CHAPTER XXXIII

_Besieged!_

"Wake up, Gregg! They're coming!"

I forced myself to consciousness. "Coming--"

"Yes. Wake up!"

I leaped from my bunk, followed Snap with a rush into the corridor. We

had returned safely to the Grantline Camp. Anita and I found ourselves

exhausted from lack of sleep, our arduous climb of Archimedes and that

tense time on the brigand ship. On the flight back Snap had explained

how the landing of the ship on Archimedes was observed through the

Grantline telescope, using but little of its power for this local

range. They had read with amazement my signals to the brigands. Snap

had rushed to completion the first of our contemplated flying

platforms. Then he had seen Miko's signals from the crater-base, seen

the lights of the fight to capture Anita and me in the cubby, and had

come to rescue us.

Back at the camp we were given food, and Grantline forced me to try

and sleep.

"They'll be on us in a few hours, Gregg. Miko will have joined them by

now. He'll lead them to us. You must rest, for we need everyone at his

best."

And surprisingly, in the midst of the camp's turmoil of last minute

activities, I slept soundly, until Snap called me that the ship was

coming.

The corridor echoed with the tramp of Grantline's busy crew. But there

was no confusion now; a grim calmness had settled upon everyone.

Anita and Venza rushed up to join us. "It's in sight!"

* * * * *

There was no need of going to the instrument room. From the windows

fronting the brink of the cliff the brigand ship was plainly visible.

It came sailing from Archimedes, a dark shape blurring the stars. All

its lights were extinguished save a single white search-beam in the

bow-peak, slanting diagonally down.

The beam presently caught our little group of buildings; its glare

shone in the windows as it clung for a moment. I could envisage the

triumphant curiosity, of Potan and his fellows up there, gazing along

the beam.

Then it swung away. The ship was at an altitude of no more than three

thousand feet when I first saw it, coming upon a level keel. Would it

circle over us, firing at us? Or sail past, after inspecting us? Or

land, perhaps, boldly crowded upon our little ledge?

We were ready--as ready as we could be with our meager equipment. The

camp was in a state of siege. The cliff-lights were extinguished: the

interior lights were dim, save in the workshops of the main building,

where the final assembling of Snap's other flying platforms and their

insulated protective shields was still in progress.

We had dimmed the lights to conserve our power, and to enable the

Erentz motors to run at full capacity. Our buildings would have to

withstand the brigand rays which soon would be upon us.

Outside on our dim, Earthlit cliff, the tiny lights showed where our

few guards were lurking. As I stood at the window watching the

oncoming ship, Grantline's voice sounded:

"Call in those men! Ring the call-lights, Franck!"

The siren buzzed over the camp's interior; the warning call-lights on

the roof brought in the outer guards. They came running to the

admission portes, which had been repaired after Miko disabled them.

* * * * *

The guards came in. We dimmed our lights further. The treasure sheds

were black against the cliff behind us. No need for guards there--the

bulk of the ore was such that we reasoned the brigands would not

attempt to move it until our buildings were captured. But, if they

should try it, we were prepared to sally out with our hand-weapons and

defend it.

In the dim lights we crouched. A silence was upon us, save for the

clanging in the workshop down the corridor. Most of us wore our Erentz

suits, with helmets ready, though I am sure there was not a man of us

but who prayed he might not have to go out. At many of the

windows--our weakest points to withstand the rays--insulated fabric

shields were hung like curtains.

The brigand ship slowly advanced. It was soon over the opposite rim of

our little crater. Its search-beam swung about the rim and down into

the valley.

My thoughts ran like a turgid stream as I stood tensely watching.

Four hours ago I had sent that flash-signal to Earth. If it were

received, a patrol-ship could come to our rescue and arrive here in

another eight hours--or perhaps even less.

Ah, that "if!" _If_ the signal were received! _If_ the patrol-ship

were immediately available! _If_ it started at once....

Eight hours at the very least. I tried to assure myself that we could

hold out that long....

The brigand ship crossed the opposite crater-rim. It dropped lower. It

seemed poised over the crater-valley, almost at our own level and less

than two miles from us. Its search-beam vanished. For a moment it

hung, a sleek, cylindrical silver shape, gleaming in the Earthlight.

Snap looked at me and murmured, "It's descending."

It slowly settled, cautiously picked its landing-place amid the crags

and pits of the tumbled scarred valley floor. It came to rest, a vague

silver menacing shape lurking in the lower shadows, close at the foot

of the inner opposite crater-wall.

A few moments of tense waiting passed. Soon tiny lights were moving

down there, some out on the rocks near the ship, others up under its

deck-dome.

A stab of searchlight shot across the valley, swung along our ledge

and clung with its glaring ten-foot circle to the front of our main

building. Then a ray flashed.

The assault had begun!

(_To be concluded_)

[Advertisement:]

The Jovian Jest

_By Lilith Lorraine_

[Illustration: _The object shot forth another tentacle._]

[Sidenote: There came to our pigmy planet a radiant wanderer with a

message--and a jest--from the vasty universe.]

Consternation reigned in Elsnore village when the Nameless Thing was

discovered in Farmer Burns' corn-patch. When the rumor began to gain

credence that it was some sort of meteor from inter-stellar space,

reporters, scientists and college professors flocked to the scene,

desirous of prying off particles for analysis. But they soon

discovered that the Thing was no ordinary meteor, for it glowed at

night with a peculiar luminescence. They also observed that it was

practically weightless, since it had embedded itself in the soft sand

scarcely more than a few inches.

By the time the first group of newspapermen and scientists had reached

the farm, another phenomenon was plainly observable. The Thing was

growing!

Farmer Burns, with an eye to profit, had already built a picket fence

around his starry visitor and was charging admission. He also flatly

refused to permit the chipping off of specimens or even the touching

of the object. His attitude was severely criticized, but he stubbornly

clung to the theory that possession is nine points in law.

* * * * *

It was Professor Ralston of Princewell who, on the third day after the

fall of the meteor, remarked upon its growth. His colleagues crowded

around him as he pointed out this peculiarity, and soon they

discovered another factor--pulsation!

Larger than a small balloon, and gradually, almost imperceptibly

expanding, with its viscid transparency shot through with opalescent

lights, the Thing lay there in the deepening twilight and palpably

shivered. As darkness descended, a sort of hellish radiance began to

ooze from it. I say hellish, because there is no other word to

describe that spectral, sulphurous emanation.

As the hangers-on around the pickets shudderingly shrank away from the

weird light that was streaming out to them and tinting their faces

with a ghastly, greenish pallor, Farmer Burns' small boy, moved by

some imp of perversity, did a characteristically childish thing. He

picked up a good-sized stone and flung it straight at the nameless

mass!

* * * * *

Instead of veering off and falling to the ground as from an impact

with metal, the stone sank right through the surface of the Thing as

into a pool of protoplastic slime. When it reached the central core of

the object, a more abundant life suddenly leaped and pulsed from

center to circumference. Visible waves of sentient color circled round

the solid stone. Stabbing swords of light leaped forth from them,

piercing the stone, crumbling it, absorbing it. When it was gone, only

a red spot, like a bloodshot eye, throbbed eerily where it had been.

Before the now thoroughly mystified crowd had time to remark upon this

inexplicable disintegration, a more horrible manifestation occurred.

The Thing, as though thoroughly awakened and vitalized by its unusual

fare, was putting forth a tentacle. Right from the top of the

shivering globe it pushed, sluggishly weaving and prescient of doom.

Wavering, it hung for a moment, turning, twisting, groping. Finally it

shot straight outward swift as a rattler's strike!

Before the closely packed crowd could give room for escape, it had

circled the neck of the nearest bystander, Bill Jones, a cattleman,

and jerked him, writhing and screaming, into the reddish core.

Stupefied with soul-chilling terror, with their mass-consciousness

practically annihilated before a deed with which their minds could

make no association, the crowd could only gasp in sobbing unison and

await the outcome.

* * * * *

The absorption of the stone had taught them what to expect, and for a

moment it seemed that their worst anticipations were to be realised. The

sluggish currents circled through the Thing, swirling the victim's body to

the center. The giant tentacle drew back into the globe and became itself

a current. The concentric circles merged--tightened--became one gleaming

cord that encircled the helpless prey. From the inner circumference of

this cord shot forth, not the swords of light that had powdered the stone

to atoms, but myriads of radiant tentacles that gripped and cupped the

body in a thousand places.

Suddenly the tentacles withdrew themselves, all save the ones that

grasped the head. These seemed to tighten their pressure--to swell and

pulse with a grayish substance that was flowing from the cups into the

cord and from the cord into the body of the mass. Yes, it was a

grayish something, a smokelike Essence that was being drawn from the

cranial cavity. Bill Jones was no longer screaming and gibbering, but

was stiff with the rigidity of stone. Notwithstanding, there was no

visible mark upon his body; his flesh seemed unharmed.

Swiftly came the awful climax. The waving tentacles withdrew

themselves, the body of Bill Jones lost its rigidity, a heaving motion

from the center of the Thing propelled its cargo to the surface--and

Bill Jones stepped out!

Yes, he stepped out and stood for a moment staring straight ahead,

staring at nothing, glassily. Every person in the shivering, paralysed

group knew instinctively that something unthinkable had happened to

him. Something had transpired, something hitherto possible only in the

abysmal spaces of the Other Side of Things. Finally he turned and

faced the nameless object, raising his arm stiffly, automatically, as

in a military salute. Then he turned and walked jerkily, mindlessly,

round and round the globe like a wooden soldier marching. Meanwhile

the Thing lay quiescent--gorged!

* * * * *

Professor Ralston was the first to find his voice. In fact, Professor

Ralston was always finding his voice in the most unexpected places.

But this time it had caught a chill. It was trembling.

"Gentlemen," he began, looking down academically upon the motley crowd

as though doubting the aptitude of his salutation. "Fellow-citizens,"

he corrected, "the phenomenon we have just witnessed is, to the lay

mind, inexplicable. To me--and to my honorable colleagues (added as an

afterthought) it is quite clear. Quite clear, indeed. We have before

us a specimen, a perfect specimen, I might say, of a--of a--"

He stammered in the presence of the unnamable. His hesitancy caused

the rapt attention of the throng that was waiting breathlessly for an

explanation, to flicker back to the inexplicable. In the fraction of a

second that their gaze had been diverted from the Thing to the

professor, the object had shot forth another tentacle, gripping him

round the neck and choking off his sentence with a horrid rasp that

sounded like a death rattle.

Needless to say, the revolting process that had turned Bill Jones

from a human being into a mindless automaton was repeated with

Professor Ralston. It happened as before, too rapidly for

intervention, too suddenly for the minds of the onlookers to shake off

the paralysis of an unprecedented nightmare. But when the victim was

thrown to the surface, when he stepped out, drained of the grayish

smokelike essence, a tentacle still gripped his neck and another

rested directly on top of his head. This latter tentacle, instead of

absorbing _from_ him, visibly poured into him what resembled a

threadlike stream of violet light.

* * * * *

Facing the cowering audience with eyes staring glassily, still in the

grip of the unknowable, Professor Ralston did an unbelievable thing.

He resumed his lecture at the exact point of interruption! But he

spoke with the tonelessness of a machine, a machine that pulsed to the

will of a dictator, inhuman and inexorable!

"What you see before you," the Voice continued--the Voice that no

longer echoed the thoughts of the professor--"is what you would call

an amoeba, a giant amoeba. It is I--this amoeba, who am addressing

you--children of an alien universe. It is I, who through this captured

instrument of expression, whose queer language you can understand, am

explaining my presence on your planet. I pour my thoughts into this

specialised brain-box which I have previously drained of its meager

thought-content." (Here the "honorable colleagues" nudged each other

gleefully.) "I have so drained it for the purpose of analysis and that

the flow of my own ideas may pass from my mind to yours unimpeded by

any distortion that might otherwise be caused by their conflict with

the thoughts of this individual.

"First I absorbed the brain-content of this being whom you call Bill

Jones, but I found his mental instrument unavailable. It was

technically untrained in the use of your words that would best convey

my meaning. He possesses more of what you would call 'innate

intelligence,' but he has not perfected the mechanical brain through

whose operation this innate intelligence can be transmitted to others

and, applied for practical advantage.

* * * * *

"Now this creature that I am using is, as you might say, full of sound

without meaning. His brain is a lumber-room in which he has hoarded a

conglomeration of clever and appropriate word-forms with which to

disguise the paucity of his ideas, with which to express nothing! Yet

the very abundance of the material in his storeroom furnishes a

discriminating mind with excellent tools for the transportation of its

ideas into other minds.

"Know, then, that I am not here by accident. I am a Space Wanderer, an

explorer from a super-universe whose evolution has proceeded without

variation along the line of your amoeba. Your evolution, as I perceive

from an analysis of the brain-content of your professor, _began_ its

unfoldment in somewhat the same manner as our own. But in your smaller

system, less perfectly adjusted than our own to the cosmic mechanism,

a series of cataclysms occurred. In fact, your planetary system was

itself the result of a catastrophe, or of what might have been a

catastrophe, had the two great suns collided whose near approach

caused the wrenching off of your planets. From this colossal accident,

rare, indeed, in the annals of the stars, an endless chain of

accidents was born, a chain of which this specimen, this professor,

and the species that he represents, is one of the weakest links.

"Your infinite variety of species is directly due to the variety of

adaptations necessitated by this train of accidents. In the

super-universe from which I come, such derangements of the celestial

machinery simply do not happen. For this reason, our evolution has

unfolded harmoniously along one line of development, whereas yours

has branched out into diversified and grotesque expressions of the

Life-Principle. Your so-called highest manifestation of this

principle, namely, your own species, is characterized by a great

number of specialized organs. Through this very specialization of

functions, however, you have forfeited your individual immortality,

and it has come about that only your life-stream is immortal. The

primal cell is inherently immortal, but death follows in the wake of

specialization.

* * * * *

"We, the beings of this amoeba universe, are individually immortal. We

have no highly specialized organs to break down under the stress of

environment. When we want an organ, we create it. When it has served

its purpose, we withdraw it into ourselves. We reach out our tentacles

and draw to ourselves whatsoever we desire. Should a tentacle be

destroyed, we can put forth another.

"Our universe is beautiful beyond the dreams of your most inspired

poets. Whereas your landscapes, though lovely, are stationary,

unchangeable except through herculean efforts, ours are Protean,

eternally changing. With our own substance, we build our minarets of

light, piercing the aura of infinity. At the bidding of our wills we

create, preserve, destroy--only to build again more gloriously.

"We draw our sustenance from the primates, as do your plants, and we

constantly replace the electronic base of these primates with our own

emanations, in much the same manner as your nitrogenous plants

revitalize your soil.

"While we create and withdraw organs at will, we have nothing to

correspond to your five senses. We derive knowledge through one sense

only, or, shall I say, a super-sense? We see and hear and touch and

taste and smell and feel and know, not through any one organ, but

through our whole structure. The homogeneous force of our

omni-substance subjects the plural world to the processing of a

powerful unity.

* * * * *

"We can dissolve our bodies at will, retaining only the permanent atom

of our being, the seed of life dropped on the soil of our planet by

Infinite Intelligence. We can propel this indestructible seed on light

rays through the depths of space. We can visit the farthest universe

with the velocity of light, since light is our conveyance. In reaching

your little world, I have consumed a million years, for my world is a

million light-years distant: yet to my race a million years is as one

of your days.

"On arrival at any given destination, we can build our bodies from the

elements of the foreign planet. We attain our knowledge of conditions

on any given planet by absorbing the thought-content of the brains of

a few representative members of its dominant race. Every well-balanced

mind contains the experience of the race, the essence of the wisdom

that the race-soul has gained during its residence in matter. We make

this knowledge a part of our own thought-content, and thus the

Universe lies like an open book before us.

"At the end of a given experiment in thought absorption, we return the

borrowed mind-stuff to the brain of its possessor. We reward our

subject for his momentary discomfiture by pouring into his body our

splendid vitality. This lengthens his life expectancy immeasurably, by

literally burning from his system the germs of actual or incipient

ills that contaminate the blood-stream.

* * * * *

"This, I believe, will conclude my explanation, an explanation to which

you, as a race in whom intelligence is beginning to dawn, are entitled.

But you have a long road to travel yet. Your thought-channels are

pitifully blocked and criss-crossed with nonsensical and inhibitory

complexes that stand in the way of true progress. But you will work this

out, for the Divine Spark that pulses through us of the Larger Universe,

pulses also through you. That spark, once lighted, can never be

extinguished, can never be swallowed up again in the primeval slime.

"There is nothing more that I can learn from you--nothing that I can

teach you at this stage of your evolution. I have but one message to

give you, one thought to leave with you--forge on! You are on the

path, the stars are over you, their light is flashing into your souls

the slogan of the Federated Suns beyond the frontiers of your little

warring worlds. Forge on!"

The Voice died out like the chiming of a great bell receding into

immeasurable distance. The supercilious tones of the professor had

yielded to the sweetness and the light of the Greater Mind whose

instrument he had momentarily become. It was charged at the last with

a golden resonance that seemed to echo down vast spaceless corridors

beyond the furthermost outposts of time.

* * * * *

As the Voice faded out into a sacramental silence, the strangely

assorted throng, moved by a common impulse, lowered their heads as

though in prayer. The great globe pulsed and shimmered throughout its

sentient depths like a sea of liquid jewels. Then the tentacle that

grasped the professor drew him back toward the scintillating nucleus.

Simultaneously another arm reached out and grasped Bill Jones, who,

during the strange lecture, had ceased his wooden soldier marching and

had stood stiffly at attention.

The bodies of both men within the nucleus were encircled once more by

the single current. From it again put forth the tentacles, cupping

their heads, but the smokelike essence flowed back to them this time,

and with it flowed a tiny threadlike stream of violet light. Then came

the heaving motion when the shimmering currents caught the two men and

tossed them forth unharmed but visibly dowered with the radiance of

more abundant life. Their faces were positively glowing and their eyes

were illuminated by a light that was surely not of earth.

Then, before the very eyes of the marveling people, the great globe

began to dwindle. The jeweled lights intensified, concentrated,

merged, until at last remained only a single spot no larger than a

pin-head, but whose radiance was, notwithstanding, searing,

excruciating. Then the spot leaped up--up into the heavens, whirling,

dipping and circling as in a gesture of farewell, and finally soaring

into invisibility with the blinding speed of light.

* * * * *

The whole wildly improbable occurrence might have been dismissed as a

queer case of mass delusion, for such cases are not unknown to

history, had it not been followed by a convincing aftermath.

The culmination of a series of startling coincidences, both ridiculous

and tragic, at last brought men face to face with an incontestable

fact: namely, that Bill Jones had emerged from his fiery baptism

endowed with the thought-expressing facilities of Professor Ralston,

while the professor was forced to struggle along with the meager

educational appliances of Bill Jones!

In this ironic manner the Space-Wanderer had left unquestionable proof

of his visit by rendering a tribute to "innate intelligence" and

playing a Jovian Jest upon an educated fool--a neat transposition.

A Columbus from a vaster, kindlier universe had paused for a moment to

learn the story of our pigmy system. He had brought us a message from

the outermost citadels of life and had flashed out again on his aeonic

voyage from everlasting unto everlasting.

FOR VACATION ADVENTURERS

Truth is stranger than fiction. Ask the Regular Army man who has

soldiered in the far-off corners of the earth, gone "over the top" in

action, and has experienced the thrill of service in the tropics or

the sub-arctic.

Better yet, get an earful of real Astounding Stories yourself, at

first hand this summer, as one of the thirty thousand young men

between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four enjoying those thirty

glorious days and nights as a student-camper at one of Uncle Sam's

Citizens' Military Training Camps.

All of these Camps are pitched at Regular Army posts, and it is the

custom for grizzled old-timers who have followed the Flag for many

long years to drift down to "the boys" around campfire time each night

and regale the student campers with thrilling, real life yarns of

action and adventure in many strange and unusual circumstances.

It is not necessary for one to be a rich man's son in order to enjoy

the manifold benefits of their Camps. Uncle Sam pays all the necessary

bills including transportation, the best of food, bedding, laundry

service and medical treatment if needed. And there is no obligation

for future military service entailed by attendance at any of these

Nation-wide CMT camps. Their primary mission is the upbuilding of

American youth in health and good citizenship.

Detailed information, together with illustrated literature about the

Citizens' Military Training Camp, may be obtained by addressing the

CMTC Officer at the U.S. Army post nearest your home.

[Advertisement:]

The Atom-Smasher

_By Victor Rousseau_

[Illustration: _It was sublime and terrible, and on the result of that

conflict depended--what?_]

[Sidenote: Four destinies rocket through the strange Time-Space of the

Fourth Dimension in Tode's marvelous Atom-Smasher.]

CHAPTER I

_The "Vanishing Place"_

"Look at that plane! That fellow's crazy! Took off with the wind

behind him! He'll nose dive before he clears the clubhouse! He'll

crash into those trees along the edge of the golf course!"

The group on the field at Westbury, Long Island, held their breaths as

they watched James Dent take off in the wildest, most erratic flight

that they had ever seen. Under lowering storm clouds, with the wind

roaring half a hurricane behind him, Dent spiraled upward as if

unconscious of the laws of Earthly gravity.

"I told you so! You ought to have stopped him, even if it is his

private plane! A feller's got no business trying to break his neck!

Look there! He's cleared those trees after all!"

James Dent had cleared them, and the clubhouse too, and was already

disappearing across the Hempstead Plains, looking like a leaf whirling

up in a winter storm. At a height of five hundred feet he sped

eastward.

"Didn't tell you where he was going?"

"Nope, acted like a crazy man. Something on his mind sure. Wherever

he's bound for, he'll never get there!"

* * * * *

But James Dent was already out of sight, and the little group

dispersed. And Dent, winging his way due east, over the oak barrens of

central Long Island, was conscious neither of the storm that howled

about him nor of the excitement that his rash take-off had occasioned.

The rain lashed him in the open cockpit, the ground fog swirled about

him, and, though it was still afternoon, there brooded a somber

twilight over the wastes. But in his mind Dent was already

anticipating his descent at the "Vanishing Place," as the natives

called it near Peconic Bay.

The "Vanishing Place" was so called because of the terrible and

inexplicable catastrophe that had occurred there five years

previously. In the two-century-old farmhouse, Miles Parrish, the

world's greatest authority on physical chemistry, had been conducting

investigations into the structure of the atom.

James Dent and Lucius Tode had been associated with old Parrish in

this work, which, carried to a successful issue, would revolutionize

the social organization of the world. The energy locked up in the atom

is so stupendous that, as Eddington indicated, a thimbleful of coal,

disintegrated, would carry the _Mauretania_ from England to America

and back again. To unlock this energy would be to set man free from

bondage, to restore the pristine leisure and happiness of Eden.

* * * * *

And because the three men were playing with deadly forces, of

incalculable power, this deserted spot had been selected for the

carrying on of the investigations. The old farmhouse had been

converted into a laboratory. For days together the three had bent over

their tubes and laboratory apparatus, hardly eating or sleeping. And

the day had come when success had seemed almost within their grasp.

Dent had received six months' leave of absence from his duties at

Columbia University in order to prosecute the experiments. As the

weeks went by, and the blind track that the three were following

opened into a clear road, a sort of madness settled upon every one of

them.

The Planck-Bohr quantum theory that the energy of a body cannot vary

continuously, but only by a certain finite amount, or exact multiples

of this amount, had been the key that unlocked the door. But always it

had been Lucius Tode who led the way. Tode was a graduate of the

University of Virginia, and accounted one of the most brilliant minds

of his generation. At thirty, he stood head and shoulders above his

contemporaries.

Dark, handsome, fearless, with a will power that nothing seemed able

to subdue, he had taken the leadership away from old Miles Parrish,

who eagerly and without thought of his own reputation followed in his

assistant's footsteps.

There were the three men--and there was the girl, Lucille Parrish, the

child of Miles's old age. Seventeen, when the catastrophe occurred,

she had come out to the deserted spot sometimes of a Sunday from her

boarding school at Garden City.

And Tode had found time to make love to her when he rushed her back to

her school in his high-powered foreign car!

Jim Dent had known nothing of that until after the catastrophe.

Lucille had been afraid of him, afraid to open her mouth upon the

subject even to her father. And she had been fascinated too, as a

young girl may well be, when a fascinating man of thirty uses his arts

to win her.

* * * * *

It was only by chance that Jim had failed to be involved in the

hideous catastrophe that had stamped the old farmhouse with the name

of "Vanishing Place" whenever the natives spoke of it.

"Two Killed in Laboratory Explosion!" was the heading in the next

morning's paper which gave Jim his first intimation of the accident.

He had been to Columbia overnight to look up a new publication that

contained an article on the hydrogen spectrum.

It was only a long paragraph, and the names of Parrish and Tode meant

nothing to the man who had written it. But Jim had taken train to

Hempstead, taxied to the flying fields, and essayed his first plane

ride to Peconic Bay, in the charge of a pilot.

A group of natives, three newspaper men and a Suffolk County policeman

were near the spot where the farmhouse had been--near the spot, not on

it.

For where the farmhouse had been was a great pool of stagnant water,

black as ink, covering an expanse of perhaps three-quarters of an

acre.

"No, sir, there was no explosion," said the officer. "At least, none

of these fellows heard anything. Just a--you tell the Professor, Mr.

Lumm."

"It was about half-past eight last night, Mr. Dent," said Andrew Lumm,

who kept the village store a mile away. "Ground seemed to rock.

Earthquake, I says to myself, holdin' on to the door. But it wasn't no

earthquake. Too gentle for that. Nothin' broke, not even a plate. Then

I says to Mrs. Lumm, 'They're gone, poor fellers, and I allus knowed

it would be that way. It's lucky young Mr. Dent went out last night on

the 7.15.'

"We hurried here, but there wasn't no sign of the place, jest a hole

on the ground with a sort of sticky mud in it. Water's been fillin' in

since then, but I guess it's reached its level now. They jest blowed

themselves to bits, Mr. Dent."

"Tell him about the vi'let light, Andy," put in one of the

bystanders.

"Yeah, like a pillar of vi'let fire that were, Mr. Dent. We seed it

through the trees, but by the time we got here it was 'most gone.

Gosh, that throwed a scare into some of us!"

"It was Mr. Tode's soul a-burnin'," squeaked Granpop Dawes. "I allus

said that feller'd come to no good end."

The group shook their heads and remained silent. It was clear that, if

they did not share Granpop Dawes's opinion, at least they considered

it not without the bounds of plausibility. Lucius Tode had created a

bad impression among the natives.

* * * * *

Jim Dent stooped and picked up something lying imbedded in the mud at

the edge of the black pool, and slipped it into his pocket. He had

been present at the inquest and had gone back to Columbia. That had

been five years before.

Professor McDowd, the palaeontologist, had identified the object Jim

had found as the milk molar of _merychippus insignis_, the miocene

representative of the modern horse. And that had made Jim Dent think

furiously.

The catastrophe must have been a gigantic one to have flung up that

fossil tooth from strata far beneath the level of the earth's surface.

More, there were even traces of archaean deposits around the borders

of the pool, whose depth, in the center, was ascertained to be 164

feet.

Black, silent, uninhabited, unstirred save by a passing breeze, the

pool had remained those five years past. The spot was shunned as

haunted or accursed by the superstitious country folks. Dense

underbrush had grown up around it.

Periodically, Jim had gone out to visit it. That was how he had come

to invest in a private plane. It was only an hour to the

flying-fields, and less than an hour from there to Peconic Bay. What

he expected to achieve he did not know. In the back of his mind was

the belief that some day he would light upon some clue that would

tell something of the unusual catastrophe.

And then that afternoon he had been shaken to the depths when a

message came to him in Lucille's voice over the telephone:

"I've heard from dad!"

* * * * *

Winging his way eastward through the storm, Jim Dent was mentally

reconstructing all that had led up to the present moment.

Lucille had finished her high school course and gone into business

life. Jim had found a position for her as secretary to a small group

of physicists, who were conducting private investigations, a position

for which her training well fitted her. She had done well. He had kept

in touch with her.

Six months before, their relations had altered. They had realized that

they were in love with each other. In the months that followed they

had discovered all sorts of things about each other that neither had

suspected, which might be summed up by saying that they had become all

in all to each other.

It was so amazing, this transformation of ordinary friendship into

radiant love, that they were still bewildered over it. They were to be

married at the end of the year.

It was then that Lucille had first told Jim about Lucius's wooing, and

her fear of the man. Apart from that, both had refrained, by tacit

agreement, from making reference to the past.

And then, that afternoon, there sounded Lucille's voice over the

telephone, "I've heard from dad!"

"From--your father? You're mistaken, dear!"

"No, Jim, I'm not mistaken. He called me on the 'phone two hours ago.

I couldn't mistake his voice, and, besides, he called me "Lucy," like

he used to do. He told me to come at once to the Vanishing Place, but

not to tell a soul unless I wished to do him a great evil. Then he

rang off."

"Where are you now?" asked Jim.

"I'm 'phoning from Amityville. I took the train immediately, but I

was so frightened, and--and at last I decide I must tell you. I didn't

think dad would have minded my telling you. So I got out. There's

another train in a few minutes, and I shall go on to Hampton Bays and

walk the two miles to the Vanishing Place. I--I'll meet you there."

"Lucille, wait! Can't you meet me somewhere else, and we'll go on

together. I'll get my plane and--"

"Oh, I just can't wait, Jim! I'm in such terror that I won't find dad

when I get there. And he told me to tell nobody. I--I'll meet you at

the Vanishing Place, Jim."

And so great had been her agitation that with that arrangement Jim had

had to rest content. He had taken a taxi out to the flying fields at

once.

* * * * *

In half an hour he would know what had happened. And he was obsessed

by the terror that he would not find Lucille or anything except the

lonely pool.

That was why he opened the throttle and drove on wildly through the

scurrying wraiths of mist, pierced by the tops of trees that at times

rose dangerously near the spreading wings.

That gap in the trees was Lake Ronkokoma. Not far now! Jim would know

soon. But as he flew, vague fears that had beset his mind since he had

received Lucille's message began to crystallize into the single fear

of Tode. If Parrish was really alive--why not Tode too?

Beneath the polish and the surface comradeship, Jim had always been

conscious of some _diablerie_ about the man, of some inner life of

which he knew nothing. Something unscrupulous and relentless,

something infinitely cruel--as when he had tested the Atom Smasher on

a stray cur that had run into the laboratory, not for experimentation,

but in mere ruthless savagery, converting the living beast instantly

into a shapeless mass of flesh and bone.

And Tode had known more about the Atom Smasher--as they affectionately

called the mechanism for releasing atomic energy--than old Parrish and

he together. Suppose Lucille's story were true! Suppose old Parrish

were actually alive, suppose Tode were responsible for some designed

scheme which would, in the end place Lucille in his power!

Wild thoughts and fears--but Jim would soon know. And with throttle

stretched to the limit he went roaring over the scrub oak toward

Peconic Bay.

* * * * *

It was beginning to grow dark, almost too dark for landing. But now

Jim could feel the tang of the salt wind upon his face. He slowed

down. The fog was as thick as ever, but the scrub oak had given place

to more open country. In a minute or two he ought to sight some

landmark. Yes, he had overshot his mark, for suddenly, through a gap

in the mists, he saw the line of breakers forming a white ridge upon

the sand.

A mile southward! Jim knew where he was now, for he knew every curve

of that shore. He banked and turned. And then he saw something that

for an instant chilled his blood.

Not far away, and not far beneath him, a ghostly violet haze was

spreading through the fog, and the fog itself was coiling back from it

until it formed a dense white wall.

For a moment Jim's hand was paralysed upon the stick. The next, his

decision was made. He closed his throttle and went down in a slow

descent right toward the heart of that column of lavender smoke that

seemed to be springing straight up out of the ground. "A pillar of

violet fire!" It could not have been described better.

The plane dived through the dense wall of fog, which for a moment shut

out the violet fire completely. Then Jim was through, and almost

immediately beneath him lay the black and glassy surface of the pool.

Out of the very heart of it rose the fire, burning like some infernal

flame that consumed nothing, and between it and the fog was a space of

almost translucent air, extending to the borders of the pool.

Jim began to circle the pool to find a landing-place. But as he looked

down, the surface of the pool began to change its aspect.

* * * * *

In place of the unruffled calm, it began to work with some devil's

yeast all around the central pillar of flame, until its depths seemed

to be churned up in frothy masses and the movement extended almost to

the circumference. Then the whole surface of the water began to tilt

and sway with a slow, shimmering, undulatory movement, as if it was a

giant roulette wheel in rotation.

And something was materializing out of the heart of the violet flame

itself.

It was a face--a human face, with bestial features, distorted and

enormously magnified through the substance in which it was. Such a

face as might look back upon an observer out of one of those

distorting mirrors at Coney Island, or some other place of popular

amusement, but twisted and enlarged beyond conception, so that it

covered half the area of a city block.

Curiously blurred, too, as if each atom of that face was in isolated

motion on its own account. And beneath the face appeared the vague

outlines of a hand, apparently manipulating some sort of infernal

mechanism.

And that face, enlarged as it was out of all proportion, filled Jim's

heart with greater horror than any face he had ever known.

For it was the visage of Lucius Tode, and on those huge and distorted

features was something that looked like a diabolical smile.

* * * * *

Everything vanished. Jim was back in the surrounding wall of fog.

Instinctively he banked again. He strove to drive the horror from his

brain. He must circle, circle incessantly, in the hope of finding

Lucille. She must have already arrived. But if she had not fallen

into Tode's power, she would hear the roaring of the plane and manage

to signal him.

He circled back into the clear space between the white and the violet,

and now he saw that the effect upon the pool was still more

pronounced. The waters were rising up in a rim all around, and yet not

overflowing. They were standing up like a bowl of clay upon the

potter's wheel, and down in the depths Jim could see the head and

shoulders of Tode, much less magnified, more natural in appearance,

and less blurred. And Tode was looking up at him and pointing that

infernal mechanism at him--something that looked like the tube of a

telescope.

Suddenly the plane shivered and stood still. The motor died abruptly.

The stick went dead. And yet the plane did not fall. As if upheld by

the same repulsive force that drove back the white fog, it simply hung

suspended three hundred feet above the heart of the violet flame.

Then--there was no longer any plane. The stick had melted in Jim's

hand, the wings dissolved like wreaths of mist. The entire body had

disintegrated into nothingness. Jim sat suspended in the void, and

felt himself very slowly descending into the violet column.

Down into the vortex of that bubbling pool, which rimmed him on all

sides ... down into the central aperture out of which emerged the

leering face of Tode! And as he dropped Jim heard, thin, faint, and

very far away, the despairing cry of Lucille....

CHAPTER II

_Old Friends--and Foes_

Jim must have lapsed into unconsciousness, for when he opened his eyes

there was a gap in his consciousness of the passage of time, though

none in his memory. He opened his eyes, and instantly he remembered

everything.

Only a brief interval could have elapsed, for it was not quite dark.

The fog and the violet flame had cleared away. Overhead a few stars

twinkled. Jim was lying on his side, half-buried in the black, slimy

mud of the dried up pool.

There was nothing but the smooth, shelving mud basin, with the scrub

oak surrounding it. Tode and the machine had vanished.

Jim pulled himself with an effort out of the sucking mud, and, heavily

clogged with it, began to make his way toward the margin.

Stumbling, struggling through the viscid ooze, he shouted Lucille's

name despairingly. But no answer came, and his cries only made the

utter silence all about him seem more fearsome.

Exhausted by his efforts, he gained the edge of the pool at last, and

stopped, trying to orientate himself. As he did so, he saw a human

face peering at him out of a clump of scrub oak.

It was the face of an aged man, with a long white beard and rags of

clothes that were festooned about him. Jim took a step toward it,

shouting a challenge. Next moment it had hurled itself out of its

shelter toward him, and two skeletonlike arms were twined about his

shoulders, while the fingers worked upward toward his throat.

The face was that of a madman, crazed by fear. And Jim recognized it.

It was the face of Professor Parrish.

Parrish, the trim, immaculate, clean-shaven, urbane old man, whose

lectures, imbued with wit and scholarship, had always been the delight

of his classes--Parrish reduced to this gibbering maniac! And yet

Parrish himself, returned to the site of their experiments after five

years!

* * * * *

So fierce was the old man's onset, so desperate his clutch, that for a

half-minute or more Jim was reduced to fighting for his life. The

clawing fingers, armed with long nails, furrowed Jim's throat, there

was a terrific strength in the body, wasted though it was almost to a

skeleton.

But it was only for a half-minute that old Parrish's endurance lasted.

Suddenly the old man went limp and tottered forward, dropped upon the

ground. Jim bent over him.

"Parrish, you know me! I'm Jim Dent!" he cried. "I came here to save

you."

Parrish was muttering something. Jim caught the words "Tode," and "God

help Lucille!"

"Parrish, I'm Jim Dent!" Jim cried again, and the old man, shuddering,

opened his eyes and recognized him.

"Jim!" he muttered. "Jim Dent! Then where is she? I got away from that

devil, found farmhouse empty, got telephone book, found her and

'phoned her. Told her to come. Save--Lucille!"

He fell back, his eyes closed. Jim crouched over the unconscious old

man. He was in a state of utter perplexity. He could not quite gather

what Parrish had been trying to tell him, and it was with difficulty

that he could focus his mind upon the situation, so great had been the

shock of finding his former chief in that condition.

What had become of his plane, and where was Lucille? Jim was positive

that he had heard her cry for help out of the vortex in the water.

But there was no water, only the circle of black mud extended in the

starlight.

Again and again Jim shouted Lucille's name, and his cries went echoing

away through the scrub without result.

Jim looked down at the unconscious old man beside him. He must get

Parrish away, get him to Andy Lumm's. He bent over him again and

raised him in his arms.

* * * * *

Suddenly he heard two familiar sounds behind him, two dull thumps that

sounded less like explosions than echoes, long drawn out, and receding

into infinity. There was no other sound quite like them that he had

ever heard.

They were the snap of the electrical discharge as the Atom Smasher

began to operate, and why the snap had sounded like a heavy body

falling a long distance away, was not known.

Tode had said one day, with what Jim had taken for sarcasm, that they

represented the wave series of a single sound extended in time to make

four-dimensional action, but Jim had never considered the explanation

seriously.

That sound, bringing back all Jim's memories of their experiments,

brought him to his feet sharply. He swung around. The surface of the

pool was a bubbling, seething mass of mud and water. And over its

surface that faint violet haze was beginning to spread.

In the center where the light was thickest, something like a gyroscope

appeared to be revolving. Out of the gyroscope something was beginning

to project--that infernal tube of Lucius Tode. And Jim knew that in

the heart of the flame that enormous, distorted face of Lucius Tode

would again be visible.

The human nervous system can only endure a certain amount of impact.

The sight of that ghastly flame, already condensing into a violet

pillar, was more than Jim could stand. He dragged old Parrish to his

feet and started off with him into the thickest part of the

undergrowth.

A fearful scream behind him stopped him at the very edge of the scrub.

He looked back, still supporting the half-conscious old man in his

arms. The violet flame was shooting up in a straight pillar, the whole

central portion of the pool was dry, and the waters were heaped up all

around it.

From the slightly elevated spot where Jim stood, he could see Tode

holding Lucille in his arms in the very heart of the fire, which threw

a pale, fluorescent light over their faces. Tode was wearing a spotted

skin, like that of a leopard, and Lucille was in the blue frock that

she had worn when Jim and she had dinner together two evenings

before.

Jim dropped old Parrish, shouted in answer, and dashed back like a

madman down the slope into the solid wall of water.

* * * * *

He fought his way desperately through that wall, which seemed of the

consistency of soft rubber or treacle, as if some subtle change had

taken place in its molecular isomers. It adhered to him without

wetting him, and he plunged through it, hearing Lucille cry out again,

and yet again.

And now he was through, and once more struggling over the viscid

surface of the pond. Behind him he heard old Parrish blundering, and

screeching at the top of his voice, but he paid no attention to him.

He could see Lucille more clearly, and the large, hazy outlines of

Tode's features were beginning to assume the proper proportions. There

was a diabolical leer upon Tode's face, unchanged during the five

years since Jim had seen him last, except that it had become more

evil, more powerful. The enormous and distorted face that Jim had seen

had been simply due to the presence of some refracting medium.

The pillar of violet light was thinning, spreading out over the pool,

but Jim could now see the scene more clearly than before, even as he

rushed onward.

The machine was inside what looked like a flat boat, but more circular

than a boat, and apparently was made of some metal resembling

aluminum. Either from the metal hull or from the mechanism inside it

there was emitted a pungent odor resembling chlorine.

The mechanism itself bore some resemblance to the old Atom Smasher of

five years before, but it appeared to be immensely more complicated.

Wheels of various sizes were set at every conceivable angle around the

central tube, from which the violet light was emanating, and all were

rotating and gyrating so fast that they looked like discs of light.

The boat itself was trembling, and this movement appeared to be

communicated to the boiling mud in the central part of the pool.

* * * * *

As Jim tried to leap down through the sucking mud to snatch Lucille

from Tode, the latter stopped, straightened himself, and pointed a

short tube at Jim's heart.

Jim felt as if an enormous, invisible force had struck him in the

chest. It was apparently the same repulsive force that had driven back

the waters. The shock was not a violent one. It did not throw him off

his feet. It merely pushed him slowly and irresistibly backward.

And the whole picture was beginning to fade. Etched sharply in the

violet light one moment, it now looked like a drawing that had been

covered with tissue paper.

The outlines were dissolving into a haze--or, rather, each line seemed

reproduced an infinite number of times, as the edge of a vibrating saw

shows an infinitude of edges. The violet fire was becoming still more

diffused. It hovered over the waters, a pale, flickering glow. And

simultaneously the walls of water began to break and come surging

forward.

Jim saw Lucille stretching out her arms toward him, and tried to

struggle forward, but in vain. She cried out his name, and he put all

his strength into that desperate futile struggle to reach her. But he

was being borne backward by the invisible power in the tube. The

rushing torrent was surging about his knees; grew waist deep: in

another moment Jim was swimming for his life against the furious

flood.

Suddenly, however, the tremendous pressure on his chest was relaxed.

Tode had turned the tube away from him. He was leaning forward out of

the boat and grasped old Parrish, who had been flung violently against

it by the dissolving waters.

The same flood carried Jim to the boat's side. Here, however, the

flood was only knee deep, owing to the repulsion still being exercised

by the violet light, which was glimmering feebly. Jim found his feet

and leaped into the craft. He grasped Lucille in his arms.

* * * * *

He turned to confront Tode, who had just dragged old Parrish over the

side. The three men confronted one another.

"Turn that tube on me, and I'll jump into your damn machinery and bust

it!" Jim shouted.

An ironical expression came on Tode's face. It was clear that he still

considered himself master of the situation. "At the immediate moment,

Dent, the lives of all of us depend upon your keeping absolutely

still," he answered. "Take my advice and sit down!"

Jim saw Lucille's face, ghastly in the faint violet light that played

about it. The girl had fainted. She was lying unconscious, her feet

against the circular metal plate that protected the machinery, her

head upon the rail that ran around the boat's upper edge. Tode,

without waiting for Jim's answer, stepped over the plate and took his

seat at a sort of instrument board with control levers and thumb

screws that apparently controlled the needles on four dials. He

touched a button, and instantly the violet light disappeared.

With its vanishing, the waves came surging forward, and lapped

violently against the hull, as if about to overwhelm the vessel,

which, however, seemed immovable. It simply rose higher in the water.

Jim understood the cause of this. Those gyroscopes would retain the

hull in the same position against anything but a mechanical force

strong enough to ruin it. He watched Tode as he sat at the instrument

board, which was illuminated by two tiny lights of what looked like

mercury-vapor. His face, handsome and cruel as ever, was tense as he

manipulated the thumb screws. Beside him lay Parrish, faintly

whimpering. The old man had evidently abandoned all hope of effecting

his escape, or of rescuing his daughter.

It was unbearable to have to sit there, knowing that the three of

them were absolutely at Tode's mercy, and yet there was nothing else

to do.

* * * * *

Tode looked up with a saturnine smile. "It's a delicate operation to

blur the present without shooting out a hundred years or so in time,"

he said, "but my micrometer's pretty accurate, Dent. Don't move, I

caution you!" He smiled again. "Yes, Dent, time is something like the

fourth dimension of space, as we believed in the old days, and I've

proved it."

Jim saw Tode touch the screw that controlled the fourth dial, and

instantly it was borne in on him that each of the dials controlled one

spatial dimension. This fourth, then, was the time dimension!

Could it be true that Tode had solved the practical problem of

traveling in time, theoretically implied since the discoveries of

Einstein?

He had known in the old days that the Atom Smasher might be adapted to

this purpose, but neither Parrish nor he had dreamed of turning aside

from their endeavor to utilize it for the purpose of releasing atomic

energy.

Thump! Thump! The familiar old sound, rushing back into memory after

all those years, the release of the electrical discharge, echoing

through infinity! The scrub around the pool blurred and was gone. A

vast gray panorama extended itself on either side of them.

They were travelling--in space--and time too. Jim no longer doubted.

And, chilled with horror, he sat there, his arm about Lucille's

unconscious form.

CHAPTER III

_Into the Infinite_

How long he sat there he did not know. Minutes or hours seemed all the

same to him. Nothing but that gray monochrome, of neither light nor

darkness, that endless panorama of miles and years, blended together

into this chaos!

But suddenly there came a shout from Tode. The blur ceased, the lights

flickered. Again there sounded the two thumps of the electrical

discharge. The vibrating mechanism grew steady. Above them, out of the

grayness, a moon disclosed itself, then the pin-points of stars. All

about them was an immense, sandy waste.

"Know where we are, Dent?" came Tode's chuckle.

Jim was not sufficiently master of himself to attempt to answer.

"We are on what will be the Russian steppes some fifty thousand years

ahead of us in time," grinned Tode. "This is an interlude between two

ice ages. Observe how pleasantly warm the climate is, for Russia.

Unfortunately the receding glaciers carried off the top-soil, which

accounts for the barrenness of the district, but in another century

this country will be overgrown with ferns, and inhabited by the

mastodon and wild horse, and a few enterprising palaeolithic hunters,

who will come in to track them down and destroy them with their stone

axes."

* * * * *

"I think you're the same sort of damn liar you always were, Tode,"

answered Jim--but without conviction. There was something terrific

about that desolation. Nothing within a thousand miles of Long Island

corresponded to it.

"You'll be convinced pretty quickly, when you see my specimen,"

answered Tode. "I let him off here on the way to the pool. He's not

exactly presentable, and when I got the idea of picking up Lucille and

taking her back with me, I thought it best not to let her see him. He

didn't want to be let off. Was afraid I wouldn't pick him up again,

and I'll admit it was a matter of pretty careful reckoning. But this

is the place, almost to the yard.

"Yes, I've done some close reckoning, Dent, but the cleverest part of

the business was letting old Parrish think he'd got away from me. I

knew he'd telephone Lucille. You know, I always had the brains of the

outfit, Dent," he continued, with a smirk of self-satisfaction.

He looked out of the boat. "And here, if I'm not mistaken, comes my

specimen," he added.

* * * * *

Something was running across the steppes toward them. It came nearer,

took human form. It was human! A man--but such a man as Jim had never

seen before outside the covers of a book. And he recognised the race

immediately.

It was a Neanderthal man, one of the race that co-existed with the

highly developed Cro-Magnons some thirty thousand years ago. Man and

not ape, though the face was bestial, and there were huge ridges above

the eyebrows.

And if Jim had needed conviction, the sight of this gibbering

creature, now climbing into the boat and fawning upon Tode, convinced

him. For the Neanderthal man vanished from the scene long before the

beginning of recorded history.

For a few moments a deathly faintness overcame him ... his eyes

closed, he felt unconsciousness rushing in upon him like a black

cloud.

"It's all right, Dent--don't look so scared!" came Tode's mocking

voice.

Jim opened his eyes, shook off that cloud of darkness with an immense

effort. The boat was throbbing violently as the wheels gyrated, the

violet light had become a pillar as thick as a man, and shot straight

up to a height of fifty feet, before it rolled away. Lucille was lying

where she had been, her eyes still staring up unseeing at the stars.

Old Parrish was whining and whimpering as he crouched in his place.

And at Tode's feet crouched the Neanderthal man, repulsive, bestial,

even though hardly formidable, and filling the last vacant spot inside

the boat. He was gibbering and mouthing as he fawned upon Tode and

pressed his hand to his hairy face. He continued to crouch and looked

up at his master with doglike eyes.

* * * * *

Repulsive, and yet man, not ape. Distinctly human, perhaps a little

lower than the Australian aborigine, the Neanderthal showed by his

reverence that the human faculty of worship existed in him.

"Meet Cain, one of my Drilgoes," said Tode, with a grin. "A faithful

servant. I left him here to wait for me on the return journey. Cain's

just my pet name for him because he subsists on the fruits of the

earth, don't you, Cain?"

The Drilgo grunted, and pressed Tode's hand to his repulsive lips,

which were fringed with a reddish beard. Suddenly Tode began to laugh

uproariously. "Feel anything wrong with your head, Dent?" he asked.

Dent put up his hand and pulled away a quantity of charred hair. His

forehead began to itch, and, rubbing his finger across it, he realized

that his eyebrows were gone. Tode laughed still louder.

"You've kept your teeth by about two seconds' grace, Dent, but I

shouldn't be surprised if you needed dental attention shortly," he

said. "What a pity dentists won't be invented for another forty or

fifty thousand years."

"You're a devil!" cried Jim.

"You see, the human body is very resistant to the Ray," Tode went on.

"It almost seems as if there is an organizing principle within it.

Even the animal tissues are resistant, though not to the same extent

as the human ones. It takes about twenty seconds for the organized

human form to be disintegrated. But hair and beaks and claws, being

superficial matter, vanish almost as soon as the Ray is turned on

them. Ten seconds more, and you'd have been obliterated, Dent, just as

your plane was.

"Yes, rub your head. Your hair will probably grow again--if I decide

to let you live. It rather depends upon what impression you make upon

Lucille as a bald-headed hero. After all, I didn't invite you to

accompany us. It's your own lookout."

* * * * *

Jim could find nothing to say to that. He was discovering more and

more that they were all helpless in Tode's hands.

"Sit back!" snarled Tode suddenly. He gave the Drilgo a push that sent

him sprawling into the bottom of the boat. "Dent, your life depends

upon your absolute acquiescence to my proposals. I didn't like you

particularly in the old days, any more than you liked me. I thought

you were a fool. On the other hand, I've no active reason to hate you,

at present. It may be that I can use you.

"Meanwhile we've got a longish journey before us, ten thousand years

more, multiplied by the fourth power of two thousand miles. Seems

simple? Well, I had to invent the mathematical process for it. Reckon

in the gravitational attraction of the planets, and you'll begin to

get an idea of the complexity of it. So, in vulgar parlance, we're not

likely to arrive till morning."

He glanced at Lucille, who was still lying unconscious with Jim's arm

about her. Then his eyes rose to meet Jim's, and a sneering smile

played about his lips. That smile was the acknowledgment of their

rivalry for the girl's affections. And it was more--it was a

challenge.

Tode welcomed that rivalry because, Jim could see, he meant to keep

him alive under conditions of servitude, to demonstrate to Lucille his

superiority.

Tode turned his thumbscrews, and the two thuds resounded. The violet

column sank down, the boat vibrated, the level stretch of land became

a blur again. The moon and stars vanished. Once more the four were off

on that terrific journey.

* * * * *

At first they seemed to be traversing space that was shot through by

alternate light and darkness, so that at times Jim could see the other

occupants of the boat clearly, while at other times there was only

Tode visible at the instrument board, with the dark outlines of the

Drilgo, Cain, sprawled at his feet. But soon these streaks seemed to

come closer and closer together, until the duration of each was only a

fraction of a second. And closer, until light and darkness blended

into a universal gray. These, Jim knew, were the alternations of night

and day.

They were traveling--incredible as it was--in time as well as space,

though whether backward or forward Jim could not know. From the

presence of the Neanderthal man, however, Jim was convinced that Tode

was taking them back more thousands of years, into the beginnings of

humanity.

A fearful journey! A madder journey than Jim could have conceived of,

had he not been a participant in it. He was losing all sense of

reality. He was hardly convinced that he would not awaken in New York,

to discover that the whole episode had been a dream.

Was this Lucille, the girl he loved ... with whom he had dined in New

York only a day or two before ... this unconscious form, stretched out

on the deck of the weird ship that was rushing through eternity? Or,

rather, it was they who were rushing through space and time upon a

stationary ship! What was reality, and what was dream, then?

Tode called "Come over here, Dent! I want to talk to you!"

* * * * *

Jim picked his way over the metal floor of the round boat, came up to

Tode, and sat down beside him above the sprawling form of the Drilgo,

Cain.

"You were a fool to come here, Dent." Tode turned with a malicious

smile from his seat at the instrument board. "You didn't have to come.

I take it that you are in love with Lucille, you poor imbecile, and

still cherish dreams of winning her. We'll take up that matter in due

course.

"Do you think I've been idle during these five years of my exile? I've

been too busy even to come back for the woman I was in love with. And

do you know what I've been doing during all this hellish period?

Charting courses, Dent! Mapping out all the planetary movements back

for uncounted ages--roughly, crudely, of course, but the best I was

able to. These are difficult seas to navigate, though they may not

seem so. You fool," he added savagely, "why didn't you come in with me

in the old days? I told you that the Atom Smasher could be used to

travel through time, and you mocked at me as a dreamer.

"I chose my hour. When everything was ready, I set forth on the most

desperate journey ever attempted by man. Talk of Columbus!--he had

nothing on me. I tell you, Dent, I've been back to the Archaean Age,

back to the time when nothing but crawling worms moved on the face of

the earth. And I've been forward to the time when an errant planet

will disrupt the earth into a shower of lava--and I nearly wrecked the

boat. Dent.

"I've won, Dent! I've won! I've solved the problem that gives man

immortality! All the epochs that have existed since God first formed

the world are mine to play with! I have seen myself as a puling

infant, and as a greybeard. I have made myself immortal, because, with

this machine, I can set back the clock of time. I have found a land

where I am worshipped as a god."

* * * * *

Tode's eyes glittered with maniacal fires. He went on in a voice of

indescribable triumph:

"I'm a god there, Dent. Do you want to know where that land is? It is

Atlantis, sunk beneath the waves nine thousand years before recorded

history opened. It is Atlantis, from which the Cro-Magnons fled in

their ships, to land on the coasts of Spain and France, and become the

ancestors of modern man.

"In old Atlantis, still not wholly submerged, I have made myself a

god. I have mastered the savage Drilgoes whom the Atlanteans

oppressed. All the spoils of their ruined cities are at my disposal.

And I came back to get Lucille, whom I had never ceased to love.

Together Lucille and I will rule like god and goddess.

"Join me, Dent. I'm a god in Atlantis--a god, I tell you. The lesser

races fear me as a supernatural being. Only the city remains

uncaptured, but it is mine whenever I choose to take it. A god--a

god--a god!"

Jim saw now what he had not realized before, that Tode was insane. It

would, indeed, have been a miracle if he had been able to retain his

sanity under such circumstances as he had described. His voice rose

into a wild scream. Yes, Tode was mad--just such a madman as any of

the old Roman emperors, drunk with power, each in his turn the sole

ruler of the world.

"The Earth is mine!" Tode screamed. "Before the modern world was

dreamed of, before the nations were created, Atlantis was the sole

power that held dominion over the scattered tribes of mankind. And she

is in my hand whenever I strike.

"Wealth incalculable, treasures such as man has never since seen,

marvels of scientific discovery, flying machines that would make ours

look foolish, paintings grander than have since been executed--all

these things exist in the proud city that will shortly be at my

command. And I have my Drilgoes, the inferior race, to serve me. They

worship me because they know I am a god. Join me, Dent, and taste the

joys of being one of the supreme rulers of the world."

* * * * *

In spite of his undoubted madness, there was such power in Tode's

voice that Jim could not help believe what he had said.

"Well," snarled Tode. "You hesitate to give me your answer, Dent?"

"Lucille and I are engaged to be married," answered Jim, and the words

were drawn from his lips almost against his will. "We love each other.

I am not going to lie to you and then betray you, Tode."

The expression on Tode's face was demoniacal. He snatched up the

deadly tube that contained the violet fire and turned it upon Jim.

Again Jim felt that repulsive force pushing him back. He gasped for

breath, and tensed his whole body in supreme resistance, while he

tried to grapple with Tode in vain.

But suddenly Tode dropped the tube, and a roar of laughter broke from

his lips.

"You fool!" he shouted. "I tell you I am a god, the one god, supreme

above all. Do you think to match your puny will against my own? I tell

you Lucille is mine. And for ever, Dent. Whenever we two have reached

old age, all that will be necessary for us to do will be to turn this

screw a hair's breadth back into the past, and we are both young

again. By holding this vessel steady in four-dimensional space, I can

achieve immortality."

"Yes, Tode," answered Jim, "but, you see, that's the one thing that

you haven't been able to work out yet."

The words seemed to come automatically from Jim's lips. It was only

after he had spoken them that he realized they were true. For a moment

Tode glared at him; then suddenly, with a shriek of insane rage, he

leaped from the instrument board and swung the ray tube with all his

might.

Jim felt the blow descend with stunning force upon his head. He

reeled, flung out his arms, and toppled forward, unconscious....

CHAPTER IV

_Escape_

An intolerably bright light that seemed to sear his eyeballs was the

first thing of which Jim was conscious. Then he became aware of his

aching head, of a sense of utter lassitude, as if he had been bruised

all over in some machine that had caught him up and held him in its

grip for endless aeons.

At last, despite the pain in his eyes, he managed to get his eyelids

open. He tried to struggle to his feet, only to discover that he was

firmly bound with what appeared to be tough creepers, pliant as ropes.

After the lapse of a few minutes, during which he struggled with the

receding waves of unconsciousness, he came to a realization of his

surroundings. That light that had so distressed him--though the

effects were now beginning to pass off--was a pillar of smoke and

flame, shooting out of the crater of a volcano about a mile away,

across a valley.

He was lying in the entrance to a cave, pegged out on his back, and

bound by the tough creepers to the stakes driven into the ground. Up

to the mouth of the cave grew huge tree-ferns, cattails, cycads, and

such growths as existed in earlier ages in the warm, moist regions of

the world.

Beneath the level of the cave a heavy white fog completely shrouded

the valley, extending up to within a short distance of the volcano

opposite. But on the upper slopes of the volcano the sunlight played,

making its crater a sheen of glassy lava, intolerably bright.

Beyond the volcano Jim could see what looked like an expanse of ocean.

* * * * *

He groaned, and at the sound a creature came shambling forward,

carrying what looked like a huge melon in either hand. Jim recognized

the Drilgo, Cain.

Chattering and mumbling, Cain placed one of the fruits to Jim's mouth.

It was a sort of bread-fruit, but he was too nauseated to eat, and

rejected it with disgust. Cain offered him the second fruit.

It was a hollow gourd, the interior filled with a clear fluid. Jim

drank greedily as the Drilgo put it to his lips. The contents were

like water, but slightly acid. Jim felt refreshed. He looked about

him.

The Drilgo uttered a chattering call, and immediately a host of the

savages swarmed into the cave. Men--undoubtedly men, in spite of the

brow ridges and the receding foreheads, carrying long spears,

consisting of chipped and pointed heads of stone, with holes bored in

them, through which long bands of creepers passed, fastening them

firmly to the shaft.

Chattering and gesticulating, the Drilgoes surrounded Jim as he lay

helpless on the ground. Their savage faces, their rolling eyes, the

threatening gestures that they made with their spears, convinced Jim

that his end was a foregone conclusion.

But suddenly a distant rumbling sound was heard, increasing rapidly in

volume. The floor of the cave vibrated; masses of rock dropped from

the walls. The light of the volcano across the valley was suddenly

obscured in an immense cloud of black smoke. The twilight within the

cave was succeeded by almost impenetrable darkness.

Shrieking in terror, the Drilgoes bolted, while Jim lay straining at

his ropes, expecting each moment to be crushed by the masses of rock

that were falling all about him.

Suddenly a soft whisper came to Jim through the darkness: "Jim! Are

you safe! Where are you? I can't see you! Speak to me!"

It was Lucille's voice, and Jim called back, husky and tremulous in

the sheer joy that had succeeded his anticipation of instant death.

* * * * *

Then he felt the girl kneeling at his side, and heard her hacking at

his bonds. A whole minute passed before the stone knife was able to

sever the last of the stout withes, however.

Then Jim was swaying on his feet, and Lucille's arms were about him,

and for a few moments their fears were forgotten in the renewal of

their love.

"I heard what that devil said to you last night," the girl said. "He

means to kill you with awful tortures. He is away now, on some task or

other, but he'll be back at any moment. We must get away at once--we

three. Dad's in another cave not far away, and his guards bolted after

the earthquake."

The earth was still rumbling, and the cavern still vibrating, but it

was clear that there was no time to lose. As soon as the quake

subsided the Drilgoes would return. Guided by Lucille, Jim groped his

way through the cavern. The girl called softly at intervals, and

presently Jim heard old Parrish's answering call. Then the old man's

form appeared in silhouette against the dark.

"I've got Jim," Lucille whispered. "Are you ready, dad?"

"Yes, yes, I'm ready," chattered the old man. "Now's our chance. I

know a place where we can hide in the thick forests, where the Ray of

the Atlanteans cannot penetrate the mists. Let's go! Let's go!"

Gripping hands, the three started back toward the point where a faint

patch of darkness showed out the entrance to the cavern. They were

nearing it when another and more violent shock flung them upon their

faces.

Huge masses of rock came hurtling down from the roof and sides of the

cavern, and again the three seemed to escape by a miracle.

* * * * *

Suddenly a huge shaft of fire shot from the crater opposite, evolving

into an inverted cone that made the whole land dazzlingly bright. It

pierced the mists in the valley underneath, and by that light Jim

could see a great wave of lava streaming down the mountain sides, like

soup spilled out of a bowl.

A gush of black smoke followed, and the light went out.

"Now!" gasped Parrish, and, clinging to one another, the three darted

out of the cavern's entrance. Another terrific shock sent them

stumbling and reeling and sprawling down the side of the mountain. Jim

heard old Parrish wailing, and, as the shock subsided, groped his way

to his side.

"You hurt?" he shouted.

"Lucille, Lucille," moaned the old man. "She's dead! A big rock

crushed her. I wish I was dead too."

Jim called Lucille's name frantically, and to his immense relief

heard her crying faintly out of the darkness. He rushed to her side

and held her in his arms.

"Where are you hit, darling?"

"I'm--all right," she panted. "I was stunned for a moment. I--can--go

on now."

But she went limp in Jim's arms, and Jim picked her up and stood

irresolute, until he heard Parrish shambling toward him over the

heaving ground.

"She's not hurt, I think, only fainted," said Jim. "Which way,

Parrish? You lead us."

"Down the slope," panted Parrish. "We'll be in the ferns in a minute.

We can hide there for a while, till she's able to walk. God help us

all! And I was once Professor of Physical Chemistry at Columbia!"

The outcry might have seemed comical under other circumstances; as it

was, Jim heartily re-echoed old Parrish's sentiments in his heart.

The last shock was subsiding in faint earth tremors. The two men

plunged down into the heavy fog, which quickly covered them, Jim

carrying Lucille in his arms. He felt the ferny undergrowth all about

him, the thick boles of tree-ferns emerged out of the mist.

"We can stop here for a while," panted Parrish. "Crouch down! They'll

never find us in this fog, and in a few minutes, when Lucille's

better, we can go on."

* * * * *

"You must tell me where we are and what our chances are," said Jim,

after again ascertaining that Lucille was unharmed.

"I'll tell you, Dent, as quick as I can. It's the place where I've

spent five years of hell as the slave of that devil, Tode. I never

dreamed, when we were working on the old Atom Smasher, that he had

adapted it to travel in the fourth dimension. He's taken us back

twelve thousand years or so to the island of Atlantis. History hasn't

begun yet. Atlantis is the only civilization in the world. The rest

are Drilgoes, Neanderthal men, wandering in the forests, and still in

their stone age.

"It's true, Dent, what old Plato learned from the Egyptian priests.

Atlantis has been slowly sinking for thousands of years, and all

that's left now is the one great island that we're on. Nearly all the

Atlanteans, the Cro-Magnon men, have perished, except for a few who

have crossed in ships to the coasts of France and Spain. They'll be

the founders of modern Europe--Basques and Iberians, and Bretons and

Welshmen. Our ancestors! It makes my brain reel to think of it!"

"Go on! Go on!" said Jim.

"There's a great city on the island, known as Atlantis too. As big as

London or New York. With flying-machines and temples and art galleries

and big ships that they're building to carry them away when the next

subsidence comes. They know they're doomed, for every few days there's

an eruption now.

"Tode means to make himself master of Atlantis, and transport it into

another epoch by means of the Atom Smasher. But he's never managed to

enter. He's made himself a god in the eyes of the Drilgoes, the

savages who inhabit these forests. He's planning to lead them against

the city, and he's got an army of thousands from all parts of the

interior, who worship him as divine.

* * * * *

"The Atlanteans are unwarlike. They've forgotten how to fight in their

thousands of years of peace. But they've got a Ray ten times as strong

as Tode's, that brings instant death to everything it touches. It

shrivels it up. It's a different principle. I don't understand it, but

it's this Ray that keeps the Drilgoes from capturing the city.

"Tode's got a laboratory inside the cave, fitted up with apparatus

that he brought from Chicago, the world capital of the year 3000 A.

D., after disintegrating the atoms and recombining them. But he hasn't

succeeded altogether. He hasn't learned everything. The future isn't

quite clear, like the past. There's a dark cloud moves across the

spectral lines and blurs them. I think it's the element of free

will--or God!"

"I know," Jim answered. "He can't hold that boat steady in

four-dimensional space, as he pretends he can. If he could, it would

mean that man was wholly master of his destiny. He can't and he never

will.

"There's an unknown quantity comes in, Parrish. It is God, and that's

what's going to beat him in the end."

"I've not been as idle as Tode thinks," said Parrish, with a senile

leer. "I know more about the Atom Smasher than he dreams of. He thinks

me just an old fool, the remnants of whose brains are useful to him in

his laboratory. That's why he's kept me alive so far. He'll find out

his mistake," he chuckled. "I have something Tode doesn't dream of."

Suddenly Parrish's air of intense seriousness vanished. He chuckled

and fumbled in his rags. Jim felt a small object like a lever pressed

into his hand and then withdrawn.

"It's death, Dent," chuckled old Parrish. "The concentrated essence of

the destructive principle. It's a lever I fitted into a concealed

groove in the Atom Smasher unknown to Tode. This lever has a universal

joint and connects with a hidden chamber, and when pulled will

catapult the annihilated components of a small quantity of uranium in

any direction we desire. The release of the slumbering energy of this

uranium will produce an explosion of proportions beyond the wildest

dreams of engineers--perhaps, one great enough to throw the Earth out

of its orbit!"

"Uranium!... Breaking up its components!" gasped Jim. "You mean you

can actually do that?"

"Yes!" chuckled Parrish. "I'm keeping it for the day when Tode becomes

a god. When he's steadied the boat in time-space and halted the march

of the past, and when he's got Lucille--then, Dent, I shall so pull

the lever that it will release the energy straight at Tode--and

destroy the Atom-Smasher, ourselves, and even, perhaps, the whole

Earth!"

And he burst into a peal of such wild laughter that Jim realized the

old man's wits were gone.

* * * * *

Was it true, that amazing story? It was difficult to know, and yet

anything seemed possible in this amazing world into which Jim had

suddenly been thrown.

The vast pall of smoke cast out by the volcano was beginning to

subside. Slowly a spectral light began to filter through the valley.

Through the fog Jim could see glimpses of the ferny undergrowth, the

giant tree-ferns and cycads that towered aloft. It was like a picture

of the earth when the mastodons, the grass-eaters and the meat-eaters

disputed for its supremacy.

Jim bent over Lucille. He saw her stir, he heard her murmur his name.

Suddenly she sat up, fixed her eyes on his, and shuddered.

"I'm all right, Jim. Let's go," she said. "I can walk now."

She staggered to her feet. Jim put out his hand to support her, but

she shook her head. Jim touched old Parrish on the arm. He started and

uttered a wild screech; then seemed to come to himself and rose.

But that screech of his was re-echoed from the mountainside above.

Other voices took up the echoes. Lucille clutched at Jim in a frenzy

of fear.

"The Drilgoes!" she whispered. "They're on our trail!"

Seizing old Parrish by the arm, Jim started to drag him into the

recesses of the fern forest. Suddenly the bestial face of a Drilgo

appeared.

A yell broke from the man's throat. The hairy arm shot back. Jim saw

the stone tip of the long spear poised overhead. He leaped forward,

delivering a blow in the man's midriff with all the strength of his

right arm.

* * * * *

The Drilgo grunted and doubled forward, the spear falling from his

hand. The heavy head of stone embedded itself in the soft ground, so

that the spear remained upright. As the man collapsed he yelled at the

top of his voice.

"This way! This way!" gibbered old Parrish, suddenly alert.

But now the undergrowth all about them was alive with Drilgoes. The

three dodged and doubled like hunted hares. High overhead something

began to clack with a sound like that made by a woodpecker drilling a

tree, but infinitely louder.

And out of the void above came Tode's voice, shouting commands to the

Drilgoes in their own language.

Suddenly a column of fire shot up from the volcano, infusing the white

mists with a reddish glare. Overhead the three could see Tode. He was

flying with a pair of mechanical wings strapped to his shoulders, not

more than two hundred feet above them. With a shout of triumph he

swooped down. In his hand was a small cylinder, about the mouth of

which a phosphorescent violet light was beginning to play.

"I've got you, Dent," he screamed in triumph, hovering above the

three, while the wings drummed and vibrated till they seemed the mere

play of light and shadow about Tode's shoulders. "Halt, or I'll blast

your body and soul to hell! Halt, or I'll kill _her_!"

The deadly tube was pointing steadily at Lucille's body as Tode

hovered ten feet overhead, perfectly still save for the whirring

wings. The three stopped dead, and Tode, with a shout of triumph,

began calling the Drilgoes, who swarmed forward out of the

undergrowth.

Huge brown bodies, nude save for their skins of jungle-cat or serpent,

they emerged, quickly forming a ring about the three prisoners. Tode

fluttered to the ground.

"Fools, did you think you could escape that way?" he asked. "As for you,

Dent. I'm going to convince you of the reality of four-dimensional space

as you would not be convinced in the old days. Do you know what I'm going

to do with you? I'm going to strip the skin from you with the ray, and

take you into the anatomical room at Columbia University and leave you

there as an exhibit, Dent!"

Tode grinned like a madman. But Jim was looking past him, at something

that had suddenly appeared upon the far horizon.

* * * * *

It was a round disc of bluish white, a disc like the moon, but

slightly smaller, a disc that flickered as if it had an eyelid that

was being winked repeatedly. Simultaneously screams broke from the

throats of all the Drilgoes. They stampeded.

Tode whirled about and saw. With a curse he leaped into the air and

whirred away.

Out of that disc a slender, blue-white beam shot suddenly, driving a

pathway through the fog, and disclosing the dark depths of the valley.

"The Eye! The Eye!" screeched Parrish. "Down on the ground! Down!

Down!"

He dropped, and Jim caught Lucille and flung himself headlong with

her. To and fro overhead, but only a few feet above them, moved the

searchlight. Shrieks broke from the Drilgoes' throats as they

scattered through the jungle.

Everywhere that ray moved, trees and undergrowth simply disappeared. A

bunch of Drilgoes, caught by it, were obliterated in an instant. Great

gaps were left through the undergrowth as the ray passed.

It faded as quickly as it had come, and instantly old Parrish was on

his feet, dragging at his daughter.

"Now! Now!" he babbled, heading along one of the burned tracks through

the undergrowth.

Jim seized Lucille and the two raced in the wake of old Parrish.

Behind them they could hear the Drilgoes shouting, but a dense,

impenetrable darkness was already beginning to settle down over the

valley. They lost the track and went crashing through the ferns, on

and on until all was silence about them.

Suddenly Parrish went down like a log. He lay breathing heavily,

completely exhausted. When Jim spoke to him a feeble muttering was the

only answer. Jim and Lucille dropped to the ground exhausted beside

him.

CHAPTER V

_The Eye of Atlantis_

For perhaps half an hour the three lay there, hearing nothing. It

seemed to be night, for the darkness was impenetrable, save for the

lurid flashes of fire from the volcano. Parrish, who was slowly

recovering his strength, was mumbling incessantly. It was with

difficulty that Jim recalled him to a realization of his surroundings.

"Where is the city of Atlantis?" he asked him.

"Over there," mumbled Parrish. "Behind the volcano. Why do you ask

me?"

"I'm thinking of going there."

"Eh? Going there? You're mad. The Eye will see you, the Eye that can

see for a hundred miles. They'll turn the Ray on you. Nothing is too

small for the Eye. And they watch night and day."

"The Eye is off now."

"It's never off. The Eye is dark. It grows white only when they are

about to use the Ray. Perhaps the Eye is watching us now."

"Nevertheless," said Jim, "I think we would do well to try to enter

the city. We can't live here in the jungle at the mercy of these

Drilgoes."

"It is impossible to enter. All strangers are killed by the

Atlanteans."

"Dad," interposed Lucille, "I think we'd better do what Jim suggests.

One of us must decide."

"My idea is that you take us to some place where we can get a view of

the city," said Jim. "Then we can make up our minds what to do. We've

got to get somewhere out of this jungle."

* * * * *

Parrish rose to his feet, mumbling. "If we go round the base of the

volcano we can see Atlantis," he said. "It's always light there. In

the daytime they drive away the fogs by some means they've got, and at

night they have an artificial sun. But we'll be killed, we'll all be

killed."

Mumbling and muttering, he began groping his way through the

undergrowth in the direction of the volcano, whose flashes were again

becoming more frequent, affording a means of directing their route.

Obscure rumblings were again beginning to shake the earth. For an hour

the three picked their way steadily upward through the ferns, until

the ground became more open.

They were approaching the base of the volcano, whose side now towered

above them, the upper part glassy with vitreous lava.

Suddenly Parrish, who was still leading, stopped and began to tremble

with fear. Stepping to his side, Jim heard the low muttering of voices

not far away.

Very cautiously he moved forward through the thin fern scrub, until

the glow of burning embers caught his sight. He stopped, hearing the

voices more distinctly, and again moved forward.

Three Drilgoes, huge, bestial men, and evidently an outpost, were

squatting around the ashes, devouring something with noisy gusto.

Softly as Jim had moved, their acute ears had caught the sound of his

footsteps. They rose, still holding what they were eating in their

hands, and, grasping their stone spears, moved in three separate ways

toward the edge of the clearing.

The man nearest Jim uttered a guttural exclamation and, after sniffing

a moment, began to lope in his direction. Suddenly he stopped short,

petrified with astonishment and fear at the sight of a man who,

instinct told him, was neither Atlantean nor of his own kind.

* * * * *

Jim leaped, tackling him about the knees, and brought him heavily to

the ground. As the Drilgo fell, the spear clattered from his hand, but

from his snakeskin girdle he pulled a long, curved knife of chipped

obsidian, sharp as a razor.

Jim grasped the Drilgo's wrist, but in a moment he saw that he was no

match for the creature in strength. He drew back his right arm and

delivered a punch to the solar plexus with all his strength.

As the Drilgo's hand grew limp he snatched away the knife. There was

no helping what he did for the two others were close upon him.

A thrust, a slashing blow, and the Drilgo was weltering in his

life-blood. A backward leap, and Jim evaded the flung spear by a

hair's breadth.

Knife in hand he leaped forward, and, dodging in beneath the long

shaft of the weapon, got in a slash that almost cut the Drilgo's body

in two.

The third Drilgo, seeing his two companions in their death-throes,

flung away his spear and fled with loud howls into the jungle.

Jim stepped back. Lucille and her father were already almost at his

heels. "It's all right," he called. "Come this way!" He led them

through the ferny growth in such a manner that they should not see the

two dead bodies. Nevertheless, he felt that Lucille knew.

"Let's see what they were cooking," he said.

But again he turned quickly. He could not know for sure what flesh

that was, roasting and scorching on the embers, and he had no desire

to know. It might have been monkey, but ... he turned away, and as he

did so, Parrish picked up several round objects that were lying a

little distance away.

"These are good to eat," he said. "A sort of bread-fruit. I've lived

on it for five years," he added with a sort of grotesque pathos.

They munched the fruit as they proceeded up the mountain, and found it

satisfying. Parrish seemed more himself again, though he still

muttered at intervals. Lucille clung closely to Jim as they proceeded.

* * * * *

They were treading on lava now, vitreous, and smooth as glass. It was

impossible to proceed further in that direction. They turned their

steps around the base in the direction of the sea.

After another hour, during which their way was lit by almost

continuous lurid flashes from the crater, a patch of illumination,

apparently out at sea, began to become visible. A half hour more, and

they were rounding the volcano's base, and suddenly it burst upon

them, a stupendous spectacle that drew an exclamation of amazement

from Jim's lips.

That low, flat background was the sea, the sound of whose breakers was

faintly audible. Between sea and land ran a narrow, slender causeway,

perhaps a mile in length. And beyond that, set on a small island, was

the most splendid city that Jim could have imagined.

Like New York--very like New York, with its mighty towers, but more

symmetrical, sloping upward from the sea toward a towering rampart at

the heart of it, crowned with huge domes and minarets and serpentine

ramps and mighty blocks of stone that must have sheltered as many

occupants as New York's highest skyscrapers.

The whole was snow-white, and gleamed softly in an artificial light

dispensed from an enormous artificial planet that seemed to hover

above the ramparts.

"God!" whispered Jim in awe as he gazed at the great city.

"You cannot cross that causeway," whimpered old Parrish. "It's death

to try. One sweep of the Ray will blot out every living thing."

"Hush! Listen!" came from Lucille's lips. "Something's moving down

there!"

* * * * *

The distant murmur of voices, the indescribable "feel" of the

proximity of other human beings told Jim that they were in imminent

danger. He glanced about him. A little overhead was an outcrop of

enormous boulders, standing up like a little fortress above the smooth

lava.

"Get behind there!" Jim whispered.

They turned and ran, slipping and stumbling up the smooth slope.

Reaching the boulders, they ensconced themselves hastily behind them.

Jim peered out through a crevice between two of the largest stones.

The sound of moving things became more audible.

Then, as a flash of flame shot from the crater overhead, Jim saw a

black human horde creeping like an array of ants around the base of

the mountain not far beneath.

Just like an army of warrior ants it seemed to flow onward, in perfect

order. And in the midst of it a faint violet light began to be

visible.

Parrish seized Jim's arm, shaking with terror. "You know what that is,

Dent?" he whimpered.

"It's Tode's Drilgoes, moving for a night attack upon Atlantis,"

answered Jim. "And that thing in the middle is the Atom Smasher."

* * * * *

It seemed hours before the last of the serried ranks of Drilgoes had

passed. By the light of a lurid flash from the volcano Jim could see

the column winding toward the causeway. Then all was shrouded in

impenetrable darkness, save for the snow-soft city upon the island.

"What are we going to do?" chattered old Parrish. "I wish I was back

in Tode's cave. He gave me food and let me help with his work

sometimes. I'll die here. We'll never get away. We'll never get

anywhere."

"We're safer here than anywhere else," answered Jim. "We'll have to

stay till morning, or--God, look at that!"

Out of the ramparts of the city the round, blue-white disc of the Eye

had suddenly disclosed itself. And simultaneously a violet flare shot

up above the moving hosts of the Drilgoes in the middle of the

causeway.

Out of the center of the Eye that blinding searchlight streamed. And

the pillar of violet fire rose up to counter it, clove it in two, as a

man cuts off the tentacle of a cuttlefish, and left it groping

helplessly above the heads of the Drilgoes.

* * * * *

To and fro wavered the blue-white beam, and like a protective wall the

violet column spread and extended, till the air was interlaced with

the play of the two colors. Streaks of white shot through streaks of

purple and black neutral clouds twirled, swirling in ghostlike forms.

It was a scene inconceivably beautiful, and it was impossible to

realize what must be happening out there.

Men must be dying, withering like stubble in the blue-white flames,

whenever they caught them. And yet, under that play of colors, Jim

could see the vast host crawling forward to the assault.

* * * * *

He held his breath. It was sublime and terrible, and on the result of

that conflict depended--what? What difference, when all this was

forgotten history, antedating the written records of the human race?

Then of a sudden the blue-white rays were seen to win. They were

beating down the violet light. Like living fingers they pierced that

protective wall, flinging it back, until only the tall central pillar

remained. And then for the first time the sound of combat became

audible.

A groan of despair, of defeat, of hopelessness. The black stream was

recoiling, turning upon itself. In the vivid glare of the white light

it could be seen dissolving, breaking into a thousand pieces,

streaming back toward the land. And, as it broke, the blue-white light

pursued, eating its way and blasting all it met. Atlantis had

triumphed.

Another sound was audible. From the city it came, a whirring as of

innumerable grasshoppers, increasing till it sounded once more like

the tapping of innumerable woodpeckers. Suddenly the night broke into

whirling balls of fire.

Lucille cried out. Jim leaped to his feet to see more clearly.

"It's men with wings," he cried. "Scores of them. They're hurling

something at the Drilgoes!"

* * * * *

The clacking of the wing mechanism filled the air. Now the fugitives

from the Drilgo host were streaming along the base of the mountain

underneath, seeking the safety of the jungles, and over them, riding

them, harrying them, flew the Atlantean birdmen, hurling their fiery

balls. And where the balls fell, conflagrations of cold fire seemed to

start and run like mercury, and shrivel up everything they touched.

But the birdmen were not without casualties of their own. Here and

there one could be seen to drop, and then the massed Drilgoes would

turn savagely upon him with their stone-pointed spears. The fight was

coming very close now. The savage cries of the Drilgoes filled the

night.

A ball of fire broke hardly fifty yards away from where the three were

crouching. A birdman fluttered down like a wounded hawk and lay

a-sprawl just underneath the rampart of boulders. Jim surmounted them,

ran down the slope of the mountainside, and bent over the dying man.

He was hideously wounded by the thrust of a Drilgo spear--whether

because the mechanism had failed, or because he had swooped too low,

Jim could not determine. As Jim bent over him he looked up at him.

A youth in his teens, with the face and build of a Greek warrior, a

worthy ancestor of European man. Jim looked at him and shuddered. "My

grandfather four hundred generations removed," he thought.

Seeing that this was no Drilgo, with eyes widened by the anticipation

of death, the Atlantean smiled, and died.