Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 Read online

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  ASTOUNDING

  STORIES

  OF SUPER-SCIENCE

  20c

  _On Sale the First Thursday of Each Month_

  W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher HARRY BATES, Editor DOUGLAS M. DOLD, Consulting Editor

  The Clayton Standard on a Magazine Guarantees

  _That_ the stories therein are clean, interesting, vivid, by leading writers of the day and purchased under conditions approved by the Authors' League of America;

  _That_ such magazines are manufactured in Union shops by American workmen;

  _That_ each newsdealer and agent is insured a fair profit;

  _That_ an intelligent censorship guards their advertising pages.

  _The other Clayton magazines are:_

  ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, RANCH ROMANCES, COWBOY STORIES, CLUES, FIVE-NOVELSMONTHLY, ALL STAR DETECTIVE STORIES, RANGELAND LOVE STORY MAGAZINE,and WESTERN ADVENTURES.

  _More than Two Million Copies Required to Supply the Monthly Demandfor Clayton Magazines._

  * * * * *

  VOL. IV, No. 2 CONTENTS NOVEMBER, 1930

  COVER DESIGN H. W. WESSOLOWSKI

  _Painted in Water-Colors from a Scene in "The Pirate Planet."_

  THE WALL OF DEATH VICTOR ROUSSEAU 151

  _Out of the Antarctic It Came--a Wall of Viscid, Grey, Half-Human Jelly, Absorbing and Destroying All Life That It Encountered._

  THE PIRATE PLANET CHARLES W. DIFFIN 168

  _A Strange Light Blinks on Venus, and Over Old Earth Hovers a Mysterious Visitant--Dread Harbinger of Interplanetary War._ (Beginning a Four-Part Novel.)

  THE DESTROYER WILLIAM MERRIAM ROUSE 198

  _Slowly, Insidiously, There Stole Over Allen Parker Something Uncanny. He Could No Longer Control His Hands--Even His Brain!_

  THE GRAY PLAGUE L. A. ESHBACH 210

  _Maimed and Captive, in the Depths of an Interplanetary Meteor-Craft, Lay the Only Possible Savior of Plague-Ridden Earth._

  JETTA OF THE LOWLANDS RAY CUMMINGS 230

  _Black-Garbed Figures Move in Ghastly Greenness As the Invisible Flyer Speeds on Its Business of Ransom._ (Conclusion.)

  VAGABONDS OF SPACE HARL VINCENT 244

  _From the Depths of the Sargasso Sea of Space Came the Thought-Warning, "Turn Back!" But Carr and His Martian Friend Found It Was Too Late!_ (A Complete Novelette.)

  THE READERS' CORNER ALL OF US 271

  _A Meeting Place for Readers of Astounding Stories._

  Single Copies, 20 Cents (In Canada, 25 Cents) Yearly Subscription,$2.00

  Issued monthly by Publishers' Fiscal Corporation, 80 Lafayette St.,New York. N. Y. W. M. Clayton, President; Francis P. Pace, Secretary.Entered as second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office atNew York, N. Y., under Act of March 3, 1879. Title registered as aTrade Mark in the U. S. Patent Office. Member Newsstand Group--Men'sList. For advertising rates address E. R. Crowe & Co., Inc., 25Vanderbilt Ave., New York: or 225 North Michigan Ave., Chicago.

  * * * * *

  The Wall of Death

  _By Victor Rousseau_

  And then Kay had broken through and was hewing madlywith great sweeps of the ax.]

  [Sidenote: Out of the Antarctic it came--a wall of viscid, grey,half-human jelly, absorbing and destroying all life that itencountered.]

  "This news," said Cliff Hynes, pointing to the newspaper, "means theend of _homo Americanus_."

  The newspaper in question was the hour-sheet of the InternationalBroadcast Association, just delivered by pneumatic tube at thelaboratory. It was stamped 1961, Month 13, Day 7, Horometer 3, and theheadlines on the front page confirmed the news of the decisive defeatof the American military and naval forces at the hands of the ChineseRepublic.

  A gallant fight for days against hopeless odds; failure of the armydynamos; airships cut off from ground guidance; battleships ripped topieces by the Chinese disintegrators; and, finally, the great wave ofblack death that had wiped out two hundred thousand men.

  Kay Bevan--to use the old-fashioned names which still persisted,despite the official numerical nomenclature--glanced through theaccount. He threw the sheet away. "We deserved it, Cliff," he said.

  Cliff nodded. "You saw that bit about the new Chinese disintegrator?If the Government had seriously considered our Crumbler--"

  Kay glanced at the huge, humming top that filled the center of thelaboratory. It spun so fast that it appeared as nothing but aspherical shadow, through which one could see the sparse furnishings,the table, the apparatus ranged upon it, and the window over-lookingthe upper streets of New York.

  "Yes--_if!_" he answered bitterly. "And I'm willing to bet the Chinesehave an inferior machine, built upon the plans that Chinese servantstole from us last year."

  "We deserved it, Cliff," said Kay again. "For ten years we've harriedand enslaved the yellow man, and taken a hundred thousand of his menand women to sacrifice to the Earth Giants. What would we have done,if conditions had been reversed?"

  "Self-preservation," Cliff suggested.

  "Exactly. The law of the survival of the fittest. They thought thatthey were fitter to survive. I tell you they had right on their side,Cliff, and that's what's beaten us. Now--a hundred thousand of our_own_ boys and girls must be fed into the maw of these monsters everyyear. God, suppose it were Ruth!"

  "Or you or I," said Cliff. "If only we could perfect the Crumbler!"

  "What use would that be against the Earth Giants? There's nothingorganic about them, not even bones. Pure protoplasm!"

  "We could have used it against the Chinese," said Cliff. "Now--" Heshrugged his shoulders hopelessly.

  * * * * *

  And if explorers had been content to leave the vast unknown AntarcticContinent alone, they would never have taught the imprisoned Giants tocross the great ice barrier. But that crossing had taken place fifteenyears ago, and already the mind of man had become accustomed to thegrim facts.

  Who could have dreamed that the supposed table-land was merely a rimof ice-mountains, surrounding a valley twice the size of Europe, sofar below sea-level that it was warmed to tropic heat by Earth'sinterior fires? Or that this valley was peopled with what could bestbe described as organized protoplasm?

  Enormous, half-transparent, gelatinous organism, attaining a height ofabout a hundred feet, and crudely organized into forms not unlikethose of men?

  Half the members of the Rawlins Expedition, which had first enteredthis valley, had fallen victims to the monsters. Most of the rest hadgone raving mad. And the stories of the two who returned, sane, toBuenos Aires, were discredited and scoffed at as those of madmen.

  But of a second expedition none had survived, and it was the solitarysurvivor of the third who had confirmed the amazing story. The giantmonsters, actuated by some flickering human intelligence, had foundtheir way out of the central valley, where they had subsisted byenfolding their vegetable and small animal prey with pseudopods, thatit to say, temporary projections of arms from the gelatinous bulk oftheir substance.

  They had floated across the shallow seas bet
ween the tip of theAntarctic Continent and Cape Horn, as toy balloons float on water.Then they had spread northward, extending in a wall that reached fromthe Atlantic to the Andes. And, as they moved, they had devoured allvegetables and animal life in their path. Behind them lay one greatbare, absolutely lifeless area.

  * * * * *

  How many of them were there? That was the hideous fact that had to befaced. Their numbers could not be counted because, after attaining aheight of about a hundred feet, they reproduced by budding!

  And within a few weeks these buds, in turn, attained their fulldevelopment.

  The Argentine Government had sent a force of twenty thousand menagainst them, armed with cannon, machine-guns, tanks, airplanes,poison gas, and the new death-ray. And in the night, when it wasbivouacking, after what it had thought was glorious victory, it hadbeen overwhelmed _and eaten_!

  Proof against the poison gas, the hideous monsters were, andinvulnerable to shot and shell. Divided and sub-divided, slashed intoribbons, blown to fragments by bombs, each of the pieces simply becamethe nucleus of a new organism, able, within a few hours, to assume theoutlines of a dwarf man, and to seize and devour its prey.

  But the Argentine expedition had done worse than it at first dreamedof. _It had given the monsters a taste for human flesh!_

  After that, the wave of devastation had obliterated life in every cityclear up to the Amazonian forests. And then it had been discoveredthat, by feeding these devils human flesh, they could be renderedtorpid and their advance stayed--so long as the periodical mealscontinued!

  At first criminals had been supplied them, then natives, then Chinese,obtained by periodical war raids. What would you have? The savageregions of the earth had already been depopulated, and a frenzy offear had taken possession of the whole world.

  Now the Chinese had defeated the annual American invasion, and theEarth Giants were budding and swarming through the heart of Brazil.

  * * * * *

  "Man," said the Theosophists, "is the fifth of the great root-racesthat have inhabited this planet. The fourth were the Atlanteans. Thethird were the Lemurians, half-human beings of whom the Australianaborigines are the survivors. The second race was not fully organizedinto human form. Of the first, nothing is known.

  "These are the second race, surviving in the Antarctic valleys.Half-human objects, groping toward that perfection of humanity ofwhich we ourselves fall very far short. As the Kabbala says, man,before Adam, reached from heaven to earth."

  Kay Bevan and Cliff Hynes had been working feverishly to perfecttheir Crumbler for use in the Chinese wars. Convinced, as were allfair-minded men, that these annual raids were unjustified, theyyielded to the logic of the facts. Should America sacrifice a hundredthousand of her boys and girls each year, when human life was cheap inChina? _Boys and girls!_

  It had been discovered that the Earth Giants required the flesh ofwomen as well as of men. Some subtle chemical constituent thenproduced the state of torpidity during which the advance and thebudding of the monsters was stayed. During the ten past years theirnorthward advance had been almost inappreciable. Brazil had even sentanother army against them.

  But the deadliest gases had failed to destroy the tenacious life ofthese protoplasmic creatures, and the tanks, which had driven throughand through them, had become entangled and blocked in the gelatinousexudations, and their occupants eaten.

  All over the world scientists were striving to invent some way ofremoving this menace to the world. Moreover, airplanes sent to thepolar continent had reported fresh masses mobilizing for the advancenorthward. A second wave would probably burst through the Amazonforest barrier and sweep over the Isthmus and overrun North America.

  Five days after the news of the Chinese disaster was confirmed, CliffHynes came back from the capital of the American Confederation,Washington.

  "It's no use, Kay," he said. "The Government won't even look at theCrumbler. I told them it would disintegrate every inorganic substanceto powder, and they laughed at me. And it's true, Kay: they've givenup the attempt to enslave China. Henceforward a hundred thousand ofour own citizens are to be sacrificed each year. Eaten alive, Kay!God, if only the Crumbler would destroy organic forms as well!"

  * * * * *

  The first year's quota of fifty thousand boys and fifty thousandgirls, thrown to the maw of the monsters to save humanity, nearlydisrupted the Confederation. Despite the utmost secrecy, despite thepenalty of death for publishing news of the sacrifice, despite thefact that those who drew the fatal lots were snatched from their homesat dead of night, everything became known.

  On the vast pampas in the extreme north of the Argentine Republic,where Bolivia, the Argentine, Paraguay and Brazil unite, was the placeof sacrifice. Thousands of acres, white with the bones of those whomthe monsters had engulfed. Brainless, devoid of intelligence,sightless, because even the sense had not become differentiated inthem, yet by some infernal instinct the Earth Giants had become awarethat this was their feasting ground.

  By some tacit compact, the guards who had annually brought theirvictims to be devoured had been unmolested, the vast wall ofsemi-human shapes withdrawing into the shelter of the surroundingforests while the Chinese were staked out in rows. Death, which wouldhave been a mercy, had been denied them. It was living flesh that theEarth Giants craved. And here, on the spot known as Golgotha, thehideous sacrifice had been annually repeated.

  That first year, when the chosen victims were transported to the fatalspot, all America went mad. Frenzied parents attacked the offices ofthe Federation in every city. The cry was raised that SpanishAmericans had been selected in preference to those of more northernblood. Civil war loomed imminent.

  And year after year these scenes must be repeated. Boys and girls,from fifteen to twenty years of age, the flower of the Federation, ahundred thousand of them, must die a hideous death to save humanity.Now the choice of the second year's victims was at hand.

  In their laboratory, removed to the heart of the Adirondackswilderness, Cliff and Kay were working frantically.

  "It's the last chance, Kay," said Cliff. "If I've not solved thesecret this time, it means another year's delay. The secret ofdissolving organic forms as well as inorganic ones! What is thismysterious power that enables organic forms to withstand the terrificbombardment of the W-ray?"

  The W-ray was the Millikan cosmic ray, imprisoned and adapted forhuman use. It was a million times more powerful than the highest knownvoltage of electricity. Beneath it, even the diamond, the hardestsubstance known, dissolved into a puff of dust; and yet the mostfragile plant growth remained unaffected.

  * * * * *

  The laboratory in the Adirondacks was open at one end. Here, against abackground of big forest trees, a curious medley of substances hadbeen assembled: old chairs, a couple of broken-down airplanes, a largedisused dynamo, a heap of discarded clothing, a miscellany of kitchenutensils on a table, a gas stove, and a heap of metal junk of allkinds. The place looked, in fact, like a junk heap.

  The great top was set in a socket in a heavy bar of craolite, the newmetal that combined the utmost tensile strength with completeinfusibility, even in the electric furnace. About six feet in height,it looked like nothing but what it was, a gyroscope in gimbals, with along and extremely narrow slit extending all around the centralbulge, but closed on the operator's side by a sliding cover of thesame craolite.

  Within this top, which, by its motion, generated a field of electricalforce between the arms of an interior magnet, the W-rays weregenerated in accordance with a secret formula; the speed of gyration,exceeding anything known on earth, multiplied their force abillionfold, converting them to wave-lengths shorter than the shortestknown to physical science. Like all great inventions, the top was ofthe simplest construction.

  "Well," said Cliff, "you'd better bring out Susie."

  Kay left the laboratory and went
to the cabin beside the lake that thetwo men occupied. From her box in front of the stove a lady porcupinelooked up lazily and grunted. Kay raised the porcupine; in the box, ofcourse. Susie was constitutionally indolent, but one does not handleporcupines, however smooth their quills may lie.

  Kay brought her to the heap of junk and placed the box on top of it.He went inside the laboratory. "I may as well tell you, Cliff. Iwouldn't have brought Susie if I'd thought the experiment had theleast chance of success," he said.

  Cliff said nothing. He was bending over the wheel, adjusting amicrometer. "All ready, Kay?" he asked.

  * * * * *

  Kay nodded and stepped back. He swallowed hard. He hated sacrificingSusie to the cause of science; he almost hoped the experiment wouldfail.

  Cliff pressed a lever, and slowly the ponderous top began to revolveupon its axis. Faster, faster, till it was nothing but a blur. Fasteryet, until only its outlines were visible. Cliff pressed a lever onthe other side.

  Nothing happened apparently, except for a cloudy appearance of the airat the open end of the laboratory. Cliff touched a foot lever. The topbegan to grow visible, its rotations could be seen; it ran slower,began to come to a stop.

  The cloud was gone. Where the airplanes and other junk had been, wasnothing but a heap of grayish dust. It was this that had made thecloud.

  Nothing remained, except that impalpable powder against the backgroundof the trees.

  Kay caught Cliff's arm. "Look out!" he shouted, pointing to the heap."Something's moving in there!"

  Something was. A very angry lady porcupine was scrambling out, a_quillless_ porcupine, with a white skin, looking like nothing so muchas a large, hairless rat. Cliff turned to Kay.

  "We've failed," he said briefly. "Too late for this year now."

  "But--the quills?"

  "Inorganic material. But even the bones remain intact because there'scirculation in the marrow, you see. And the Earth Giants haven't evenbones. They're safe--this year!"

  He flung himself down under a tree, staring up at the sky in abjectdespair.

  * * * * *

  "Look, Kay, I've got my number!" Ruth Meade smiled as she handed Kaythe ticket issued by the Government announcing the lottery numberprovided for each citizen.

  One hundred thousand young people between the ages of fifteen andtwenty would be drawn for the sacrifice, and Ruth, being nineteen, hadcome within the limits, but this would be her last year. In a fewweeks the Government would announce the numbers--drawn by a secondlottery--of those who were condemned.

  Then, before these had been made public, the victims would alreadyhave been seized and hurried to the airship depots in a hundredplaces, for conveyance to the hideous Golgotha of the pampas.

  The chance that any individual would be among the fated ones wasreasonably small. It was the fashion to make a jest of the wholebusiness. Ruth smiled as she showed her ticket.

  Kay stared at it. "Ruth, if--if anything happened to you I'd goinsane. I'd--"

  "Why this sudden ardor, Kay?"

  * * * * *

  Kay took Ruth's small hand in his. "Ruth, you mustn't play with me anymore. You know I love you. And the sight of that thing makes me almostinsane. You do care, don't you?" And, as Ruth remained silent, "Ruth,it isn't Cliff Hymes, is it? I know you two are old friends. I'drather it were Cliff than anybody else, if it had to be some one,but--tell me, Ruth!"

  "It isn't Cliff," said Ruth slowly.

  "Is it--some one else?"

  "It's you, dear," answered Ruth. "It's always been you. It might havebeen Cliff if you hadn't come along. But he knows now it can never behe."

  "Does he know it's me?" asked Kay, greatly relieved.

  Ruth inclined her head. "He took it very finely," she said. "He saidjust what you've said about him. Oh, Kay, if only your experiment hadsucceeded, and the world could be free of this nightmare! Whathappened? Why couldn't you and Cliff make it destroy life?"

  "I don't know, dear," answered Kay. "Iron and steel melt into powderat the least impact of the rays. They are so powerful that there waseven a leakage through the rubber and anelektron container. Even thecraolite socket was partly fused, and that is supposed to be animpossibility. And there was a hole in the ground seven feet deepwhere the very mineral water in the earth had been dissolved. Butagainst organic substances the W-ray is powerless.

  "Next year, dear--next year we'll have solved our problem, and thenwe'll free the world of this menace, this nightmare. Ruth--don't let'stalk about that now. I love you!"

  They kissed. The Earth Giants faded out of their consciousness evenwhile Ruth held that ominous ticket in her hand.

  * * * * *

  Kay said nothing to Cliff about it, but Cliff knew. Perhaps he had puthis fate to the test with Ruth and learned the truth from her. Ruthmade no reference to the matter when she saw Kay. But between the twomen, friends for years, a coolness was inexorably developing.

  They had gone to work on the new machine. They were hopeful. When theywere working, they forgot their rivalry.

  "You see, Kay," said Cliff, "we mustn't forget that the Millikan rayshave been bombarding Earth since Earth became a planet, out of thedepths of space. It is their very nature not to injure organic life,otherwise all life on Earth would have been destroyed long ago. Now,our process is only an adaptation of these cosmic rays. We haven'tchanged their nature."

  "No," agreed Kay. "What we want is a death-ray strong enough toobliterate these monsters, without simply disintegrating them andcreating new fragments to bud into the complete being. Why do yousuppose they are so tenacious of life, Cliff?"

  "They represent primeval man, life itself, striving to organizeitself, and nothing is more tenacious than the life principle,"answered Cliff.

  Meanwhile the fatal weeks were passing. A few days after the ticketshad been distributed, a Government notice was broadcasted andpublished, ordaining that, in view of former dissensions, nosubstitutes for the condemned persons would be permitted. Rich orpoor, each of the victims chosen by lot must meet his fate.

  * * * * *

  And the monsters were growing active. There had been an extension oftheir activities. Tongues had been creeping up the rivers that raninto the Amazon. Suddenly a dense mass of the devils had appeared onthe north coast, near Georgetown. They had overleaped the Amazon; theywere overrunning British Guiana, eating up everything on their way.Georgetown was abandoned; the monsters were in complete control.

  "They will be cut off from the main herd," the optimistic reportsannounced. "We shall deal with the main herd first. This year thesacrifice will have to be made, but it will be the last. Scientistshave at last hit upon an infallible toxin which will utterly destroythis menace within a few months."

  Nobody believed that story, for everything had been tried and failed.In their laboratory Cliff and Kay were working frantically. And nowthe coldness that had developed between them was affecting theircollaboration too. Cliff was keeping something back from Kay.

  * * * * *

  Kay knew it. Cliff had made some discovery that he was not sharingwith his partner. Often Kay, entering the laboratory, would find Clifffurtively attempting to conceal some operation that he was in themidst of. Kay said nothing, but a brooding anger began to fill hisheart. So Cliff was trying to get all the credit for the result oftheir years of work together!

  And always, in the back of his mind, there was a vision of the littleGovernment ticket in Ruth's hand, with the numbers in staring blacktype. They had burned into his brain. He could never forget them.Often at night, after a hard day's work, he would suddenly awaken outof a hideous nightmare, in which he saw Ruth taken away by the agentsof the Government, to be thrown as a sacrifice to the monsters.

  And Cliff was hiding something! That made the situation unbearable.

  The coolness between the t
wo men was rapidly changing into openanimosity. And then one day, quite by chance, in Cliff's absence, Kaycame upon evidence of Cliff's activities.

  Cliff was no longer experimenting with the W-ray! He was using a newtype of ray altogether, the next series, the psenium electronemanation discovered only a few years before, which had the peculiarproperty of non-alternation, even when the psenium electron changedits orbit around the central nucleus of the psenium atom.

  Instead of discontinuity, the psenium electron had been found to emitradiation steadily, and this had upset the classic theories of matterfor the ninth time in the past fifteen years.

  * * * * *

  And Kay's wrath broke loose in a storm of reproaches when Cliff cameinto the laboratory.

  "You've been deliberately keeping me in the dark!" he shouted. "You'rea nice sort of partner to have! Here's where we split up thecombination, Hynes!"

  "I've been thinking that for a long time," sneered Cliff. "The factis, Kay, you're a little too elementary in your ideas to suit me. It'sdue to you that I kept hammering away on the wrong tack for years. Thesooner we part, the better."

  "No time like now," said Kay. "Keep your laboratory. You put most ofthe money into it, anyway. I'll build me another--where I can workwithout being hampered by a partner who's out for himself all thetime. Good luck to you in your researches, and I hope you'll get allthe credit when you find a way of annihilating the Earth Giants."

  And he stormed out of the laboratory, jumped into his plane, andwinged his way southward toward his apartment in New York.

  * * * * *

  Crowds in the streets of every town on the way. In villages andhamlets, swarming like ants, and hurrying along the highways! Kay, whoflew one of the slow, old-fashioned planes, averaging little more thana hundred miles an hour, winged his way methodically overhead, toomuch absorbed in his anger against Cliff to pay much attention to thisphenomenon at first. But gradually it was borne in upon him thatsomething was wrong.

  He flew lower, and now he was passing over a substantial town, and hecould hear the shouts of anger that came up to him. The whole town wasin a ferment, gathered in the town square.

  Suddenly the reason came home to Kay. He saw the adjoining airport,and dropped like a plummet, hovering down until his wheels touched theground. Without waiting to taxi into one of the public hangars, heleaped out and ran through the deserted grounds into the square.

  Groans, yells, shrieks of derision rent the air. The whole crowd hadgone maniacal. And it was as Kay had thought. Upon a white backgroundhigh up on the town ball building, the numbers of the local boys andgirls who had been picked for sacrifices were being shown.

  * * * * *

  Eight boys and fifteen girls, already on their way into the wastes ofSouth America, to meet a hideous death.

  "They took my Sally," screamed a wizened woman, the tears raining downher checks. "Kidnapped her at the street corner after dark. I didn'tknow why she hadn't come home last night. God, my Sally, my littlegirl, gone--gone--"

  "People, you must be patient," boomed the Government announcer. "ThePresident feels with you in your affliction. But by next year a meanswill have been devised of destroying these monsters. Your childrenwill have their sacrifice recorded in the Hall of Fame. They are truesoldiers who--"

  "To hell with the Government!" roared a man. "Stop that damn talkmachine! Break her, fellows! Then we'll hang President Bogart from thetop of the Capitol!"

  Yells answered him, and the crowd surged forward toward the building.

  "Stand back!" shrieked the announcer. "It's death to set foot on thestep. We are now electrified. Last warning!"

  The first ranks of the mob recoiled as a charge of electricity at avoltage just short of that required to take life coursed through theirbodies. Shrieks of agony rang out. Files of writhing forms covered theground.

  * * * * *

  Kay rushed to the automatic clerk at the window beside the metalsteps, taking care to avoid contact with them. Within six feet, thetemperature of his body brought the thermostatic control into action;the window slid upward and the dummy appeared. He turned the dial toAlbany.

  "I want New York Division, Sub-station F, Loyalist Registration," hecalled. "Give me Z numbers of the lottery, please."

  "No numbers will be given out until Horometer 13," the dummy boomed.

  "But I tell you I must know immediately!" Kay pleaded frantically.

  "Stand away, please!"

  "I've got to know, I tell you!"

  "We are now electrified. Last warning!"

  "Listen to me. My name's Kay Bevan. I--"

  A mighty buffet in the chest hurled Kay ten feet backward upon theground. He rose, came within the electric zone, felt his arms twistedin a giant's grasp, staggered back again and sat down gasping. Thewindow went down noiselessly, the dummy swung back into place. Kay gotupon his feet again, choking with impotent rage.

  All about him men and women were milling in a frantic mob. He brokethrough them, went back to where his plane was standing. A minutelater he was driving madly toward the district airport in New Yorkwithin three blocks of Ruth's apartment.

  * * * * *

  He dropped into a vacant landing place, checked hastily, and rushedinto the elevator. Once in the upper street, he bounded to the middleplatform, and, not satisfied to let it convey him at eight miles anhour, strode on through the indignant throng until he reached hisdestination. Hurling the crowds right and left he gained the exit,and a half-minute later was on the upper level of the apartment block.

  He pushed past the janitor and raced along the corridor to Ruth'sapartment. She would be in if all was well; she worked for theBroadcast Association, correcting the proofs that came from thedistrict headquarters by pneumatic tube. He stopped outside the door.The little dial of white light showed him that the apartment wasunoccupied.

  As he stood there in a daze, hoping against hope, he saw a threadhanging from the crevice between door and frame. He pulled at it, anddrew out a tiny strip of scandium, the new compressible metal that hadbecome fashionable for engagement rings. Plastic, all but invisible,it could be compressed to the thickness of a sheet of paper: it wasthe token of secret lovers, and Kay had given Ruth a ring of it.

  It was the signal, the dreaded signal that Ruth had been on thelottery list--the only signal that she had been able to convey, sincestringent precautions were taken to prevent the victims becoming knownuntil all possibility of rescue was removed.

  * * * * *

  No chance of rescuing her! From a hundred airports the greatGovernment airships had long since sailed into the skies, carryingthose selected by the wheel at Washington for sacrifice to the EarthGiants. Only one chance remained. If Cliff had discovered the secretthat had so long eluded them, surely he would reveal it to him now!

  Their quarrel was forgotten. Kay only knew that the woman he loved waseven then speeding southward to be thrown to the maw of the vilemonsters that held the world in terror. Surely Cliff would bend everyeffort to save her!

  Only a few hours had passed since Kay had stormed out of thelaboratory in the Adirondacks in a rage when he was back on theirlittle private landing field. He leaped from the plane and ran up thetrail beside the lake between the trees. The cabin was dark; and, whenKay reached the laboratory he found it dark too.

  "Cliff! Cliff!" he shouted.

  No answer came, and with a sinking heart he snapped the button at thedoor. It failed to throw the expected flood of light through theinterior. With shaking hand Kay pulled the little electron torch fromhis pocket, and its bright beam showed that the door was padlocked. Hemoved round to the window. The glass was unbreakable, but the ray fromthe torch showed that the interior of the laboratory had beendismantled, and the great top was gone.

  In those few hours Cliff, for reasons best known to himself, hadr
emoved the top, Kay's one hope of saving Ruth. And he was gone.

  * * * * *

  In that moment Kay went insane. He raved and cursed, calling downvengeance upon Cliff's head. Cliff's very motive was incredible. Thathe had deliberately removed the top in order that Ruth should die wasnot, of course, conceivable. But in that first outburst of fury Kaydid not consider that.

  Presently Kay's madness burned itself out. There was still one thingthat he could do. His plane, slow though it was, would carry him tothe pampas. He could get fresh fuel at numerous bootleg petrolstations, even though the regulations against intersectional flightwere rigid. With luck he could reach the pampas, perhaps before thesluggish monsters had fallen upon their prey. It was said that thevictims sometimes waited for days!

  Something was rubbing against his leg, pricking it through hisanklets. Kay looked down. A lady porcupine, with tiny new quills, wasshowing recognition, even affection, if such a spiny beast could besaid to possess that quality.

  Somehow the presence of the beast restored Kay's mind to normal.

  "Well, he's left us both in the lurch, Susie," he said. "Good luck toyou, beastie, and may you find a secure hiding place until your quillshave grown."

  * * * * *

  Drowning men catch at straws. Kay snatched out his watch, and theilluminated dial showed that it was already two quintets pasthorometer 13. He darted back to the cabin. The door was unfastened,and his torch showed him that, though Cliff had evidently departed,and taken his things, the interior was much as it had been. When Kaypicked up the telephotophone, the oblong dial flashed out. Theinstrument was in working order.

  He turned the crank, and swiftly a succession of scenes flashed overthe dial. On this little patch of glassite, Kay was actually makingthe spatial journey to Albany, each minutest movement of the crankrepresenting a distance covered. The building of the New York Divisionappeared, and its appearance signified that Kay was telephonicallyconnected. But there was no automatic voice attachment, an expensethat Kay and Cliff had decided would be unjustified. He had to relyupon the old-fashioned telephone, such as was still widely in use inrural districts. He took up the receiver.

  "Sub-Station F, Loyalist Registration, please," he called.

  "Speaking," said a girl's voice presently.

  "I want the Z numbers. All from Z5 to ZA," said Kay.

  And thus, in the dark hut, he listened to the doom pronounced, milesaway, by a more or less indifferent operator. When the fatal numberwas read out, he thanked her and hung up. He released the crank, whichmoved back to its position, putting out the light on the dial.

  * * * * *

  For a moment or two he stood there motionless, in a sort of daze,though actually he was gathering all his reserves of resolution forthe task confronting him. Simply to find Ruth among the hundredthousand victims, and die with her. A task stupendous in itself, andyet Kay had no doubt that he would succeed, that he would be holdingher in his arms when the tide of hell flowed over them.

  He knew the manner of that death. The irresistible onset of the giantmasses of protoplasm, the extrusion of temporary arms, or feelers,that would grasp them, drag them into the heart of the yieldingsubstance, and slowly smother them to death while the life was drainedfrom their bodies. It had been said the death was painless, but thatwas Government propaganda. But he would be holding Ruth in his arms.He'd find her: he had no doubt of that at all.

  And, strangely enough, now that Kay knew the worst, now that not theslightest doubt remained, he was conscious of an elevation of spirits,a sort of mad recklessness that was perfectly indefinable.

  * * * * *

  Kay turned his torch into a corner of the kitchen. Yes, there was thething subconsciousness had prompted him to seek. A long-shafted, heavywoodsman's ax, a formidable weapon at close quarters. Because it isthe instinct of _homo Americanus_ to die with a weapon in his hands,rather than let himself be butchered helplessly, Kay snatched it up.He ran back to his plane. The gas tank was nearly empty, but there waspetrol in the ice house beside the lake.

  Kay wheeled the machine up to it, and filled up with gas and oil. Allready now! He leaped in, pressed the starter, soared vertically,helicopter wings fluttering like a soaring hawk's. Up to the passengerair lane at nine thousand: higher to twelve, the track of theinternational and supply ships; higher still, to the fourteen thousandceiling of the antiquated machine. He banked, turned southward.

  It was freezing cold up there, and Kay had no flying suit on him,but, between the passenger lane and the lane of the heliospheres, atthirty thousand, there was no air police. And he could afford to takeno chances. The Government police would be on the lookout for a scoresuch desperate men as he, bent on a similar mission. He drove theplane toward the Atlantic till a red glow began to diffuse itselfbeneath him, an area of conflagration covering square miles ofterritory.

  Swooping lower, Kay could hear the sound of detonations, the roar ofold-fashioned guns, while through the pall of lurid smoke came thelong, violet flashes of atomic guns, cleaving lanes of devastation.New York was burning.

  The frenzied populace had broken into revolt, seized the guns storedin the arsenals, and attacked the great Bronx fortress that stood likea mighty sentinel to protect the port.

  A swarm of airships came into view, swirling in savage fight. Kayzoomed. It was not his battle.

  * * * * *

  Now New York lay behind him, and he was winging southward over theAtlantic. All night he flew. At dawn he came down in a coast hamletfor bootleg petrol and oil.

  "You come from New York?" asked the Georgian. "Hear there's war brokeout up there."

  "My war's down in Brazil," muttered Kay.

  "Say, if them Giants comes up here yuh know what us folks is going todo? We're going to set the hounds on 'em. Yes, sirree, we've got apack of bloodhounds, raised for jest that purpose. I guess that'ssomething them wisecrackers at Washington ain't thought of. They tooktwo little fellers from Hopetown, but they won't take nobody fromhere."

  Kay fuelled up and resumed his flight southward.

  After that it was a nightmare. The sun rose and set, alternating withthe staring moon and stars. Kay crossed the Caribbean, sighted theSouth American coast, swept southward over the jungles of Brazil. Hedrank, but no food passed his lips. He had become a mechanism, set foron special purpose--self-immolation.

  * * * * *

  It was in a wide savannah among the jungles that he first caught sightof the monsters. At first he thought it was the rising dawn mist; thenhe began to distinguish a certain horrible resemblance to human forms,and swooped down, banking round and round the opening in the jungleuntil he could see clearly.

  There were perhaps a score of them, an advance guard that had pushedforward from one of the main divisions. Men? Anthropoids, rather, fortheir sex was indistinguishable! Human forms ranging from a few feetto a hundred, composed apparently of a grayish jelly, propellingthemselves clumsily on two feet, but floating rather than walking.Translucent, semi-transparent. Most horrible of all, these shadowy,spheroid creatures exhibited here and there buds of various sizes,which were taking on the similitude of fresh forms. And among themwere the young, the buds that had fallen from the parent stems, fullyformed humans of perhaps five or six feet, bouncing with a horribleplayfulness among their sires.

  As Kay soared some three hundred feet overhead, a young tapir cameleaping out of the jungle and ran, apparently unconscious of theirpresence, right toward the monsters. Suddenly it stopped, and Kay sawthat it was already encircled by coils of protoplasm, resembling arms,which had shot forth from the bodies of the devils.

  * * * * *

  Swiftly, despite its struggles and bleatings, the tapir was drawn intothe substance of the monsters, which seemed to fuse together and forma solid wall of protoplasm in all respec
ts like the agglutination ofbacteria under certain conditions.

  Then the beast vanished in the wall, whose agitated churnings alonegave proof of its existence.

  For perhaps ten minutes longer Kay remained hovering above theclearing. Then the bodies divided, resuming their separate shapes. Andthe white bones of the tapir lay in a huddled mass in the open.

  Kay went mad. Deliberately he set down his plane, and, hatchet inhand, advanced upon the sluggish monsters. Shouting wildly, he leapedinto their midst.

  The fight that followed was like a nightmare fight. He lopped off theslow tentacles that sought to envelop him, he slashed the devils intolong ribbons of writhing jelly, slashed until the substance bluntedthe ax; wiped it clean and leaped into their midst again, hewing untilhe could no longer raise his arm. Then he drew back and surveyed thescene before him.

  It was dreadful enough to drive the last remnants of sanity from hisbrain. For every piece that he had cut from the monsters, everyprotoplasmic ribbon was reorganizing before his eyes into thesemblance of a new creature. Where there had been a score, there werenow five hundred!

  Kay ran back to his plane, leaped in, and soared southward. His facewas a grotesque mask of madness, and his cries rang out through theether.

  * * * * *

  The victims were no longer chained to stakes. The Federation, whichalways acted with complete secrecy, had gone one better. It hadengaged electrical engineers, kept them housed in secret places,transported them to Golgotha; and there a vast electrified field hadbeen established, an open space whose boundaries were marked out bypillars of electron steel.

  Between these pillars ran lines of electric force. To attempt to passthem meant--not death, for dead boys and girls were spurned by thedevils--but a violent shock that hurled one backward.

  On this great plain the hundred thousand victims sat huddled in theopen. Food they had none, for no purpose was to be served bymitigating their last agonies. No shelter either, for the sight ofbuildings might delay the final phase. But high above the doomed therefloated the flag of the Federation, on a lofty pole, a touch of ironicsentimentality that had commended itself to some mind at Washington.

  Over a square mile of territory, ringed with jungle the victims lay.The majority of them ringed this terrain; that is to say, attemptingto escape, they had been hurled back by the electrical charge, and,having no strength or will remaining, they had dropped where they hadbeen hurled, and lay in apathetic resignation.

  There had been screams and cries for mercy, and piteous scenes whenthe Government airships had deposited them there and flown away, butnow an intense silence had descended upon the doomed. Resigned totheir fate, they sat or lay in little silent groups, all eyes turnedtoward the gloomy jungle.

  * * * * *

  And everywhere within this jungle a wraith-like mist was forming atthis dawn hour. From a thousand miles around, the devils weremustering for their prey, agglutinating, in order that the meal of onemight become the meal of all.

  Wisps of protoplasmic fog were stealing out through the trees,changing shape every instant, but always advancing: now presenting theappearance of an aligned regiment of huge, shadowy men, now nothingbut a wall of semi-solid vapor. And still, with eyeballs straining intheir sockets, the victims watched.

  Suddenly all were seized with the same spasm of mad terror. Again theyhurled themselves against the electrified lines, and again they werehurled back, masses of boys and girls tumbling against one another,and screaming in one wail that, could it have been heard inWashington, would have driven all insane. Again and again, till theyfell back, panting and helpless. And solidly the wall of devils wascreeping up from every side.

  Ruth Deane, one of the few who had themselves in control, lay somedistance back from the electrified field. From the moment when she wassurprised in her apartment by the Government representatives, she hadknown that there was no hope of escape.

  * * * * *

  She had slipped the ring off her finger, snapped the plastic metal,and attached it to a thread torn from her dress. She had managed toinsert it in the door, hoping that Kay would find it. It would serveas a last message of love to him.

  Every removal of a selected victim was in the nature of a kidnapping.At dead of night her apartment had been opened. She had been orderedto dress. Nothing could be written, no arrangements made. She wasalready considered as one dead.

  She had been hurried out of the upper entrance to the monorail, whichconveyed her in a special car to the landing station. A few minuteslater she had been on her way to join the camp of other victims, ahundred miles away. Within two hours she was on her way southward.

  Stunned by the tragedy, none of the victims had made much of anoutcry. They had been given water by the airship police. No food forboys and girls already dead. Days and nights had passed, and now shewas here, faint from exhaustion, and wondering at the despair shown bythose others. What difference would it make in half an hour? Besides,that Government pamphlet had insisted that this death was painless!

  But an immense longing to see Kay once more came over her. There hadbeen a time when she thought she loved Cliff; then Kay had come intoher life, and she had known that other affair was folly. She hadnever told Kay of the bitter scene between Cliff and herself, how hehad raved against Kay and sworn to win her in the end.

  Cliff had calmed down and apologized, and Ruth had never seen himagain. She wished he had not taken it like that. But above all shewanted to see Kay, just to say good-by.

  And she tried to send out her whole heart to him in an unspokenmessage of love that would surely somehow convey itself to him.

  * * * * *

  The wall of devils was creeping up on every side, slowly,lethargically. The monsters took their time, because they knew theywere invincible. The sobs and shrieks had died away. Collected into amass almost as rigid as that of the Earth Giants, the victims waited,palsied as a rabbit that awaits the approach of the serpent.

  A humming overhead. An airplane shooting down from the sky. Rescue?No. Only a solitary pilot, armed with a woodsman's ax.

  Kay drifted down, touched ground, leaped to his feet. Chance hadbrought him within five hundred yards of where Ruth was standing. ButRuth had known who that lone flyer must be. She broke through thethrong; she rushed to meet him. Her arms were around him.

  "Kay, darling Kay!"

  "Ruth, dearest!"

  "I knew you'd come."

  "I've come to die beside you!"

  * * * * *

  It was perhaps odd that it did not enter the head of either as apossibility that Kay should simply place Ruth in the plane and flyaway with here to safety. Had the thought occurred to Kay, he mighthave been tempted. But such black treachery was somethinginconceivable by either. So long as the Federation remained, so longas man moved in an organized society, he was bound to his fellows, tofight, suffer, and die with them.

  "Stand by me, Ruth. We're going down fighting."

  They moved back toward the throng, which, momentarily stirred to hopeby Kay's appearance, had fallen into the former apathy of despair. Andnow the monsters were beginning to enter the electrified zone at onepoint. As they passed the line of posts, the high tension current madetheir bodies luminous, but it had no appreciable effect upon them.They moved on, inevitably.

  A score or so of semi-human forms, agglutinated into a mass, and yetindividually discernible. They bore down slowly upon the crowd ofvictims, who pressed backward as they advanced. On the other sides,though they almost encircled the field of death, the monsters weremaking no maneuvers to entrap their prey. Their sluggish minds wereincapable of conceiving anything of the kind. But for the electrifiedzone, the great majority of the victims could have effected theirescape. The monsters were simply pressing forward to their meal; theydid not interpret its capture in terms of strategy at all.

 
* * * * *

  A new frenzy of horror seized the crowd. They fled, struggling backuntil the foremost in flight reached the other side of Golgotha, to berepulsed by the electrified zone there. They fell in tumbled heaps.Appalling shrieks rang through the air.

  Another line of the monsters was seeping forward, converging towardthe first. As the two lines met, they coalesced into a wall ofprotoplasm, a thousand feet in length by a hundred high. A wall out ofwhich leered phantasmal faces, like those in a frieze.

  Kay stood alone, his arm around Ruth. To follow the flying mob wouldbut prolong the agony. He raised the ax. He looked into the girl'seyes. She understood, and nodded.

  One last embrace, one kiss, and Kay placed her behind him. He sprangforward, shouting, and plunged into the very heart of the wall.

  And Ruth, watching with eyes dilated with horror, saw it yield with asucking sound, and saw Kay disappear within it.

  * * * * *

  She saw the hideous mass fold itself upon him, and a hundred extrudedtentacles wave in the air as they blindly grappled for him. And thenKay had broken through, and was hewing madly with great sweeps of theax that slashed great streamers of the amorphous tissue from the wallof protoplasm.

  It recoiled and then folded once more, and Kay's mighty sweeps wereslashing phantom limbs from phantom bodies; and lopping off tentaclesthat curled and coiled, and put forth caricatures of hands andfingers, and then, uniting with other slashed off tentacles, began tomould themselves into the likeness of dwarf monsters. Kay's strugglewas like that of a man fighting a fog, for again and again he brokethrough the wall, and always it reunited.

  And behind it another wall of protoplasm was pressing forward, and onanother side a wall was drifting up. As Kay stopped, panting, andmomentarily free, Ruth saw that they were almost encircled.

  She saw the nature of that fight. Inevitably that wall would closeabout them; and, though the bones of last year's victims had beengathered up and carried away by the Federation, she guessed what wouldoccur.

  She ran to Kay and dragged him back through the closing gap. It metbehind them, and again they stood face to face with the devils. Onlythis time, instead of a wall of protoplasm, it was a veritablemountain that confronted them, and there could be no more breakingthrough.

  Kay thought afterward that the one touch of absolute horror was thatthe reforming monsters, the young ones growing visibly before hiseyes, had the gamboling instinct of young lambs or other creatures.They were much more lively than the parent creatures.

  * * * * *

  By this time perhaps a third of the space within the electrified lineshad been occupied by the devils. The wall was slowly and sluggishlyadvancing, and a fresh infiltration was drifting in on another side.As the victims were pressed closer and closer together in theirflight, half of them seemed to go insane. They raced to and fro,laughing and screaming, flinging their arms aloft in extravagantgestures. One young fellow, rushing across the ground, hurled himselflike a bolt from a catapult into the heart of the grisly mass, whichopened and received him.

  There was a struggle, a convulsion; then the mass moved on.

  Kay wiped his ax. He stood beside Ruth, gathering strength and breathto fight again. What else was there to do?

  Suddenly a humming sound came to his ears. Still some little distancefrom the monsters, he glanced back. The victims were shouting, staringupward. Over the tops of the jungle trees Kay saw a second airplaneflying toward them, a larger one than the plane which he had flown.

  It opened its helicopter wings and drifted downward. Kay saw a singlepilot, and, in the baggage compartment something that at first he didnot recognize. Then he recognized both this object and the aviator.

  "It's Cliff," he whispered hoarsely. "He's brought the top!"

  * * * * *

  The crowd was milling about Cliff as he stepped out of the plane. Kaybroke through their midst, shouting to them to clear a space, that itwas their chance, their only chance. They heard him and obeyed. AndCliff and Kay clasped hands, and there was Ruth beside them.

  The two men carried the top out of the baggage compartment and set itup.

  "Thank God I came in time," Cliff hissed. "How long have we got, Kay?"

  "Five minutes, I think," Kay answered, glancing at the oncoming wall."They're slow. Will it work, Cliff? God, when I found you'd gone lastnight--"

  Cliff did not answer. Ignoring Kay's offer of assistance, he fittedthe top tightly into its socket of craolite, much heavier than theformer one. Beneath this, three heavy craolite legs formed a sort oftripod.

  "I looked forward to this possibility, Kay," said Cliff, as headjusted the top and turned the clamps that held it in position."Sorry I had to deceive you, but you we're so set on the cosmic rays,and I knew the psenium emanations wouldn't appeal to you. You wouldn'thave believed. I had a hunch Ruth would draw one of those numbers...._How long?_"

  The swaying masses of gray jelly were very near them. Cliff workedfeverishly at the top.

  "Let me help. Cliff!"

  "No! I'm through! Stand back!" shouted Cliff.

  * * * * *

  Even then--he regretted it afterward, and knew that he would regret itto his dying day--even then the thought flashed through Kay's mindthat Cliff wanted all the glory. Behind him the milling, screamingcrowd was huddling, as if for protection. Slowly a wisp-like tentacleprotruded from the advancing wall. Kay swung his ax and lopped it fromthe phantom body. But the wall was almost upon them, and from theother side it was advancing rapidly.

  "I'm ready! Stand back!" Cliff turned upon Kay, his face white, hisvoice hoarse. "I've one request to make, Kay. Keep everybody back,including you and Ruth. Nobody is to come within twenty-five yards ofthis machine!"

  "That shall be done," said Kay, a little bitterness in his tone.

  "Ruth, I think I'm going to save you all." Cliff looked into thegirl's face for a moment. "Please stand back twenty-five yards," herepeated.

  Kay took Ruth by the arm and drew her back. The crowd moved back,their pressure moving back the vast multitudes behind them. The vastmob was almost packed into the quarter of the Golgotha; there wasscarcely room to move.

  Kay saw Cliff press the lever.

  * * * * *

  Slowly the giant top began to whirl. Faster ... faster.... Now it wasrevolving so fast that it had become totally invisible. But Cliff wasalmost surrounded by the wall of jelly. Only his back could be seen,and then space was narrowing fast.

  Kay gripped Ruth's arm tightly. He held his breath. The crowd, of whomonly a small part knew what was taking place, was screaming withterror as the mass of jelly on the other side pressed them inexorablybackward. And Cliff had almost vanished. Would the machine work? Wasit possible that the psenium emanations would succeed where theMillikan rays, the W-ray had failed?

  Then of a sudden the air grew dark as night. Kay began to sneeze. Hegasped for air. He was choking. He could see nothing, and he strainedRuth to him convulsively, while the terrified multitudes behind himset up a last wail of despair.

  He could see nothing, and he stood with the ax ready for the onset ofthe monsters, more terrible now, in their invisibility, than before.Then of a sudden there sounded subterranean rumblings. The groundseemed to open almost under Kay's feet.

  He leaped back, dragging Ruth with him. Slowly the dust was settling,the darkness lessening. A faint, luminous glow overhead revealed thesun. Kay was aware that Cliff had swung the top, so that the pseniumrays were being brought to bear upon the second mass of the monsterson the other side.

  The sun vanished in appalling blackness. Again the dust-choked air wasalmost unbreathable. The shrieks of the crowd died away in wheezinggasps; and then a wilder clamor began.

  "The earthquake! The earthquake!" a girl was shrilling. "God help usall!"

  Kay stood still, clutching Ruth tightl
y in his arms. He dared notstir, for all the world seemed to be dissolving into chaos.

  * * * * *

  Slowly the dust began to settle again. Perhaps five minutes passedbefore the sunbeams began to struggle through. A cloud of grey duststill obscured everything. But the wall of protoplasm was gone!

  Cliff's voice came moaning out of the murk, calling Kay's name.

  Kay moved forward cautiously, still holding Ruth. He seemed to beskirting the edge of a vast crater. At the edge of it he found thetop, revolving slowly. And Cliff's voice came from beside the top.

  "Kay, we've won. Don't look at me. Don't let Ruth see me! Look down!"

  Kay looked down into the bottomless pit, extending clear across theplain to the distant jungle. An enormous canyon cloven in the earth,filled with the slowly settling cloud of dust.

  "They're there, Kay. Don't look this way!"

  But Kay looked--and could see nothing except a pile of debris, fromthe bottom of which Cliff's voice issued.

  "Cliff, you're not hurt?"

  "A--a little. You must listen while I tell you how to clean up themonsters. It's the psenium emanation. It has the same effect when ourmethod is applied to it. It disintegrates everything inorganic--notorganic.

  "I thought, if I couldn't get them, I'd crumble the earth away--burythem. They're underneath the debris, Kay, a mile deep, buried, beneaththe impalpable powder that represented the inorganic salts andminerals of the earth. They'll never get out of that. Protoplasm needsoxygen. They'll trouble us no more.

  "You must take the top, Kay. Use our old method. You'll find itsapplication to the psenium emanation written in a book fastenedbeneath the hood. Wipe out the rest of them. If any more come, you'llknow how to deal with them."

  "Cliff, you're not badly hurt?" Kay asked again.

  "Don't look, I tell you! Keep Ruth away!"

  * * * * *

  But the dust was settling fast, and suddenly Ruth uttered a scream offear.

  And a strangled cry broke from Kay's throat as he looked down at whathad been Cliff Hynes.

  The man seemed to have become resolved into the same sort ofprotoplasm as the Earth Giants. He lay, a little heap, incrediblysmall, incredibly distorted. Flesh without bones, shapeless lumps offlesh where arms and legs and body frame should have been.

  Cliff's voice came faintly. "You remember the leakage through therubber and analektron container, Kay. The W-rays even fused thecraolite socket. The psenium rays are stronger. They destroy evenbone. They're fatal to the man who operates the machine, unless hefollows the directions. I've written them out for you, but I had--notime--to apply them."

  His voice broke off. Then, "Good luck to you and--Ruth, Kay," hewhispered, absent inaudibly. "Don't let--her--look at me."

  Kay led Ruth gently away. "Did you hear that?" she whispered, sobbing."He died to save us Kay."

  * * * * *

  It was like a return from the grave for the amazed boys and girlswho--since the onset of the monsters had destroyed the electriclines--poured out of the plain of Golgotha to life and freedom.

  Many of them had gone mad, a few had died of fright, but the restwould come back to normal, and the world was saved.

  Hunger was their greatest problem, for, despite Kay's hurried flightto the nearest occupied post, it was difficult to convince theFederation officials that the devils were really gone, buried beneatha mile of crumbled earth. And Kay had to be back to mop up other,smaller bands that had spread through the forests.

  It was six months before the last of the monsters had beenobliterated, and then Kay, now one of the highest officials in theFederation's service, was granted a lunarian's leave of absencepending his taking command of an Antarctic expedition for the purposeof destroying the remaining monsters in their lair.

  He took this opportunity to be married to Ruth, in the church in hisnative town, which was _en fete_ for the occasion.

  "Thinking of Cliff?" Kay asked his bride, as she settled in his planepreparatory to their starting for the honeymoon in the Adirondacks. "Ithink he would be happy if he knew. He saved the world, dear; he gavehis best. And that was all he wanted."

  * * * * *

  [Advertisement: ]