The flyer was here. We came upon it suddenly around a bend in the

gully. Although I had only seen the nose if it earlier in the evening.

I recognized this to be the same. It was in truth a strange looking

flyer: I had never seen one quite like it. Barrel-winged, like a

Jantzen: multi-propellored: and with folding helicopters for the

vertical lifts and descent. And a great spreading fan-tail, in the

British fashion. It rested on the rocks like a fat-winged bird with

its long cylindrical body puffed out underneath. A seventy-foot cabin:

fifteen feet wide, possibly. A line of small window-portes; a circular

glassite front to the forward control-observatory cubby, with the

propellors just above it, and the pilot cubby up there behind them.

And underneath the whole, a landing gear of the Fraser-Mood

springed-cushion type: and an expanding, air-coil pontoon-bladder for

landing upon water.

* * * * *

All this was usual enough. Yet, with the brief glimpses I had as my

captors hurried me toward the landing incline, I was aware of

something very strange about this flyer. It was all dead black, a

bloated-bellied black bird. The moonlight struck it, but did not gleam

or shimmer on its black metal surface. The cabin window-portes glowed

with a dim blue-gray light from inside. But as I chanced to gaze at

one a green film seemed to cross it like a shade, so that it winked

and its light was gone. Yet a hole was there, like an eye-socket. An

empty green hole.

We were close to the plane now, approaching the bottom of the small

landing-incline. The wing over my head was like a huge fat barrel cut

length-wise in half. I stared up; and suddenly it seemed that the wing

was melting. Fading. Its inner portion, where it joined the body, was

clear in the moonlight. But the tips blurred and faded. An aspect

curiously leprous. Uncanny. Gruesome.

They took me up the landing-incline. A narrow vaulted corridor ran

length-wise of the interior, along one side of the cabin body. To my

left as we headed for the bow control room, the corridor window-portes

showed the rocks outside. To the right of the corridor, the ship's

small rooms lay in a string. A metal interior. I saw almost nothing

save metal in various forms. Grid floor and ceiling. Sheet metal walls

and partitions. Furnishings and fabrics, all of spun metal. And all

dead black.

We entered the control room. The two men holding me flung me in a

chair. I had been searched. They had taken from me the tiny, colored

magnesium light-flashes. How easy for the plans of men to go astray!

Hanley and I had arranged that I was to signal the Porto Rican

patrol-ship with those flares.

"Sit quiet!" commanded my guard.

I retorted, "If you hit me again, I won't."

* * * * *

De Boer came in, carrying Jetta. He put her in a chair near me, and

she sat huddled tense. In the dim gray light of the control room her

white face with its big staring dark eyes was turned toward me. But

she did not speak, nor did I.

The bandits ignored us. De Boer moved about the room, examining a bank

of instruments. Familiar instruments, most of them. The usual

aero-controls and navigational devices. A radio audiphone transmitter

and receiver, with its attendant eavesdropping cut-offs. And there was

an ether-wave mirror-grid. De Boer bent over it. And then I saw him

fastening upon his forehead an image-lens. He said:

"You stay here, Hans. You and Gutierrez. Take care of the girl and

this fellow Grant. Don't hurt them."

Gutierrez was a swarthy Latin American. He smiled. "For why would I

hurt him? You say he is worth much money to us, De Boer. And the girl,

ah--"

De Boer towered over him. "Just lay a finger on her and you will

regret it, Gutierrez! You stay at your controls. Be ready. This affair

it will take no more than half an hour."

A man came to the control room entrance. "You come, Commander?"

"Yes. Right at once."

"The men are ready. From the mine we might almost be seen here. This

delay--"

"Coming, Rausch."

* * * * *

But he lingered a moment more. "Hans, my finder will show you what I

do. Keep watch. When we come back, have all ready for flight. This

Grant had an alarm-detector. Heaven only knows what eavesdropping and

relaying he has done. And for sure there is hell now in Spawn's

garden. The Nareda police are there, of course. They might track us up

here."

He paused before me. "I think I would not cause trouble, Grant."

"I'm not a fool."

"Perhaps not." He turned to Jetta. "No harm will come to you. Fear

nothing."

He wound his dark cloak about his giant figure and left the control

room. In a moment, through the rounded observing pane beside me, I saw

him outside on the moonlit rocks. His men gathered about him. There

were forty of them, possibly, with ten or so left here aboard to guard

the flyer.

And in another moment the group of dark-cloaked figures outside crept

off in single file like a slithering serpent, moving down the rock

defile toward where in the cauldron pit the lights of the mine shone

on its dark silent buildings.

CHAPTER XII

_The Attack on the Mine_

There was a moment when I had an opportunity to speak with Jetta.

Gutierrez sat watchfully by the archway corridor entrance with a

needle projector across his knees. The fellow Hans, a big, heavy-set

half-breed Dutchman with a wide-collared leather jerkin and wide,

knee-length pantaloons, laid his weapon carefully aside and busied

himself with his image mirror. There would soon be images upon it, I

knew: De Boer had the lens-finder on his forehead, and the scenes at

the mine, as De Boer saw them would be flashed back to us here.

This Gutierrez was very watchful. A move on my part and I knew he

would fling a needle through me.

My thoughts flew. Hanley had notified Porto Rico. The patrol-ship had

almost enough time to get here by now.

I felt Jetta plucking at me. She whispered:

"They have gone to attack the mine."

"Yes."

"I heard it planned. Señor Perona--"

Her hurried whispers told me further details of Perona's scheme. So

this was a pseudo attack! Perona would take advantage of it and hide

the quicksilver. De Boer would return presently and escape. And hold

me for ransom. I chuckled grimly. Not so easy for a bandit, even one

as clever as De Boer at hiding in the Lowland depths to arrange a

ransom for an agent of the United States. Our entire Lowland patrol

would be after him in a day.

* * * * *

Jetta's swift whispers made it all clear to me. It was Perona's

scheme.

She ended, "And my father--" Her voice broke; her eyes flooded

suddenly with tears "Oh, Philip, he was good to me, my poor father."

I saw that the mirror before Hans was glowing with its coming image. I

pressed Jetta's hand.

"Yes, Jetta."

One does not disparage the dead. I could not exactly subscribe to

Jetta's appraisal of her parent, but I did not say so.

"Jetta, the mirror is on."

I turned away from her toward the instrument table. Gutierrez at the

door raised his weapon. I said hastily, "Nothing. I--we just want to

see the mirror."

I stood beside Hans. He glanced at me and I tried to smile

ingratiatingly.

"This attack will be successful, eh, Hans?"

"Damn. I hope so."

The mirror was glowing. Hans turned a switch to dim the tube-lights of

the room so that we might see the images better. It brought a protest

from Gutierrez.

I swung around. "I'm not a fool! You can see me perfectly well: kill

me if I make trouble. I want to see the attack."

"_Por Dios_, if you try anything--"

"I won't!"

"Shut!" growled Hans. "The audiphone is on. The big adventure--and the

commander--leaves me here just to watch!"

* * * * *

A slit in the observatory pane was open. The dark figure of one of the

bandits on guard outside came and called softly up to us.

"Started. Hans?"

"Starting."

"Should it go wrong, call out."

"Yes. But it will not."

"There was an alarm, relayed probably to Great New York, the commander

said, from Spawn's garden. These cursed prisoners--"

"Shut! You keep watch out there. It is starting."

The guard slunk away. My attention went back to the mirror. An image

was formed there now, coming from the eye of the lens upon De Boer's

forehead. It swayed with his walking. He was evidently leading his

men, for none of them were in the scene. The dark rocks were moving

past. The lights of the mine were ahead and below, but coming nearer.

The audiphone hummed and crackled. And through it, De Boer's

low-voiced command sounded:

"To the left is the better path. Keep working to the left."

The image of the rocks and the mine swung with a dizzying sweep as De

Boer turned about. Then again he was creeping forward.

The mine lights came closer. De Beer's whispered voice said: "There

they are!"

* * * * *

I could see the lights of the mine's guards flash on. A group of

Spawn's men gathered before the smelter building. The challenge

sounded.

"Who are you? Stop!"

And De Boer's murmur: "That is correct, as Perona said. They expect

us. Well," he ended with a sardonic laugh, "expect us."

His projector went up. He fired. In the silence of the control room we

could hear the audiphoned hiss of it, and see the flash in the

mirror-scene. He had fired into the air.

Again his low voice to his men: "Hold steady. They will run."

The group of figures at the smelter separated, waved and scattered

back into the deeper shadows. Their hand-lights were extinguished, but

the moonlight caught and showed them. They were running away; hiding

in the crags. They fired a shot or two, high in the air.

De Boer was advancing swiftly now. The image swayed and shifted,

raised and lowered rhythmically as he ran. And the dark shape of the

smelter building loomed large as he neared it.

I felt Jetta beside me: heard her whisper: "Why, he should attack and

then come back! Greko told my father--"

But De Boer was not coming back! He was dashing for the smelter

entrance. Spawn's guards must have known then that there was something

wrong. Their shots hissed, still fired high, and our grid sounded

their startled shouts. Then as De Boer momentarily turned his head, I

saw what was taking place to the side of him. A detachment of the

bandits had followed the retreating guards. The bandits' shots were

levelled now. Dim stabs of light in the gloom. One of the guards

screamed as he was struck.

* * * * *

The attack was real! But it was over in a moment. Spawn's men, those

who were not struck down, plunged away and vanished. Perona had

disconnected the mine's electrical safeguards. The smelter door was

sealed, but it gave before the blows of a metal bar two of De Boer's

men were carrying.

In the unguarded, open strong-room, Perona, alone, was absorbed in his

task of carrying the ingots of quicksilver down into the hidden

compartment beneath its metal floor.

Our mirror was vague and dim now with a moving interior of the main

smelter room as De Boer plunged through. At the strong-room entrance

he paused, with his men crowding behind him. The figure of Perona

showed in the vague light: he was stooping under the weight of one of

the little ingots. Beside him yawned the small trap-opening leading

downward.

He saw De Boer. He straightened, startled, and then shouted with a

terrified Spanish oath. De Boer's projector was levelled: the huge,

foreshortened muzzle of it blotted out half our image. It hissed its

puff of light--a blinding flash on our mirror--in the midst of which

the dark shape of Perona's body showed as it crumpled and fell. Like

Spawn, he met instant death.

Jetta was gripping me. "Why--" Gutierrez was with us. Hans was

bending forward, watching the mirror. He muttered, "Got him!"

I saw a chance to escape, and pulled at Jetta. But at once Gutierrez

stepped backward.

"Like him I will strike you dead!" he said.

* * * * *

No chance of escape. I had thought Gutierrez absorbed by the mirror,

but he was not. I protested vehemently:

"I haven't moved, you fool. I have no intention of moving."

And now De Boer and his men were carrying up the ingots. A man for

each bar. A confusion of blurred swaying shapes, and low-voiced,

triumphant murmurs from our disc.

Then De Boer was outside the smelter house, and we saw a little queue

of the bandits carrying the treasure up the defile. Coming back here

to the flyer. There was no pursuit; the mine guards were gone.

The triumphant bandits would be here in a few moments.

"_Ave Maria, que magnifico!_" Gutierrez had retreated to our doorway,

more alert than ever upon me and Jetta. Hans called through the

window-slit:

"All is well, Franks!"

"Got it?"

"Yes! Make ready."

There was a stir outside as several of the bandits hastened down the

defile to meet De Boer. And the tread of others, inside the flyer at

their posts, preparing for hasty departure.

Hans snapped off the audiphone and mirror. He bent over his control

panel. "All is well, Gutierrez. In a moment we start."

Through the observatory window I saw the line of De Boer's men coming:

Abruptly Hans gave a cry. "Look!"

* * * * *

A glow was in the room. A faint aura of light. And our disconnected

instruments were crackling, murmuring with interference. Eavesdropping

waves were here! Hans realised it: so did I.

But there was no need for theory. From outside came shouts.

"Patrol-ship!"

"Hurry!"

The ship, suddenly exposing its lights, was perfectly visible above

us. Five thousand feet up, possibly. A tiny silver bird in the

moonlight: but even with the naked eye I could see by its light

pattern that it was the official Porto Rican patrol-liner. It saw us

down here: recognized this bandit flyer, no doubt.

And it was coming down!

There was a confusion as the bandits rushed aboard. The patrol was

dropping in a swift spiral. I watched tensely, holding Jetta, with the

turmoil of the embarking bandits around me. Gutierrez stood with

levelled weapon.

"They have not moved, Commander."

De Boer was here. The treasure was aboard.

"Ready, Hans. Lift us."

The landing portes clanged as they closed. Hans shoved at his

switches. I heard the helicopter engines thumping. A vertical lift:

there was no space in this rocky defile for any horizontal take-away.

He was very calm, this De Boer. He sat in a chair at a control-bank of

instruments unfamiliar to me.

"Full power, Hans: I tell you. Lift us!"

* * * * *

The ship was quivering. We lifted. The rocks of the gully dropped

away. But the patrol-ship was directly over us. Was De Boer rushing

into a collision?

"Now, forward, Hans."

We poised for the level flight. Did De Boer think he could

out-distance this patrol-ship, the swiftest type of flyer in the

Service? I knew that was impossible.

The silver ship overhead was circling, watchful. And as we levelled

for forward flight it shot a warning searchlight beam down across our

bow, ordering us to land.

De Boer laughed. "They think they have us!"

I saw his hand go to a switch. A warning siren resounded through our

corridor, warning the bandits of De Boer's next move. But I did not

know it then: the thing caught me unprepared.

De Boer flung another switch. My senses reeled. I heard Jetta cry out.

My arm about her tightened.

A moment of strange whirling unreality. The control room seemed fading

about me. The tube-lights dimmed. A green glow took their place--a

lurid sheen in which the cubby and the tense faces of De Boer and Hans

showed with ghastly pallor. Everything was unreal. The voices of De

Boer and Hans sounded with a strange tonelessness. Stripped of the

timber that made one differ from the other. Hollow ghosts of human

voices. By the sound I could not tell which was De Boer and which was

Hans.

The corridor was dark; all the lights on the ship faded into this

horrible dead green. The window beside me had a film on it. A dead,

dark opening where moonlight had been. Then I realized that I was

beginning to see through it once more. Starlight. Then the moonlight.

We had soared almost level with the descending patrol-ship. We went

past it, a quarter of a mile away. Went past, and it did not follow.

It was still circling.

* * * * *

I knew then what had happened. And why this bandit ship had seemed of

so strange an aspect. We were invisible! At four hundred yards, even

in the moonlight, the patrol could not distinguish us. Only ten of

these X-flyers were in existence: they were the closest secret of the

U. S. Anti-War Department. No other government had them except in

impractical imitations. I had never even seen one before.

But this bandit ship was one. And I recalled that a year ago, a

suppressed dispatch intimated that the Service had lost one--wrecked

in the Lowlands and never found.

So this was that lost invisible flyer? De Boer, using it for

smuggling, with Perona and Spawn as partners. And now, De Boer making

away in it with Spawn's treasure!

The bandit's hollow, toneless, unreal chuckle sounded in the gruesome

lurid green of the control room.

"I think that surprised them!"

The tiny silver shape of the baffled local patrol-ship faded behind us

as we flew northward over heavy, fantastic crags; far above the tiny

twinkling lights of the village of Nareda--out over the sullen dark

surface of the Nares Sea.

CHAPTER XIII

_The Flight to the Bandit Stronghold_

During this flight of some six hours--north, and then, I think,

northeast--to the remote Lowland fastness where De Boer's base was

located, I had no opportunity to learn much of the operation of this

invisible flyer. But it was the one which had been lost. Wrecked, no

doubt, and the small crew aboard it all killed. The vessel, however,

was not greatly damaged: the crew were killed doubtless by escaping

poisonous gases when the flyer struck.

How long it lay unfound, I cannot say. Perhaps, for days, it still

maintained its invisibility, while the frantic planes of the U. S.

Anti-War Department tried in vain to locate it. And then, with its

magnetic batteries exhausting themselves, it must have become visible.

Perona, making a solo flight upon Nareda business to Great London,

came upon it. Perona, Spawn and De Boer were then in the midst of

their smuggling activities. They salvaged the vessel secretly. De

Boer, with an incongruous flair for mechanical science, was enabled in

his bandit camp, to recondition the flyer--building a workshop for the

purpose, with money which Perona freely supplied.

Some of this I learned from De Boer, some is surmise: but I am sure it

is close to the facts.

* * * * *

I have since had an opportunity--through my connection with this

adventure which I am recording--of going aboard one of the X-flyers of

the Anti-War Department, and seeing it in operation with its technical

details explained to me. But since it is so important a Government

secret, I cannot set it down here. The principles involved are

complex: the postulates employed, and the mathematical formulae

developing them in theory, are far too intricate for my understanding.

Yet the practical workings are simple indeed. Some of them were

understood as far back as 1920 and '30, when that pioneer of modern

astrophysics, Albert Einstein, first proved that a ray of light is

deflected from its normal straight path when passing through a

magnetic field.

I am sorry that I cannot give here more than this vague hint of the

workings of the fantastic invisible flyers which to-day are so often

the subject of speculation by the general public which never has seen

them, and perhaps never will. But I think, too, that a lengthy

pedantic discourse here would be out of place. And tiring. After all,

I am trying to tell only what happened to me in this adventure. And to

little Jetta.

A very strangely capable fellow, this young De Boer. A modern pirate:

no other age could have produced him. He did not spare Perona's money,

that was obvious. From his hidden camp he must have made frequent

visits to the great Highland centers, purchasing scientific equipment:

until now, when his path crossed mine. I found him surrounded by most

of the every-day devices of our modern world. The village of Nareda

was primitive: backward. Save for its modern lights, a few local

audiphones and image-finders, and its official etheric connections

with other world capitals, it might have been a primitive Latin

American village of a hundred years ago.

* * * * *

But not so De Boer's camp, which presently I was to see. Nor this, his

flyer, with which his smuggling activities had puzzled Hanley's Office

for so many months. There was nothing primitive here.

De Boer himself was a swaggering villain. I saw him now with his cloak

discarded, in the normal tube-lights of the control room when, after a

time, the mechanism of invisibility of the flyer was shut off. A

fellow of six feet and a half at the very least, this De Boer. Heavy,

yet with his great height and strength, lean and graceful. He wore a

fabric shirt, with a wide-rolled collar. A wide belt of tanned hide,

with lighters, a little electron drink-cooler and other nick-nackeries

hanging from tasseled cords--and a naked, ugly-looking knife blade

clipped beside a holster which held an old-fashioned exploding

projector of leaden steel-tipped bullets.

His trousers were of leather, wide-flaring, ending at his brawny bare

knees, with wide-cut, limp leather boots flapping about his calves in

ancient piratical fashion. They had flaring soles, these shoes, for

walking upon the Lowland caked ooze. The uppers were useless: I rather

think he wore them because they were picturesque. He was a handsome

fellow, with rough-hewn features. A wide mouth, and very white, even

teeth. A cruel mouth, when it went grim. But the smile was intriguing:

I should think particularly so to women.

He had a way with him, this devil-may-care bandit. Strange mixture of

a pirate of old and an outlaw of our modern world. With a sash at his

waist, a red handkerchief about his forehead, and a bloody knife

between his teeth. I could have fancied him a fabled pirate of the

Spanish Main. A few hundred years ago when these dry Lowlands held the

tossing seas. But I had seen him, so far, largely seated quietly in

his chair at his instrument table, a cigarette dangling from his lips,

and, instead of a red bandanna about his forehead, merely the elastic

band holding the lens of his image-finder. It caught in the locks of

his curly black hair. He pushed it askew; and then, since he did not

need it now, discarded it altogether.

* * * * *

Where we went I could not surmise, except that we flew low over the

sullen black waters of the Nares Sea and then headed northeast. We

kept well below the zero-height, with the dark crags of the Lowlands

passing under us.

The night grew darker. Storm clouds obscured the moon; and it was then

that De Boer shut off the mechanism of invisibility. The control room,

with only the watchful Gutierrez now in it--besides De Boer, Jetta and

myself--was silent and orderly. But there were sounds of roistering

from down the ship's corridor. The bandits, with this treasure of the

radiumized quicksilver ingots aboard, were already triumphantly

celebrating.

I sat whispering with Jetta. De Boer, busy with charts and

navigational instruments, ignored us, and Gutierrez, so long as we did

not move, seemed not to object to our whispers.

The night slowly passed. De Boer served us food, calling to one of his

men to shove a slide before us. For himself, he merely drank his

coffee and an alcoholic drink at his instrument table, while absorbed

in his charts.

The roistering of the men grew louder. De Boer leaped to his feet,

cursed them roundly, then went back to his calculations. He stood once

before Jetta, regarding her with a strange, slow smile which made my

heart pound. But he turned away in a moment.

The bandits, for all De Boer's admonitions, were now ill-conditioned

for handling this flyer. But I saw, through the small grid-opening in

the control room ceiling, the pilot in his cubby upon the wing-top.

He sat alert and efficient, with his lookout beside him.

* * * * *

The night presently turned really tumultuous, with a great wind

overhead, and storm clouds of ink, shot through occasionally by

lightning flashes. We flew lower, at minus 2,000 feet, on the average.

The heavy air was sultry down here, with only a dim blurred vista of

the depths beneath us. I fancied that now we were bending eastward,

out over the great basin pit of the mid-Atlantic area. No vessels

passed us, or, if they did, I did not sight them.

De Boer had a detector on his table. Occasionally it would buzz with

calls: liners or patrols in our general neighborhood. He ignored them

with a sardonic smile. Once or twice, when our dim lights might have

been sighted, he altered our course sharply. And, when at one period

we passed over the lights of some Lowland settlement, he flung us

again into invisibility until we were beyond range.

I had, during these hours, ample opportunity to whisper with Jetta.

But there was so little for us to say. I knew all of Spawn's and

Perona's plot. Both were dead: it was De Boer with whom we were

menaced now. And as I saw his huge figure lounging at his table, and

his frowning, intent face, the vision of the aged, futile Perona, who

had previously been my adversary, seemed inoffensive indeed.

De Boer obviously was pleased with himself. He had stolen half a

million dollars of treasure, and was making off with it to his base in

the depths. He would smuggle these ingots into the world markets at

his convenience; months from now, probably. Meanwhile, what did he

intend to do with me? And Jetta? Ransom me? I wondered how he could

manage it. And the thought pounded me. What about Jetta? I felt now

that she was all the world to me. Her safety, beyond any thought of

smugglers or treasure, was all that concerned me. But what was I

going to do about it?

* * * * *

I pressed her hand. "Jetta, you're not too frightened, are you?"

"No, Philip."

Her mind, I think, was constantly on her father, lying dead back there

on his garden path. I had not spoken of him, save once. She threatened

instant tears, and I stopped.

"Do not be too frightened. We'll get out of this."

"Yes."

"He can't escape. Jetta; he can't hide. Why, in a day or so all the

patrols of the United States Lowland Service will be after us!"

But if the patrol-ships assailed De Boer, if he found things going

badly--he could so easily kill Jetta and me. He might be caught, but

we would never come through it alive.

My thoughts drifted along, arriving nowhere, just circling in the same

futile rounds. I was aware of Jetta falling asleep beside me, her face

against my shoulder, her fingers clutching mine. She looked like a

half grown, slender, ragged boy. But her woman's hair lay thick on my

arm, and one of the dark tresses fell to my hand. I turned my fingers

in it. This strange little woman. Was my love for her foredoomed to

end in tragedy? I swore then that I would not let it be so.

CHAPTER XIV

_Jetta Takes a Hand_

I came from my reverie to find De Boer before me. He was standing with

legs planted wide, arms folded across his deep chest, and on his face

an ironic smile.

"So tired! My little captives, _di mi_! You look like babes lost in a

wood."

I disengaged myself from Jetta, resting her against a cushion, and she

did not awaken. I stood up, fronting De Boer.

"What are you going to do with me?" I demanded.

He held his ironic smile. "Take you to my camp. You'll be well hidden,

no one can follow me. My X-flyer's a very handy thing to have, isn't

it?"

"So you're the smuggler I was sent after?"

That really amused him. "Er--yes. Those tricksters, Perona and

Spawn--we were what you would call partners. He had--the perfumed

Perona--what he thought was a clever scheme for us. I was to take all

the risk, and he and Spawn get most of the money. Chah! They thought I

was imbecile--pretending to attack a treasure and being such a fool

that I would not seize it for myself! Not De Boer!" He chuckled.

"Well, so very little did they know me. No treasure yet touched De

Boer's fingers without lingering!"

* * * * *

He was in a talkative mood, and drew up his chair and slouched in it.

I saw that he had been drinking some alcholite beverage, not enough to

befuddle him, but enough to take the keen edge off his wits, and make

him want to talk.

"Sit down, Grant."

"I'll stand."

"As you like."

"What are you going to do with me?" I demanded again. "Try to ransom

me for a fat price from the United States?"

He smiled sourly. "You need not be sarcastic, young lad. The better

for you if I get a ransom."

"Then I hope you get it."

"Perona's idea," he added. "I will admit it looked possible: I did not

know then you had Government protection." He went grim. "That was

Perona and Spawn's trickery. Well, they paid for it. No one plays De

Boer false and lives to tell it. Perona and Spawn wanted to get rid of

you--because you annoyed them."

"Did I?"

"With the little Jetta, I fancy." His gaze went to the sleeping Jetta

and back to me. "Perona was very sensitive where this little woman was

concerned. Why not? An oldish fool like him--"

* * * * *

I could agree with that, but I did not say so.

I said, "You'd better cast me loose, Jetta and me. I suppose you

realize, De Boer, that you'll have the patrols like a pack of hounds

after you. Jetta is a Nareda citizen: the United States will take that

up. There's the theft of the treasure. And as you say, I'm a

Government agent."

He nodded. "Your Government is over-zealous in protecting its agents.

That I know, Grant. I might have left you alone, there in the garden,

when I realized it. But that, by damn, was too late! Live men talk.

Any way, if I cannot ransom you, to kill you is very easy. And dead

men are shut-mouthed."

"I'm still alive, De Boer."

He eyed me. "You talk brave."

This condescending, amused giant!

I retorted. "How are you going to ransom me?"

"That," he said. "I have not yet planned it. A delicate business."

I ventured, "And Jetta?" My heart was beating fast.

"Jetta," he said with a sudden snap, "is none of your business."

Again his gaze went toward her. "I might marry her: why not? I am not

wholly a villain. I could marry her legally in Cape Town, with all the

trappings of clergy--and be immune from capture under the laws there.

If she is seventeen. I have forgotten her age, it's been so long since

I knew her. Is she seventeen? She does not look it."

I said shortly. "I don't know how old she is."

"But we can ask her when she awakens, can't we?"

* * * * *

He was amusing himself with me. And yet, looking back on it now, I

believe he was more than half serious. From his pouch he drew a small

cylinder. "Have a drink, Grant. After all I bear you no ill-will. A

man can but follow his trade: you were trying to be a good Government

agent."

"Thanks."

"And then you may make it possible for me to pick a nice ransom.

Here."

"I hope so." I declined the drink.

"Afraid for your wits?"

I said impulsively, "I want all my wits to make sure you handle this

ransom properly, De Boer. I'm as interested as you are: in that at

least, we are together."

He grinned, tipped the cylinder at his lips for a long drink.

"Quite so--a mutual interest. Let us be friends over it."

His gaze wandered back to Jetta. He added slowly:

"She is very lovely, Grant. A little woodland flower, just ready for

plucking." A sentimental tone, but there was in his expression a

ribald flippancy that sent a shudder through me. "She has quite

overcome you, Grant. Well, why not me as well? I am certainly more of

a man than you. We must admit that Perona had a good eye."

* * * * *

My thoughts were wandering. Suppose I could not find an opportunity to

escape with Jetta? De Boer might successfully ransom me and take her

to Cape Town. Or if he feared that to try for the ransom would be too

dangerous, doubtless he would kill me out of hand. An ill outcome

indeed! Nor could I forget that there was half a million of treasure

involved.

It was obvious to me that Hanley would not permit the patrol-ships to

attack De Boer with the lives of Jetta and myself at stake. Hanley

knew, or suspected, that De Boer was operating an invisible flyer, but

I did not see how that could help Hanley much. Markes, acting for

Nareda, would doubtless be willing to ransom Jetta: the United States

would ransom me. I must urge the ransom plan, because for all the

money in the world I would not endanger Jetta, nor let this bandit

carry her off.

Or could I escape with her, and still find some means to save the

treasure? It was Jetta's treasure now, two-thirds of it, for it had

legally belonged to her father. Could I save it, and her as well?

Not by any move of mine, here now on this flyer. That was impossible.

In De Boer's camp, perhaps. But that, too, I doubted. He was too

clever a scoundrel to be lax in guarding me.

But in the effecting of a ransom--the exchange of me, and perhaps

Jetta, for a sum of money--that would be a delicate transaction, and

some little thing could easily go wrong for De Boer. There would be my

chance. I would have to make something go wrong! Get in his confidence

now so that I would have some say in arranging the details of the

ransom. Make him think I was only concerned for my own safety. Appear

clever in helping plan the exchange. And then so manipulate the thing

that I could escape with Jetta and save the treasure--and the ransom

money as well. And capture De Boer, since that was what Hanley had

sent me out to accomplish.

* * * * *

Thoughts fly swiftly. All this flashed to me. I had no details as yet.

But that I must get into De Boer's confidence stood but clearly.

I said abruptly, "De Boer, since we are to be friends--"

"So you prefer to sit down now?"

"Yes." I had drawn a small settle to face him. "De Boer, do you intend

to ask a ransom for Jetta?"

"You insist with that question?"

"That is my way. Then we can understand each other. Do you?"

"No," he said shortly.

I frowned. "I think I could get you a big price."

"I think I should prefer the little Jetta, Grant."

I held myself outwardly unmoved. "I don't blame you. But you will

ransom me? It can be worked out. I have some ideas."

"Yes," he agreed. "It can be worked perhaps. I have not thought of

details yet. You are much concerned for your safety, Grant? Fear not."

An amused thought evidently struck him. He added. "It occurs to me how

easy, if I am going to ransom you, it will be for me to send you back

dead. You might, if I send you back alive, tell them a lot of things

about me."

"I will not talk."

"Not," he said, "if I close your mouth for good."

* * * * *

I had no retort. There was no answering such logic; and with his

murders of Spawn and Perona, and the deaths of some of the police

guards at the mine, the murder of me would not put him in much worse a

position.

He was laughing ironically. Suddenly he checked himself.

"Well, Jetta! So you have awakened?"

Jetta was sitting erect. How long she had been awake, what she had

heard. I could not say. Her gaze went from De Boer to me, and back

again.

"Yes, I am awake."

It seemed that the look she flashed me carried a warning. But whatever

it was, I had no chance of pondering it, for it was driven from my

mind by surprise at her next words.

"Awake, yes! And interested, hearing this Grant bargain with you for

his life."

It surprised De Boer as well. But the alcholite had dulled his wits,

and Jetta realized this, and presumed upon it.

"Ho!" exclaimed De Boer. "Our little bird is angry!"

"Not angry. It is contempt."

Her look to me now held contempt. It froze me with startled chagrin;

but only for an instant, and then the truth swept me. Strange Jetta! I

had thought of her only as a child; almost, but not quite a woman. A

frightened little woodland fawn.

"Contempt, De Boer. Is he not a contemptuous fellow, this American?"

Again I caught her look and understood it. This was a different

Jetta. No longer helplessly frightened, but a woman, fighting. She had

heard De Boer calmly saying that he might send me back dead--and she

was fighting now for me.

De Boer took another drink, and stared at her. "What is this?"

She turned away. "Nothing. But if you are going to ransom me--"

"I am not, little bird."

* * * * *

She showed no aversion for him, and it went to his head, stronger than

the drink. "Never would I ransom you!"

He reached for her, but nimbly she avoided him. Acting, but clever

enough not to overdo it. I held myself silent: I had caught again the

flash of a warning gaze from her. She had fathomed my purpose. Get his

confidence. Beguile him. And woman is so much cleverer than the

trickiest man at beguiling!

"Do not touch me, De Boer! He tried that. He held my hand in the

moonlight--to woo me with his clever words."

"Hah! Grant, you hear her?"

"And I find him now not a man, but a craven--"

"But you will find me a man, Jetta." De Boer was hugely amused. "See

Grant, we are rivals! You and Perona, then you and me. It is well for

you that I fear you not, or I would run my knife through you now."

I could not mistake Jetta's shudder. But De Boer did not see it, for

she covered it by impulsively putting her hand upon his arm.

"Did you--did you kill my father?" She stumbled over the question. But

she asked it with a childlike innocence sufficiently real to convince

him.

"I? Why--" He recovered from his surprise. "Why no, little bird. Who

told you that I did?"

"No one. I--no one has said anything about it." She added slowly, "I

hoped that it was not you, De Boer."

"Me? Oh no: it was an accident." He shot me a menacing glance. "I will

explain it all. Jetta. Your father and I were friends for years--"

"Yes. I know. Often he spoke to me of you. Many times I asked him to

let me meet you."

* * * * *

They were ignoring me. But Gutierrez, lurking in the door oval, was

not: I was well aware of that.

"I remember you from years ago, little Jetta."

"And I remember you."

I understand the rationality of her purpose. She could easily get De

Beer's confidence. She had known him when a child. Her father had been

his business partner, presumably his friend. And I saw her now

cleverly altering her status here. She had been a captive, allied with

me. She was changing that. She was now Spawn's daughter, here with her

dead father's friend.

She turned a gaze of calm aversion upon me. "Unless you want him here,

De Boer. I would rather talk to you--without him."

He leaped to his feet. "Hah! that pleases me, little Jetta! Gutierrez,

take this fellow away."

The Spanish-American came slouching forward. "The girl's an old

friend, Commander? You never told me that."

"Because it is no business of yours. Take him away. Seal him in

D-cubby."

I said sullenly. "I misjudged both of you."

Jetta's gaze avoided me. As Gutierrez shoved me roughly down the

corridor, De Boer laughed, and his voice came back: "Do not be afraid.

We will find some safe way of ransoming you--dead or alive!"

I was flung on a bunk in one of the corridor cubbies, and the door

sealed upon me.

(_To be continued._)

An Extra Man

_By Jackson Gee_

[Illustration: "Harry turns into a thick smoke, and gets sucked into a

big hole in the machine."]

[Sidenote: Sealed and vigilantly guarded was "Drayle's Invention,

1932"----for it was a scientific achievement beyond which man dared

not go.]

Rays of the August mid-day sun pouring through the museum's glass roof

beat upon the eight soldiers surrounding the central exhibit, which

for thirty years has been under constant guard. Even the present

sweltering heat failed to lessen the men's careful observation of the

visitors who, from time to time, strolled listlessly about the room.

The object of all this solicitude scarcely seemed to require it. A

great up-ended rectangle of polished steel some six feet square by ten

or a dozen feet in height, standing in the center of Machinery Hall,

it suggested nothing sinister or priceless. Two peculiarities,

however, marked it as unusual--the concealment of its mechanism and

the brevity of its title. For while the remainder of the exhibits

located around it varied in the simplicity or complexity of their

design, they were alike in the openness of their construction and

detailed explanation of plan and purpose. The great steel box,

however, bore merely two words and a date: "Drayle's Invention,

1932."

It was, nevertheless, toward this exhibit that a pleasant appearing

white-haired old gentleman and a small boy were slowly walking when a

change of guard occurred. The new men took their posts without words

while the relieved detail turned down a long corridor that for a

moment echoed with the clatter of hobnailed boots on stone. Then all

was surprisingly still. Even the boy was impressed into reluctant

silence as he viewed the uniformed men, though not for long.

* * * * *

"What's that, what's that, what's that?" he demanded presently with

shrill imperiousness. "Grandfather, what's that?" An excited arm

indicated the exhibit with its soldier guard.

"If you can keep still long enough," replied the old gentleman

patiently, "I'll tell you."

And with due regard for rheumatic limbs he slowly settled himself on a

bench and folded his hands over the top of an ebony cane preparatory

to answering the youngster's question. His inquisitor, however, was,

at the moment, being hauled from beneath a brass railing by the

sergeant of the watch.

"You'll have to keep an eye on him, sir," said the man reproachfully.

"He was going to try his knife on the wood-work when I caught him."

"Thank you, Sergeant. I'll do my best--but the younger generation, you

know."

"Sit still, if possible!" he directed the squirming boy. "If not,

we'll start home now."

The non-com took a new post within easy reaching distance of the

disturber and attempted to glare impressively.

"Go on, grandfather, tell me. What's D-r-a-y-l-e? What's in the box?

Can't they open it? What are the soldiers for? Must they stay here?

Why?"

"Drayle," said the old man, breaking through the barrage of questions,

"was a close friend of mine a good many years ago."

"How many, grandfather? Fifty? As much as fifty? Did father know him?

Is father fifty?"

"Forty; no; yes; no," said the harassed relative; and then with

amazing ignorance inquired: "Do you really care to hear or do you just

ask questions to exercise your tongue?"

"I want to hear the story, grandpa. Tell me the story. Is it a nice

story? Has it got bears in it? Polar bears? I saw a polar bear

yesterday. He was white. Are polar bears always white? Tell me the

story, grandpa."

* * * * *

The old man turned appealing eyes toward the sergeant. Tacitly a

sympathetic understanding was established. The warrior also was a

father, and off the field of battle he had known defeat.

"Leave me handle him, sir," he suggested. "I've the like of him at

home."

"I'd be very much indebted to you if you would."

Thus encouraged, the soldier produced from an inner pocket and offered

one of those childhood sweets known as an "all day sucker."

"See if you can choke yourself on that," he challenged.

The clamor ceased immediately.

"It always works, sir," explained the man of resource. "The missus

says as how it'll ruin their indigestions, but I'm all for peace even

if I am in the army."

Now that his vocal organs were temporarily plugged, the child waved a

demanding arm in the direction of the main exhibit to indicate a

desire for the resumption of the narrative. But the ancient was not

anxious to disturb so soon the benign and acceptable silence. In fact

it was not until he observed the sergeant's look of inquiry that he

began once more.

"That box," he said slowly, "is both a monument and a milestone on the

road to mankind's progress in mechanical invention. It marks the point

beyond which Drayle's contemporaries believed it was unsafe to go: for

they felt that inventions such as his would add to the complexities

of life, and that if a halt were not made our own machines would

ultimately destroy us.

"I did not, still do not, believe it. And I know Drayle's spirit broke

when the authorities sealed his last work in that box and released him

upon parole to abandon his experiments."

As the speaker sighed in regretful reminiscence, the sergeant glanced

at his men. Apparently all was well: the only visible menace lolled

within easy arm's reach, swinging his short legs and sucking noisily

on his candy. Nevertheless the non-com shifted to a slightly better

tactical position as he awaited the continuance of the tale.

* * * * *

"Christopher Drayle," said the elderly gentleman, "was the greatest

man I have ever known, as well as the finest. Forty years or more ago

we were close friends. Our homes on Long Island adjoined and I handled

most of his legal affairs. He was about forty-five or six then, but

already famous.

"His rediscovery of the ancient process of tempering copper had made

him one of the wealthiest men in the land and enabled him to devote

his time to scientific research. Electricity and chemistry were his

specialties, and at the period of which I speak he was deeply

engrossed in problems of radio transmission.

"But he had many interests and not infrequently visited our local

country club for an afternoon of golf. Sometimes I played around the

course with him and afterward, over a drink, we would talk. His

favorite topic was the contribution of science to human welfare. And

even though I could not always follow him when he grew enthusiastic

about some new theory I was always puzzled.

"It was at such a time, when we had been discussing the new and first

successful attempt to send moving pictures by radio, that I mentioned

the prophecy of Jackson Gee. Gee was the writer of fantastic,

pseudo-scientific tales who had said: 'We shall soon be able to

resolve human beings into their constituent elements, transmit them by

radio to any desired point and reassemble them at the other end. We

shall do this by means of vibrations. We are just beginning to learn

that vibrations are the key to the fundamental process of all life.'

* * * * *

"I laughed as I quoted this to Drayle, for it seemed to me the ravings

of a lunatic. But Drayle did not smile. 'Jackson Gee,' he said, 'is

nearer to the truth than he imagines. We already know the elements

that make the human body, and we can put them together in their proper

proportions and arrangements: but we have not been able to introduce

the vitalizing spark, the key vibrations to start it going. We can

reproduce the human machine, but we can not make it move. We can

destroy life in the laboratory, and we can prolong it, but so far we

have not been able to create it. Yet I tell you in all seriousness

that that time will come; that time will come.'

"I was surprised at his earnestness and would have questioned him

further. But a boy appeared just then with a message that Drayle was

wanted at the telephone.

"Something important, sir," he said. Drayle went off to answer the

summons and later he sent word that he had been called away and would

not be able to return.

"It was the last I heard from Drayle for months. He shut himself in

his laboratory and saw no one but his assistants, Ward of Boston, and

Buchannon of Washington. He even slept in the workshop and had his

food sent in.

"Ordinarily I would not have been excluded, for I had his confidence

to an unusual degree and I had often watched him work. I admired the

deft movements of his hands. He had the certain touch and style of a

master. But during that period he admitted only his aids.

* * * * *

"Consequently I felt little hope of reaching him one morning when it

was necessary to have his signature to some legal documents. Yet the

urgency of the case led me to go to his home on the chance that I

might be able to get him long enough for the business that concerned

us. Luck was with me, for he sent out word that he would see me in a

few minutes. I remember seating myself in the office that opened off

his laboratory and wondering what was beyond the door that separated

us. I had witnessed some incredible performances in the adjoining

room.

"At last Drayle came in. He looked worried and careworn. There were

new lines in his face and blue half-circles of fatigue beneath his

eyes. It was evident that it was long since he had slept. He

apologized for having kept me waiting and then, without examining the

papers I offered, he signed his name nervously in the proper spaces.

When I gathered the sheets together he turned abruptly toward the

laboratory, but at the door he paused and smiled.

"'Give my respects to Jackson Gee,' he said."

* * * * *

"Who's Jackson Gee? Does father know him? Has he any polar bears?

Aren't you going to tell me about that?"

The tidal wave of questions almost overwhelmed the historian and his

auditor. But the military, fortunately, was equal to the emergency.

With a tactical turn of his hand he thrust the remnant of the lollypop

between the chattering jaws and spoke with sharp rapidity.

"Listen," he commanded, "that there, what you got, is a magic candy,

and if you go on exposing it to the air after it is once in your mouth

it's likely to disappear, just like that." And the speed of the

translation was illustrated by a smart snapping of the fingers.

Doubt shone in the juvenile terror's eyes and the earlier generations

waited fearfully while skepticism and greed waged their recurrent

conflict. For a time it seemed as if the veteran had blundered; but

finally greed triumphed and a temporary peace ensued.

"Where was I?" inquired the interrupted narrator when the issue of

battle was settled.

"You was talking about Jackson Gee," answered the guardsman in a

cautiously low tone.

"So I was, so I was," the old gentleman agreed somewhat vaguely,

nodding his head. He gazed at the sergeant with mingled awe and

admiration. "I suppose it's quite useless to mention it," he said

rather wistfully, "but if you ever get out of the army and should want

a job.... You could name your own salary, you know?" The question

ended on an appealing note.

Evidently the soldier understood the digression, for he replied in a

tone that would brook no dispute. "No, sir, I couldn't consider it."

"I was afraid so," said the other regretfully, and added, with

apparent irrelevance, "I have to live with him, you see."

"Tough luck," commiserated the listener.

Reluctantly summoning his thoughts from the pleasant contemplation of

what had seemed to offer a new era of peace, the bard turned to his

story.

* * * * *

"A few hours later," he continued, "I had a telephone call from

Drayle's wife, and I realized from the fright in her voice that

something dreadful had happened. She asked me to come to the house at

once. Chris had been hurt. But she disconnected before I could ask for

details. I started immediately and I wondered as I drove what disaster

had overtaken him. Anything, it seemed to me, might have befallen in

that room of miracles. But I was not prepared to find that Drayle had

been shot and wounded.

"The police were before me and already questioning the assailant, Mrs.

Farrel, a fiery tempered young Irish-woman. When I entered the room

she was repeating half-hysterically her explanation that Drayle had

killed her husband in the laboratory that morning.

"'Right before my eyes, I seen it,' she shouted. 'Harry was standing

on a sort of platform looking at a big machine like, and so help me he

didn't have a stitch of clothes on, and I started to say something,

but all at once there came a terrible sort of screech and a flash like

lightnin' kinda, in front of him. Then Harry turns into a sort of

thick smoke and I can see right through him like he was a ghost; and

then the smoke gets sucked into a big hole in the machine and I know

Harry's dead. And here's this man what done it, just a standin' there,

grinnin' horrid. So something comes over me all at once and I points

Harry's gun at him and pulls the trigger!'

"Even before the woman had finished I recalled what I seen one

afternoon in Drayle's laboratory many months before. I had been there

for some time watching him when he placed a small tumbler on a work

table and asked me if I had ever seen glass shattered by the

vibrations of a violin. I told him that I had, but he went through the

demonstration as if to satisfy himself. Of course when he drew a bow

across the instrument's strings and produced the proper pitch the

goblet cracked into pieces exactly as might have been expected. And I

wondered why Drayle concerned himself with so childish an experiment

before I noticed that he appeared to have forgotten me completely.

* * * * *

"I endeavored then not to disturb him, and I remember trying to draw

myself out of his way and feeling that something momentous was about

to take place. Yet actually I believe it would have required a

considerable commotion to have distracted his attention, for his

ability to concentrate was one of the characteristics of his genius.

"I saw him place another glass on the table and I noticed then that

it stood directly in front of a complicated mechanism. At first this

gave out a low humming sound, but it soon rose to an unearthly whining

shriek. I shrank from it involuntarily and a second later I was amazed

at the sight of the glass, seemingly reduced to a thin vapor, being

drawn into a funnel-like opening near the top of the device. I was too

startled to speak and could only watch as Drayle started the

contrivance again. Once more its noise cut through me with physical

pain. I cried out. But my voice was overwhelmed by the terrific din of

the mysterious machine.

"Then Drayle strode down the long room to another intricate mass of

wire coils and plates and lamps. And I saw a dim glow appear in two of

the bulbs and heard a noise like the crackling of paper. Drayle made

some adjustments, and presently I observed a peculiar shimmering of

the air above a horizontal metal grid. It reminded me of heat waves

rising from a summer street, until I saw the vibrations were taking a

definite pattern; and that the pattern was that of the glass I had

seen dissolved into air. At first the image made me think of a picture

formed by a series of horizontal lines close together but broken at

various points in such fashion as to create the appearance of a line

by the very continuity of the fractures. But as I watched, the plasma

became substance. The air ceased to quiver and I was appalled to see

Drayle pick up the tumbler and carry it to a scale on which he weighed

it with infinite exactness. If he had approached me with it at that

moment I would have fled in terror.

* * * * *

"Next, Drayle filled the goblet with some liquid which immediately

afterward he measured in a beaker. The result seemed to please him,

for he smiled happily. At the same instant he became aware of my

presence. He looked surprised and then a trifle disconcerted. I could

see that he was embarrassed by the knowledge that I had witnessed so

much, and after a second or two he asked my silence. I agreed at

once, not only because he requested it but because I couldn't believe

the evidence myself. He let me out then and locked the door.

"It was this recollection that made me credit the woman's story. But I

was sick with dread, for in spite of my faith in Drayle's genius I

feared he had gone mad.

"Mrs. Drayle had listened to Mrs. Farrel's account calmly enough, but

I could see the fear in her eyes when she signaled a wish to speak to

me alone. I followed her into an adjoining room, leaving Mrs. Farrel

with the two policemen and the doctor, who was trying to quiet her.

"As soon as the door closed after us Mrs. Drayle seized my hands.

"'Tim,' she whispered, 'I'm horribly afraid that what the woman says

is true. Chris has told me of some wonderful things he was planning to

do, but I never expected he would experiment on human beings. Can they

send him to prison?'

"Of course I said what I could to comfort her and tried to make my

voice sound convincing. At the time the legal aspect of the matter did

not worry me so much as the fear that the attack on Drayle might prove

fatal. For even if it should develop that he was not dangerously hurt,

I imagined that the interruption of the experiment at a critical

moment might easily have ruined whatever slim chance there had been of

success. For us the nerve-wracking part was that we could do nothing

until the surgeon who was attending Drayle could tell us how badly he

was injured.

* * * * *

"At last word came that the bullet had only grazed Drayle's head and

stunned him, but that he might remain unconscious for some time. Mrs.

Drayle went in and sat at her husband's side, while I returned to the

laboratory and found the police greatly bewildered as to whether they

ought to arrest Drayle.

"They had discovered in a closet an outfit of men's clothing that Mrs.

Farrel identified as her husband's, and, although they saw no other

trace of the missing man, they had a desire to lock up somebody as an

evidence of their activity. It took considerable persuasion to prevail

upon them to withhold their hands. There was no such difficulty about

restraining them in the laboratory. They were afraid to touch any

apparatus, and they gave the invention a ludicrously wide berth.

"I never knew exactly how long it was that I paced about the lower

floor of Drayle's home before the doctor summoned me and announced

that the patient wanted me, but that I must be careful not to excite

him. I have often wondered how many physicians would have to abandon

their profession if they were deprived of that phrase. 'You must not

excite the patient.'

"Drayle was already excited when I entered. In fact, he was furious at

the doctor's efforts to restrain him. But I realized that my fear for

his reason was groundless. His remarks were lucid and forceful as he

raged at the interference with his work. As soon as he saw me he

appealed for assistance.

"'Make them let me alone. Tim,' he begged, as his wife and the doctor,

partly by force and partly by persuasion, endeavored to hold him in

bed. 'I must get back to the laboratory. That woman believes that I've

killed her husband, and my assistant will think that we've failed.'

* * * * *

"I was about to argue with him when suddenly he managed to thrust the

doctor aside and start toward the door. His seriousness impressed me

so that I gave him a supporting arm and together we headed down the

hall, with Mrs. Drayle and the doctor following anxiously in the rear.

The laboratory was deserted and locked when we arrived. The police

evidently felt it was too uncanny an atmosphere for a prolonged wait.

Drayle opened the door, went directly to his machine, and examined it

minutely.

"'Thank the Lord that woman hit only me!' he said, and sank into a

chair. Then he asked for some brandy. Mrs. Drayle rushed off and

reappeared in a minute with a decanter and glass. Drayle helped

himself to a swallow that brought color to his cheeks and new strength

to his limbs. Immediately after he turned again to the machine. I

dragged up a chair, assisted him into it, and seated myself close by.

"I knew little enough about mechanics, but I was fascinated by the

numerous gauges that faced me on the gleaming instrument board. There

were dials with needlelike hands that registered various numbers;

spots of color appeared in narrow slots close to a solar spectrum: a

stream of graph-paper tape flowed slowly beneath a tracing-pen point

and carried away a jiggly thin line of purple ink. In a moment Drayle

was oblivious of everything but his records. I watched him copy the

indicated figures, surround them with formulas, and solve mysterious

problems with a slide-rule.

"His calculations covered a large sheet before he had finished. At

last he underscored three intricate combinations of letters and

figures and carried the answers to his private radio apparatus. This

operated on a wave length far outside the range of all others and

insured him against interference. With it he was able to speak at any

time with his assistants in Washington or Boston or with both at once.

He threw the switch that sent his call into the air. An answer came

instantly, and Drayle begin to talk to his distant lieutenants.

* * * * *

"'We've been interrupted, gentlemen,' he said, 'but I think we may

continue now. We'll reassemble in the Boston laboratory. Have you

arranged the elements? The coefficients are....' And he gave a

succession of decimals.

"A voice replied that all was ready. Drayle said 'Excellent,' went

back to his invention and twisted a black knob on the board before

him.

"With this trifling movement all hell seemed to crash about us. The

ghastly cacophony that I had experienced in the same room some months

previously was as nothing. These stupendous waves of sound pounded us

until it seemed as if we must disintegrate beneath them. Wails and

screams engulfed us. Mrs. Drayle dropped to her knees beside her

husband. The doctor seized my arm and I saw the knuckles of his hand

turn white with the pressure of his grip, yet I felt nothing but the

awful vibrations that drummed like riveting machines upon and through

my nerves and body. It was not an attack upon the ears alone; it

crashed upon the heart, beat upon the chest so that breathing seemed

impossible. My brain throbbed under the terrific pulsations. For a

while I imagined the human system could not endure the ordeal and that

all of us must be annihilated.

"Except for his slow turning of the dials Drayle was motionless before

the machine. Below the bandage about his forehead I could see his

features drawn with anxiety. He had wagered a human life to test his

theory and I think the enormity of it had not struck him until that

moment.

"What I knew and hoped enabled me to imagine what was taking place in

the Boston laboratory. I seemed to see man's elementary dust and

vapors whirled from great containers upward into a stratum of

shimmering air and gradually assume the outlines of a human form that

became first opaque, then solid, and then a sentient being. At the

same instant I was conscious that the appalling pandemonium had ceased

and that the voice of Drayle's Boston assistant was on the radio.

* * * * *

"'Congratulations, Chief! His reassemblage is perfect. There's not a

flaw anywhere.' "'Splendid,' Drayle answered. 'Bring him here by

plane right away; his wife is worried about him.'

"Then Drayle turned to me.

"'You see,' he said, 'Jackson Gee was right. We have resolved man into

his constituent elements, transmitted his key vibrations by radio, and

reassembled him from a supply of identical elements at the other end.

And now, if you will assure that woman that her husband is safe, I

will get some sleep. You will have the proof before you in less than

three hours.'

"I can't vouch for the doctor's feelings, but as Drayle left us I was

satisfied that everything was as it should be, and that I had just

witnessed the greatest scientific achievement of all time. I did not

foresee, nor did Drayle, the results of an error or deliberate

disobedience on the part of one of his assistants.

"We waited, the doctor and I, for the arrival of the man who, we were

convinced, had been transported some three hundred miles in a manner

that defied belief. The evidence would come, Drayle had said, in a few

hours. Long before they had elapsed we were starting at the sound of

every passing motor, for we knew that a plane must land some distance

from the house and that the travelers would make the last mile or so

by car.

"Mrs. Drayle endeavored to convince the imagined widow that her

husband was safe and was returning speedily. Later she rejoined us,

full of questions that we answered in a comforting blind faith. The

time limit was drawing to a close when the sound of an automobile horn

was quickly followed by a sharp knock on the laboratory door. At a

sign from Mrs. Drayle one of the policemen opened it and we saw two

men before us. One, a scholarly appearing, bespectacled youth, I

recognized as Drayle's Boston assistant, Ward; the other, a rather

burly individual, was a stranger to me. But there was no doubt he was

the man we awaited so eagerly, for Mrs. Farrel screamed 'Harry!

Harry!' and sped across the room towards him.

* * * * *

"At first she ran her fingers rather timidly over his face, and then

pinched his huge shoulders, as if to assure herself of his reality.

The sense of touch must have satisfied her, for abruptly she kissed

him, flung her arms about him, clung to him, and crooned little

endearments. The big man, in turn, patted her cheeks awkwardly and

mumbled in a convincingly natural voice, ''Sall right, Mary, old kid!

There ain't nothin' to it. Yeah! Sure it's me!'

"Then I was conscious of Drayle's presence. A brown silk dressing gown

fell shapelessly about his spare frame and smoke from his cigarette

rose in a quivering blue-white stream. Ward spied him at the same

moment and stepped forward with quick outstretched hands. I remember

the flame of adoring zeal in the youngster's eyes as he tried to

speak. At length he managed to stammer some congratulatory phrases

while Drayle clapped him affectionately on the back.

"Then Drayle turned to Farrel to ask him how he enjoyed the trip.

Farrel grinned and said, 'Fine! It was like a dream, sir! First I'm in

one place and then I'm in another and I don't know nothing about how I

got there. But I could do with a drink, sir. I ain't used to them

airyplanes much.'

"Drayle accepted the hint and suggested that we all celebrate. He gave

instructions over a desk telephone and almost immediately a man

entered with a small service wagon containing a wide assortment of

liquors and glasses. When we had all been served, Ward asked somewhat

hesitantly if he might propose a toast. 'To Dr. Drayle, the greatest

scientist of all time!'

* * * * *

"We were of course, already somewhat drunk with excitement as we

lifted our glasses. But Drayle would not have it.

"'Let me amend that,' he said. 'Let us drink to the future of

science.'

"'Sure!' said Farrel, very promptly. I think he was somewhat uncertain

about 'toast,' but he clung hopefully to the word 'drink.'

"We had raised our glasses again when Drayle, who was facing the door,

dropped his. It struck the floor with a little crash and the liquor

spattered my ankles. Drayle whispered 'Great God!' I saw in the

doorway another Farrel. He was grimy, disheveled, his clothing was

torn, and his expression ugly; but his identity with 'Harry' was

unescapable. For an instant I suspected Drayle of trickery, of

perpetrating some fiendishly elaborate hoax. And then I heard Mrs.

Farrel scream, heard the newcomer cry, 'Mary,' and saw two men staring

at each other in bewilderment.

"The explanation burst upon me with a horrible suddenness. Farrel had

been reconstructed in each of Drayle's distant laboratories, and there

stood before us two identities each equally authentic, each the legal

husband of the woman who, a few hours previously, had imagined herself

a widow. The situation was fantastic, nightmarish, unbelievable and

undeniable. My head reeled with the fearful possibilities.

"Drayle was the first to recover his poise. He opened a door leading

into an adjoining room and motioned for us all to enter. That is, all

but the police. He left them wisely with their liquor. 'Finish it,' he

advised them. 'You see no one has been killed.'

* * * * *

"They were not quite satisfied, but neither were they certain what

they ought to do, and for once displayed common sense by doing

nothing. When the door closed after us I saw that Buchannon, the

Washington laboratory assistant, was with us. He must have arrived

with the second Farrel, although I had not observed him during the

confusion attending the former's unexpected appearance. But Drayle had

noted him and now seized his shoulders. 'Explain!' he demanded.

"Buchannon's face went white and he shrank under the clutch of

Drayle's fingers. Beyond them I saw the two twinlike men standing

beside Mrs. Farrel, surveying each other with incredulous recognition

and distaste.

"'Explain!' roared Drayle, and tightened his grasp.

"'I thought you said Washington, Chief.' His voice was not convincing.

I didn't believe him, nor did Drayle.

"'You lie!' he raged, and floored the man with his fist.

"In a way I couldn't help feeling sorry for the chap. It must have

been a frightful temptation to participate in the experiment and I

suppose he had not forseen the consequences. But I began to have a

glimmering of the magnificent possibilities of the invention for

purposes far beyond Drayle's intent. For, I asked myself, why, if such

a machine could produce two human identities, why not a score, a

hundred, a thousand? The best of the race could be multiplied

indefinitely and man could make man at last, literally out of the dust

of the earth. The virtue of instantaneous transmission which had been

Drayle's aim sank into insignificance beside it. I fancied a race of

supermen thus created. And I still believe, Sergeant, that the chance

for the world's greatest happiness is sealed within that box you

guard. But its first fruits were tragic."

The historian shifted his position on the bench so as to escape the

sun that was now reflected dazzlingly by the polished steel casket.

* * * * *

"Drayle did not glance again at his disobedient lieutenant. He was

concerned with the problem of the extra man, or, I should say, an

extra man, for both were equal. Never before in the history of the

world had two men been absolutely identical. They were, of course, one

in thought, possessions and rights, physical attributes and

appearance. Mrs. Farrel, as they were beginning to realize, was the

wife of both. And I have an unworthy suspicion that the red-headed

young woman, after she recovered from the shock, was not entirely

displeased. The two men, however, finding that each had an arm about

her waist, were regarding each other in a way that foretold trouble.

Both spoke at the same time and in the same words.

"'Take your hands off my wife!'

"And I think they would have attacked each other then if Drayle hadn't

intervened. He said, 'Sit down! All of you!' in so peremptory a voice

that we obeyed him.

"'Now,' he went on, 'pay attention to me. I think you realize the

situation. The question is, what we shall do about it?' He pointed an

accusing finger at the Farrel from Washington. 'You were not

authorized to exist; properly we should retransmit you, and without

reassembling you would simply cease to be.'

"The man addressed looked terrified. 'It would be murder!' he

protested.

"'Would it?' Drayle inquired of me.

"I told him that it could not be proved inasmuch as there would be no

_corpus delicti_ and hence nothing on which to base a charge.

"But the Washington Farrel seemed to have more than an academic

interest in the question and grew obstinate.

"'Nothing doing!' he announced emphatically. 'Here I am and here I

stay. I started from this place this morning and now I'm back, and as

for that big ape over there I don't know nothing about him--except

he'll be dead damn soon if he don't keep away from my wife.'

* * * * *

"The other Drayle-made man leaped up at this, and again I expected

violence. But Buchannon flung himself between, and they subsided,

muttering.

"'Very well, then,' Drayle continued, when the room was quiet, 'here

is another solution. We can, as you realize, duplicate Mrs. Farrel,

and I will double your present possessions.'

"This time it was Mrs. Farrel who was dissatisfied. 'You ain't

talking to me,' she informed Drayle. 'Me stand naked in front of all

them lamps and get turned into smoke? Not me!' A smile spread over her

face and her eyes twinkled with deviltry. 'I didn't never think I'd be

in one of them triangles like in the movies, and with my own husbands,

but seein' I am, I'm all for keeping them both. Then I might know

where one of them was some of the time.'

"But neither of the men took to this idea and the problem appeared

increasingly complex. I proposed that the survivor be determined by

lot, but this suggestion won no support from anyone. Again the two men

spoke at the same instant and in the same words. It was like a

carefully rehearsed chorus. 'I know my rights, and I ain't going to be

gypped out of them!'

"It was at this point that Drayle attempted bribery. He offered fifty

thousand dollars to the man who would abandon Mrs. Farrel. But this

scheme fell through because both men sought the opportunity and Mrs.

Farrel objected volubly.

"So in the end Drayle promised each of them the same amount as a price

for silence and left the matter of their relationships to their own

settlement.

* * * * *

"I was skeptical of the success of the plan but could offer nothing

better. So I drew up a release as legally binding as I knew how to

make it in a case without precedent. I remember thinking that if the

matter ever came into court the judge would be as much at a loss as I

was.

"Our troubles, though, didn't spring from that source. Each of the

three parties accepted the arrangement eagerly and Drayle dismissed

them with a hand-shake, a wish for luck and a check for fifty thousand

dollars each. It's very nice to be wealthy, you know.

"Afterward, we went out and paid off the police. Perhaps that's

stating it too bluntly. I mean that Drayle thanked them for their

zealous attention to his interests, regretted that they had been

unnecessarily inconvenienced and treated that they would not take

amiss a small token of his appreciation of their devotion to duty.

Then he shook hands with them both and I believe I saw a yellow bill

transferred on each occasion. At any rate the officers saluted smartly

and left.

"Of course I was impatient to question Drayle, but I could see that he

was desperately fatigued. So I departed.

"Next morning I found my worst fears exceeded by the events of the

night. The three Farrels who had left us in apparently amiable spirits

had proceeded to the home of Mrs. and the original Mr. Farrel. There

the argument of who was to leave had been resumed. Both men were, of

course, of the same mind. Whether both desired to stay or flee I would

not presume to say. But an acrimonious dispute led to physical

hostilities, and while Mrs. Farrel, according to accounts, cheered

them on, they literally fought to the death. Being equally capable,

there was naturally, barring interruption, no other possible outcome.

I can well believe they employed the same tactics, swung the same

blows, and died at the same instant.

"Mrs. Farrel, after carefully retrieving both of her husbands' checks,

told a great deal of the story. As might be expected, nobody believed

the yarn except our profound federal law makers. They welcomed an

opportunity to investigate an outsider for a change and had all of us

before a committee.

"Finally the Congress of these United States of America, plus the

sagacious Supreme Court, decided that my client wasn't guilty of

anything, but that he mustn't do it again. At least that was the gist

of it. I recollect that I offered a defense of psycopathic

neuroticism.

"As a result of the _obiter dictum_ and a resolution by both Houses

Assembled Drayle's invention was sealed, dated and placed under guard.

That's its history, Sergeant."

* * * * *

The white-haired old gentleman picked up the high silk hat that added

a final touch of distinction to his tall figure, and looked about him

as if trying to recall something. At last the idea came.

"By the way," he inquired suddenly, "didn't I have an extraordinarily

obnoxious grandson with me when I came?"

The attentive auditor was vastly startled. He surveyed the great hall

rapidly, but reflected before he answered.

"No, sir--I mean he ain't no more'n average! But I reckon we'd better

find him, anyhow."

His glance had satisfied the sergeant that at least the object of his

charge was safe and his men still vigilant. "I'll be back in a

minute," he informed them. "Don't let nothin' happen."

"Bring us something more'n a breath," pleaded the corporal,

disrespectfully.

The sergeant had already set off at a brisk pace with the story

teller. For several minutes as they rushed from room to room the hunt

was unrewarded.

"I think, sir," said the sergeant, "we'd better look in the natural

history division. There is stuffed animals in there that the kids is

fond of."

"You're probably right," the patriarch gasped as he struggled to

maintain the gait set by the younger man. "I might have known he

didn't really want to hear the story."

"They never do," answered the other over his shoulder. "I'll bet

that's him down there on the next floor."

* * * * *

The two searchers had emerged upon a wide gallery that commanded a

clear view of the main entrance where various specimens of American

fauna were mounted in intriguing replicas of their native habitat.

The guard pointed an accusing finger at one of these groups and sprang

toward the stairs.

The old gentleman's breath and strength were gone. He could only gaze

in the direction that had been indicated by the madly running guard;

but he had no doubts. A small boy was certainly digging vigorously at

the head of a specimen of _Ursus Polaris_ that the curator had

represented in the dramatic pose of killing a seal. A protesting wail

arose from below as the young naturalist was withdrawn from his field

by a capable hand on the slack of his trousers. And presently,

chagrined with failure, the culprit was before his grandsire.

"Gee!" he complained, "I was only looking at the polar bear. Are polar

bears always white? Are--"

"You'd better take him away, sir," interrupted the sergeant. "He was

trying to pry out one of the bear's eyes with the stick of the

lollypop I give him. Take him."

The old gentleman extended both hands. His left found a grip in his

grandson's coat collar; his right, partly concealing a government

engraving, met the guard's with a clasp of gratitude.

"Sergeant," he remarked in a voice tense with feeling, "a half-hour

ago I expressed some ridiculous regrets that Drayle's invention had

been kept from the world. Now I realize its horrid menace. I shudder

to think it might have been responsible for two like him!"

The object of disapproval was shaken indicatively.

"Guard the secret well, Sergeant! Guard it well! The world's peace

depends upon you!" The old gentleman's words trembled with conviction.

Then alternately shaking his head and his grandson he marched down the

hallway, ebony cane tapping angrily upon the stone.

As the exhausted but happy warrior retraced his steps a high-pitched

voice floated after him.

"Grandpa, are polar bears _always_ white?"

* * * * *

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The Reader's Corner

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Astounding Stories

[Illustration: _The Reader's Corner_]

_The Invisible X-Flyers_

The following is a semi-technical description of the

operation of the invisible X-flyers used in "Jetta of the

Lowlands" as compiled by Philip Grant in the year 2021 from

official records of the Anti-War Department of the United

States of North America, and discovered recently by Ray

Cummings.

The attainment of mechanical invisibility reached a state of

perfection in the year 2000 sufficient to make it practical

for many uses. For a century this result had been sought. It

came, about the year 2000, not as a single startling

discovery, but as the culmination of the patient labor of

many men during many years. The popular mind has always

considered that science advances by a series of "great

scientific discoveries"; "unprecedented"; "revolutionary."

That is not so. Each step in the progress of scientific

achievement is built most carefully upon the one beneath it.

And generally the "revolutionary, unprecedented discovery"

has very little of itself that is new; rather it is a new

combination of older, perhaps seemingly impractical

knowledge. Every scientific theory, every device, is the

offspring from a large and varied family tree of many

scientific ancestors, each of whom in his day was a

remarkable personage.

Thus it is, with the principles of mechanical invisibility.

I deal here with the famous X-flyers. The operation of the

plane itself is immaterial; its motors; its wing-spread

surfaces; its aerial controls. I am concerned only with the

scientific principles underlying its power of invisibility.

Three scientific factors are involved: First, the process

known as de-electroniration; second, the theories of color

absorption; third, the material, inevitable deflection

(bending) of light rays when passing through a magnetic

field.

I take each of the three in order. The forerunners of

de-electroniration were the Martel effects--the experiments

of Charles Martel, in Paris, in 1937. A new electric

current, of a different character--now called the

oscillating current as distinct from the alternating and

direct--was developed. Metallic plates were

electro-magnetized to produce an enveloping magnetic field

of somewhat a different character from any field formerly

known.

Dr. Norton Grenfell followed this in 1946 by using the

Martel oscillating current to obtain a reverse effect. A

similar disturbance of electrode balance. But not a

surcharge. An exhaustion. An anti-electrical state, instead

of a state of magnetism. A metallic mass so treated--and

with a constant flow of oscillating current holding its

subnormal electronic balance--was then said to be

de-electronired.

Scientific "discoveries" are largely made by the trial and

error system. The scientist takes what he finds. Generally

he does not know, at first, what it means. Martell took his

oscillating current and "discovered" the Martel Magnetic

Levitation, whereby gravity was lessened, and then

completely nullified. Grenfell, with his de-electroniration,

increased the power of gravity. The two were combined by

Grenfell and his associates--and the secret of

interplanetary flight was at hand.

But there was a host of other workers not interested in

space flyers; they probed in other directions. It was found

that the subnormal magnetic field surrounding a metallic

substance in a state of de-electroniration had two unusual

properties: its color absorption was high; and it bent light

rays from their normal straight path into a curve abnormally

great. Yet, though it absorbed the color of the rays

emanating from the de-electronired metal (the metal itself

increasing this result), the magnetic field, while bending

the rays passing through it from distant objects behind it,

nevertheless left their color and all their inherent

properties unchanged.

The principles of color absorption are these:--a pigment--a

paint, a dye, if you will--is "red" because it absorbs from

the light rays of the sun all the other colors and leaves

only red to be reflected from it to the eye. Or "violet"

because all the rest are absorbed, and the violet is

reflected. Or "black" because all are absorbed; and "white"

the reverse, all blended and reflected. Color is dependent

upon vibratory motion. The solar spectrum--its range of

visibility through the primary colors from red to

violet--can be likened to a range of radio wave-lengths;

vibration frequencies; and when we eliminate them all save

the "violet"--that is what we have left, in the radio to

hear, in color absorption to see.

Thus, a de-electronired metal was found to produce black.

Not black as habitually we meet it--a "shiny" black, a

"dull" black; but a true black--a real absence of light-ray

reflection--a "nothingness to see"; in effect, an

invisibility.

A word of explanation is necessary regarding the other

property of the de-electronired field--the bending of

distant light rays into a curve, yet leaving their spectrum

unchanged. It was Albert Einstein who first made the

statement--in the years following the turn of the century at

1900--that it was a normal, natural thing for a ray of light

to be slightly deflected from its straight path when passing

through a magnetic field. The claim caused world-wide

interest, for upon its truth or falsity the whole fabric of

the Einstein Theory of Relativity was woven.

An eclipse of the sun in the 1920's established that light

is actually bent in the manner Einstein had calculated. A

magnetic field surrounds the sun. In those days they did

not know that it is a field of subnormal electronic

balance--in effect, the result of de-electroniration. It was

found, nevertheless, that stars close to the limb of the sun

appeared, not in their true positions, but shifted in just

the directions and with the amount of shift Einstein

predicted. The light rays coming from them to the eye of the

observer on Earth were curved in passing so close to the

sun. But the color-bands of their spectrums were unaltered.

And some of the stars actually were behind the sun, yet

because of the curved path of the light, were visible. I

mention this because it is an important aspect of the

subject of mechanical invisibility.

With the foregoing factors, the secret of mechanical

invisibility is constructed. Gracely, an American--following

a long series of world-wide experiments, tests of current

strength, frequencies of oscillation, suitable metals, etc.,

which I cannot detail here--in 1955 was the final developer

of the mechanisms subsequently used in the X-flyers.

Gracely produced what he christened "aluminoid-spectrite"--a

light-weight alloy which, when carrying an oscillating

electronic current of the proper frequency, produced the

effects I have described. It absorbed from the light rays

coming from the metal, all the colors of the solar spectrum,

well beyond the range of the human eye at both ends of the

scale. The result was a "visible nothingness."

A moment's thought will make clear that term. A visible

nothingness is not invisibility. The fact that something was

there but could not be seen was obvious. A black hat with a

light on it and placed against an average background is

almost as easy to see as a white hat. Gracely's first crude

experiments were made with an aluminoid-spectrite cube--a

small brick a foot in each dimension. The cube glowed,

turned, dark, then black, then was gone. He had it resting

on a white table, with a white background. And the fact that

the cube was still there, was perfectly obvious. It was as

though a hole of nothingness were set against the white

table. It outlined the cube; reconstructed it so that for

practical purposes the eye saw not a white, aluminoid brick,

but a dead black one.

And this is very much what a man sees when he stares at his

black hat on a table. The hat occults its background, and

thus reconstructs itself.

But when Gracely determined the proper vibrations of his

oscillating current to coincide with all the other material

factors he was using, the final result was before him-real

invisibility. He used a patterned background--a

symmetrically checkered surface, most difficult of all. The

light rays coming from this background passed through the

magnetic field surrounding the invisible colorless cube, and

were bent into a curved path. But their own

color-spectrum--in actuality the color, shape, all the

visible characteristics of the background--was not greatly

altered. The observer saw what actually was behind the

invisible cube: the checkered background, sometimes

slightly distorted, but nevertheless sufficiently clear for

its abnormality to escape notice. Thus the cube's outlines

were not reconstructed; and, in effect, it had vanished.

In practical workings with the X-flyers, no such difficult

test as Gracely's cube and rectangular, symmetrically

patterned background is ever met. The varying background

behind a plane--at rest or flying, and particularly at

night--demands less perfection of background than Gracely's

laboratory conditions. I am informed that an X-flyer can

vaguely be seen--or sensed, rather--from some angles and

under certain and unfavorable conditions of light, and

depending on its line of movement relative to the angle of

observation, and the type and color-lighting of its

background. But under most conditions it represents a very

nearly perfect mechanical invisibility.

There is one aspect of the subject with which I may close

this brief paper. I give it without technical explanation;

it seems to me an amusing angle.

The theory of stereoscopics--the vision of the twin lenses

of the human eyes, set a distance apart to give the

perception of depth, of the third dimension--is in itself a

subject tremendously interesting, and worthy of anyone's

study. I have no space for it here, nor would it be strictly

relevant. I need only state that a two-eyed man sees

partially around an object (by virtue of the different

angles from which each of his eyes gaze at it) and thus sees

a trifle more of the background than would otherwise be the

case. And this--these two viewpoints blended in his

brain--gives him his perception of "depth," of

"solidity"--the difference between a real scene of three

dimensions and a painted scene on a canvas of two dimensions

with only the artist's skill in perspective to simulate the

third.

And I cannot refrain from mentioning that in Government

tests of the Anti-War Department to determine the perfection

of the invisibility of the X-flyers, it was a one-eyed man

who proved that they were not always totally invisible!--Ray

Cummings.

_Thank You_

Dear Editor:

I just want you to know this: I am a reader of your truly

named Astounding Stories. I really enjoyed reading the

"Spawn of the Stars," also "Brigands of the Moon," and I am

very glad to hear that we are going to have another of

Charles W. Diffin's stories in the next issue--"The Moon

Master."--J. R. Penner, 376 Woodlawn Ave, Buffalo N. Y.

_"A Wiz"_

Dear Editor:

I am only a young girl sixteen years of age but am greatly

interested in science. I have no master mind by any means,

but have worked out many a difficult problem in school for

my science prof.

Your magazine is a wiz. I haven't missed an instalment

since it started. Give us more stories like "Monsters of

Moyen," and "The Beetle Horde."--Josephine Frankhouser, 4949

Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

_"Pretty Good"_

Dear Editor:

I received Astounding Stories for May and it is pretty good.

The next issue is number six, and I hope it is better than

the previous ones. There have been some stories that do not

belong in a Science Fiction magazine, such as: "The Cave of

Horror," "The Corpse on the Grating," "The Soul Master," and

"The Man who was Dead." There is also another story that was

printed in the May issue that, so far as I think, does not

belong in this magazine: that is, "Murder Madness."

Even all the other stories seem to be fantastic. Weird. Why

not try to publish something on the H. G. Wells, E. R.

Burroughs type of stories, also Ray Cummings' "The Man who

Mastered Time," or "The Time Machine," by Wells?--Louis

Wentzler, 1933 Woodbine St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

_From Ye Reader_

Dear Ye Ed.:

That sounds rather medieval a little for the editor of so

novel a magazine, but nevertheless let's forget that and

talk about some astounding stories.

First, I would suggest that you eliminate all stories of

interplanetary travel (I would be different), as there are

already several magazines on the market which deal almost

exclusively with such stories. Now, tales like "The Beetle

Horde," and those written by Murray Leinster, and those

concerning that Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Bird, and those about

the deep sea, like "Into the Ocean's Depths,"--such stories

are astounding, and good. And once in a while let's have a

humorous story. You know: "A bit of humor now and then--"

Well, anyhow, publish any kind of astounding story, just so

it is different and does not deal with interplanetary

travel.

Now, about the magazine. I think it is a good publication

and I like it werra, werra mooch. I bought it on impulse and

happened to be lucky enough to get the first issue, and nary

an issue have I missed since. Although I possess an abject

horror of any kind of insect, I enjoyed "The Beetle Horde"

to the fullest extent. But here's hoping nothing like that

will really happen.

Another thing I'd like to state is this: Some reader made a

remark about not publishing any of Verne's works. I say you

should. Why should any such great author be disregarded in

so good a magazine? And is it not interesting to note that

some of his stories have become actual realizations? Even

Poe's should be published. All those dead authors whose

stories would be considered good were they living. Why

should any person ask not to have such good stories in your

magazine? Perhaps there are some people who would enjoy

them, but do not have the means nor time to buy these great

works in book form. Think it over, ye Ed., think it over.

And now, to finish up, I'll say: are there any readers like

me--a girl--or do only men and boys read Astounding

Stories?--Gertrude Hemken, 5730 So. Ashland Ave., Chicago,

Ill.

_Short--and Sweet_

Dear Editor:

Congratulations! Have followed up every issue of Astounding

Stories and have found them the best yet. I have one fault

to find and that is you do not publish Astounding Stories

often enough. Thirty days is too far between.--Bernard

Bauer, 235 Holland St., Syracuse, N. Y.

_Yes Sir!_

Dear Editor:

I read Astounding Stories all the time, although I'm just a

boy. I think they're O. K. They give me a great "kick."

I think "The Moon Master" was the best story I ever read.

Please ask Mr. Diffin to write more like it.

But then all the stories are really peppy.--Jack Hudson, St.

Mark's School, Southborough, Massachusetts.

_"Undoubtedly the Best"_

Dear Editor:

Your magazine is undoubtedly the best Science Fiction "mag"

on the stands. Why? Because of your authors. There is not

another Science Fiction book on the stands that has stories

by Victor Rousseau, Murray Leinster Ray Cummings, A. T.

Locke, A. J. Burks, C. W. Diffin, S. W. Ellis and many

others.

Some of your readers want stories by Dr. David H. Keller, Ed

Earl Repp and Walter Kately. Well, I just wanted to tell you

that I have stopped reading all other Science Fiction "mags"

on account of the frequency of these authors in them. So

please, please, don't destroy my last stronghold.

Also, I would not be against reprints. There is only one so

far who has objected to reprints, while there have been

several asking you to reprint A. Merritt's "People of the

Pit." It would not only satisfy your present readers, but,

because of the great popularity of A. Merritt among the

reading circles of to-day, it would gain for you many more

readers.

Harl Vincent is an indispensable acquisition to "our"

magazine. His stories are not only all excellent but his

stories all contain good science. He will bring you many new

readers.

May I add my voice to every other reader's in the cry for

the reprinting of "People of the Pit," by A. Merritt? Why

not give us some stories by him? He's pretty near the best

writer living to-day.

I don't care for the Mars stories by Burroughs. He's too

much long sword and short sword. A Merritt, however, is the

man for you to get and keep.

The schedule for July looks "doggone good" and suggestive to

the imagination. You might increase the contents of the

book.

The only thing wrong with the stories is that you have too

many repetitions. Please get A. Merritt. If you publish

stories by him you will see a very noticeable increase in

your subscription column. Another author who would repeat A.

Merritt's action on your subscription column is Dr. Edward

Elmer Smith. Please see about these authors.--Gabriel

Kirschner, Box 301, Temple, Texas.

_From Young Miss Nightingale_

Dear Editor:

I have been wanting to write to you for a long time but only

now am I able to do so. When I first got a copy of your

magazine I just grabbed it and started reading it. That

magazine had the first installment of "Brigands of the Moon"

in it. Now, after one magazine has been read I nearly burst

until the next one comes.

As for the writers, I like Ray Cummings, Harl Vincent,

Sewell Peaslee Wright, and Murray Leinster best. I like

interplanetary stories best. I also like stories of the

Fourth Dimension and those of ancient races of people living

in uninhabited parts of the earth. So far I have liked

especially well "The Ray of Madness," "Cold Light," "From

the Ocean Depths" and its sequel "Into the Ocean's Depths,"

"Brigands of the Moon," and "Murder Madness." Of course, I

like the others too. I am only a mere girl (that accounts

for this poor typewriting)--only ten years old--but I know

my likes and dislikes.--Ellen Laura Nightingale, 223 So.

Main St., Fairmont, Minn.

_Yessir--H. W. Wessolowski_

Dear Editor:

I have just finished the June issue of Astounding Stories.

It contained some very interesting stories, such as

"Brigands of the Moon," by Ray Cummings, "The Moon Master,"

by Charles W. Diffin, "Murder Madness," by Murray Leinster,

and "Giants of the Ray," by Tom Curry. Although "Out of the

Dreadful Depths," by C. D. Willard, was a good story, it

does not belong in a Science Fiction magazine.

One of the best improvements you could make on Astounding

Stories right now is to cut all edges smooth. I would like

to see at least one full page picture with each story.

Wesso is the only good artist you have. Is Wessolowski his

real name?--Jack Darrow, 4225 N. Spaulding Avenue, Chicago,

Illinois.

Anent Reincarnation.

Dear Editor:

In the July issue of Astounding Stories, a correspondent,

Worth K. Bryant, asks some thought-provoking questions about

the fascinating subject of reincarnation. Although I have

written to Mr. Bryant personally, I would like to present my

views on the subject to all your readers.

Mr. Bryant asks: "Could a person remember his own death in a

former reincarnation?" Yes, he could--if he could "tune in"

on his higher consciousness, or ego. Were that possible, he

could see all his past lives from beginning to end. It is

only the physical self that dies; the ego, or true self, is

immortal and remembers everything that it has experienced in

previous incarnations on the physical plane. But since

consciousness on this plane is expressed through the

material brain, most human beings are unable to recall their

former visits to this world; and it is perhaps better so. If

there were not loss of memory our minds would now range over

the adventures of thousands of years in the past. It would

encompass a vast drama with countless loves and hates, of

many lives filled with pathos and tragedy. Thus to distract

the mind from the present life would retard our progress.

There will come a time in human evolution when the average

person will be able to recall his past incarnations, and

then there will be no need or argument that we have lived

here before, because everyone will remember it.

For those who care to pursue this subject more fully, I

recommend "Elementary Theosophy," by L. W. Rogers,

obtainable at most public libraries.--Allen Glasser, 1610

University Ave., New York, N. Y.

_Prefers the Longer Stories_

Dear Editor:

I've been reading your excellent periodical since the first

issue, and I feel that I'm entitled to an opportunity to

give expression to my reactions to the various issues. Of

course, as a whole, the magazines were uniformly good every

month, but some of the stories, naturally, were better than

others.

In the January issue the best story was "The Beetle Horde"

by Victor Rousseau. I expected a lot from this writer,

having read his "Draft of Eternity," "The Eye of Balamok"

and "The Messiah of the Cylinder." I wasn't disappointed.

The best story in the February issue was "Spawn of the

Stars," by Charles Willard Diffin. Diffin is a newcomer as

far as I know, but he certainly can write.

"Vandals of the Stars" took the honors in the March issue.

A. T. Locke has written some good adventure shorts, but this

was his first fantastic story, to the best of my knowledge.

Come again, Locke! "Brigands of the Moon," by Ray Cummings

was great too.

The best for April was "Monsters of Moyen," by Arthur J.

Burks. Clever idea.

Victor Rousseau rang the bell again in the May issue with

"The Atom Smasher." Let's have other stories of

time-travel--some into the very remote past. Cave man stuff,

you know!

"The Moon Master," by Charles Willard Diffin was the best

for June. Diffin is one of your best writers.

In the last (July) issue, "The Forgotten Planet," by Sewell

Peaslee Wright, I think, takes first place, though

hard-pressed by "Earth, the Marauder" and "The Power and the

Glory."

Now for a few suggestions. In the first place, let's have

less short stories, and more longer ones. In my choice of

stories for each issue, with one exception, I picked the

novelettes. My reason for so doing is the fact that the

authors apparently are not able to do justice to their

themes in the shorter lengths. Of course, there are

exceptions, like Diffin's "The Power and the Glory."

My second suggestion in this: Why not have a fixed position

for your announcement of the stories for the next issue? The

last page, for example. This would be more convenient for

the readers; besides, those of us who have "our mags" bound

into volumes could then cut out the announcement.

Finally, my third suggestion--and the real reason for my

writing this letter. Don't you think it would be a good idea

to publish in each issue the picture of one of the authors,

and a short synopsis of his life? How he started writing,

his experiences, etc. I'm certain that I'm not the only

reader who's interested in the authors. I hope, if

everything else I've said is ignored, you'll at least give

the last suggestion serious consideration.

Why not get the opinion of other readers?

Continued and increasing success to Astounding Stories, best

of the Science Fiction magazines!--P. A. Lyter, 220 Peffer

Street, Harrisburg, Pa.

_Mr. Bates Accepts with Pleasure_

Dear Editor:

It is with greatest pleasure I note the addition of Miss

Lilith Lorraine to your staff, and her initial effort in

your publication. "The Jovian Jest" is but a glimpse of what

is to come. The stories which she has written heretofore

have been real gems of Science Fiction. May I again

congratulate you.

The Science Correspondence Club takes great pleasure in

announcing the enrollment of Capt. S. P. Meek and R. F.

Starzl as members. These authors are well-known to

Astounding Stories readers. Also, we take pleasure in

announcing that we have asked Mr. Bates to become an

honorary member in recognition of his fine work in

furthering Science Fiction.

Our first bulletin has been issued and real progress is

started. For those interested, Mr. Raymond A. Palmer at

1431--34th St., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will handle all

inquiries.

In closing, let me say that when a story pleases you

readers, or the work of some author impresses you, write to

the editor and tell him about it. In this way more and

better Science Fiction will appear. Let us all give

Astounding Stories a big hand, you readers! Best wishes of

the Science Correspondence Club and--Walter L. Dennis, F. P.

S., 4653 Addison St., Chicago, Illinois.

_"Bargain"_

Dear Editor:

I have just finished "The Atom Smasher," in your May issue

of Astounding Stories, and liked it very much.

This is the first story that I have read in your magazine,

although I have read other magazines for the past three

years.

I see where you inquire as to the kind of stories your

readers want.

Personally, I think stories of interplanetary travel are the

best, and most demanded by readers of Science Fiction. Try

and have one in each issue.

In my opinion, I see no criticisms to be made on your

magazine. It certainly would be a bargain at several times

the price you ask. I am sure I will continue reading

it--Louis D. Buchanan, Jr., 711 Monroe Ave., Evansville,

Indiana.

_No "Flash in the Pan"_

Dear Editor:

When I bought the first issue of Astounding Stories last

December, I was impressed by its array of splendid stories

and famous authors. I thought, then, that perhaps that first

number was just a flash in the pan, and that succeeding

issues would sink to the level of other Science Fiction

magazines. Happily, I was wrong. Astounding Stories has more

than fulfilled the promise of its initial issue. The stories

are undoubtedly the finest of their kind, and written by the

most prominent Science Fiction authors of the day. I cannot

conceive of any possible improvement in the magazine.

I do wish, though, that you would not heed the gratuitous

advice of certain earnest but misguided correspondents. For

instance, in the June issue, one Warren Williams of Chicago,

suggests that you enlarge the magazine and give each story a

full-page illustration, like other Science Fiction

periodicals. Mr. Williams evidently favors standardization.

As one magazine is, so must the rest be. Please ignore this

request, and others like it. Astounding Stories is

different, unique; just keep it that way, and you will never

lack a host of satisfied readers.

Before closing, I must voice my profound admiration for

Murray Leinster's brilliant and engrossing story, "Murder

Madness." It's the best serial you've printed so far; though

I have high anticipation for Arthur J. Burks' latest novel,

"Earth, the Marauder."--Mortimer Weisinger, 3550 Rochambeau

Ave., Bronx, New York.

_"I Mean Increased"_

Dear Editor:

I wish to thank you for your reply to my letter. I did not

expect you to give me a personal reply: that was why I asked

you to reply to me in "The Readers' Corner." You are the

only editor I have ever known of that goes to the trouble to

giving personal replies to readers. Other magazines require

a nominal fee. That's another score for you!

Your personal letter, as a girl would aptly say, "tickled me

all over."

I am sorry I can't get a subscription just yet, but I am

"bound" to my newsdealer a little while yet, as I

immediately gave him a monthly order for Astounding Stories.

If you are the one who picked the authors, you have the best

taste I have ever seen in one person. But couldn't your

taste be improved? Pardon me, I mean increased. Namely,

please add to your taste: H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E.

Howard.

If you had different authors, in other words, new,

inexperienced authors, I would object to your running more

than one serial at a time, but with the marvelous old-timers

I have no objections, for they can write long ones far

better than they can the shorts. So keep them at work.

The three short stories, "Out of the Dreadful Depths," "The

Cavern World" and "Giants of the Ray," were all very good.

Ray Cummings was wonderful in the way he handled his

"Brigands of the Moon." It was a "wow baby." "Murder

Madness" is a great improvement over "Tanks." "Tanks" was

the worst I've ever read by Leinster. But he came out of his

reverie in "Murder Madness." It's great.

Sewell Peaslee Wright can work wonders with short stories.

Keep his "typer" clicking. By the way, may I say a few good

words for Sophie Wenzel Ellis? If she can duplicate

"Creatures of the Light," maker her repeat.

Victor Rousseau's story, "The Beetle Horde," kept me "all

het up" throughout. "The Atom Smasher" was excellent. I also

greatly like stories of the mighty Atlantis.

I agree with others of your readers that you should not let

Astounding Stories be printed in such a small size. Make it

a little larger, and give us smoother paper, and you will

prosper greatly.

"The Moon Master" was excellent.--Gabriel Kirschner, Box

301, Temple, Texas.

_"Could Kick Myself"_

Dear Editor:

I have just started reading Astounding Stories and could

kick myself for not seeing it sooner. In your latest issue,

"The Moon Master," by Charles Diffin, is great. He sure

knows how to write adventure with science.

I am a member of the Science Corresponding Club and am glad

to say it. In later years the club will be known just like

other big clubs of to-day, "Nationally and

Sciencelly."--John Marcroft, 32 Washington St., Central

Falls, R. I.

_A Full List_

In the January number of Astounding Stories Cummings'

"Phantom of Reality" was the best, followed by Rousseau's

"Beetle Horde."

February: 1--Diffin's "Spawn of the Stars"; 2--Rousseau's

"Beetle Horde"; 3--Ellis' "Creatures of the Light";

4--Meek's "The Thief of Time."

March: 1--Cummings' "Brigands of the Moon"; 2--Locke's

"Vandals of the Stars"; 3--Meek's "Cold Light."

April: 1--Cummings' "Brigands of the Moon"; 2--Burk's

"Monsters of Moyen"; 3--Meek's "Ray of Madness";

4--Pelcher's "Vampires of Venus."

May: 1--Cummings' "Brigands of the Moon"; 2--Leinster's

"Murder Madness"; 3--Rousseau's "Atom Smasher."

June: 1--Cummings' "Brigands of the Moon"; 2--Leinster's

"Murder Madness"; 3--Diffin's "Moon Master."

Please give us a story by H. P. Lovecraft, if you can get

one.--Carl Ballard, 202 N. Main St., Danville, Va.

_"Words Cannot Express"_

Dear Editor:

I have read your wonderful magazine since it was first

published, and words cannot express what a fine magazine I

think it is. All my life, I have hoped that someone would

publish a magazine just like Astounding Stories. A magazine

just full to the brim with the right kind of stories;

thrilling stories of super-science, well written in plain

and convincing English by wide awake authors.

I thought that "The Cavern World" was a whiz of a story, and

"The Moon Master" was so exciting that I sat up late at

night reading it. Let's have more of that kind of science

story, that thrills every red-blooded American.

I hope that you print your magazine on better paper.--David

Bangs, 190 Marlboro St., Boston, Mass.

_Unconvinced_

Dear Editor:

I received the latest issue of Astounding Stories, and in

looking it through I noticed your comments on reprints. Your

argument can easily be shot full of holes, and that's what I

intend to do.

First: Those stories being printed now are far inferior to

the reprints. Even your best stories, such as "Murder

Madness" and "Brigands of the Moon," cannot be compared with

such stories as "Station X," "The Moon Pool," "The Metal

Monster," or "The Columbus of Space" and "The Second

Deluge."

Second: The Saturday Evening Post cannot be compared with

our magazine, for all the stories printed in it can be

obtained in book form, while the scientific novels are

almost all out of print.

Third: There is surely more than one out of a hundred who

haven't read the reprints. Just because some have read them

is no reason that they don't want them. I know, for I have a

large library of reprints and have read, and own, almost

every one of them, yet I would gladly see them again.

Fourth: The authors need not starve. You could easily devote

just a small space for reprints, and many would pay

twenty-five cents for the magazine.

The fairest and most American idea would be to let your

readers vote for this. Here is vote No. 1 for

reprints.--Woodrow Gelman, 1603 President St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

_Praise and Suggestions_

Dear Editor:

I have just finished the July issue of Astounding Stories

and classify the stories as follows:

"Beyond the Heaviside Layer," good; "Earth, the Marauder,"

excellent, best in issue; "From an Amber Block," fairly

good; "The Terror of Air-Level Six," very good; "The

Forgotten Planet," excellent; "The Power and the Glory,"

good; "Murder Madness," very good, but not so much so as

preceding chapters.

Now for a few criticisms:

1. Your magazine (or should I say "our" magazine?) is too

small. Of course, it would be a radical change to make it

larger, but, like others, I think in the end you would gain

rather than lose by it. Most small magazines are cheap

affairs, and to have Astounding Stories small brands it as a

cheap type of magazine. Small magazines are more likely to

be hidden on the newsstands by larger ones, and in most

stores the large magazines have the more advantageous

positions.

2. The edges of your pages are uneven. You look in the index

and find an interesting story is on, for example, page 56.

You skim the pages to find it, and from page 43 you find

yourself suddenly at page 79. Make the paper more even,

please.

3. Don't have advertisements before the stories. Have them

in the rear.

4. Have a full page illustration facing the beginning of

each story. If at the end of a story you find pages won't

turn up right, continue the last page to the back of the

book.

Wesso is excellent. Another good artist is Paul, who draws

for another Science Fiction magazine. Your cover

illustrations are fine.

Summary: Enlarge size of magazine, smooth edges of paper,

have advertisements in rear of book, use full page

illustrations.

If this is expensive, you could charge twenty-five cents

instead of twenty cents, and I, for one, would be glad to

pay the extra nickel as I do for other magazines of Science

Fiction.--Robert Baldwin, 1427 Judson Ave., Evanston,

Illinois.

_"The Readers' Corner"_

All Readers are extended a sincere and cordial invitation to "come

over to 'The Readers' Corner'" and join in our monthly discussion of

stories, authors, scientific principles and possibilities--everything

that's of common interest in connection with our Astounding Stories.

Although from time to time the Editor may make a comment or so, this

is a department primarily for _Readers_, and we want you to make full

use of it. Likes, dislikes, criticisms, explanations, roses,

brickbats, suggestions--everything's welcome here: so "come over in

'The Readers' Corner'" and discuss it with all of us!

_--The Editor._

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