormous thing slid into the mud

and began ploughing a way, belly deep, toward the pool. Shapeless,

slow-writhing forms were cast up in its wake, to quiver for a moment

in the sunlight and then melt below the mud again.

One of the bloated, formless mud-crawlers was snapped up in the huge

jaws with an abrupt plunge of the long neck, and the monster began to

feed, hog-like, slobbering over the loathsome carcass.

Wichter shook his head, half in fanatical eagerness, half in despair.

"I'd like to stay and see more," he said with a sigh, "but if that's

the kind of creatures we're apt to encounter in the Zeudian jungle,

we'd better be going at once--"

"Sh-h!" snapped Joyce. Then, in a barely audible whisper: "I think the

thing heard your voice!"

The monster had abruptly ceased its feeding. Its head, thrust high in

the air, was waving inquisitively from side to side. Suddenly it

expelled the air from its vast lungs in a roaring cough--and started

directly for their tree.

"Shoot!" cried Wichter, raising his gun.

* * * * *

Moving with the speed of an express train, the monster had almost got

to their overhanging branch before they could pull the triggers. Both

shells imbedded themselves in the enormous chest, just as the long

neck reached up for them. And at once things began to happen with

cataclysmic rapidity.

Almost with their impact the shells exploded. The monster stopped,

with a great hole torn in its body. Then, dying on its feet, it thrust

its great head up and its huge jaws crunched over the branch to which

its two puny destroyers were clinging.

With all its dozens of tons of weight, it jerked in a gargantuan death

agony. The tree, enormous as it was, shook with it, and the branch

itself was tossed as though in a hurricane.

There was a splintering sound. Wichter and Joyce dropped their guns to

cling more tightly to the bole of the drooping branch that was their

only security. The guns glanced off the mountainous body--and, with a

last convulsion of the mighty legs, were swept underneath!

The monster was still at last, its insensate jaws yet gripping the

bough. The two men looked at each other in speechless consternation.

The shell a mile off through the dreadful jungle.... Themselves,

helpless without their guns....

"Well," said Joyce at last. "I guess we'd better be on our way.

Waiting here, thinking it over, won't help any. Lucky there's no

night, for a couple of weeks at least, to come stealing down on us."

* * * * *

He started down the great trunk, with Wichter following close behind.

Walking as rapidly as they could, they hurried back along the tunneled

trail toward their shell.

They hadn't covered a hundred yards when they heard a mighty crashing

of underbrush behind them. Glancing back, they saw tooth-studded jaws

gaping cavernously at the end of a thirty-foot neck--little,

dead-looking eyes glaring at them--a hundred-foot body smashing its

way over the trap-bushes and through tangles of vines and

down-drooping branches.

"The mate to the thing we killed back there!" Joyce panted. "Run, for

God's sake!"

Wichter needed no urging. He hadn't an ounce of fear in his spare,

small body. But he had an overwhelming desire to get back to Earth and

deliver his message. He was trembling as he raced after Joyce, thirty

feet to a bound, ducking his head to avoid hitting the thick lavender

foliage that roofed the trail.

"One of us must get through!" he panted over and over. "One of us must

make it!"

It was speedily apparent that they could never outrun their pursuer.

The reaching jaws were only a few yards behind them now.

"You go," called Joyce, sobbing for breath. He slowed his pace

deliberately.

"No--you--" Wichter slowed too. In a frenzy, Joyce shoved him along

the trail.

"I tell you--"

He got no further. In front of them, where there had appeared to be

solid ground, they suddenly saw a yawning pit. Desperately, they tried

to veer aside, but they were too close. Their last long birdlike leap

carried them over the edge. They fell, far down, into a deep chasm,

splashing into a shallow pool of water.

A few clods of earth cascaded after them as the monster above dug its

great splay feet into the ground and checked its rush in time to keep

from falling after them. Then the top of the pit slowly darkened as a

covering of some sort slid across it. They were in a prison as

profoundly quiet and utterly black as a tomb.

* * * * *

"Dorn," shouted Joyce. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," came a voice in the near darkness. "And you?"

"I'm still in one piece as far as I can feel." There was a splashing

noise. He waded toward it and in a moment his outstretched hand

touched the professor's shoulder.

"This is a fine mess," he observed shakily. "We got away from those

tooth-lined jaws, all right, but I'm wondering if we're much better

off than we would have been if we hadn't escaped."

"I'm wondering the same thing." Wichter's voice was strained. "Did you

see the way the top of the pit closed above us? That means we're in a

trap. And a most ingenious trap it is, too! The roof of it is

camouflaged until it looks exactly like the rest of the trail floor.

The water in here is just shallow enough to let large animals break

their necks when they fall in and just deep enough to preserve small

animals--like ourselves--alive. We're in the hands of some sort of

reasoning, intelligent beings, Joyce!"

"In that case," said Joyce with a shudder, "we'd better do our best to

get out of here!"

But this was found to be impossible. They couldn't climb up out of the

pit, and nowhere could they feel any openings in the walls. Only

smooth, impenetrable stone met their questing fingers.

"It looks as though we're in to stay," said Joyce finally. "At least

until our Zeudian hosts, whatever kind of creatures they may be, come

and take us out. What'll we do then? Sail in and die fighting? Or go

peaceably along with them--assuming we aren't killed at once--on the

chance that we can make a break later?"

"I'd advise the latter," answered Wichter. "There is a small animal on

our own planet whose example might be a good one for us to follow.

That's the 'possum." He stopped abruptly, and gripped Joyce's arm.

From the opposite side of the pit came a grating sound. A crack of

greenish light appeared, low down near the water. This widened jerkily

as though a door were being hoisted by some sort of pulley

arrangement. The walls of the pit began to glow faintly with

reflected light.

"Down," breathed Wichter.

* * * * *

Noiselessly they let themselves sink into the water until they were

floating, eyes closed and motionless, on the surface. Playing dead to

the best of their ability, they waited for what might happen next.

They heard a splashing near the open rock door. The splashing neared them,

and high-pitched hissing syllables came to their ears--variegated sounds

that resembled excited conversation in some unknown language.

Joyce felt himself touched by something, and it was all he could do to

keep from shouting aloud and springing to his feet at the contact.

He'd had no idea, of course, what might be the nature of their

captors, but he had imagined them as man-like, to some extent at

least. And the touch of his hand, or flipper, or whatever it was,

indicated that they were not!

They were cold-blooded, reptilian things, for the flesh that had

touched him was cold; as clammy and repulsive as the belly of a dead

fish. So repulsive was that flesh that, when he presently felt himself

lifted high up and roughly carried, he shuddered in spite of himself

at the contact.

Instantly the thing that bore him stopped. Joyce held his breath. He

felt an excruciating, stabbing pain in his arm, after which the

journey through the water was resumed. Stubbornly he kept up his

pretence of lifelessness.

The splashing ceased, and he heard flat wet feet slapping along on dry

rock, indicating that they had emerged from the pit. Then he sank into

real unconsciousness.

The next thing he knew was that he was lying on smooth, bare rock in a

perfect bedlam of noises. Howls and grunts, snuffling coughs and

snarls beat at his ear-drums. It was as though he had fallen into a

vast cage in which were hundreds of savage, excited animals--animals,

however, that in spite of their excitement and ferocity were

surprisingly motionless, for he heard no scraping of claws, or padding

of feet.

Cautiously he opened his eyes....

* * * * *

He was in a large cave, the walls of which were glowing with greenish,

phosphorescent light. Strewn about the floor were seemingly dead

carcasses of animals. And what carcasses there were! Blubber-coated

things that looked like giant tadpoles, gazelle-like creatures with a

single, long slim horn growing from delicate small skulls, four-legged

beasts and six-legged ones, animals with furry hides and crawlers with

scaled coverings--several hundred assorted specimens of the smaller

life of Zeud lay stretched out in seeming lifelessness.

But they were not dead, these bizarre beasts of another world. They

lived, and were animated with the frenzied fear of trapped things.

Joyce could see the tortured heaving of their furred and scaled sides

as they panted with terror. And from their throats issued the

outlandish noises he had heard. They were alive enough--only they

seemed unable to move!

There was nothing in his range of vision that might conceivably be the

beings that had captured them, so Joyce started to lift his head and

look around at the rest of the cavern. He found that he could not

move. He tried again, and his body was as unresponsive as a log. In

fact, he couldn't feel his body at all! In growing terror, he

concentrated all his will on moving his arm. It was as limp as a rag.

He relaxed, momentarily in the grip of stark, blind panic. He was as

helpless as the howling things around him! He was numbed, completely

paralyzed into immobility!

The professor's voice--a weak, uncertain voice--sounded from behind

him. "Joyce! Joyce!"

He found that he could talk, that the paralysis that gripped the rest

of his muscles had not extended to the vocal cords. "Dorn! Thank God

you're alive! I couldn't see you, and I thought--"

"I'm alive, but that's about all," said Wichter. "I--I can't move."

"Neither can I. We've been drugged in some manner--just as all the

other animals in here have been drugged. I must have got my dose in

the pit. I was cut, or stabbed, in the arm."

* * * * *

Joyce stopped talking as he suddenly heard steps, like human footsteps

yet weirdly different--flap-flapping sounds as though awkward flippers

were slapping along the rock floor toward them. The steps stopped

within a few feet of them; then, after what seemed hours, they sounded

again, this time in front of him.

He opened his eyes, cautiously, barely moving his eyelids, and saw at

last, in every hideous detail, one of the super-beasts that had

captured Wichter and himself.

It was a horrible cartoon of a man, the thing that stood there in the

greenish glow of the cave. Nine or ten feet high, it loomed; hairless,

with a faintly iridescent, purplish hide. A thick, cylindrical trunk

sloped into a neck only a little smaller than the body itself. Set on

this was a bony, ugly head that was split clear across by lipless

jaws. There was no nose, only slanted holes like the nostrils of an

animal; and over these were set pale, expressionless, pupil-less eyes.

The arms were short and thick and ended in bifurcated lumps of flesh

like swollen hands encased in old-fashioned mittens. The legs were

also grotesquely short, and the feet mere shapeless flaps.

It was standing near one of the smaller animals, apparently regarding

it closely. Observing it himself, Joyce saw that it was moving a

little. As though coming out of a coma, it was raising its bizarre

head and trying to get on its feet.

Leisurely the two-legged monster bent over it. Two long fangs gleamed

in the lipless mouth. These were buried in the neck of the reviving

beast--and instantly it sank back into immobility.

Having reduced it to helplessness--the monster ate it! The lipless

jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the

animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute

it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows a

monkey.

* * * * *

Joyce closed his eyes, feeling weak and nauseated. He didn't open them

again till long after he had heard the last of the awkward, flapping

footsteps.

"Could you see it?" asked Wichter, who was lying so closely behind him

that he couldn't observe the monstrous Zeudian. "What did it do? What

was it like?"

Joyce told him of the way the creature had fed. "We are evidently in

their provision room," he concluded. "They keep some of their food

alive, it seems.... Well, it's a quick death."

"Tell me more about the way the other animal moved, just before it was

eaten."

"There isn't much to tell," said Joyce wearily. "It didn't move long

after those fangs were sunk into it."

"But don't you see!" There was sudden hope in Wichter's voice. "That

means that the effect of the poison, which is apparently injected by

those fangs, wears off after a time. And in that case--"

"In that case," Joyce interjected, "we'd have only an unknown army of

ten-foot Zeudians, the problem of finding a way to the surface of the

ground again, and the lack of any kind of weapons, to keep us from

escaping!"

"We're not quite weaponless, though," the professor whispered back.

"Over in a corner there's a pile of the long, slender horns that

sprout from the heads of some of these creatures. Evidently the

Zeudians cut them out, or break them off before eating that

particular type of animal. They'd be as good as lances, if we could

get hold of them."

* * * * *

Joyce said nothing, but hope began to beat in his own breast. He had

noticed a significant happening during the age-long hours in the

commissary cave. Most of the Zeudians had entered from the direction

of the pit. But one had come in through an opening in the opposite

side. And this one had blinked pale eyes as though dazzled from bright

sunlight--and was bearing some large, woody looking tubers that seemed

to have been freshly uprooted! There was a good chance, thought Joyce,

that that opening led to a tunnel up to the world above!

He drew a deep breath--and felt a dim pain in his back, caused by the

cramping position in which he had lain for so long.

He could have shouted aloud with the thrill of that discovery. This

was the first time he had felt his body at all! Did it mean that the

effect of the poison was wearing off--that it wasn't as lastingly

paralyzing to his earthly nerve centers as to those of Zeudian

creatures around them? He flexed the muscles of his leg. The leg moved

a fraction of an inch.

"Dorn!" he called softly, "I can move a little! Can you?"

"Yes," Wichter answered, "I've been able to wriggle my fingers for

several minutes. I think I could walk in an hour or two."

"Then pray for that hour or two. It might mean our escape!" Joyce told

him of the seldom used entrance that he thought led to the open air.

"I'm sure it goes to the surface, Dorn. Those woody looking tubers had

been freshly picked."

* * * * *

Three of the two-legged monsters came in just then. They relapsed into

lifeless silence. There was a horrible moment as the three paused over

them longer than any of the others had. Was it obvious that the

effects of the numbing poison was wearing off? Would they be bitten

again--or eaten?

The Zeudians finally moved on, hissing and clicking to each other.

Eventually the cold-blooded things fed, and dragged lethargically out

of the cave in the direction of the pit.

With every passing minute Joyce could feel life pouring back into his

numbed body. His cramped muscles were in agony now--a pain that gave

him fierce pleasure. At last, risking observation, he lifted his head

and then struggled to a sitting position and looked around.

No Zeudian was in sight. Evidently they were too sure of their poison

glands to post a guard over them. He listened intently, and could hear

no dragging footsteps. He turned to Wichter, who had followed his

example and was sitting up, feebly rubbing his body to restore

circulation.

"Now's our chance," he whispered. "Stand up and walk a little to

steady your legs, while I go over and get us a couple of those sharp

horns. Then we'll see where that entrance of mine goes!"

He walked to the pile of bones and horns in the corner and selected

two of the longest and slimmest of the ivory-like things. Just as he

had rejoined Wichter he heard the sound with which he was now so

grimly familiar--flapping, awkward footsteps. Wildly he signaled the

professor. They dropped in their tracks, just as the approaching

monster stumped into the cave.

* * * * *

For an instant he dared hope that their movement had gone unobserved,

but his hope was rudely shattered. He heard a sharp hiss: heard the

Zeudian flap toward them at double-quick time. Abandoning all

pretense, he sprang to his feet just as the thing reached him, its

fangs gleaming wickedly in the greenish light.

He leaped to the side, going twenty feet or more with the press of his

Earth muscles against the reduced gravity. The creature rushed on

toward the professor. That game little man crouched and awaited its

onslaught. But Joyce had sprung back again before the two could clash.

He raised the long horn and plunged it into the smooth, purplish back.

Again and again he drove it home, as the monster writhed under him. It

had enormous vitality. Gashed and dripping, it yet struggled on,

attempting to encircle Joyce with its stubby arms. Once it succeeded,

and he felt his ribs crack as it contracted its powerful body. But a

final stroke finished the savage fight. He got up and, with an

incoherent cry to Wichter, raced toward the opening on which they

pinned their hopes of reaching the upper air.

Hissing cries and the thudding of many feet came to them just as they

reached the arched mouth of the passage. But the cries, and the

constant pandemonium of the paralysed animals died behind them as they

bounded along the tunnel.

* * * * *

They emerged at last into the sunlight they had never expected to see

again, beside one of the great lavender trees. They paused an instant

to try to get their bearings.

"This way," panted Joyce as he saw, on a hard-packed path ahead of

them, one of the trail-marks he had blazed.

Down the trail they raced, toward their space shell. Fortunately they

met none of the tremendous animals that infested the jungles; and

their journey to the clearing in which the shell was lying was

accomplished without accident.

"We're safe now," gasped Wichter, as they came in sight of the bare

lava patch. "We can outrun them five feet to their one!"

They burst into the clearing--and halted abruptly. Surrounding the

shell, stumping curiously about it and touching it with their

shapeless hands, were dozens of the Zeudians.

"My God!" groaned Joyce. "There must be at least a hundred of them!

We're lost for certain now!"

They stared with hopeless longing at the vehicle that, if only they

could reach it, could carry them back to Earth. Then they turned to

each other and clasped hands, without a word. The same thought was in

the mind of each--to rush at the swarming monsters and fight till they

were killed. There was absolutely no chance of winning through to the

shell, but it was infinitely better to die fighting than be swallowed

alive.

* * * * *

So engrossed were the Zeudians by the strange thing that had fallen

into their province, that Joyce and Wichter got within a hundred feet

of them before they turned their pale eyes in their direction. Then,

baring their fangs, they streamed toward the Earth men, just as the

pursuing Zeudians entered the clearing from the jungle trail.

The two prepared to die as effectively as possible. Each grasped his

lace-like horn tightly. The professor mechanically adjusted his

glasses more firmly on his nose....

With his move, the narrowing circle of Zeudians halted. A violent

clamor broke out among them. They glared at the two, but made no

further step toward them.

"What in the world--" began Wichter bewilderedly.

"Your glasses!" Joyce shouted, gripping his shoulder. "When you moved

them, they all stopped! They must be afraid of them, somehow. Take

them clear off and see what happens."

Wichter removed his spectacles, and swung them in his hand, peering

near-sightedly at the crowding Zeudians.

Their reaction to his simple move was remarkable! Hisses of

consternation came from their lipless mouths. They faced each other

uneasily, waving their stubby arms and covering their own eyes as

though suddenly afraid they would lose them.

Taking advantage of their indecision, Joyce and Wichter walked boldly

toward them. They moved aside, forming a reluctant lane. Some of the

Zeudians in the rear shoved to close in on them, but the ones in front

held them back. It wasn't until the two were nearly through that the

lane began to straggle into a threatening circle around them again.

The Zeudians were evidently becoming reassured by the fact that

Wichter continued to see all right in spite of the little strange

creature's alarming act of removing his eyes.

"Do it again," breathed Joyce, perspiration beading his forehead as

the giants moved closed, their fangs tentatively bared for the numbing

poison stroke.

* * * * *

Wichter popped his glasses on, then jerked them off with a cry, as

though he were suffering intensely. Once more the Zeudians faltered

and drew back, feeling at their own eyes.

"Run!" cried Joyce. And they raced for the haven of the shell.

The Zeudians swarmed after them, snarling and hissing. Barely ahead of

the nearest, Joyce and Wichter dove into the open panel. They slammed

it closed just as a powerful, stubby arm reached after them. There was

a screaming hiss, and a cold, cartilagenous lump of flesh dropped to

the floor of the shell--half the monster's hand, sheared off between

the sharp edge of the door and the metal hull.

Joyce threw in the generator switch. With a soft roar the water-motor

exploded into action, sending the shell far into the sky.

"When we return," said Joyce, adding a final thousand miles an hour to

their speed before they should fly free of the atmosphere of Zeud, "I

think we'd better come at the head of an army, equipped with air-guns

and explosive bombs."

"And with glasses," added the professor, taking off his spectacles and

gazing at them as though seeing them for the first time.

Four Miles Within

A COMPLETE NOVELETTE

_By Anthony Gilmore_

CHAPTER I

_The Monster of Metal_

[Illustration: The man hurled the empty gun at the monster.]

[Sidenote: Far down into the earth goes a gleaming metal sphere whose

passengers are deadly enemies.]

A strange spherical monster stood in the moonlight on the silent

Mojave Desert. In the ghostly gray of the sand and sage and joshua

trees its metal hide glimmered dully--an amazing object to be found on

that lonely spot. But there was only pride and anticipation in the

eyes of the three people who stood a little way off, looking at it.

For they had constructed the strange sphere, and were soon going to

entrust their lives to it.

"Professor," said one of them, a young man with a cheerful face and a

likable grin, "let's go down now! There's no use waiting till

to-morrow. It's always dark down there, whether it's day or night up

here. Everything is ready."

The white-haired Professor David Guinness smiled tolerantly at the

speaker, his partner, Phil Holmes. "I'm kind of eager to be off,

myself," he admitted. He turned to the third person in the little

group, a dark-haired girl. "What do you say, Sue?"

"Oh, let's, Father!" came the quick reply. "We'd never be able to

sleep to-night, anyway. As Phil says, everything is ready."

"Well, I guess that settles it," Professor Guinness said to the eager

young man.

Phil Holmes' face went aglow with anticipation. "Good!" he cried.

"Good! I'll skip over and get some water. It's barely possible that

it'll be hot down there, in spite of your eloquent logic to the

contrary!" And with the words he caught up a large jug standing

nearby, waved his hand, said: "I'll be right back!" and set out for

the water-hole, situated nearly a mile away from their little camp.

The heavy hush of the desert night settled down once more after he

left.

* * * * *

As his figure merged with the shadows in the distance, the elderly

scientist murmured aloud to his daughter:

"You know, it's good to realize that my dream is about to become a

reality. If it hadn't been for Phil.... Or no--I really ought to thank

you, Sue. You're the one responsible for his participation!" And he

smiled fondly at the slender girl by his side.

"Phil joined us just for the scientific interest, and for the thrill

of going four miles down into the earth," she retorted at once, in

spite of the blush her father saw on her face. But he did not insist.

Once more he turned, as to a magnet, to the machine that was his

handiwork.

The fifteen-foot sphere was an earth-borer--Guinness's own invention.

In it he had utilized for the first time for boring purposes the newly

developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the

sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray--most of them on the

bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the

outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to

rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A

small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior,

where, in spite of the space taken up by batteries and mechanisms and

an enclosed gyroscope for keeping the borer on an even keel, there was

room for several people.

The earth-borer had been designed not so much for scientific

investigation as the specific purpose of reaching a rich store of

radium ore buried four miles below the Guinness desert camp. Many

geologists and mining engineers knew that the radium was there, for

their instruments had proven it often; but no one up to then knew how

to get to it. David Guinness did--first. The borer had been

constructed in his laboratory in San Francisco, then dismantled and

freighted to the little desert town of Palmdale, from whence Holmes

had brought the parts to their isolated camp by truck. Strict secrecy

had been kept. Rather than risk assistants they had done all the work

themselves.

* * * * *

Fifteen minutes passed by, while the slight figure of the inventor

puttered about the interior of the sphere, brightly lit by a

detachable searchlight, inspecting all mechanisms in preparation for

their descent. Sue stood by the door watching him, now and then

turning to scan the desert for the returning Phil.

It was then, startlingly sudden, that there cracked through the velvet

night the faint, distant sound of a gun. And it came from the

direction of the water-hole.

Sue's face went white, and she trembled. Without a word her father

stepped out of the borer and looked at her.

"That was a gun!" he said. "Phil didn't have one with him, did he?"

"No," Sue whispered. "And--why, there's nobody within miles of here!"

The two looked at each other with alarm and wonder. Then, from one of

the broken patches of scrub that ringed the space in which the borer

stood, came a mocking voice.

"Ah, you're mistaken, Sue," it affirmed. "But that was a gun."

David Guinness jerked around, as did his daughter. The man who had

spoken stood only ten yards away, clearly outlined in the bright

moonlight--a tall, well-built man, standing quite at ease, surveying

them pleasantly. His smile did not change when old Guinness cried:

"Quade! James Quade!"

The man nodded and came slowly forward. He might have been considered

handsome, had it not been for his thin, mocking lips and a swarthy

complexion.

"What are you doing here?" demanded Guinness angrily. "And what do you

mean--'it was a gun?' Have you--"

"Easy, easy--one thing at a time," said Quade, still smiling. "About

the gun--well, your young friend Holmes said, he'd be right back, but

I--I'm afraid he won't be."

* * * * *

Sue Guinness's lips formed a frightened word:

"Why?"

Quade made a short movement with his left hand, as is brushing the

query aside. "Let's talk about something more pleasant," he said, and

looked back at the professor. "The radium, and your borer, for

instance. I hear you're all ready to go down."

David Guinness gasped. "How did you know--?" he began, but a surge of

anger choked him, and his fists clenched. He stepped forward. But

something came to life in James Quade's right hand and pointed

menacingly at him. It was the stubby black shape of an automatic.

"Keep back, you old fool!" Quade said harshly. "I don't want to have

to shoot you!"

Unwillingly, Guinness came to a stop. "What have you done with young

Holmes?" he demanded.

"Never mind about him now," said Quade, smiling again. "Perhaps I'll

explain later. At the moment there's something much more interesting

to do. Possibly you'll be surprised to hear it, but we're all going to

take a little ride in this machine of yours, Professor. Down. About

four miles. I'll have to ask you to do the driving. You will, won't

you--without making a fuss?"

Guinness's face worked furiously. "Why, you're crazy, Quade!" he

sputtered. "I certainly won't!"

"No?" asked Quade softly. The automatic he held veered around, till it

was pointing directly at the girl. "I wouldn't want to have to shoot

Sue--say--through the hand...." His finger tightened perceptibly on

the trigger.

"You're mad, man!" Guinness burst out. "You're crazy! What's the

idea--"

"In due time I'll tell you. But now I'll ask you just once more,"

Quade persisted. "Will you enter that borer, or must I--" He broke off

with an expressive shrug.

David Guinness was powerless. He had not the slightest idea what Quade

might be about; the one thought that broke through his fear and anger

was that the man was mad, and had better be humored. He trembled, and

a tight sensation came to his throat at sight of the steady gun

trained on his daughter. He dared not trifle.

"I'll do it," he said.

* * * * *

James Quade laughed. "That's better. You always were essentially

reasonable, though somewhat impulsive for a man of your age. The rash

way you severed our partnership, for instance.... But enough of that.

I think we'd better leave immediately. Into the sphere, please. You

first, Miss Guinness."

"Must she come?"

"I'm afraid so. I can't very well leave her here all unprotected, can

I?"

Quade's voice was soft and suave, but an undercurrent of sarcasm ran

through it. Guinness winced under it; his whole body was trembling

with suppressed rage and indignation. As he stepped to the door of the

earth-borer he turned and asked:

"How did you know our plans? About the radium?--the borer?"

Quade told him. "Have you forgotten," he said, "that you talked the

matter over with me before we split last year? I simply had the

laboratory watched, and when you got new financial backing from young

Holmes, and came here. I followed you. Simple, eh?... Well, enough of

this. Get inside. You first, Sue."

Trembling, the girl obeyed, and when her father hesitated Quade jammed

his gun viciously into his ribs and pushed him to the door. "Inside!"

he hissed, and reluctantly, hatred in his eyes, the professor stepped

into the control compartment after Sue. Quade gave a last quick glance

around and, with gun ever wary, passed inside. The door slammed shut:

there was a click as its lock shot over. The sphere was a sealed ball

of metal.

Inside, David Guinness obeyed the automatic's imperious gesture and

pulled a shiny-handled lever slowly back, and the hush that rested

over the Mojave was shattered by a tremendous bellow, a roar that

shook the very earth. It was the disintegrating blast, hurled out of

the bottom in many fan-shaped rays. The coarse gray sand beneath the

machine stirred and flew wildly; the sphere vibrated madly; and then

the thunder lowered in tone to a mighty humming and the earth-borer

began to drop. Slowly it fell, at first, then more rapidly. The shiny

top came level with the ground: disappeared; and in a moment there was

nothing left but a gaping hole where a short while before a round

monster of metal had stood. The hole was hot and dark, and from it

came a steadily diminishing thunder....

* * * * *

For a long time no one in the earth-borer spoke--didn't even try

to--for though the thunder of the disintegrators was muted, inside, to

a steady drone, conversation was almost impossible. The three were

crowded quite close in the spherical inner control compartment. Sue

sat on a little collapsible stool by the bowed, but by no means

subdued, figure of Professor David Guinness, while Quade sat on the

wire guard of the gyroscope, which was in the exact center of the

floor.

The depth gauge showed two hundred feet. Already the three people were

numb from the vibration; they hardly felt any sensation at all, save

one of great weight pressing inwards. The compartment was fairly cool

and the air good--kept so by the automatic air rectifiers and the

insulation, which shut out the heat born of their passage.

Quade had been carefully watching Guinness's manipulation of the

controls, when he was struck by a thought. At once he stood up, and

shouted in the elderly inventor's ear: "Try the rockets! I want to be

sure this thing will go back up!"

Without a word Guinness shoved back the lever controlling the

disintegrators, at the same time whirling a small wheel full over. The

thudding drone died away to a whisper, and was replaced by sharper

thundering, as the stream of the propulsion rockets beneath the sphere

was released. A delicate needle trembled on a gauge, danced at the

figure two hundred, then crept back to one-ninety ... one-sixty ...

one-forty.... Quade's eyes took in everything.

"Excellent, Guinness!" he yelled. "Now--down once more!"

The rockets were slowly cut; the borer jarred at the bottom of its

hole; again the disintegrators droned out. The sphere dug rapidly into

the warm ground, biting lower and lower. At ten miles an hour it

blasted a path to depths hitherto unattainable to man, sweeping away

rock and gravel and sand--everything that stood in its way. The depth

gauge rose to two thousand, then steadily to three and four. So it

went on for nearly half an hour.

At the end of that time, at a depth of nearly four miles, Quade got

stiffly to his feet and once more shouted into the professor's ear.

"We ought to be close to that radium, now," he said. "I think--"

But his words stopped short. The floor of the sphere suddenly fell

away from their feet, and they felt themselves tumbled into a wild

plunge. The drone of the disintegrators, hitherto muffled by the earth

they bit into, rose to a hollow scream. Before the professor quite

knew what was happening, there was a stunning crash, a shriek of

tortured metal--and the earth-borer rocked and lay still....

* * * * *

The whole world seemed to be filled with thunder when David Guinness

came back to consciousness. He opened his eyes and stared up into a

darkness to which it took him some time to accustom himself. When he

did, he made out hazily that he was lying on the floor of a vast dark

cavern. He could dimly see its jagged roof, perhaps fifty feet above.

There was the strong smell of damp earth in his nostrils; his head was

splitting from the steady drone in his ear-drums. Suddenly he

remembered what had happened. He groaned slightly and tried to sit up.

But he could not. His arms and legs were tied. Someone had removed him

from the earth-borer and bound him on the floor of the cavern they had

plunged into.