IX

The Imperial German Commissioner for War, General Hans von Helmuth, was

a man of extraordinary decision and farsightedness. Sixty years of age,

he had been a member of the general staff since he was forty. He had sat

at the feet of Bismarck and Von Moltke, and during his active

participation in the management of German military affairs he had seen

but slight changes in their policy: Mass--overwhelming mass; sudden

momentous onslaught, and, above all, an attack so quick that your

adversary could not regain his feet. It worked nine times out of ten,

and when it didn't it was usually better than taking the defensive.

General von Helmuth having an approved system was to that extent

relieved of anxiety, for all he had to do was to work out details. In

this his highly efficient organization was almost automatic. He himself

was a human compendium of knowledge, and he had but to press a button

and emit a few gutturals and any information that he wanted lay

typewritten before him. Now he sat in his office smoking a Bremen cigar

and studying a huge Mercatorial projection of the Atlantic and adjacent

countries, while with the fingers of his left hand he combed his heavy

beard.

From the window he looked down upon the inner fortifications of

Mainz--to which city the capital had been removed three months

before--and upon the landing stage for the scouting planes which were

constantly arriving or whirring off toward Holland or Strassburg. Across

the river, under the concealed guns of a sunken battery, stood the huge

hangars of the now useless dirigibles Z^{51~57}. The landing stage

communicated directly by telephone with the adjutant's office, an

enormous hall filled with maps, with which Von Helmuth's private room

was connected. The adjutant himself, a worried-looking man with a bullet

head and an iron-gray moustache, stood at a table in the centre of the

hall addressing rapid-fire sentences to various persons who appeared in

the doorway, saluted, and hurried off again. Several groups were

gathered about the table and the adjutant carried on an interrupted

conversation with all of them, pausing to read the telegrams and

messages that shot out of the pneumatic tubes upon the table from the

telegraph and telephone office on the floor below.

An elderly man in rather shabby clothes entered, looking about

helplessly through the thick lenses of his double spectacles, and the

adjutant turned at once from the officers about him with an "Excuse me,

gentlemen."

"Good afternoon, Professor von Schwenitz; the general is waiting for

you," said he. "This way, please."

He stalked across to the door of the inner office.

"Professor von Schwenitz is here," he announced, and immediately

returned to take up the thread of his conversation in the centre of the

hall.

The general turned gruffly to greet his visitor. "I have sent for you,

Professor," said he, without removing his cigar, "in order that I may

fully understand the method by which you say you have ascertained the

place of origin of the wireless messages and electrical disturbances

referred to in our communications of last week. This may be a serious

matter. The accuracy of your information is of vital importance."

The professor hesitated in embarrassment, and the general scowled.

"Well?" he demanded, biting off the chewed end of his cigar. "Well? This

is not a lecture room. Time is short. Out with it."

"Your Excellency!" stammered the poor professor, "I--I----The

observations are so--inadequate--one cannot determine----"

"What?" roared Von Helmuth. "But you said you _had_!"

"Only approximately, your Excellency. One cannot be positive, but within

a reasonable distance----" He paused.

"What do you call a reasonable distance? I supposed your physics was an

exact science!" retorted the general.

"But the data----"

"What do you call a reasonable distance?" bellowed the Imperial

Commissioner.

"A hundred kilometres!" suddenly shouted the overwrought professor,

losing control of himself. "I won't be talked to this way, do you hear?

I won't! How can a man think? I'm a member of the faculty of the

Imperial University. I've been decorated twice--twice!"

"Fiddlesticks!" returned the general, amused in spite of himself. "Don't

be absurd. I merely wish you to hurry. Have a cigar?"

"Oh, your Excellency!" protested the professor, now both ashamed and

frightened. "You must excuse me. The war has shattered my nerves. May I

smoke? Thank you."

"Sit down. Take your time," said Von Helmuth, looking out and up at a

monoplane descending toward the landing in slowly lessening spirals.

"You see, your Excellency," explained Von Schwenitz, "the data are

fragmentary, but I used three methods, each checking the others."

"The first?" shot back the general. The monoplane had landed safely.

"I compared the records of all the seismographs that had registered the

earthquake wave attendant on the electrical discharges accompanying the

great yellow auroras of July. These shocks had been felt all over the

globe, and I secured reports from Java, New Guinea, Lima, Tucson,

Greenwich, Algeria, and Moscow. These showed the wave had originated

somewhere in Eastern Labrador."

"Yes, yes. Go on!" ordered the general.

"In the second place, the violent magnetic storms produced by the helium

aurora appear to have left their mark each time upon the earth in a

permanent, if slight, deflection of the compass needle. The earth's

normal magnetic field seems to have had superimposed upon it a new field

comprised of lines of force nearly parallel to the equator. My

computations show that these great circles of magnetism centre at

approximately the same point in Labrador as that indicated by the

seismographs--about fifty-five degrees north and seventy-five degrees

west."

The general seemed struck with this.

"Permanent deflection, you say!" he ejaculated.

"Yes, apparently permanent. Finally the barometer records told the same

story, although in less precise form. A compressional wave of air had

been started in the far north and had spread out over the earth with the

velocity of sound. Though the barographs themselves gave no indication

whence this wave had come, the variation in its intensity at different

meteorological observatories could be accounted for by the law of

inverse squares on the supposition that the explosion which started the

wave had occurred at fifty-five degrees north, seventy-five degrees

west."

The professor paused and wiped his glasses. With a roar a Taube slid off

the landing stage, shot over toward the hangars, and soared upward.

"Is that all?" inquired the general, turning again to the chart.

"That is all, your Excellency," answered Von Schwenitz.

"Then you may go!" muttered the Imperial Commissioner. "If we find the

source of these disturbances where you predict you will receive the

Black Eagle."

"Oh, your Excellency!" protested the professor, his face shining with

satisfaction.

"And if we do _not_ find it--there will be a vacancy on the faculty of

the Imperial University!" he added grimly. "Good afternoon."

He pressed a button and the departing scholar was met by an orderly and

escorted from the War Bureau, while the adjutant joined Von Helmuth.

"He's got him! I'm satisfied!" remarked the Commissioner. "Now outline

your plan."

The bullet-headed man took up the calipers and indicated a spot on the

coast of Labrador:

"Our expedition will land, subject to your approval, at Hamilton Inlet,

using the town of Rigolet as a base. By availing ourselves of the

Nascopee River and the lakes through which it flows, we can easily

penetrate to the highland where the inventor of the Ring machine has

located himself. The auxiliary brigantine _Sea Fox_ is lying now under

American colours at Amsterdam, and as she can steam fifteen knots an

hour she should reach the Inlet in about ten days, passing to the north

of the Orkneys."

"What force have you in mind?" inquired Von Helmuth, his cold gray eyes

narrowing.

"Three full companies of sappers and miners, ten mountain howitzers, a

field battery, fifty rapid-fire standing rifles, and a complete outfit

for throwing lyddite. Of course we shall rely principally on high

explosives if it becomes necessary to use force, but what we want is a

hostage who may later become an ally."

"Yes, of course," said the general with a laugh. "This is a scientific,

not a military, expedition."

"I have asked Lieutenant Münster to report upon the necessary

equipment."

Von Helmuth nodded, and the adjutant stepped to the door and called out:

"Lieutenant Münster!"

A trim young man in naval uniform appeared upon the threshold and

saluted.

"State what you regard as necessary as equipment for the proposed

expedition," said the general.

"Twenty motor boats, each capable of towing several flat-bottomed barges

or native canoes, forty mules, a field telegraph, and also a

high-powered wireless apparatus, axes, spades, wire cables and drums,

windlasses, dynamite for blasting, and provisions for sixty days. We

shall live off the country and secure artisans and bearers from among

the natives."

"When will it be possible to start?" inquired the general.

"In twelve days if you give the order now," answered the young man.

"Very well, you may go. And good luck to you!" he added.

The young lieutenant saluted and turned abruptly on his heel.

Over the parade ground a biplane was hovering, darting this way and

that, rising and falling with startling velocity.

"Who's that?" inquired the general approvingly.

"Schöningen," answered the adjutant.

The Imperial Commissioner felt in his breast-pocket for another cigar.

"Do you know, Ludwig," he remarked amiably as he struck a meditative

match, "sometimes I more than half believe this 'Flying Ring' business

is all rot!"

The adjutant looked pained.

"And yet," continued Von Helmuth, "if Bismarck could see one of those

things," he waved his cigar toward the gyrating aeroplane, "he wouldn't

believe it."

X

All day the International Assembly of Scientists, officially known as

Conference No. 2, had been sitting, but not progressing, in the large

lecture hall of the Smithsonian Institution, which probably had never

before seen so motley a gathering. Each nation had sent three

representatives, two professional scientists, and a lay delegate, the

latter some writer or thinker renowned in his own country for his wide

knowledge and powers of ratiocination. They had come together upon the

appointed day, although the delegates from the remoter countries had not

yet arrived, and the Committee on Credentials had already reported.

Germany had sent Gasgabelaus, Leybach, and Wilhelm Lamszus;

France--Sortell, Amand, and Buona Varilla; Great Britain--Sir William

Crookes, Sir Francis Soddy, and Mr. H. G. Wells, celebrated for his "The

War of the Worlds" and The "World Set Free," and hence supposedly just

the man to unravel a scientific mystery such as that which confronted

this galaxy of immortals.

The Committee on Data, of which Thornton was a member, having been

actively at work for nearly two weeks through wireless communication

with all the observatories--seismic, meteorological, astronomical, and

otherwise--throughout the world, had reduced its findings to print, and

this matter, translated into French, German, and Italian, had already

been distributed among those present. Included in its pages was Quinn's

letter to the State Department.

The roll having been called, the president of the National Academy of

Sciences made a short speech in which he outlined briefly the purpose

for which the committee had been summoned and commented to some extent

upon the character of the phenomena it was required to analyze.

And then began an unending series of discussions and explanations in

French, German, Dutch, Russian, and Italian, by goggle-eyed,

bushy-whiskered, long-haired men who looked like anarchists or

sociologists and apparently had never before had an unrestricted

opportunity to air their views on anything.

Thornton, listening to this hodgepodge of technicalities, was dismayed

and distrustful. These men spoke a language evidently familiar to them,

which he, although a professional scientist, found a meaningless jargon.

The whole thing seemed unreal, had a purely theoretic or literary

quality about it that made him question even their premises. In the

tainted air of the council room, listening to these little pot-bellied

_Professoren_ from Amsterdam and Münich, doubt assailed him, doubt even

that the earth had changed its orbit, doubt even of his own established

formulæ and tables. Weren't they all just talking through their hats?

Wasn't it merely a game in which an elaborate system of equivalents gave

a semblance of actuality to what in fact was nothing but mind-play? Even

Wells, whose literary style he admired as one of the beauties as well as

one of the wonders of the world, had been a disappointment. He had

seemed singularly halting and unconvincing.

"I wish I knew a practical man--I wish Bennie Hooker were here!"

muttered Thornton to himself. He had not seen his classmate Hooker for

twenty-six years; but that was one thing about Hooker: you knew he'd be

exactly the same--only more so--as he was when you last saw him. In

those years Bennie had become the Lawson Professor of Applied Physics at

Harvard. Thornton had read his papers on induced radiation, thermic

equilibrium, and had one of Bennie's famous Gem Home Cookers in his own

little bachelor apartment. Hooker would know. And if he didn't he'd tell

you so, without befogging the atmosphere with a lot of things he _did_

know, but that wouldn't help you in the least. Thornton clutched at the

thought of him like a falling aeronaut at a dangling rope. He'd be worth

a thousand of these dreaming lecturers, these beer-drinking visionaries!

But where could he be found? It was August, vacation time. Still, he

might be in Cambridge giving a summer course or something.

At that moment Professor Gasgabelaus, the temporary chairman, a huge

man, the periphery of whose abdomen rivalled the circumference of the

"working terrestrial globe" at the other end of the platform, pounded

perspiringly with his gavel and announced that the conference would

adjourn until the following Monday morning. It was Friday afternoon, so

he had sixty hours in which to connect with Bennie, if Bennie could be

discovered. A telegram of inquiry brought no response, and he took the

midnight train to Boston, reaching Cambridge about two o'clock the

following afternoon.

The air trembled with heat. Only by dodging from the shadow of one big

elm to another did he manage to reach the Appian Way--the street given

in the university catalogue as Bennie's habitat--alive. As he swung open

the little wicket gate he realized with an odd feeling that it was the

same house where Hooker had lived when a student, twenty-five years

before.

"Board" was printed on a yellow, fly-blown card in the corner of the

window beside the door.

Up there over the porch was the room Bennie had inhabited from '85 to

'89. He recalled vividly the night he, Thornton, had put his foot

through the lower pane. They had filled up the hole with an old golf

stocking. His eyes searched curiously for the pane. There it was, still

broken and still stuffed--it couldn't be!--with some colourless material

strangely resembling disintegrating worsted. The sun smote him in the

back of his neck and drove him to seek the relief of the porch. Had he

ever left Cambridge? Wasn't it a dream about his becoming an astronomer

and working at the Naval Observatory? And all this stuff about the earth

going on the loose? If he opened the door wouldn't he find Bennie with a

towel round his head cramming for the "exams"? For a moment he really

imagined that he was an undergraduate. Then as he fanned himself with

his straw hat he caught, on the silk band across the interior, the

words: "Smith's Famous Headwear, Washington, D.C." No, he was really an

astronomer.

He shuddered in spite of the heat as he pulled the bell knob. What

ghosts would its jangle summon? The bell, however, gave no sound; in

fact the knob came off in his hand, followed by a foot or so of copper

wire. He laughed, gazing at it blankly. No one had ever used the bell in

the old days. They had simply kicked open the door and halloed: "O-o-h,

Bennie Hooker!"

Thornton laid the knob on the piazza and inspected the front of the

house. The windows were thick with dust, the "yard" scraggly with weeds.

A piece of string held the latch of the gate together. Then

automatically, and without intending to do so at all, Thornton turned

the handle of the front door, assisting it coincidentally with a gentle

kick from his right toe, and found himself in the narrow cabbage-scented

hallway. The old, familiar, battered black-walnut hatrack of his student

days leaned drunkenly against the wall--Thornton knew one of its back

legs was missing--and on the imitation marble slab was a telegram

addressed to "Professor Benjamin Hooker." And also, instinctively,

Thornton lifted up his adult voice and yelled:

"O-o-h, ye-ay! Bennie Hooker!"

The volume of his own sound startled him. Instantly he saw the

ridiculousness of it--he, the senior astronomer at the Naval

Observatory, yelling like that----

"O-o-h, ye-ay!" came in smothered tones from above.

Thornton bounded up the stairs, two, three steps at a time, and pounded

on the old door over the porch.

"Go away!" came back the voice of Bennie Hooker. "Don't want any lunch!"

Thornton continued to bang on the door while Professor Hooker wrathfully

besought the intruder to depart before he took active measures. There

was the cracking of glass.

"Oh, damn!" came from inside.

Thornton rattled the knob and kicked. Somebody haltingly crossed the

room, the key turned, and Prof. Bennie Hooker opened the door.

"Well?" he demanded, scowling over his thick spectacles.

"Hello, Bennie!" said Thornton, holding out his hand.

"Hello, Buck!" returned Hooker. "Come in. I thought it was that

confounded Ethiopian."

As far as Thornton could see, it was the same old room, only now crammed

with books and pamphlets and crowded with tables of instruments. Hooker,

clad in sneakers, white ducks, and an undershirt, was smoking a small

"T. D." pipe.

"Where on earth did you come from?" he inquired good-naturedly.

"Washington," answered Thornton, and something told him that this was

the real thing--the "goods"--that his journey would be repaid.

Hooker waved the "T. D." in a general sort of way toward some

broken-down horsehair armchairs and an empty crate.

"Sit down, won't you?" he said, as if he had seen his guest only the day

before. He looked vaguely about for something that Thornton might smoke,

then seated himself on a cluttered bench holding a number of retorts,

beside which flamed an oxyacetylene blowpipe. He was a wizened little

chap, with scrawny neck and protruding Adam's apple. His long hair gave

no evidence of the use of the comb, and his hands were the hands of

Esau. He had an alertness that suggested a robin, but at the same time

gave the impression that he looked through things rather than at them.

On the mantel was a saucer containing the fast oxidizing cores of

several apples and a half-eaten box of oatmeal biscuits.

"My Lord! This is an untidy hole! No more order than when you were an

undergrad!" exclaimed Thornton, looking about him in amused horror.

"Order?" returned Bennie indignantly. "Everything's in perfect order!

This chair is filled with the letters I _have_ already answered; this

chair with the letters I've _not_ answered; and this chair with the

letters I shall _never_ answer!"

Thornton took a seat on the crate, laughing. It was the same old Bennie!

"You're an incorrigible!" he sighed despairingly.

"Well, you're a star gazer, aren't you?" inquired Hooker, relighting his

pipe. "Some one told me so--I forget who. You must have a lot of

interesting problems. They tell me that new planet of yours is full of

uranium."

Thornton laughed. "You mustn't believe all that you read in the papers.

What are you working at particularly?"

"Oh, radium and thermic induction mostly," answered Hooker. "And when I

want a rest I take a crack at the fourth dimension--spacial curvature's

my hobby. But I'm always working at radio stuff. That's where the big

things are going to be pulled off, you know."

"Yes, of course," answered Thornton. He wondered if Hooker ever saw a

paper, how long since he had been out of the house. "By the way, did you

know Berlin had been taken?" he asked.

"Berlin--in Germany, you mean?"

"Yes, by the Russians."

"No! Has it?" inquired Hooker with politeness. "Oh, I think some one did

mention it."

Thornton fumbled for a cigarette and Bennie handed him a match. They

seemed to have extraordinarily little to say for men who hadn't seen

each other for twenty-six years.

"I suppose," went on the astronomer, "you think it's deuced funny my

dropping in casually this way after all this time, but the fact is I

came on purpose. I want to get some information from you straight."

"Go ahead!" said Bennie. "What's it about?"

"Well, in a word," answered Thornton, "the earth's nearly a quarter of

an hour behind time."

Hooker received this announcement with a polite interest but no

astonishment.

"That's a how-de-do!" he remarked. "What's done it?"

"That's what I want you to tell _me_," said Thornton sternly. "What

_could_ do it?"

Hooker unlaced his legs and strolled over to the mantel.

"Have a cracker?" he asked, helping himself. Then he picked up a piece

of wood and began whittling. "I suppose there's the devil to pay?" he

suggested. "Things upset and so on? Atmospheric changes? When did it

happen?"

"About three weeks ago. Then there's this Sahara business."

"What Sahara business?"

"Haven't you heard?"

"No," answered Hooker rather impatiently. "I haven't heard anything. I

haven't any time to read the papers; I'm too busy. My thermic inductor

transformers melted last week and I'm all in the air. What was it?"

"Oh, never mind now," said Thornton hurriedly, perceiving that Hooker's

ignorance was an added asset. He'd get his science pure, uncontaminated

by disturbing questions of fact. "How about the earth's losing that

quarter of an hour?"

"Of course she's off her orbit," remarked Hooker in a detached way. "And

you want to know what's done it? Don't blame you. I suppose you've gone

into the possibilities of stellar attraction."

"Discount that!" ordered Thornton. "What I want to know is whether it

could happen from the inside?"

"Why not?" inquired Hooker. "A general shift in the mass would do it. So

would the mere application of force at the proper point."

"It never happened before."

"Of course not. Neither had seedless oranges until Burbank came along,"

said Hooker.

"Do you regard it as possible by any human agency?" inquired Thornton.

"Why not?" repeated Hooker. "All you need is the energy. And it's lying

all round if you could only get at it. That's just what I'm working at

now. Radium, uranium, thorium, actinium--all the radioactive

elements--are, as everybody knows, continually disintegrating,

discharging the enormous energy that is imprisoned in their molecules.

It may take generations, epochs, centuries, for them to get rid of it

and transform themselves into other substances, but they will inevitably

do so eventually. They're doing with more or less of a rush what all the

elements are doing at their leisure. A single ounce of uranium contains

about the same amount of energy that could be produced by the combustion

of ten tons of coal--but it won't let the energy go. Instead it holds on

to it, and the energy leaks slowly, almost imperceptibly, away, like

water from a big reservoir tapped only by a tiny pipe. 'Atomic energy'

Rutherford calls it. Every element, every substance, has its ready to be

touched off and put to use. The chap who can find out how to release

that energy all at once will revolutionize the civilized world. It will

be like the discovery that water could be turned into steam and made to

work for us--multiplied a million times. If, instead of that energy just

oozing away and the uranium disintegrating infinitesimally each year, it

could be exploded at a given moment you could drive an ocean liner with

a handful of it. You could make the old globe stagger round and turn

upside down! Mankind could just lay off and take a holiday. But _how_?"

Bennie enthusiastically waved his pipe at Thornton.

"How! That's the question. Everybody's known about the possibilities,

for Soddy wrote a book about it; but nobody's ever suggested where the

key could be found to unlock that treasure-house of energy. Some chap

made up a novel once and pretended it was done, but he didn't say _how_.

But"--and he lowered his voice passionately--"I'm working at it,

and--and--I've nearly--nearly got it."

Thornton, infected by his friend's excitement, leaned forward in his

chair.

"Yes--nearly. If only my transformers hadn't melted! You see I got the

idea from Savaroff, who noticed that the activity of radium and other

elements wasn't constant, but varied with the degree of solar activity,

reaching its maximum at the periods when the sun spots were most

numerous. In other words, he's shown that the breakdown of the atoms of

radium and the other radioactive elements isn't spontaneous, as Soddy

and others had thought, but is due to the action of certain extremely

penetrating rays given out by the sun. These particular rays are the

result of the enormous temperature of the solar atmosphere, and their

effect upon radioactive substances is analogous to that of the

detonating cap upon dynamite. No one has been able to produce these rays

in the laboratory, although Hempel has suspected sometimes that traces

of them appeared in the radiations from powerful electric sparks.

Everything came to a halt until Hiroshito discovered thermic induction,

and we were able to elevate temperature almost indefinitely through a

process similar to the induction of high electric potentials by means of

transformers and the Ruhmkorff coil.

"Hiroshito wasn't looking for a detonating ray and didn't have time to

bother with it, but I started a series of experiments with that end in

view. I got close--I am close, but the trouble has been to control the

forces set in motion, for the rapid rise in temperature has always

destroyed the apparatus."

Thornton whistled. "And when you succeed?" he asked in a whisper.

Hooker's face was transfigured.

"When I succeed I shall control the world," he cried, and his voice

trembled. "But the damn thing either melts or explodes," he added with a

tinge of indignation.

"You know about Hiroshito's experiments, of course; he used a quartz

bulb containing a mixture of neon gas and the vapour of mercury, placed

at the centre of a coil of silver wire carrying a big oscillatory

current. This induced a ring discharge in the bulb, and the temperature

of the vapour mixture rose until the bulb melted. He calculated that the

temperature of that part of the vapour which carried the current was

over 6,000°. You see, the ring discharge is not in contact with the wall

of the bulb, and can consequently be much hotter. It's like this." Here

Bennie drew with a burnt match on the back of an envelope a diagram of

something which resembled a doughnut in a chianti flask.

Thornton scratched his head. "Yes," he said, "but that's an old

principle, isn't it? Why does Hiro--what's his name--call it--thermic

induction?"

"Oriental imagination, probably," replied Bennie. "Hiroshito observed

that a sudden increase in the temperature of the discharge occurred at

the moment when the silver coil of his transformer became white hot,

which he explained by some mysterious inductive action of the heat

vibrations. I don't follow him at all. His theory's probably all wrong,

but he delivered the goods. He gave me the right tip, even if I have got

him lashed to the mast now. I use a tungsten spiral in a nitrogen

atmosphere in my transformer and replace the quartz bulb with a capsule

of zircorundum."

"A capsule of what?" asked Thornton, whose chemistry was mid-Victorian.

"Zircorundum," said Bennie, groping around in a drawer of his work

table. "It's an absolute nonconductor of heat. Look here, just stick

your finger in that." He held out to Thornton what appeared to be a

small test tube of black glass. Thornton, with a slight moral

hesitation, did as he was told, and Bennie, whistling, picked up the

oxyacetylene blowpipe, regarding it somewhat as a dog fancier might gaze

at an exceptionally fine pup. "Hold up your finger," said he to the

astronomer. "That's right--like that!"

Thrusting the blowpipe forward, he allowed the hissing blue-white flame

to wrap itself round the outer wall of the tube--a flame which Thornton

knew could melt its way through a block of steel--but the astronomer

felt no sensation of heat, although he not unnaturally expected the

member to be incinerated.

"Queer, eh?" said Bennie. "Absolute insulation! Beats the thermos

bottle, and requires no vacuum. It isn't quite what I want though,

because the disintegrating rays which the ring discharge gives out break

down the zirconium, which isn't an end-product of radioactivity. The

pressure in the capsule rises, due to the liberation of helium, and it

blows up, and the landlady or the police come up and bother me."

Thornton was scrutinizing Bennie's rough diagram. "This ring discharge,"

he meditated; "I wonder if it isn't something like a sunspot. You know

the spots are electron vortices with strong magnetic fields. I'll bet

you the Savaroff disintegrating rays come from the spots and not from

the whole surface of the sun!"

"My word," said Bennie, with a grin of delight, "you occasionally have

an illuminating idea, even if you are a musty astronomer. I always

thought you were a sort of calculating machine, who slept on a logarithm

table. I owe you two drinks for that suggestion, and to scare a thirst

into you I'll show you an experiment that no living human being has ever

seen before. I can't make very powerful disintegrating rays yet, but I

can break down uranium, which is the easiest of all. Later on I'll be

able to disintegrate anything, if I have luck--that is, anything except

end-products. Then you'll see things fly. But, for the present, just

this." He picked up a thin plate of white metal. "This is the metal

we're going to attack, uranium--the parent of radium--and the whole

radioactive series, ending with the end-product lead."

He hung the plate by two fine wires fastened to its corners, and

adjusted a coil of wire opposite its centre, while within the coil he

slipped a small black capsule.

"This is the best we can do now," he said. "The capsule is made of

zircorundum, and we shall get only a trace of the disintegrating rays

before it blows up. But you'll see 'em, or, rather, you'll see the

lavender phosphorescence of the air through which they pass."

He arranged a thick slab of plate glass between Thornton and the thermic

transformer, and stepping to the wall closed a switch. An oscillatory

spark discharge started off with a roar in a closed box, and the coil of

wire became white hot.

"Watch the plate!" shouted Bennie.

And Thornton watched.

For ten or fifteen seconds nothing happened, and then a faint beam of

pale lavender light shot out from the capsule, and the metal plate swung

away from the incandescent coil as if blown by a gentle breeze.

Almost instantly there was a loud report and a blinding flash of yellow

light so brilliant that for the next instant or two to Thornton's eyes

the room seemed dark. Slowly the afternoon light regained its normal

quality. Bennie relit his pipe unconcernedly.

"That's the germ of the idea," he said between puffs. "That capsule

contains a mixture of vapours that give out disintegrating rays when the

temperature is raised by thermic induction above six thousand. Most of

'em are stopped by the zirconium atoms in the capsule, which break down

and liberate helium; and the temperature rises in the capsule until it

explodes, as you saw just now, with a flash of yellow helium light. The

rays that get out strike the uranium plate and cause the surface layer

of molecules to disintegrate, their products being driven off by the

atomic explosions with a velocity about equal to that of light, and it's

the recoil that deflects and swings the plate. The amount of uranium

decomposed in this experiment couldn't be detected by the most delicate

balance--small mass, but enormous velocity. See?"

"Yes, I understand," answered Thornton. "It's the old, 'momentum equals

mass times velocity,' business we had in mechanics."

"Of course this is only a toy experiment," Bennie continued. "It is what

the dancing pithballs of Franklin's time were to the multipolar,

high-frequency dynamo. But if we could control this force and handle it

on a large scale we could do anything with it--destroy the world, drive

a car against gravity off into space, shift the axis of the earth

perhaps!"

It came to Thornton as he sat there, cigarette in hand, that poor Bennie

Hooker was going to receive the disappointment of his life. Within the

next five minutes his dreams would be dashed to earth, for he would

learn that another had stepped down to the pool of discovery before him.

For how many years, he wondered, had Bennie toiled to produce his

mysterious ray that should break down the atom and release the store of

energy that the genii of Nature had concealed there. And now Thornton

must tell him that all his efforts had gone for nothing!

"And you believe that any one who could generate a ray such as you

describe could control the motion of the earth?" he asked.

"Of course, certainly," answered Hooker. "He could either disintegrate

such huge quantities of matter that the mass of the earth would be

shifted and its polar axis be changed, or if radioactive

substances--pitchblende, for example--lay exposed upon the earth's

surface he could cause them to discharge their helium and other products

at such an enormous velocity that the recoil or reaction would

accelerate or retard the motion of the globe. It would be quite

feasible, quite simple--all one would need would be the disintegrating

ray."

And then Thornton told Hooker of the flight of the giant Ring machine

from the north and the destruction of the Mountains of Atlas through the

apparent instrumentality of a ray of lavender light. Hooker's face

turned slightly pale and his unshaven mouth tightened. Then a smile of

exaltation illuminated his features.

"He's done it!" he cried joyously. "He's done it on an engineering

scale. We pure-science dreamers turn up our noses at the engineers, but

I tell you the improvements in the apparatus part of the game come when

there is a big commercial demand for a thing and the engineering chaps

take hold of it. But _who_ is he and _where_ is he? I must get to him. I

don't suppose I can teach him much, but I've got a magnificent

experiment that we can try together."

He turned to a littered writing-table and poked among the papers that

lay there.

"You see," he explained excitedly, "if there is anything in the quantum

theory----Oh! but you don't care about that. The point is where _is_ the

chap?"

And so Thornton had to begin at the beginning and tell Hooker all about

the mysterious messages and the phenomena that accompanied them. He

enlarged upon Pax's benignant intentions and the great problems

presented by the proposed interference of the United States Government

in Continental affairs, but Bennie swept them aside. The great thing, to

his mind, was to find and get into communication with Pax.

"Ah! How he must feel! The greatest achievement of all time!" cried

Hooker radiantly. "How ecstatically happy! Earth blossoming like the

rose! Well-watered valleys where deserts were before. War abolished,

poverty, disease! Who can it be? Curie? No; she's bottled in Paris.

Posky, Langham, Varanelli--it can't be any one of those fellows. It

beats me! Some Hindoo or Jap maybe, but never Hiroshito! Now we must get

to him right away. So much to talk over." He walked round the room,

blundering into things, dizzy with the thought that his great dream had

come true. Suddenly he swept everything off the table on to the floor

and kicked his heels in the air.

"Hooray!" he shouted, dancing round the room like a freshman. "Hooray!

Now I can take a holiday. And come to think of it, I'm as hungry as a

brontosaurus!"

That night Thornton returned to Washington and was at the White House by

nine o'clock the following day.

"It's all straight," he told the President. "The honestest man in the

United States has said so."