A Dangerous Scientist
Julian Epworth returned to consciousness on a luxurious day bed in a
pleasant plastered room tinted a light green. For several moments he
did not comprehend. Presently he put his hand up to his head, and
found a bandage.
“Just what happened?” he asked curiously, not expecting a reply.
“Take it calmly,” Joan advised. She was sitting by him in a dejected
attitude. “We’re prisoners, and——”
“Where are we?” he demanded impatiently.
She placed her finger on her lips, and pointed at an open door. The
only thing the young man could see through the door was another
plastered room tinted blue, and a radio receiving set.
“This is KFI, Los Angeles, California,” he heard come over the radio.
“We are now going to hear from Professor Ainslee, the distinguished
astronomer of Mount Wilson Observatory. He is going to tell you
something about the things that are going on in the moon.”
There was a brief delay, and then Prof. Ainslee’s well-known voice
came over the air.
“Greetings, ladies and gentlemen of Radio Land: Continuing my short
talks about the marvelous growth on our satellite, I will state that
the newly discovered lake in the extreme western part of the Sea of
Vapours is rapidly getting larger. I should say that it is about a
mile in diameter at this time. Of course it cannot be water as water
cannot exist on the moon. The heat of the sun, shining steadily for
fourteen days, would dry it up as there is no air on the moon to give
the water protection. As all readers are aware air forms a blanket
over water, and prevents its gradual evaporation. But there is
certainly a dark spot at the point indicated, and the scientific world
is studying it thoughtfully. The spectroscopic investigation states
absolutely that it is water. This increases the mystery.”
“Ah, ha,” a shrill voice broke out in the adjoining room, “I, the
greatest and mightiest scientist in the world, am the only man who can
answer this mystery. Bring in the prisoners, Kosloff, and let them
hear the rest of this astronomical lecture. Perhaps they may be
interested to discover how ignorant their scientists are.”
The speaker had hardly finished when the door was pushed open, and
four men sprang into the green-tinted room, covering Epworth and Joan
with their guns.
“Come,” one of the men commanded in broken English, “the general
wishes to speak to you.”
Epworth got up from the bed, and followed by Joan passed through the
door guarded by the gunmen. Their captors stopped them in front of a
large mahogany desk. Seated behind this desk was an enormous giant.
Epworth instantly recognized him as the man who had prevented the
get-away in the Greyhound with a machine gun.
The giant stood up and made an elaborate bow, drawing his immense
height erect. He was fully eight feet tall, and extended an arm almost
as large as Joan’s body. Epworth weighed 160 pounds, and mentally
compared his weight with the appearance of the giant. He was willing
to wager that the giant would weigh 350 pounds, and that there was not
an ounce of surplus fat about the man’s red-haired body. He thought of
red hair all over the man because the giant’s shirt was open at the
throat and a huge mat of red hair was visible. In addition to this he
had a mass of tousled red hair on his head and a long red beard, which
came almost to his waist. He was, in fact, a Man Mountain Dean, beard
and all.
He smiled at Epworth and Joan, and they thought of horse teeth, and
the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac.
As Joan stepped in front of him he leaned forward, and gave her a hard
stare out of his small, twinkling pale blue eyes. At first there was a
slight pucker of puzzlement around his big mouth. Then he spoke in
good English in a small shrill voice. His voice was so small and sharp
that it was all Joan could do to keep from laughing. Epworth saw that
she was about to smile, and punched her lightly in the side, shaking
his head vigorously in the negative.
“It will never do to laugh at him,” he whispered out of the corner of
his mouth. “Our lives are in his hands.”
“Ah, ha! The beautiful Miss Joan Epworth, flying sister of the noted
air man, Julian Epworth,” the giant exclaimed. “I think that she walks
like a fly into our trap.”
He opened a drawer in the mahogany table and pulled out a Los Angeles
magazine. Opening the magazine at a certain page he whirled the sheet
around so that she could see. Then he stared at her again. Joan shrank
back from that stare. There was something dangerous about it that she
could not understand.
But she understood the picture in the magazine. It was her own
picture.
“My lady,” continued the giant with distinguished courtesy of speech
but with a sarcastic stare in his eyes, “that magazine is a year old.
I have been keeping it for a purpose. I planned in the near future to
visit Los Angeles with one of my fastest airships, and kidnap you.
That picture told me that you were a very charming and fascinating
young lady. Now that I see you I realize that the magazine did not
tell half of the truth.”
“Just what do you mean by that speech?” Epworth demanded sharply. “I
will have you to understand this girl is my sister, and is not to be
hurt or insulted.”
“I am not going to hurt her. I wouldn’t hurt her for a million
dollars. All I am going to do is to make her my wife. We are a little
short of women up here in the colony, and I have known for a year that
she would fit in admirably.”
“Marry you, you red-haired brute?” Joan cried passionately. “I shall
never marry you. Besides I do not want a husband. I am just a school
girl. I will not be thinking of marrying for ten years.”
“You are old enough—quite old enough. I like them young. But you will
have to be satisfied with a rather crude ceremony. We go very little
on ceremonies here, especially religious ceremonies. There are no
priests here, no churches here, no god to solemnize a marriage. I am
the only god here, but believe me I am a big one. I make and unmake
worlds.”
“You will never call this girl wife,” Epworth said softly. “Not as
long as I live.”
“Then you would fight for her? Fine.” He paused and looked at them
with narrowing eyes. “But I am forgetting the astronomical lecture. I
am the man who is doing things with the moon. I am transforming that
satellite, which is a boiling caldron for fourteen days and then a
freezing Arctic Ocean for fourteen days, into a pleasant place to
live. It will be a place where I can take my sweet comrades, and
establish a colony which will not be annoyed by world dictators or
tyrannical democracies.”
He paused and drew his hand across his huge mouth, exposing his horse
teeth as his hand left his face. The act proved so repulsive to Joan
that she turned her head. The giant noted this and frowned. The frown
was not pleasant to behold.
“The moon you are aware has for untold centuries been a dead planet,”
he continued without rebuking the girl but with a sinister contortion
of his under lip. “The scientists tell us that there is no atmosphere
there; no plant life; no water; and that men cannot live there even if
they could go there. I am fixing that all up, working the moon over so
that we will find life quite pleasant when we go there. I am sending
rocket projectiles loaded with water from the Arctic Ocean to the
moon. A projectile leaves here loaded with ice; immediately behind it
goes another projectile carrying liquid air, hydrogen and oxygen. Both
projectiles hit in the same spot on the moon, and the liquid air
explodes and forms a protecting velvet for the ice water when it
melts.”
He paused, and began to laugh, his sides shaking up and down
ludicrously. Again Joan had to turn her head; again he eyed her
savagely without saying anything for a second. When he spoke there was
a threat in his voice.
“When you are my wife you’re going to have to watch your
risibilities,” he said gently. “But to proceed. We delay—spread out
too much for your small minds. Taking cognizance of my projectiles,
you see the beginning to the Lake of Vapours. Fearing that there may
be no nitrogen on the moon I am sending frequent projectiles loaded
with saltpeter to unite with the supposed volcanic soils, and make
vegetable life possible. In addition I am sending all kinds of
seeds—vegetable seeds, flower seeds, fruit tree seeds, cereal seeds.
They go mixed with commercial fertilizer liquidized.”
“And you get the saltpeter and fertilizer from——”
The giant did not wait for Epworth to finish his sentence.
“Various and sundry plants in the United States—from Ford, Dupont,
etc. The wholesale robberies you were about to speak of are not what
one would call stealing. We need these things to start a great
civilization on another planet. Your people have them. Unfortunately
we have not the money to buy all we need; and consequently we are
forced to adopt the methods of other nations. We take them.”
“And you think that this crazy idea is going to work?”
“Ha, ha! Do you know who I am?”
Without realizing that she was speaking to the man Joan shook her
head.
“I am Herman Toplinsky, the greatest scientist in the world. I have
been run out of my home country because I am too smart for the other
scientists. I am being hunted like a wild animal by all the
governments of the earth. This is why I am hiding in this remote place
with my comrades, and using my airships to get chemicals, supplies,
gold, and all the things I need. Am I a bandit? Nay, nay. I am simply
a wronged scientist—a smart man without a country. I cannot help the
antagonisms of rude and ignorant men.”
Epworth had heard of the man. He was no idle boaster. Before he had
been chased out of his home country he had stood at the head of
International Science.
The scientist turned his eyes on Joan. She had her fingers pressed on
her nose, and could not remove them before he discovered her act. He
smiled, and sprang nimbly forward.
“What you smell is my chemical laboratory,” he explained. “It is in
here.” He threw open a door. The scent that came from the inner room
caused the girl to draw back quickly. “I have just removed my hands
from a vat of NH₃.”
It was the smell of rotten eggs accentuated a hundred times, and
Epworth now knew that what had been so repulsive to his nostrils since
he had been in the room was hydrogen mixed with sulphur and nitrogen.