CHAPTER V

_A Desperate Act_

The ship that Chet Bullard and Harkness had designed had none of the

instruments for space navigation that the ensuing years were to bring.

Chet's accuracy was more the result of that flyer's sixth sense--that

same uncanny power that had served aviators so well in an earlier day.

But Chet was glad to see his instruments registering once more as he

approached a new world.

Even the sonoflector was recording; its invisible rays were darting

downward to be reflected back again from the surface below. That

absolute altitude recording was a joy to read; it meant a definite

relationship with the world.

"I'll hold her at fifty thousand," he told Harkness. "Watch for some

outline that you can remember from last time."

There was an irregular area of continental size; only when they had

crossed it did Harkness point toward an outflung projection of land.

"That peninsula," he exclaimed; "we saw that before! Swing south and

inland.... Now down forty, and east of south.... This ought to be the

spot."

Perhaps Harkness, too, had the flyer's indefinable power of

orientation. He guided Chet in the downward flight, and his pointing

finger aimed at last at a cluster of shadows where a setting sun

brought mountain ranges into strong relief. Chet held the ship steady,

hung high in the air, while the quick-spreading mantle of night swept

across the world below. And, at last, when the little world was

deep-buried in shadow, they saw the red glow of fires from a hidden

valley in the south.

"Fire Valley!" said Chet. "Don't say anything about me being a

navigator. Wait, you've brought us home, sure enough."

"Home!" He could not overcome this strange excitement of a home-coming

to their own world. Even the man who stood, pistol in hand, behind him

was, for the moment, forgotten.

Valley of a thousand fires!--scene of his former adventures! Each

fumerole was adding its smoky red to the fiery glow that illumined the

place. There were ragged mountains hemming it in; Chet's gaze passed

on to the valley's end.

Down there, where the fires ceased, there would be water; he would

land there! And the ship from Earth slipped down in a long slanting

line to cushion against its under exhausts, whose soft thunder echoed

back from a bare expanse of frozen lava. Then its roaring faded. The

silvery shape sank softly to its rocky bed, as Chet cut the motor that

had sung its song of power since the moment when Schwartzmann had

carried him off--taken him from that frozen, forgotten corner of an

incredibly distant Earth.

* * * * *

"Iss there air?" Schwartzmann demanded. Chet came to himself again

with a start: he saw the man peering from the lookout to right and to

left as if he would see all that there was in the last light of day.

"Strange!" he was grumbling to himself. "A strange place! But those

hills--I saw their markings--there will be metals there. I will

explore; later I return: I will mine them. Many ships I must build to

establish a line. The first transportation line of space. Me, Jacob

Schwartzmann--I will do it. I will haff more than anyone else on

Earth; I will make them all come to me crawling on their bellies!"

Chet saw the hard shine of the narrowed eyes. For an instant only, he

dared to consider the chance of leaping upon the big, gloating figure.

One blow and a quick snatch for the pistol!... Then he knew the folly

of such a plan: Schwartzmann's men were armed; he would be downed in

another second, his body a shattered, jellied mass.

Schwartzmann's thoughts had come back to the matter of air; he

motioned Chet and Harkness toward the port.

Diane Delacouer had joined them and she thrust herself quickly between

the two men. And, though Schwartzmann made a movement as if he would

snatch her back, he thought better of it and motioned for the portal

to be swung. Chet felt him close behind as he followed the others out

into the gathering dark.

* * * * *

The air was heavy with the fragrance of night-blooming trees. They

were close to the edge of the lava flow. The rock was black in the

light of a starry sky; it dropped away abruptly to a lower glade. A

stream made silvery sparklings in the night, while beyond it were

waving shadows of strange trees whose trunks were ghostly white.

It was all so familiar.... Chet smiled understandingly as he saw Walt

Harkness' arm go about the trim figure of Diane Delacouer. No mannish

attire could disguise Diane's charms; nor could nerve and cold courage

that any man might envy detract from her femininity. Her dark, curling

hair was blowing back from her upraised face as the scented breezes

played about her; and the soft beauty of that face was enhanced by the

very starlight that revealed it.

It was here that Walt and Diane had learned to love; what wonder that

the fragrant night brought only remembrance, and forgetfulness of

their present plight. But Chet Bullard, while he saw them and smiled

in sympathy, knew suddenly that other eyes were watching, too; he felt

the bulky figure of Herr Schwartzmann beside him grow tense and rigid.

But Schwartzmann's voice, when he spoke, was controlled. "All right,"

he called toward the ship; "all iss safe."

Yet Chet wondered at that sudden tensing, and an uneasy presentiment

found entrance to his thoughts. He must keep an eye on Schwartzmann,

even more than he had supposed.

Their captor had threatened to maroon them on the Dark Moon. Chet did

not question his intent. Schwartzmann would have nothing to gain by

killing them now. It would be better to leave them here, for he might

find them useful later on. But did he plan to leave them all or only

two? Behind the steady, expressionless eyes of the Master Pilot,

strange thoughts were passing....

* * * * *

There were orders, at length, to return to the ship. "It is dark

already," Schwartzmann concluded: "nothing can be accomplished at

night."

"How long are the days and nights?" he asked Harkness.

"Six hours," Harkness told him; "our little world spins fast."

"Then for six hours we sleep," was the order. And again Herr

Schwartzmann conducted Mademoiselle Delacouer to her cabin, while Chet

Bullard watched until he saw the man depart and heard the click of the

lock on the door of Diane's room.

Then for six hours he listened to the sounds of sleeping men who were

sprawled about him on the floor; for six hours he saw the one man who

sat on guard beside a light that made any thought of attack absurd.

And he cursed himself for a fool, as he lay wakeful and vainly

planning--a poor, futile fool who was unable to cope with this man who

had bested him.

Nineteen seventy-three!--and here were Harkness and Diane and himself,

captured by a man who was mentally and morally a misfit in a modern

world. A throw-back--that was Schwartzmann: Harkness had said it. He

belonged back in nineteen fourteen.

Harkness was beyond the watching guard; from where he lay came sounds

of restless movement. Chet knew that he was not alone in this mood of

hopeless dejection. There was no opportunity for talk; only with the

coming of day did the two find a chance to exchange a few quick words.

The guard roused the others at the first light of sunlight beyond the

ports. Harkness sauntered slowly to where Chet was staring from a

lookout. He, too, leaned to see the world outside, and he spoke

cautiously in a half-whisper:

"Not a chance, Chet. No use trying to bluff this big crook any more.

He's here, and he's safe; and he knows it as well as we do. We'll let

him ditch us--you and Diane and me. Then, when we're on our own, we'll

watch our chance. He will go crazy with what he finds--may get

careless--then we'll seize the ship--" His words ended abruptly. As

Schwartzmann came behind them, he was casually calling Chet's

attention to a fumerole from which a jet of vapor had appeared.

Yellowish, it was; and the wind was blowing it.

Chet turned away; he hardly saw Schwartzmann or heard Harkness' words.

He was thinking of what Walt had said. Yes, it was all they could do;

there was no chance of a fight with them now. But later!

Diane Delacouer came into the control-room at the instant; her dark

eyes were still lovely with sleep, but they brightened to flash an

encouraging smile toward the two men. There were five of

Schwartzmann's men in the ship besides the pilot and the scientist,

Kreiss. They all crowded in after Diane.

They must have had their orders in advance; Schwartzmann merely

nodded, and they sprang upon Harkness and Chet. The two were caught

off their guard; their arms were twisted behind them before resistance

could be thought of. Diane gave a cry, started forward, and was

brushed back by a sweep of Schwartzmann's arm. The man himself stood

staring at them, unmoving, wordless. Only the flesh about his eyes

gathered into creases to squeeze the eyes to malignant slits. There

was no mistaking the menace in that look.

* * * * *

"I think we do not need you any more," he said at last. "I think, Herr

Harkness, this is the end of our little argument--and, Herr Harkness,

you lose. Now, I will tell you how it iss that you pay.

"You haff thought, perhaps, I would kill you. But you were wrong, as

you many times have been. You haff not appreciated my kindness; you

haff not understood that mine iss a heart of gold.

"Even I was not sure before we came what it iss best to do. But now I

know. I saw oceans and many lands on this world. I saw islands in

those oceans.

"You so clever are--such a great thinker iss Herr Harkness--and on one

of those islands you will haff plenty of time to think--yess! You can

think of your goot friend, Schwartzmann and of his kindness to you."

"You are going to maroon us on an island?" asked Walt Harkness

hoarsely. Plainly his plans for seizing the ship were going awry. "You

are going to put the three of us off in some lost corner of this

world?"

Chet Bullard was silent until he saw the figure of Harkness struggling

to throw off his two guards. "Walt," he called loudly, "take it easy!

For God's sake, Walt, keep your head!"

This, Chet sensed, was no time for resistance. Let Schwartzmann go

ahead with his plans; let him think them complacent and unresisting;

let Max pilot the ship; then watch for an opening when they could land

a blow that would count! He heard Schwartzmann laughing now, laughing

as if he were enjoying something more pleasing than the struggles of

Walt.

* * * * *

Chet was standing by the controls. The metal instrument-table was

beside him; above it was the control itself, a metal ball that hung

suspended in air within a cage of curved bars.

It was pure magic, this ball-control, where magnetic fields crossed

and recrossed; it was as if the one who held it were a genie who could

throw the ship itself where he willed. Glass almost enclosed the cage

of bars, and the whole instrument swung with the self-compensating

platform that adjusted itself to the "gravitation" of accelerated

speed. The pilot, Max, had moved across to the instrument-table, ready

for the take-off.

Schwartzmann's laughter died to a gurgling chuckle. He wiped his eyes

before he replied to Harkness' question.

"Leave you," he said, "in one place? _Nein!_ One here, the other

there. A thousand miles apart, it might be. And not all three of you.

That would be so unkind--"

He interrupted himself to call to Kreiss who was opening the port.

"No," he ordered; "keep it closed. We are not going outside; we are

going up."

But Kreiss had the port open. "I want a man to get some fresh water,"

he said; "he will only be a minute."

He shoved at a waiting man to hurry him through the doorway. It was

only a gentle push; Chet wondered as he saw the man stagger and grasp

at his throat. He was coughing--choking horribly for an instant

outside the open port--then fell to the ground, while his legs jerked

awkwardly, spasmodically.

Chet saw Kreiss follow. The scientist would have leaped to the side of

the stricken man, whose body was so still now on the sunlit rock; but

he, too, crumpled, then staggered back into the room. He pushed feebly

at the port and swung it shut. His face, as he turned, was drawn into

fearful lines.

"Acid!" He choked out the words between strangled breaths.

"Acid--sulfuric--fumes!"

* * * * *

Chet turned quickly to the spectro-analyzer; the lines of oxygen and

nitrogen were merged with others, and that meant an atmosphere unfit

for human lungs! There had been a fumerole where yellowish vapor was

spouting; he remembered it now.

"So!" boomed Schwartzmann, and now his squinting eyes were full on

Chet. "You--you _schwein!_ You said when we opened the ports there

would be a surprise! Und this iss it! You thought to see us kill

ourselves!"

"Open the port!" he shouted. The men who held Chet released him and

sprang forward to obey. The pilot, Max, took their place. He put one

hand on Chet's shoulder, while his other hand brought up a

threatening, metal bar.

Schwartzmann's heavy face had lost its stolid look; it was alive with

rage. He thrust his head forward to glare at the men, while he stood

firmly, his feet far apart, two heavy fists on his hips. He whirled

abruptly and caught Diane by one arm. He pulled her roughly to him and

encircled the girl's trim figure with one huge arm.

"Put you _all_ on one island?" he shouted. "Did you think I would put

you _all_ out of the ship? You"--he pointed at Harkness--"and

you"--this time it was Chet--"go out now. You can die in your damned

gas that you expected would kill me! But, you fools, you

imbeciles--Mam'selle, she stays with me!" The struggling girl was

helpless in the great arm that drew her close.

Harkness' mad rage gave place to a dead stillness. From bloodless lips

in a chalk-white face he spat out one sentence:

"Take your filthy hands off her--now--or I'll--"

Schwartzmann's one free hand still held the pistol. He raised it with

deadly deliberation; it came level with Harkness' unflinching eyes.

"Yes?" said Schwartzmann. "You will do--what?"

* * * * *

Chet saw the deadly tableau. He knew with a conviction that gripped

his heart that here was the end. Walt would die and he would be next.

Diane would be left defenseless.... The flashing thought that followed

came to him as sharply as the crack of any pistol. It seemed to burst

inside his brain, to lift him with some dynamic power of its own and

project him into action.

He threw himself sideways from under the pilot's hand, out from

beneath the heavy metal bar--and he whirled, as he leaped, to face the

man. One lean, brown hand clenched to a fist that started a long

swing from somewhere near his knees; it shot upward to crash beneath

the pilot's out-thrust jaw and lift him from the floor. Max had aimed

the bar in a downward sweep where Chet's head had been the moment

before; and now man and bar went down together. In the same instant

Chet threw himself upon the weapon and leaped backward to his feet.

One frozen second, while, to Chet, the figures seemed as motionless as

if carved from stone--two men beside the half-opened port--Harkness in

convulsive writhing between two others--the figure of Diane, strained,

tense and helpless in Schwartzmann's grasp--and Schwartzmann, whose

aim had been disturbed, steadying the pistol deliberately upon

Harkness--

"Wait!" Chet's voice tore through the confusion. He knew he must grip

Schwartzmann's attention--hold that trigger finger that was tensed to

send a detonite bullet on its way. "Wait, damn you! I'll answer your

question. I'll tell you what we'll do!"

In that second he had swung the metal bar high; now he brought it

crashing down in front of him. Schwartzmann flinched, half turned as

if to fire at Chet, and saw the blow was not for him.

With a splintering crash, the bar went through an obstruction. There

was sound of glass that slivered to a million mangled bits--the sharp

tang of metal broken off--a crash and clatter--then silence, save for

one bit of glass that fell belatedly to the floor, its tiny jingling

crash ringing loud in the deathly stillness of the room....

It had been the control-room, this place of metal walls and of

shining, polished instruments, and it could be called that no longer.

For, battered to useless wreckage, there lay on a metal table a cage

that had once been formed of curving bars. Among the fragments a metal

ball that had guided the great ship still rocked idly from its fall,

until it, too, was still.

It was a room where nothing moved--where no person so much as

breathed....

Then came the Master Pilot's voice, and it was speaking with quiet

finality.

"And that," he said, "is your answer. Our ship has made its last

flight."

His eyes held steadily upon the blanched face of Herr Schwartzmann,

whose limp arms released the body of Diane; the pistol hung weakly at

the man's side. And the pilot's voice went on, so quiet, so hushed--so

curiously toneless in that silent room.

"What was it that you said?--that Harkness and I would be staying

here? Well, you were right when you said that, Schwartzmann; but it's

a hard sentence, that--imprisonment for life."

Chet paused now, to smile deliberately, grimly at the dark face so

bleached and bloodless, before he repeated:

"Imprisonment for life!--and you didn't know that you were sentencing

yourself. For you're staying too, Schwartzmann, you contemptible,

thieving dog! You're staying with us--here--on the Dark Moon!"

(_To be continued._)

If The Sun Died

_By R. F. Starzl_

[Illustration: Crack! Again Mich'l's fist caught him.]

[Sidenote: Tens of millenniums after the Death of the Sun there comes

a young man who dares to open the Frozen Gate of Subterranea.]

By our system of time we would have called it around 65,000 A. D., but

in this cavern world, miles below the long-forgotten surface of the

earth, it was 49,889. Since the Death of the Sun. That legendary sun

was but a dim racial memory, but the 24-hour day, based on its

illusory travel across the sky, was still maintained by uranium

clocks, by which the myriads who dwelt in the galleries and maze of

the under-world warrens regulated their lives.

In the office of the nation's central electro-plant sat a young man.

He was unoccupied at the moment. He was an example of the marvelously

slow process of evolution, for, to all outward appearances he differed

little from a Twentieth Century man. Keen intelligence sat on his

fine-cut, kindly young face. In general build he was lighter, more

refined than a man of the past. Yet even the long, delicately colored

robe of mineral silk which he wore could not detract from his obvious

virility and strength.

His face flashed in a smile when a girl suddenly appeared in the

middle of the room, materializing, so it seemed, out of nowhere. She

resembled him to some extent, except that she was exquisitely

feminine, dark-haired, with a skin of warm ivory, while he was blond

and ruddy. Her tinkling, silvery voice was troubled as she asked:

"Have I your leave to stay, Mich'l Ares?"

The look of adoration he gave her was answer enough, but he answered

with the conventional formula, "It is given." He rose to his feet,

walked right through the seemingly solid vision and made an adjustment

on a bank of dials. Then he walked through the apparition again and,

standing beside his chair, looked at her inquiringly.

"You haven't forgotten, Mich'l, this is the day of the Referendum?"

Mich'l smiled slightly. It would be a day of confusion in Subterranea

if he should forget. As chief of the technies he was in direct charge

of the tabulating machines that would, a few seconds after the vote,

give the result in the matter of the opening of the Frozen Gate. But

the girl's concern sobered him instantly. On the decision of the

people at noon depended the life work of her father, Senator Mane. And

it was now nine o'clock.

"I am sure they will order the Gate opened," he said instantly. "All

the technies are agreed that your father is right, that the Great

Cold was only another, more severe ice age--not the death of the Sun.

The technies--"

* * * * *

Just as the girl had seemingly materialized, a young man now stood

beside her. In appearance he was a picture of pride, power, arrogance,

and definite danger. His hawk-like, patrician features were smiling.

This olive-skinned, dark young rival of Mich'l was Lane Mollon, son of

Senator Mollon, ruthless administration leader and bitter opponent of

Senator Mane's Exodus faction.

Lane looked at Mich'l insolently.

"Have I your leave to stay, Mich'l Ares?" he asked.

"It is given," said Mich'l without enthusiasm.

"I'm not calling on you of my own will, Mich'l," the apparition of

young Mollon said contemptuously, "but Nida had the telucid turned on

as I stepped into the room."

"It's as well for you that you're not here personally," Mich'l replied

promptly. "The last time we met I believe I was obliged to knock you

down."

Lane Mollon flushed, with a sidelong glance at Nida. The girl gave

Mich'l a frightened look.

Lane interpreted her concern rightly.

"Ordinarily it's not safe to try anything like that with me. I could

have you executed in half an hour. But I don't have to call on the

State to punish you. Nida, you'll admit I'm taking no unfair advantage

of him?"

"Oh, I do, Lane, but--"

Lane reached out his hand to the dial, invisible to Mich'l, which

operated the telucid apparatus, and immediately the apparitions

vanished. Mich'l looked at his own telucid, its great unwinking eye

set in the wall. But he did not project his own illusory body to the

girl's home. He was a technie--one of the pitifully few trained men

and women who kept the intricate automatic machinery working. On them

rested the immense, stupid civilization of the caverns, and there was

work to do. Mich'l felt that on this morning of her father's greatest

trial Nida would pay scant attention to Lane.

* * * * *

Mich'l was testing some of the controls when Gobet Hanlon came in.

Gobet was also a technie, and Mich'l's special friend. Like Mich'l, he

wore the light robe that was universal among the civilians in the

equable climate of the caverns. He walked with the light, springy step

that was somehow characteristic of the specialized class to which he

belonged, as distinguished from the languid gait of the pampered, lazy

populace. Attached to his girdle of flat chain links was a tiny

computing machine about as large as the palm of a man's hand. For

Gobet did most of the mathematical work.

"You'll want me at the tabulating section?" Gobet stated inquiringly.

"It may be well," Mich'l smiled. "For the first time in centuries, I

believe, the general public is going to vote."

"Flos Entine wants to come along."

Mich'l's smile changed to a grin. He knew the pretty, willful little

sweetheart of Gobet's. If she wanted to be at the tabulating plant she

would be there.

"In fact," Gobet confessed somewhat sheepishly, "she is in the car."

The car was waiting in the gallery. It had no visible support, but

hovered a few inches above the floor above one of two parallel

aluminum alloy strips that stretched, like the trolley tracks of the

ancients, throughout all the galleries. The ancients well knew that

aluminum is repelled by magnetism, but the race had lived in the

caverns for centuries before evolving an alloy that possessed this

repulsive power to a degree strong enough to support a considerable

weight.

Under Mich'l's guidance the car moved forward silently, through

interminable busy streets with arched roofs, lined on either side with

doors that led to homes, theaters and food distributing automats.

Occasionally they passed public gardens, purely ornamental, in which a

few specimens of vegetation were preserved. They passed multitudes of

people, most of them handsome with a pampered, hot-house prettiness,

but betraying the peculiar lassitude which had been sapping the

energies of this once dynamic race for millennia. Yet to-day they

showed almost eagerness. The name of Leo Mane, prophet of deliverance,

was on every tongue. And what was the Sun like? Like the great

vita-lights that were prescribed by law and evaded by everyone, except

possibly the technies? Those technies--they seemed to delight in work!

Curious glances fell on the gliding car. Some work in connection with

the Referendum? What must one do to vote? Oh, the telucid!

* * * * *

Arriving at Administration Circle, the car entered a vast excavation

half a mile in diameter, possibly a thousand feet high at the dome.

Here were the entrances to some of the principal Government warrens.

Here also centered the streets, like radiating spokes of a wheel, on

which many of the officials lived. Here the emanation bulbs were more

frequent than in the galleries, so that the light was almost glaring.

Guards of soldier-police, the stolid, well-fed, specialized class

produced by centuries of a static civilization, were everywhere. Not

in the memory of their grandparents had they done any fighting, but in

their short, brightly colored tunics, flaring trousers and little

kepis they looked very smart. Their only weapon was a small tube

capable of projecting a lethal light-ray.

Mich'l led his party to the audience hall. It was only a few hundred

feet in diameter. At one end was the speaker's rostrum. Senator Mane

was already there. He was tall, purposeful, but withal tired and

wistful looking. His graying hair was cut at the nape of his neck,

sweeping back from his swelling temples in a manner really suggestive

of a mane. His large, luminous eyes lit up.

"Is it nearly time?"

"Yes, Senator," Mich'l said. "The nation will soon assemble."

"You have met Senator Mollon?"

"I have had the pleasure," Mich'l acknowledged with polite irony,

"since Senator Mollon gives me practically all my orders."

Mollon acknowledged the tribute with a quick smile, without rising

from his chair. He, too, was different from the average Subterranean

in that he was forceful and aggressive, like Senator Mane. He was

still youngish looking, of powerful, blocky build. His dark hair was

carefully parted in the middle and brushed down sleekly. The Twentieth

Century had known his prototype, the successful, powerful, utterly

unscrupulous politician; and in a different sphere, that type of

extra-Governmental ruler which the ancients called "gangster." It was

casually discussed in Subterranea that certain of the state

soldier-police were responsible for the mysterious assassinations that

had so conveniently removed most of the effective resistance to

Mollon's progress in the Senate. The once potent body had not held a

session in ten years: didn't dare to, a cynical and indifferent public

said. And a strange reluctance on the part of qualified men to accept

the Presidential nomination had left that office unfilled for the past

three years. Mollon, as party dictator, performed the duties of

President provisionally.

* * * * *

Flos, mischievous as usual, rounded her great blue eyes and gazed at

Mollon with an expression of rapt admiration.

"Oh, Senator," she thrilled, "I think it's wonderful of you to give

Senator Mane an opportunity to debate with you. You are so kind!"

Mollon failed to detect any mockery, luckily for Flos. He looked at

her with half-closed eyes.

"The public must be satisfied," he rumbled. "Senator Mane has aroused

in them great hopes. A small matter might be adjusted, but only a

Referendum will satisfy them in this."

"But Senator, the race is going to ruin. If we could get into the Sun

again--wouldn't you want that?"

"I don't believe there is a 'Sun'," Mollon replied; then, with the

candor of one who is perfectly sure of himself, added:

"If Mane were right, I still couldn't permit the Frozen Gate to be

opened. I can control the people for their own good, here; it might

not be possible Outside."

A deep musical note sounded. Suddenly the myriad inhabitants of

Subterranea seemed to be milling around in the room. Actually their

bodies were in their dwelling cells, but their telucid images filled

the hall. By a simple adjustment of the power circuit, their images,

instead of being life size, were made only about an inch high,

permitting the accommodation of the entire nation in the hall. Their

millions of tiny voices, mingling, made a sighing sound.

* * * * *

Mane rose and stepped forward, raising his hand.

"Citizens of Subterranea," he began in powerful, resonant tones, and

then went on to put into his address all the fervor of a lifetime of

endeavor. He told them of those times in the dim past when the human

race still dwelt on the surface of the earth. Of the Sun that poured

out inexhaustible floods of life and light; of the green things that

were grown, not only to look at, but for food for all living things

before food was made synthetically out of mined chemicals. Of the

world overrun by a teeming, happy, dynamic civilization.

"Then something happened. The Sun seemed to give less light, less

heat. Perhaps we ran into a cloud of cosmic dust that intercepted the

Sun's rays. Perhaps the cause was to be found in some change in the

Sun's internal structure. But the effects could not be doubted. Ice

began to come down from the poles. Ice barriers higher than the

highest towers covered the world, wiping out all life but the most

energetic.

"Our ancestors, and many other advanced nations, began to burrow

toward the hot interior of the earth. We to-day have no idea of the

labor that went into the digging of our underground home. We are

becoming degenerate. More and more of us, even those who still use the

vita-lights, are becoming pale and flabby. There are hardly enough

technies to keep the automatic machinery in order. What will happen

when those technies also deteriorate, and lose the will to work? For

deteriorate they must, just as Senator Mollon and his still active

allies will. Just as I will, if I live long enough. There is a great

force that we never know here. It is called the cosmic ray. It never

penetrates to our depth. And our vita-lights do not produce it."

He then spoke of the proposed Exodus, argued, pleaded, painted a rosy

picture of the outer world, of a Sun come back, a world of brightness

and life. At the conclusion of his speech a sigh arose from the

assembled millions--a sigh of hope, of half belief. Had the vote been

taken then the Frozen Gate would have been opened.

* * * * *

But Senator Mollon was on the rostrum, holding up a square, well

manicured hand for attention. In his deep rumbling bass he tore the

arguments for the Exodus to shreds. With the whip of fear he drove

away hope.

"If our savage ancestors lived on the inhospitable outer shell of the

earth," he shouted, "is that a reason for our taking that retrograde

step? Read your histories. What happened to our neighboring nation of

Atlantica only a short 15,000 years ago? They did just as this man is

urging--opened their outer gate. It promptly froze open, and liquid

air, the remnant of what in primordial days was an outer atmosphere,

poured down the tunnels. The whole nation died, and we saved ourselves

only by blasting the connecting passages between them and us with

fulminite."

A wave of fear passed over the tiny massed figures. For centuries the

race had been rapidly losing all initiative, except for those few

leaders who, through superior stamina and religious devotion to the

artificial sun-rays, had maintained something of their pristine

energy.

Now they were hysterical with fear of the unknown. Even as Mich'l Ares

adjusted the parabolic antenna of the thought-receptor vote-counting

machine, he knew what the verdict would be. In a moment the vote was

flashed on a screen on the ceiling: 421 in favor of the Exodus and

2,733,485 against it. There was an eery cheer from the people, and

they began to dissolve like smoke. Mollon rose, bowed politely and

smilingly, and walked out to where his magnetic car awaited him.

* * * * *

It was with a feeling of deep depression that Mich'l Ares went to work

the next morning. His despair was shared by the technies under him

with whom he talked. At the telestereo station he found a bitter young

man broadcasting a prepared commentary on the election ordered by

Senator Mollon. It was congratulatory in nature, designed to confirm

popular opinion that the nation had been saved from a great

catastrophe and to glorify the principles of Mollon's party.

"... And so once more this great nation has demonstrated its ability

to govern itself, to protect itself against dangerous and unsocial

experiments. The voice of the people is the voice of God. The

Government claims for itself no credit for this momentous decision.

Each citizen has done his share toward the continuation of our safety,

our prosperity...."

The young man finished the document, smiled a charming smile, and

turned off the switch. Then he grimaced his disgust and lapsed into a

glum meditation.

"What say, Kratz?" Mich'l asked.

"Trouble again on the west sector. Had trouble getting power enough.

Generators ought to be overhauled." He made a helpless gesture.

"How about conscripting a little labor?"

"Tried it this morning. Most of the people are still in a daze from

chewing too much merclite. Those that're sober are too busy preening

themselves for voting on the winning side."

Kratz informed Mich'l that Mollon had that morning given up all

pretense of constitutional government, had preempted the treasury, and

was consolidating his position as avowed dictator.

"He probably wanted to do that a long time," Mich'l commented. "He

didn't quite dare till that Referendum yesterday gave him the real

measure of the public. Well, I've got to be going."

* * * * *

Mich'l took one of the small mechanical service tunnels back to his

office. This latest news had hardly affected him, so keen was his

disappointment over the defeat of the Exodus. But he wanted to be

alone. He walked through vast halls full of machinery, abandoned and

rusting, through dark corridors that had once roared with industrial

life. What would happen when the present overloaded machinery should

break down; wear out? The remnants of the great technical army could

hardly serve what was left. Each passing year these silent, useless

hulks became more numerous. The specter of famine was stalking amid

the dusty pipes and empty vats of the chemical plants; the horrors of

darkness lurked amid the tarnished compression spheres and the long,

hooded monstrosities of the power plants, inadequately served by

harassed and overworked technies.

In the middle of his office Mich'l found the telucid counterpart of

Mila, sister of Nida Mane. She was younger than Nida, hardly more than

sixteen. Her eyes were wide with terror as she sought Mich'l. Her

cheeks were wet with tears, and her silken brown hair fell in careless

disarray.

"Mich'l!" she cried, as soon as she saw him. "Lane Mollon has taken

Nida!"

"Taken her!"

"And Father is under arrest. Lane came this morning, crazy with

merclite gum. He had four or five soldiers with him. When Nida refused

to see him they broke down the door and went to her room. They dragged

her out to Lane's car, and he took her to his warren near the

Presidential quarters."

"She there now?"

"Yes. Father followed Lane's car. Guards kept him out of Lane's

warren, so he went to see Mollon. That devil only laughed at him,

offered to call another Referendum. Father had a small pocket

needle-ray and--"

"Good! He killed Mollon?"

"No. But he managed to burn a hole through his arm. He was rushed off

to one of the cells. And Mollon says he will call a Referendum to

decide Father's fate."

"It would be just like that devil's sense of humor to let the people

decree their only friend's death."

* * * * *

"They'll do it, too!" Mila exclaimed tragically. "Oh, how I wish

Mother were alive!"

"And each one will feel deep within him that he has done a great,

commendable and original thing!" Mich'l added, with keen insight.

Mila sank to the floor.

"Go to your room," Mich'l said, gently stern. "Mollon and his gang

have reckoned without the technies." A woman's image appeared,

stooping commiseratingly over Mila--a friend of the family. Mich'l

ordered her to care for Mila. Then, he took a deep breath. Gone was

his feeling of helpless sorrow, leaving only an overwhelming,

steadying, satisfying anger. He flung the telucid switch, barked

cracking orders.

In half an hour every technical man of Subterranea was in a large

storeroom near Mich'l's office. They were mostly young, keen and

alert, their skins red or brown from the actinic lights, their hair

showing more or less bleaching from the same cause. As Mich'l talked

they became intent: they listened with a cold, deadly silence that

would perhaps have made the smug millions of Subterranea quake with

fear.

This affront put upon the only man in the Government who could speak

their language, who could comprehend their ideals: the peril of the

girl they all knew and loved: these things set their long-repressed

resentment flaring to white heat. They were ready for desperate

things. A turn of a valve and water would thunder through the maze of

galleries; a mishap far, far down toward the earth's hot core, and

steam would rush up--

* * * * *

But Mich'l steadied them. After all, Subterranea was their country.

Anarchy was far from the technie ideals. He had a plan.

"Nothing is to be done until we have Senator Mane and Nida," Mich'l

instructed them. "Remember that! Do nothing until you hear from me.

Each of you go to your station. Set all adjustments so that they will

not need attention for some weeks, at least. Those of you who have

families, tell them to be ready to move to another residence. Say

nothing about any trouble--understand?"

There were nods of assent.

"You will proceed to your posts and keep busy. When I come it'll be by

telucid. I will say nothing. I will simply wave my hand. That means

you are to take your wives, your families, your sweethearts, to

Substation No. 37X."

There were audible gasps.

"Not 37X!" exclaimed one of the older men. "Why, that's twenty miles

up, near the Frozen Gate!"

"Yes!" Mich'l smiled with tight lips. "You men willing?"

There was an instantaneous shout of approval. Curiously enough,

seizure of the Gate by force had not occurred to any of this

law-abiding, well-disciplined group. But Mollon's lawless seizure of

the Government had removed all inhibitions of that sort. Seizure of

the Gate would bring at one stroke the realization of the dream that

the technies had tried for generations to win by political means.

Surely, when the Gate was open, and they could see the glorious,

half-mythical Sun for themselves, the people would consent to the

Exodus!

For the technies, even in the bitterness of defeat, were not

anti-social. They hoped and worked for the devitalized races of

Subterranea, for the betterment of their condition, more than for

their own. The technies were the fittest; they had demonstrated their

ability to survive unchanged under adverse condition. They would be

least helped by the Exodus. Yet they had worked for it all their

lives, as had their fathers before them, out of unselfish love for

humanity. There have always been such men. Through the murk of history

we see their lives as small, steady lights, infrequent and lonely.

With the opening of the Frozen Gate suddenly a possibility, the

technies forgot their exasperation with the stupid mob.

* * * * *

"The Gate is guarded," said an elderly man dubiously.

"A small guard," Gobet Hanlon remarked quickly, "and probably dazed

with merclite. Nothing to fear."

"Stay away from the Gate," Mich'l instructed. "Give no cause for

alarm. If an emergency arises while I'm gone, see Gobet."

"Don't go alone, Mich'l," Gobet begged. "A few of us with ray-needles

can storm the detention cells. We can clean out Lane's warren."

"We might, but the Senator and Nida would be gone. The alarm would be

given. In a few minutes there'd be a mob."

The technies were already dispersing eagerly. Mich'l pressed his

friend's hand, saying:

"I'll take my needle-ray, and I know every way to get around there is.

Alone, I'll attract no attention. Till later, Gobet!" And he was gone.

Mich'l's way was through the smaller, less frequented communication

passages used principally by the technies. Occasionally he did meet

citizens, still light-headed after their election victory celebration,

and lost, but he paid them no heed. He came to the ventilation center

of that level.

For ages no air had entered Subterranea from the outside. All of the

air had to be regularly reconditioned, and so was returned, through a

systematic network of air ducts, to a vast, central chemical plant. It

was a latter-day Cave of the Winds, where the north, south, east and

west winds of that buried empire regularly returned for a brief few

minutes of play amid chemical sprays, condensers, humidifiers,

oxydisers, to be again dispatched to their drudgery. This hall was

truly colossal, filled to the shadowy ceilings, a thousand feet high,

with gigantic pipes, tanks, wind-turbines.

* * * * *

The technie in charge had not yet returned, but Mich'l consulted the

distribution plan, and soon located the duct that led to Lane Mollon's

warren. In a few minutes he was running, helped along by a strong

current of fresh air. The map had shown the warren to be about a mile

away. For the benefit of the technies who had to work there, the duct

was plainly marked; and the lighting, by infrequent emanation bulbs,

was adequate, though dim.

Mich'l had made no plans for a course of action after arriving at his

destination. He felt reasonably sure that if he could get into the

warren he would have a good chance to escape with Nida. In the

confusion he could hide her nearby, and perhaps effect the release of

the senator also. He had no doubt about his fate if he were caught.

Lane's pose of good sportsmanship having failed to impress Nida, he

had adopted simple, brutal coercion. Mich'l's fate, if caught

interfering, would be summary execution.

Mich'l found the grating which he sought. It bore the key number of

Lane's establishment. The key which would unlock it was of course in

the hands of the police; but the bars were badly corroded, and Mich'l

managed to bend them enough to permit the passage of his body.

He found himself in a small chamber, from which ducts led to all parts

of the warren. These ducts were too small to permit passage of his

body, however; it would be necessary to come into the open. A small

metal door promised egress. Mich'l climbed out, and faced a surprised

cook in the kitchen, engaged in flavoring synthetic food drinks.

Mich'l said explanatorily:

"Inspection, air service."

The cook did not know the regulations about keeping the air tunnels

locked. Moreover, he, like all other servants of the mighty, worked

unwillingly, being conscripted. He only grunted.

* * * * *

Mich'l made a pretense of testing the air currents. Presently he

stepped into one of the communicating corridors. The warren was

planned something like a house of the Surface Age, with luxuriously

furnished rooms, baths, dining halls, and all the appurtenances of

wealth. Arriving at a rotunda, in the center of which was a glowing

fountain, Mich'l encountered a guard. Boldly he asked him:

"Where is Mr. Mollon? I wish to see him."

The guard looked surprised.

"About Nida Mane, sir? I would hardly dare."

Mich'l looked at the man sharply, but there was no hint of recognition

in the stupid, phlegmatic face.

"What about Nida Mane? It is about her I wish to speak."

There was a slight stirring of interest in the soldier's face.

"He will be glad to see you, sir, if you bring news of her."

"Eh, yes? Perhaps what I have to tell will be of no interest to him."

"If you can tell him where she is he will ask no more of you."

"She made good her escape then?"

Slow suspicion was dawning at last.

"For one who brings news you ask a lot of questions," the guard

remarked heavily, as his hand slipped to the needle-ray weapon at his

side. "Show your pass!"

Like a flash Mich'l was upon him, his hand at the thick throat, the

other grasping the wrist. Although the soldier, like the majority of

the populace, lacked the intense vitality of the technies, he had

stubborn strength, and he fought effectively in the drilled, automatic

way of his kind. Mich'l was further handicapped by the necessity of

maintaining silence. One shout, and a dozen needle-rays would no doubt

perforate his body with holes and slash his flesh with smoldering

cuts.

* * * * *

Grunting and sweating, they fought all around the rose-colored curb of

the fountain. At last Mich'l succeeded in forcing his adversary over

the low stone, and they went over together with a resounding splash.

The straining body of the guard suddenly relaxed, and a spreading red

cloud in the water disclosed that he had struck his head against the

first of the terraces that rose in the fountain's mist-shrouded

center.

Up one of the corridors a door opened, and an angry voice shouted:

"Gurka! Gurka! I'll have you in bracelets! Captain of the guard!"

"Sir!" From another of the corridors came a sound of running feet. A

command rang out:

"On the double!"

An officer, followed by four soldiers, dashed around the corner and

flashed by the fountain. Peering over the curb, Mich'l saw them, some

hundred yards away, come to a halt before an opened door. With a

thrill of exultation Mich'l recognized the tall figure of Lane Mollon,

looking like a slightly damaged satyr of the better class, for his

head was bandaged, and he was in bad humor.

"Captain!" he stormed. "I want you to put that damned louse in

solitary confinement for a year. Hear?"

"Yes, sir." Like a megaphone the long corridor carried the low,

respectful words to Mich'l's ears.

Lane continued to storm:

"And if you put another damned merclite-crazy blunker[1] on guard in

this place I'll have your commission. Hear?"

"Yes, sir."

[Footnote 1: Blunker--a blunderer, an oaf. Mechanical recording had

preserved the language in much of its original form, but new words did

creep in.]

* * * * *

A quick decision was necessary, and Mich'l acted without hesitation.

The guard had rolled over on his back, so that his face was out of the

water, and he was breathing with quick, painful gasps. Mich'l dragged

him up under the concealing shelter of the fountain spray, and there

changed clothes with him. In the meantime the flowing water washed

away the red stain of blood. When the captain returned with his guard,

Mich'l was lying realistically in the pool, apparently deep in drugged

sleep, the little kepi tilted rakishly over his face.

He was roughly seized and dragged out of the water to the

accompaniment of much cursing. A fist crashed into his face.

Suddenly the soldiers felt the supine figure under their hands explode

into energy. Elbows and fists seemed to fly from all directions at

once. A needle-ray appeared, and before they could draw their own

weapons they were howling with pain as searing welts drew over their

bodies. With one accord they plunged into the pool. Only the officer

remained, and he fell to the mosaic floor, his weapon half raised, the

small black hole in his chest giving off a burnt odor.

Mich'l appropriated the officer's brassard of rank, and, menacing the

cowed guards, forced them to herd into a nearby room, carrying the

body of the officer with them. Mich'l locked the door and looked

around. He saw no one observing him, and could count on carrying a

pretty good bluff in his uniform, which was rapidly shedding its

water. With a firm step Mich'l walked to Lane Mollon's door, threw it

open, and entered.

* * * * *

Lane sat up on his couch, his feet striking the floor with an angry

thump. But when he recognized Mich'l he paled slightly.

"Where is she?" Mich'l demanded roughly, "before I burn you down!"

"You said once," Lane began sneeringly, "that you wanted to fight me.

Now, if you'll just put down that--"

"Not now," Mich'l dissented with deadly coldness. "Where is Nida?

Speak fast."

Lane did so.

"She isn't here. The little short[2] crowned me with a chair, and

slipped out. How did I--"

[Footnote 2: Short--trouble-maker, spitfire. A colloquialism probably

growing out of the once frequently used electrical term

"short-circuit."]

"When? Hurry up!"

"Hardly an hour ago. She walked down the corridor, showed a

thick-witted guard my own executive pass, and got away. But I got that

guard--"

"Never mind what you did to the guard--"

Suddenly the image of an officer strange to Mich'l stood in the room

and saluted smartly.

"Has Captain Ilgen Mr. Lane Mollon's leave to stay?" he asked.

Mollon started forward, but before he could disclose his predicament

Mich'l had sidled over to him and thrown one arm affectionately over

his shoulder. In his hand, concealed by the rich folds of Lane's robe,

Mich'l held his needle-ray, and it was pressed firmly against Lane's

ribs.

"Mr. Mollon will be glad to hear you," Mich'l said smoothly.

* * * * *

He fancied that the eyes of the officer's image dilated slightly, but

it lost none of its military rigor. But some explanation of his

presence there in his still damp uniform must be given Ilgen, so he

growled, in a voice that he tried to make a bit thick, as if he had

chewed too much merclite:

"At ease, Captain. At ease! Damn it man, you don't have to be so

damned military. You're among friends!" And he towseled Lane's dark

hair affectionately.

Captain Ilgen looked his disgust.

"Sir," he said to Lane, "we recaptured Nida Mane as she tried to board

a public car near the Executive Mansion."

The black lens at the end of Mich'l's needle-ray pressed hard, and

Lane said naturally:

"You have her in custody?"

"Sir, we have." And to Mich'l's dismay, Nida, defiant, her lovely form

half revealed by rents in her garments, seemed to materialize beside

the officer. Her wrathful eyes were fixed on Lane, and then she saw

Mich'l.

The technie put all his will into the pleading stare which he

returned, and she understood. She gave no sign of recognition, but

favored both Lane and Mich'l equally with the chill of her disdain.

"Sir, what are your orders?"

Lane glanced aside at Mich'l, acutely conscious of the lethal pressure

in his ribs.

"'Sall right with me, old fellow," Mich'l squawked good-humoredly.

"This your girl that got away from you? Let's both go over and bring

her back."

Lane nodded assent. The soldier saluted, and his vision and that of

the girl disappeared.

"And we're going to do just that!" Mich'l added in an entirely changed

voice. "Get up, you. Act right, speak right, do right, and you may

live to see another day."

* * * * *

So the two left the warren in apparent amity, and walked the beautiful

street, with its richly formed, brightly colored arches, its seemingly

illimitable vistas, its luxuriant, pampered decorative vegetation, its

blazing lights--until at last they came to Administration Circle, and

entered the ponderous gates behind which lay the very heart of the

Government.

They were challenged at once. Although the officer of the guard knew

Lane, usage required the showing of the daily pass. Many high officers

of the Government had in years past fallen from grace overnight.

This formality complied with, Lane and Mich'l, the latter with his

ray-needle ever ready, sat down to wait in the guard room. And Lane,

under Mich'l's quiet prompting, ordered that Nida and her father be

brought to him.

"We shall bring the girl, yes," the astonished officer protested, "but

not Senator Mane. He is a prisoner of state."

"Perhaps you don't know, Captain," Mich'l suggested smoothly, "that it

is not wise to disregard the orders of the Provisional President's

son?"

"It would cost me my commission, perhaps my life!" the officer said.

"Neither would be worth much if you disobey!" Mich'l countered, a wire

edge creeping into his voice.

The officer looked into Lane's stormy face, then with great reluctance

retreated to carry out the order.

In about ten minutes he was back, with four guards and his prisoners.

He explained that Captain Ilgen was detained on official duty.

"You may go," said Lane, prompted by a jab in the ribs.

"A written receipt, please, sir, for the senator."

Glowering, Lane wrote out the desired document. At last they were

alone.

"Our program," Mich'l announced briskly, "is simple. You will conduct

us to one of the Government cars, and will ride with us to such places

as we may direct, and I shall release you when it pleases me. If you

then want to fight, I will accommodate you."

"I would be willing to fight you, as head of the technies," Lane

countered sullenly, "but I wouldn't be bothered with a rebel and a

traitor. You've overstepped yourself this time, my fine bolthead, and

all I ask is a front seat at your execution!"

* * * * *

They stepped into the brightly lighted hall, and in that instant

Mich'l felt a searing heat on his shoulder. Without a moment's pause

he hurled Senator Mane and the girl back into the room. At the same

moment he flung an arm around Lane's neck and pulled him back into the

doorway, where he could use him as a shield while he cautiously peered

out into the corridor. His shoulder throbbed painfully, but his

movement had prevented the needle-ray from penetrating deeply in any

one place.

A short distance up the corridor was a wider space, in the center of

which stood a large bronze urn filled with exotic plants. Behind this

urn were several soldiers, and Mich'l recognized the sharp-eyed

Captain Ilgen. So that officer had recognized the true state of

affairs, or had strong suspicions! But in his haste and eagerness he

had overlooked one important fact. In the guardroom, were riot-rays,

heavy replicas of the ordinary hand weapons. They had not been needed

for many years, but the technies had always kept them fully charged

and in order.

"Nida!" Mich'l called, not removing his eye from the doorway.

"Yes?" She was standing beside him, and Mich'l thrilled to the

admiration and positive affection in her intonation.

"Notice those short tubes mounted on light wheels over against the

walls? Those are riot-ray projectors. Wheel me over a couple."

Nida did as directed. Mich'l stuck the stubby muzzle of one of the

nearest weapons into the corridor, pulled the lever and swung the ray

in an arc toward the ambushed soldiers. There was a sharp crackling

noise and the heat chipped myriads of flakes off the stone walls,

leaving a gray path across the rich murals, and the air was filled

with flying particles. The heat was terrific. It beat back into the

doorway.

Captain Ilgen gave a short, sharp order, and he and his men retreated

before the bronze urn began to wilt and drip melted metal. He could

not be accused of cowardice, for his hand weapons were puny compared

to the riot-rays.

"Quick, before he gets in touch with the outer guard!" Mich'l urged

his prisoner forward, Senator Mane following. The grave patriarch of

rhetoric made a striking picture as he dragged the second riot-ray

along. The other one was abandoned, locked with full power on. It was

converting that corridor into an inferno, and there would be no

pursuit through that avenue.

* * * * *

Mich'l pushed open the metal door suddenly. Two guards on duty were

just coming in, their hand weapons ready. They never knew what struck

them for there was no time for compunction. But even as their bodies

sank to the paving there was the harsh clangor of alarm bells.

Soldiers dashed from everywhere and came running, their needle-rays

menacing.

"In there!" Mich'l shouted. He pointed to the doors, at the dead

guards. As they hesitated, he added:

"Revolution! They're storming the President's office! Hear the rays?"

Through the doors came a faint humming, an acrid smell of heat, of

stone and metal fumes. A corporal saluted Mich'l, recognized Lane's

haggard features, and Lane again felt that cogent persuader in his

ribs.

"That's right, Corporal!" he said bitterly.

"Is the guard room occupied, sir?"

"Not now, you fool!" Mich'l snapped at him. This resolved the last of

the corporal's misgivings. Giving an order, he led his men in,

gasping.

"Now we'll run!" Mich'l ordered, giving Lane a shove. "Coming, Nida?"

She was dragging her father along joyously. They crossed the broad

pedestrian walk, and in the street found an official car nestling on

one of the tracks.

"Heave in the riot-ray, will you, old fellow?" Mich'l requested

jovially, and Lane did. Then the listless chauffeur turned a

controller, and the big car rose a few inches, lightly as a feather,

and sped away swiftly through the maze of traffic.

* * * * *

Sometime later they were in a service lift; not one of the great

public lifts that carried their hundreds at a trip, but one of the

small lifts used mostly by the technies, and known to few outside

their ranks. Mich'l, standing blissfully close to Nida and her father,

enjoyed his moment of relaxation. Many things had been attended to.

Lane had been released at last, in one of the catacomb cemeteries. It

would take him at least two hours to find his way out. They were

discussing the riot-ray, which they had with them.

"I hope we won't have to exhaust it in a fight before we get out,"

Senator Mane said anxiously. "It would be a splendid weapon if we

encounter a hostile environment Outside."

"The Gate is guarded," Mich'l said practically, "but we expect to

surprise them. No use worrying."

The lift came to a stop at an air-lock. The great elevator shafts

were closed by airlocks every 2,000 feet. The reason is obvious. If

the air of the great, spheroid subterranean nation were allowed to

freely obey the laws of gravity, it would be oppressively dense in the

lower levels, and excessively rarified in the upper ones. While the

airlocks were operating Mich'l stepped to a telucid and gave the

agreed-on signal.

In another half hour they were at 37X. The great, dusty, and

little-used storeroom was only poorly lighted; it was dank, and had an

uncomfortable chill. Technies and their families were coming in from

all sides, and it was not long before some five hundred persons, men,

women and children, were assembled. Many of them were pale and

frightened looking, for they were staking everything on an ideal, a

theory. There would be no coming back. The statute books of

Subterranea decreed only one penalty--death--for even the merest

tampering with the Frozen Gate. It was not like this that they had

visioned the opening of the Gate. Under properly controlled

conditions, it would have been possible to open the gate for

preliminary explorations. But not now. They were outside the law.

* * * * *

Nida, standing beside Mich'l, shivered and pulled her over-robe closer

around her. There was sadness in her voice as she said:

"These children.... They remind me of the thousands of children we

must abandon with our people. If I could, I'd steal a few to take with

us."

Mich'l grinned without mirth.

"And be damned as a kidnapper of a particularly horrible sort, as long

as Subterranea lasts!"

"I know. I know. But what will happen to them all when the automatic

machinery fails?"

"They may learn to run it, if they have to. Or if we succeed in

establishing ourselves in the outer world we can tunnel back to them

around the Gate in a year or so. Don't worry about them too much.

We're taking the big risk, not they."

Gobet Hanlon, accompanied by Flos Entine and Mila Mane, approached. He

was loaded down with a huge case of concentrated food.

"I've given orders to bring with us all the cold resisting fabrics we

could carry. Got 'em loaded down, eh?"

"All here?"

"Every last one."

"Let's go, then." Mich'l stepped to a small door that led into the

main corridor close to the Gate. This door had not been used by the

technies when assembling. Through a tiny hole the guard, four

soldiers, could be seen about a blanket, tossing sixteen-sided dice.

Mich'l opened the door, his needle-ray pointed.

"Don't move, or you burn!" he commanded harshly.

* * * * *

The guards, taken completely by surprise, did not move. In a few

moments they were bound, gagged, and dumped into a corner of 37X.

Eager technies were swarming over the complicated mechanism that they

had dared to touch, before, only for inspection and maintenance. The

Frozen Gate was like a huge stopper in a bottle, made of chromium

steel. It was thirty feet in diameter, and thirty feet thick from its

well insulated inside face to that enigmatical Outside that had been a

grisly mystery to the race for some five hundred centuries.

There was a flash of sparks, and the quiet hum of motors. With a

shuddering groan the great plug freed itself from the grip of

millennia; turned a few inches in its hole. The supporting gimbals

took the load now, and slowly the great mass moved inward, carried by

an overhead traveling crane whose track was bolted to the rock roof.

The rate of movement was slow, not much over three or four inches a

minute.

An excited murmur filled the cavern--almost hysterical joy. But

Mich'l, watching that widening margin for the dreaded gush of liquid

air, only trembled with relief. At least the calamity that had visited

rash Atlantica would not be repeated here.

A young technie, one of the heat distributors, climbed up the heavy

bosses on the gateway's face.

"I'm going to be the first to see the Sun!" he shouted joyously. His

challenging gaze roved over the waiting crowd, and suddenly his face

turned ashen. For at the turn of the corridor, some hundred yards

away, he had seen men. No mistaking those uniforms; they were

soldiers. And Mich'l, following his gaze, saw a riot-ray being wheeled

into place. His own riot-ray already commanded the corridor, but he

dared not use it. The soldiers, under the partial protection of the

turn, could incinerate the helpless technies with little danger to

themselves.

"Wait!" Mich'l shouted, running into the open.

* * * * *

An officer came to meet him. He then recognized Captain Ilgen, whose

exceptional shrewdness had almost undone him before. Ilgen could not

see the slow movement of the gate, and Mich'l, himself weaponless,

counted only on parleying for time.

They met midway between the two forces, and the small black lens of

the captain's weapon pointed steadily at Mich'l's chest.

"Mich'l Ares, I arrest you." It seemed that the captain's fine gray

eyes looked out of the lean face with real sympathy. "It may be there

will be executive clemency for these people of yours, but for you--"

Mich'l, tense and deadly, saw the captain's vigilant attention leave

his face for a second; saw his eyes widen in consternation. He could

not know that Ilgen had seen a slender crescent of green light appear

in the Frozen Gate, but he did not lose the opportunity. His fist

crashed on the captain's jaw, so that the soldierly figure reeled and

the needle-ray fell to the ground. Mich'l leaped after him, picked him

up, held him. The riot-ray was turned full on him, and a soldier's

hand trembled on the lever. But it did not pull.

"You'll kill him!" Mich'l shouted. And then he ventured to turn his

head to look at the Gate. He saw the first of the fugitives struggle

into the narrow crack. The gate seemed to have stuck, and there was

barely room to pass. Ilgen, half conscious, was trying to rain blows

on Mich'l's back, compelling him to stop and pass the officer's hands

through the belt of his tunic and to manacle them with a pair of

bracelets which he found in his pocket. As he staggered toward the

Gate with his burden, he saw Gobet beside him, the stolen riot-ray

menacing the soldiers, who would otherwise have rushed in.

* * * * *

Suddenly Ilgen struggled upright.

"Fire," he commanded in stentorian tones.

"They'll kill you too, you fool!" Mich'l exclaimed angrily.

"I am a soldier!" Ilgen answered with contempt. His legs barely

supported his weight, and he was struggling to free his manacled

hands. He threw himself into the narrow crevice of the Gate, to

obstruct the stream of fugitives. He started to shout again:

"Fi--" Crack! Again Mich'l's fist caught him. He hooked the officer's

elbows over two of the bosses, so that he was supported in plain sight

of his men, and turned to urge haste. The last two stragglers were

hurrying through, and with relief Mich'l turned to follow. But he set

the closing mechanism in motion before he leaped for the narrow

opening that was becoming still narrower, though very slowly. Now for

that green crescent of light, and hope!

He felt a wave of heat. Glancing back, he saw the irresolute guards

scattered by the enraged charge of a square, blocky man in civilian

robe--the usually smiling Provisional President, Senator Mollon.

Mollon himself was fumbling with the lever of the riot-ray. Ilgen had

evidently reported where he was going before starting in pursuit of

the technies.

Again that withering flash of heat, and Mich'l saw Captain Ilgen,

still semi-conscious, suddenly turn red-faced. Mollon would burn him

up without compunction, in the hope of catching one of the fugitive

technies. And now a figure in uniform leaped forward at Mollon's angry

gesture, and bent purposefully to the sighting tube.

The crescent was now so slender that Mich'l had to turn sideways to

squeeze back into the corridor. And slowly, inexorably, it was growing

smaller still. With desperate haste the practiced, uniformed man was

adjusting his range.

Captain Ilgen struggled when Mich'l seized him.

"I arrest--"

Mich'l thought for a sickening moment that he was caught in the

closing gate. Then he was free in the cylindrical tunnel into which

the plug was creeping. Luckily, Ilgen was slight. His body squeezed

through with little more difficulty than Mich'l's own. Now the opening

was too small for any man's body. A red glow illuminated that

narrowing slit; an acrid wave of heat, and the smell of burnt metal

came with the strong current of air that blew out of Subterranea.

* * * * *

Mich'l dragged his captive down the rocky tunnel, the floor of which

dipped gently away from the Gate; for drainage, no doubt. Around a

bend, the source of the greenish light was apparent. The fugitives

were in an ice cavern. The light seemed to emanate from roof and

walls. The air was uncompromisingly chill, for the blast of warm air

from Subterranea had stopped.

But the cold of the air was nothing to the icy chill that settled on

the heart of Mich'l Ares, and the hearts of Senator Mane, and the

other leaders of this desperate enterprise. So this, this was the

Outside! A cavern of ice--small, hemmed-in! Those ancient folk-legends

of a Sun--

"I arrest you, Mich'l Ares!"

Mich'l laughed shortly. What a single-minded fellow this Captain Ilgen

was! Still groggy, of course. Didn't know where they were. He left the

soldier with the red, blistered face.

"Mich'l! Mich'l!" a voice echoed shrilly from the ice walls. It was a

high-pitched voice, and an excited one. A boy came flying out of a

narrow crevice, his short robe flying, his cloth-wrapped legs

twinkling.

"Mich'l!" he shouted. "I saw it! I saw the Sun, the beautiful Sun!"

Lucky it was that in the rush no one was hurt. The small cleft opened

into a wide tunnel, a low-roofed cave through which milky-white water

flowed. The cave opened upon a vista of blue sky and towering

mountains whose tops were burdened with snow and upon whose sides

glaciers slid down and melted; and the milky-white stream brawled down

into a green valley, far, far below. On a mountain meadow, not far

from the glacier that still buried the Frozen Gate, they rested....

* * * * *

And so came a new strain of humanity upon the surface of the earth--a

strain tempered and refined by the inexorable process of evolution and

environment. Already animal life had reappeared, drastically changed

and ruthlessly weeded out by the most severe Ice Age the world had

ever known, and now Man stood once more on a new threshold of time.

Something of this may have passed through the minds of the refugees

luxuriating in the strong sunlight of this mountain meadow, and in

active and alert brains the foundations of a new civilization were

already being built.

They were preparing to go into the valley below when there was a dull

concussion. The glacier over the Frozen Gate rose slightly, then

disappeared completely out of sight, leaving a yawning hole in the

mountainside. Ice and rocks slid down, filling the hole. The refugees

gazed at the scene in fear and wonder.

"They have blown up the gate! And the chambers leading to it!" Senator

Mane--now only Leo Mane--said slowly. "There goes our last chance to

save them!" His tones were deeply sad. He could not look upon these

people as an experiment that Nature had abandoned, although he knew

that history is thronged with the shadows of vanished races, culled by

the process of natural selection.

But Youth looks only ahead. The majority of the rescued technies were

young, and with eagerness and anticipation, they followed Mich'l and

Nida Ares down into the valley to build their first homes.

The Midget From the Island

A COMPLETE NOVELETTE

_By H. G. Winter_

[Illustration: _"For God's sake, Hagendorff, what's come over you?"_]

[Sidenote: Garth Howard, prey to half the animals of the forest,

fights valiantly to regain his lost five feet of size.]

In the chill of an early morning, a rowboat drifted aimlessly down the

Detroit River. It seemed to have broken loose from its mooring and

been swept away; its outboard motor was silent and it swung in slow

circles as the currents caught at it. But the boat carried a

passenger. A man's nude body stretched face downward in it.

It was a startling figure that lay there. The body was fully matured

and had a splendid development of rounded muscles--and yet it was not

more than three feet in length. A perfectly formed and proportioned

manikin! The two officers in the harbor police launch which presently

slid alongside to investigate were giants in comparison.

They had not expected to find such weird cargo in a drifting rowboat.

They stared at the naked, unconscious midget in utter amazement, as if

seeing a thing that could not be real. And when one of them reached

down to lift the tiny body aboard, his eyes went wider with added

surprise. His lift was inadequate. The dwarf's weight was that of a

normal-sized man!

This was mystery on mystery. But they got the uncannily heavy figure

aboard at last and ascertained that, though the skin showed many

wounds and was blue from long exposure, the heart was still beating.

And realizing that the life might flicker out beneath their eyes

unless they took action immediately, they proceeded to work over him.

After some minutes, the dwarf gave signs of returning consciousness.

His lids fluttered and opened, disclosing eyes that filled suddenly

with terror as they stared into the faces, huge in comparison, that

leaned over his. One of the officers said reassuringly:

"You're all right, buddy: you're on a harbor police launch. But who in

the devil are you? D'you speak English? Where'd you come from?"

* * * * *

The midget struggled to speak; struggled desperately to tell something

of great importance. They bent closer. Gasping, high-pitched words

came to their ears, and the story that those words told held them

spellbound. When the shrill voice ceased and the dwarf sank back into

the coat they had thrown around him, the two policemen gazed at each

other. One whistled softly, and his companion said soberly:

"We'd better phone up and have the local police tend to this right

away, Bill."

Thus, two hours later, several miles up the river, another launch

containing three officers came to its destination, a solitary,

thickly-wooded island that brooded under a cloak of silence where the

river leaves broad Lake St. Clair. The launch crept up to a mooring

post a few feet from a small, rough beach, and was tied there.

Quickly, the men waded ashore and tiptoed up a winding trail that was

barred from the sun by dank foliage. They soon came to a clearing

where a large cabin had been built. There, one of them whispered,

"Guns out!"

Then the three men crossed the clearing and cautiously entered the

cabin.

For a moment there was silence. Then came a terrified shout, followed

by the bunched thunder of a succession of pistol shots. The

reverberations slowly died away, and some time later the policemen

reappeared and stood outside the door.

One of them, dazed, kept repeating over and over, "I wouldn't have

believed it! I wouldn't have believed it!" and another nodded in

wordless agreement. The third, white-faced, stared for a long time

unseeingly at the cloud-flecked bowl of the sky....

But it would be best, perhaps, to tell the story as it happened.

* * * * *

The incredible events that shaped it began two nights before, when the

larger of the two rooms in the island cabin was bathed in the bald

glare of a strong floodlight that threw into sharp prominence the

intent features of two men in the room, and the complicated details of

the strange equipment around them.

Garth Howard, the younger of the two, was holding a tiny, squawling,

spitting thing, not more than three inches long, which might have

seemed, at a quick glance, to have been a normal enough kitten. Closer

inspection, however, would have revealed that it had a thick, smooth

coat, a lithe, fully developed body and narrowed, venomous

eyes--things which no week-old kitten ever possessed. It was a mature

cat, but in the size of a kitten.

Howard's level gray eyes were held fascinated by it. When he spoke,

his words were hushed and almost reverent.

"Perfect, Hagendorff!" he said. "Not a flaw!"

"The reduction has not improved her temper," Hagendorff articulated

precisely. His deep voice matched the rest of him. Garth Howard's

clean-muscled body stood a good six feet off the floor, yet the other

topped him by inches. And his face compared well with his bulky body,

for his head was massive, with overhanging brows and a shaggy mop of

blond hair. Athlete and weight-lifter, the two looked, but in reality

they were scientist and assistant, working together for a common end.

* * * * *

The room in which they stood was obviously a laboratory. Bulky gas

engines and a generator squatted at one end; tables held racks of

tools and loops of insulated wiring and jars of various chemicals. One

long table stretched the whole length of the room, placed flush

against the left wall, whose rough planking was broken by a lone

window. There were racks of test tubes on this table, and tools,

carelessly scattered by men intent on their work.

Still another table was devoted to several cages, containing the usual

martyrs of experimental science: guinea pigs and rabbits, rats and

white mice. Beside these was a large box, screen topped, in which, in

separate partitions, were a variety of insects: beetles and flies and

spiders and tarantulas.

But the thing that dominated the laboratory was the machine on the

long table against the wall. Its chamber, the most striking feature,

was a cube of roughly six feet, built of dull material resembling

bakelite. Wires trailed through it from the glittering plate, which

was the chamber's floor, and a curved spray-shaped projector overhead,

to an intricately constructed apparatus studded with vacuum tubes. A

small switchboard stood beside the chamber, and from it thick cables

led to the generator in the rear of the room.

"Let us return her to normal," Hagendorff rumbled after a moment or

two devoted to prodding and examining the diminutive cat. "Then for

the final experiment."

One whole wall of the cubical chamber was a hinged door, with a tier

of several peep-holes. Garth Howard swung the door open, placed the

tiny, struggling cat inside and quickly closed it again. "Right," he

said briefly, and pressed his eyes to the bottom peep-hole.

* * * * *

A switch was pulled over, and the dynamo's drone pulsed through the

room. Hagendorff's fingers rested on a large lever that jutted from

the switchboard. Slowly, he pulled it to one side.

The imprisoned cat, small as a rat, had been nervously whipping its

tail from side to side and meowing plaintively; but, as the lever

swung over, there came a change. The vacuum tubes behind the

switchboard glowed green; a bright white ray poured from the spray in

the chamber, making the metal plate below a shimmering, almost molten

thing. The animal's legs suddenly braced on it; its narrowed eyes

widened, glazing weirdly, while the tail became a stiff, bristling

ramrod. And, as a balloon swells from a strong breath, the cat's body

increased in size. It grew not in spurts, but with a smooth, flowing

rhythm: grew as easily as a flower unfolding beneath the sun.

In only a few seconds its original size was attained. Howard raised

his hand; the lever shot back and the white beam faded into

nothingness. A full sized and very angry cat tore around the inside of

the chamber.

"Normal?" Hagendorff questioned. The other nodded and prepared to open

the door.

"Wait! She always was a little undersized; I give her a few inches

more as a reward."

"Not too much," warned Garth. "She's got a nasty temper; we don't

want a wildcat prowling round here!"

The white beam flashed, the tubes glowed and almost instantly

flickered off again. When the chamber's door was opened, an indignant

and slightly oversized cat bounded through, leaped from the table with

a squawled oath of hatred and streaked into the front room of the

cabin.

* * * * *

Garth turned and faced Hagendorff, a smile on his lips and a gleam in

his eyes. He ran his fingers through his black hair.

"Well," he said, "now it's time for the final experiment. Who shall it

be?"

Hagendorff did not answer at once, and the American went on:

"I think it'd better be me. There's a slight risk, of course, and I,

as the inventor, could never ask an assistant to do anything I

wouldn't. Is it all right with you?"

Hagendorff nodded quickly in answer. Garth stood reflecting for a

moment.

"Guinea pigs, rabbits and insects have survived reduction to

one-twentieth normal size," he said slowly. "It should be safe for the

human body to descend just as far. But stop me at about two feet this

first time. I'm not taking any chances; I want to be alive and kicking

when I announce the success of my experiments to the scientific

world."

His assistant said nothing.

"Well, here goes," Garth added. "I'd better take off my clothes if I

don't want to be buried in them. They're not affected by the process.

Must be because of the lack of organic connection between their fibers

and the human body."

A few minutes later, nude, he jumped onto the laboratory table. He

presented a perfect specimen of well-developed manhood as he stood

before the door of the chamber. His smooth skin, under which the

rounded muscles rolled easily, gleamed white beneath the glare of the

floodlight. His gray eyes glanced at the stolid assistant, who already

had one hand on the switchboard's lever. Garth saw that the hand was

trembling slightly, and smiled as he realized Hagendorff was as

excited as he. He said:

"I'll leave the door ajar, so you can more easily watch every phase of

the reduction. If it's painful--well, I guess I can stand anything a

cat can!"

Then, stooping slightly, Garth stepped in and drew the door almost

shut.

* * * * *

He relaxed as much as possible from the tremendous excitement that

filled him, and nodded at Hagendorff.

"I'm ready," he said. "Go ahead!"

The ray came to his body as the crash of thunder comes to the ear. His

nerves leaped as it struck and enveloped him. He felt as if he were

entombed in ice, and yet his veins were aflame. Fiery shafts fanged

him all through and resolved, presently, into a measured, tingling

beat.

His thoughts raced. He knew that those minute particles of matter, the

atoms of his body, were being compacted; he sensed that his legs were

rigid, his body stiff, his eyes clamped ahead in a glazed stare. He

was only half-conscious of the objects outside, but the dim sight of

them was fantastic and nauseous.

There was Hagendorff's face peering in at him--growing! Swelling as

the cat's body had swollen; and yet receding and rising until Garth,

momentarily forgetting that he was the one whose size was changing,

thought that the man's titanic body would fill the room. But the room

was growing, too: the stools were becoming leviathans of wood, the

walls were like cliffs, the compact switchboard was a large surface

of black, and the chamber in which he stood grew into a high-roofed

vault, its sides shooting up and retreating as if shoved by invisible

hands.

And still he sank, and still the terrible light devoured him.

Suddenly a delirious sensation engulfed him; his senses went reeling

away, and he staggered. Then with a wrench he came to. As he regained

control of his mind he knew the lever had been switched off and the

process completed.

He found that he was gasping. He passed a hand over his sweat-studded

face and looked around.

* * * * *

Outside was the room of a giant. And in a moment a giant became

visible. His vast bulk filled the chamber's doorway; his mammoth face

peered in. Garth's eardrums quivered from a deep bass rumble, sounding

like thunder on a distant horizon.

"Are you all right, Howard?"

A finger half the length of his own arm reached forward and prodded

him. For a second Garth could do nothing but stare at it. It brought

home to him starkly the puny size of his body, only two feet in

height. He felt suddenly afraid. But that was foolish, he thought; and

he laughed, his voice ludicrously high and shrill.

"I'm all right," he cried. "But I can hardly understand you. If I were

much smaller, I probably couldn't--your voice'd seem so deep. Gangway,

Hagendorff, I'm coming out!"

His eyes were just below the level of the giant's shoulders. He

stepped from the black chamber and stared amazedly at the room, at the

chairs, the objects in it--at the laboratory table on which he was

standing, along which he might have sprinted thirty yards. A surge of

exultant animal spirits flowed through him. His dream had become a

reality; the machine had passed its last test! His body was sound and

whole; he felt perfectly natural; he had not changed, save in size;

and in size he was like Gulliver, confronted with a Brobdingnagian

room!

He hurdled a five-inch-high box of tools, ran down the creaking table

and stood laughing in front of a rack of test tubes half as high as he

was. Three strides took Hagendorff opposite him; and from above the

thunderous voice rumbled:

"What were your sensations?"

"Probably as close as man'll ever get to the feelings of a spark of

electricity!" the midget replied. "But bearable, though I was freezing

and burning at the same time. My body was rigid, paralyzed--just like

the animals we used. I couldn't move."

"You're sure you couldn't move? You were helpless?"

* * * * *

The booming voice throbbed with sudden interest. Garth looked up

curiously. "No," he repeated. "I couldn't move. But lift me down,

Hagendorff. I want to take a walk on the floor."

A hand wrapped around his body, tensed and strained upwards. The

two-foot-high man was not quite pulled off the table. Then Hagendorff

grunted and relaxed his grasp.

"I had forgotten," he rumbled. "Your weight remains the same. You are

one-third my size, yet you weigh almost as much as I do. Weight, which

is the sum of the mass of all the atoms in you, is not, naturally,

affected by compacting those atoms."

It was only by a great effort that he was able to deposit the manikin

on the floor.

For a while Garth strolled around, savoring to their full the

fantastic sensations his diminished stature gave him, at once amused

and somehow frightened by the overwhelming size of the laboratory. To

his eyes, the tables were like bridges; Hagendorff's broad figure

loomed monstrously over him, and the guinea pigs and rabbits in their

cages seemed as big as fair-sized dogs. With a grin, he looked up at

the giant who was his assistant.

"Think I'll make the return trip, and give you a chance," he said.

"I've had my share, and the process has been proven. It's weird, being

down in this new world all alone. I'd hate to think what would happen

if a rat came along!"

Silently, Hagendorff stooped and grasped him again. But Garth, when he

stood once more inside the chamber, regarded his huge, rough-moulded

face curiously.

"Say," he said, puzzled, "your hands are trembling like the devil!

What's wrong? You're more nervous than I am!"

Hagendorff did not answer. He advanced to the switchboard. His

narrowed, deep-set eyes shot a quick glance at the small, nude man

inside the chamber, and for a second one hand hovered over the lever

on the panel.

* * * * *

In that tense second a flash of intuition, of deadly fear, came to

Garth Howard, and he leaped wildly forward. But his rear foot did not

leave the floor of the chamber, and his shout of alarm was choked

midway. Again the fierce ray paralyzed every muscle in him, and he was

locked motionless where he was.

Helplessly, his glazed eyes stared at Hagendorff, while every moment

his rigid little body melted downwards. He was becoming rapidly

smaller, not larger!

Through the agony of the stabbing electrical waves, in vain Garth

tried to wrench his legs free. The few inches that separated him from

the door were an impassable barrier. Sheer panic clutched him. He was

trapped. But why? Why had Hagendorff tricked him?

As if reading the question, the giant outside came close to the

chamber's door and regarded his captive with eyes that were lit by a

peculiar flame. He grunted, then reached backward and returned the

switchboard lever almost to the neutral point, reducing the speed of

the decreasing process.

"Yes, that is better," the German gloated, in a deep, satisfied tone.

"It will be slower, now. Slower--and more interesting to watch!... I

fancy your eyes are reproachful, my friend. Why have I done it, you

wonder? _Ach!_ This machine, it will startle the world of science; it

will make its inventor famous--not? Yes; and did you think I was going

to stand by and see all the credit go to you? No! To me it shall

go--me alone! And you--" He chuckled and rubbed his hands before going

on.

"You shall be what the newspapers call a martyr to science. You shall

sink to a foot, to six inches--to one inch--even less, I think!

Eventually the reduction will kill you, of course; and your body shall

be proof of how you died--in an experiment--and shall also prove the

machine's power and my genius!"

* * * * *

He laughed thunderously, a blond and malevolent titan. He did not

notice that, with the lessening of the reduction's speed, a slight

trace of control over his muscles had returned to the midget inside.

His tiny body was slowly diminishing, and complete, hopeless paralysis

and death was not far away. But Garth was fighting every second,

fighting desperately with the trace of strength he possessed to slide

to the door, break the contact and get out from under the ray's

remorseless influence. Almost imperceptibly, the effort lacerating

him with pain, he slid his feet forward. Hagendorff talked on. He

seemed to be blinded by the vision of the fame his treachery would

bring him.

"We shall have an experiment, my Professor; and then you will have an

interesting death! The ray will suck you down; you will crumple and

crumple till you're not much bigger than my thumbnail! And then I

shall--_ah!_"

Garth had torn loose. Calling on every ounce of strength and will, the

midget, now no more than one foot high, had reached the edge of the

floor plate and pitched out onto the long laboratory table.

Giant and dwarf faced each other. For a moment neither spoke or moved.

A breathless tensity hung over the laboratory. The machine droned on,

forgotten. From outside, startlingly near, came the eery hoot of an

owl.

A tight smile broke through the angry surprise on Hagendorff's face.

"Well, well!" he said, with gargantuan, macabre humor. "We object! It

was foolish, eh, to reduce the power? Next time, it shall not be so.

We--_object!_"

With the word, he lunged, and his bulky arms lashed down in a wide,

grasping sweep.

But Garth's taut muscles, retaining all the strength and vigor of

their normal size had been awaiting just such a move, and his tiny

body described the arc of a tremendous leap that neatly vaulted one

huge arm and started him sprinting swiftly down the table.

* * * * *

At the end he wheeled, and before the other overcame his surprise at

such a nimble retreat, burst out indignantly:

"For God's sake, Hagendorff, what's come over you? Be sensible! You

can't do this; you can't really mean it! Why--"

"So!" roared the assistant, and his rush cut short the midget's

shrill, frantic words. But his grasp this time was better judged;

Garth felt the great fingers slip over his body. Remembering his

strength, he lashed out at one with all his might. Hagendorff grunted

with pain; but instead of continuing the attack, he suddenly turned

and strode to the door leading into the other room, and closed it with

a bang.

"You cannot escape," he growled, advancing again; "you merely delay."

Panting, Garth glanced around the room. He was, in truth, trapped.

There was but the one door; and even if he could reach it, he could

not get it open, for the handle would be far above him. The room was a

sealed arena. For a little while it would go on--a wild leaping and

dodging on the table, a hopeless evading of mammoth hands ... and

then, inevitably, would come a crushing grip on his body, followed by

experimentation and the agony of death in the black chamber.

Fearful, he waited, a perfect, living statuette, twelve inches

high....

A grunt preluded the giant's vicious charge. The American staggered

from the brush of a sweeping hand; then, twisting mightily, he dove

under it, like a mouse slipping under the paw of a cat. In doing so he

fell sprawling; and though he was up in a moment, his arm was held. A

hoarse, exultant rumble came to his ears.

"Caught, my friend!"

But Hagendorff spoke too soon. With a great wrench, Garth broke free,

and made a tigerish dash back along the table toward the window. And

even as the clumsy titan jumped to the side and grabbed again at him,

he hurled his tiny, heavy body against the pane, and went plunging

through a shower of glass into the cool dark night outside.

* * * * *

He fell five feet, and the wind was jarred out of him as he crashed

through the branches of a bush under the window into the sodden earth

beneath. Unhurt, save for a few lacerations from the glass, he

staggered to his feet, gasping for his breath, and started to run

across the clearing towards the fringe of dense forest growth that

ringed the cabin.

Then he heard thunderous footsteps and, a second later, the sound of

the front door being pulled open. Garth turned in his tracks, and

stumbled back beneath the cabin, thanking heaven that it was raised on

short stilts. But the ruse did not give him much of a start, and by

the time he had painfully threaded his way between the piles of timber

left underneath the cabin, Hagendorff had discovered the trick and was

scouting back.

Then, with the strength of the hunted, Garth was out from under the

other side and sprinting for the doubtful sanctuary of the forest.

His tiny feet, carrying the weight of a normal-sized man, sank ankle

high into the muddy ground, several times almost tripping him. Even as

he got to where a trail through the bush began, and passed from the

cold starlight into spaces black with clustered shadows, he heard a

bellow from behind, and, glancing back, saw a monstrous shape come

leaping on his tracks.

He had only seconds in which to find refuge; he could not stick to the

trail. Thick bush, dank and heavy from recent rains, was on either

side, fugitive streaks of pale light from above painting it eerily.

Garth plunged into the matted growth, dropped to hands and knees and

wormed forward away from the trail. Earth-jarring footbeats sounded

close. With frantic haste he wrenched though the scratching tendrils

and came to a miniature clearing.

* * * * *

He saw the tilted shape of a rotted tree-stump, its roots half washed

away and exposing a narrow crevice between them. Gasping, the nude,

foot-high figure tumbled down into it, and lay there, trying to hush

his labored breathing.

He was a mere twenty feet from the trail; and though to him the bush

was a jungle, to his pursuer it was only chest-high. A towering shadow

moved along the trail. The thud of heavy footbeats came more slowly to

the listening midget. Hagendorff was searching, puzzled by the vague

shadows, for where Garth had left the path.

Silence fell.

Garth's heart was pounding like a trip-hammer. He held himself alert,

ready, if need be, to struggle up from the moist crevice and dart on

further into the bush. He could not see the giant, but could picture

his huge, sullen face all too clearly. Still no sound came. Risking

all, he gripped a root and hauled himself up slightly. Then he peered

around the stump.

Hagendorff was standing in the thick of the bush. He was not ten feet

away, striving in the gloom to discern the other's tell-tale tracks.

Garth drew his head back, hardly daring to breathe. Shivering, his

naked body miserably cold, he waited, pressed down in the soggy earth.

His betraying tracks were there; the shadows alone befriended him.

The silence was drawn so fine that the faint cheep of a night-bird

sounded startlingly loud. But then came thunder that sent the bird

winging away in fright, and the night and the forest echoed with the

roar of a wrathful, impatient human voice.

"You hear me, wherever you are! And hear this: I leave you now, but in

ten minutes I have you! You little fool--you think you can get free?

It is only by minutes you delay me!"

Snarling a curse, the treacherous giant turned and crashed through the

bush and took his huge form striding back towards the cabin.

* * * * *

Garth was thinking of many things as he scrambled back wearily from

his refuge to the trail. He was cursing the unwanted publicity which

prying reporters had given his work in Detroit, and which had led him

to lease the lonely island and build a laboratory in the wilderness.

Had it not been for that publicity, he would never have needed an

assistant, and the vision of fame would never have come to delude

Hagendorff and turn his thoughts towards murder.

His position seemed a horrible delirium from which he must presently

awake. Naked, dwarfed by each ordinary forest weed, unarmed, and

trembling from the wind-sharpened night, he hardly knew which way to

turn. His body was blotched with blood and mud, and under it the

ragged gashes made by glass and bush stung painfully; he was hungry

and stiff and tired and miserable. He remembered Hagendorff's threat

of capturing him in ten minutes, and forced a smile to his face.

"Looks kind of bad," he muttered, using his voice in an attempt to

dispel some of the lonely grip of the night, "but we'll keep moving,

anyway! He's coming back soon. Let's see: I'd better make for the

stream. It'll be hard for him to follow my tracks through that. And

then...."

Then--what? The island was small. He realized he could not stand many

hours of exposure. Inevitably--But he turned his mind from the future

and its seeming hopelessness, and concentrated on the immediate need,

which was to hide himself. Forcing the pace, he struck off on a

shambling trot down the dim trail, on into the deepening, sinister

shadows towards the island's lone stream.

* * * * *

Obstacles that normally he would not have noticed made his path

tortuous. His great weight sank his feet ankle-high in the moist,

uneven ground. Time and time again he stumbled over some imbedded rock

that, potato-sized, was like a boulder to him. Time and time again he

fell, and when he rose his legs were plastered with soggy earth that

did not dry; and the damp, fallen leaves and twigs he pitched into

clung to his coating of mud. Each broken limb and branch, dropped from

the whispering gloom of the trees above, drained the energy from his

tiring muscles. Soon he was conscious of a vague numbness creeping

over him, a deceptive, drowsy warmth into which he longed to sink, but

which he drove back by working his arms and legs as vigorously as he

could.

On he went, with teeth clenched and eyes fixed on the half-seen trail

ahead--a fantastic, tiny creature hunted like a wild animal by a giant

of his own kind!

Presently, through the shroud of darkness traced by ghostly slivers of

starlight, came the sound of trickling water. The trail rose, dipped

down; and through that hollow crawled the stream, winding from a

hidden spring to the encompassing river below. Garth was winded when

he came to it; to his eyes it seemed a small river. His legs were so

numb they hardly felt the cold bite of the water that lapped around

them.

Some furry water animal leaped away as Garth trudged upstream, alarmed

by the strange midnight visitant and the self-encouraging mutterings

of a shrill human voice....

* * * * *

He had waded what seemed to him a weary distance--in reality only a

few hundred yards--through the winding, icy creek, when suddenly he

halted and stood stock-still. Listening, he heard the ordinary sounds

of the wind through the fir-spires, and the slow trickle of water;

heard the beating of his own heart. Nothing else. And yet.... He took

another step.

Then he swung quickly around and peered back, senses alert. There was

no mistaking the sound that had come again. It was the crunch of heavy

feet, thudding at even intervals on damp earth. They were

Hagendorff's; and he was armed with light!

A long beam of white speared through the tangle of bush and tree

trunks far below. It came slanting down from above, prying for the

story recorded by miniature footprints in the ground. By its distance

from him, Garth could tell Hagendorff had come to where his trail led

into the stream. The ray held steady for minutes. Again it prowled

nervously around, hunting for tell-tale signs, sweeping in widening

circles. Then, it was punctuated by the crunch of a boot.

The giant was following upstream!

With the flashlight, he might even be able to trace the prints in the

bed of the creek. Stooping, Garth crept ahead, as silently as he

could, though the stir of water at his feet seemed terribly loud.

There were keen ears behind, craned for sounds like that. He knew he

would have to hide again--quickly--and at that moment he saw a place.

A cleft in the bank to his right held a small hole, dimly limned by a

wisp of starlight. On hands and feet the midget scrambled cat-like to

it. It slanted down and inwards, only inches wide, so that the earth

was close to his body when he slid feet-first inside. But it was warm

and dry, for it was shielded by a ledge from rain, and with the warmth

the hunted manikin's spirits rose somewhat. The ray of light, which he

could see sweeping back and forth downstream, was still following

slowly, as if Hagendorff were having trouble making out the

water-covered trail. Garth breathed easier, cuddled down--and then,

for some unaccountable reason, he felt uneasy.

* * * * *

He had not noticed it at first, but now his nostrils were filled with

a queer, musky odor that electrified his nerves and tensed his

muscles. He felt the short hairs on his neck rise; felt his lips

tighten and draw back over clenched teeth. Some long-buried instinct

was warning him of danger--and suddenly he sprang from the hole and

swung around.

From it, a killer came snaking out, its bared fangs thirsty for his

life blood!

Arching and swaying its lithe-muscled body, it slid forward in its

graceful, savage way--a weasel, the deadliest pound-for-pound killer

that prowls the forest. It was as long as the naked human who faced it

was tall. Unwittingly, he had chosen its hole as a refuge.

Retreat would have been impossible, but Garth for some reason did not

even think of it. A strange new sensation poured through his tense

body, a sensation akin to fierce joy. Gone was his tiredness; his

teeth too were bared, matching the wicked fangs before him. Two primal

creatures they were, tooth to tooth and claw to claw, the man as naked

and intoxicated with the blood lust as the ten pounds of bone and

sinew that now darted suddenly for his throat.

With the lightning quickness that had come to him with small size,

Garth stepped aside. And as the weasel's head streaked by he called

on man's distinctive weapon, and put every ounce of his weight behind

a right arm swing that landed square on a cold black nose and doubled

the weasel back in midair.

Stunned, it writhed for a second on the slippery bank; and then again

it was up, mad with pain now and swaying slightly as it gathered for a

second leap against this creature that fought so strangely.

* * * * *

But in the momentary respite Garth had reasoned out his best chance.

He did not try to fight off the second dart with his fists, but went

boldly in. Ducking through the needle claws with head lowered, his

tiny hands streaked in on the furry throat. He found it, and his

fingers thumbed into the wind-pipe; but not before the weasel smelled

the blood its claws had drawn and went utterly berserk. For a moment

there was a wild flurry of furry, tearing legs and a blood-streaked

white body between them, trying desperately to evade their slicing

strokes. They pitched down the bank together, animal and man

struggling silently to the death; and when they jarred to a stop in

the water below, Garth's strategy was achieved.

He was uppermost; his grip was steel around the throbbing throat, and

the hundred and eighty pound weight of his body was holding the legs

powerless. Not an inch from his face the weasel's fangs clashed

frantically together. Garth maintained his clutch, squeezing with

every bit of his mighty strength. The animal shuddered; then writhed

in the death convulsions; at last lay still.

Panting, his mind a welter of primate emotions roused by the kill, the

man shook it a last time, jumped to his feet and glared around--to see

the beam of a flashlight only a dozen yards away. His more deadly foe,

the human foe, was upon him. Perhaps the sounds of the fight had

reached his ears.

Garth lost not a moment. Quickly he slung the weasel's body back into

the hole and jammed himself down after it.

* * * * *

Hagendorff approached slowly, mumbling and cursing to himself in

sullen ill-humor. Things were not going as he had expected them to.

The white ray scoured the banks of the stream, searching doggedly.

Nearer he came, and with each step the watching midget's rapid

breathing grew tighter. The towering body was more than shadow now.

Another ten feet and the flashlight would find the marks of the fight.

But the titan's patience gave out. Closer than he had yet been to his

quarry, he paused, and again the thunder of his voice broke the

night's hush.

"Bah! This is foolish! In daylight I find him certainly. I have waited

long; I can wait a little more. I need sleep. To-morrow, it will be

different!"

He swung away from the stream, and in a few minutes the rip and crash

of his progress through the bush had died. In the silence, Garth

Howard considered his situation.