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

  The Pirate Planet

  BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL

  _By Charles W. Diffin_

  Like rats in a cage, the planes of the 91st Squadronwere darting and whirling.]

  [Sidenote: A strange light blinks on Venus, and over old Earth hoversa mysterious visitant--dread harbinger of interplanetary war.]

  CHAPTER I

  Lieutenant McGuire threw open his coat with its winged insignia of theair force and leaned back in his chair to read more comfortably thenewspaper article.

  He glanced at Captain Blake across the table. The captain was deep ina game of solitaire, but he looked up at McGuire's audible chuckle.

  "Gay old girl!" said Lieutenant McGuire and smoothed the paper acrosshis knees. "She's getting flirtatious."

  The captain swore softly as he gathered up his cards. "Notinterested," he announced; "too hot to-night. Keep her away."

  "Oh, she's far enough away," McGuire responded; "about seventy millionmiles. Don't get excited."

  "What are you talking about?" The captain shuffled his cardsirritably.

  "Venus. She's winking at us, the old reprobate. One of thesestar-gazers up on Mount Lawson saw the flashes a week or so ago. Ifyou'll cut out your solitaire and listen, I'll read you something toimprove your mind." He ignored the other's disrespectful remark andheld the paper closer to see the paragraphs.

  "Is Venus Signalling?" inquired the caption which Lieutenant McGuireread. "Professor Sykes of Mt. Lawson Observatory Reports Flashes.

  "The planet Venus, now a brilliant spectacle in the evening sky, isbehaving strangely according to a report from the local observatory onMount Lawson. This sister star, most like Earth of all the planets, isnow at its eastern elongation, showing like a half-moon in the bigtelescopes on Mt. Lawson. Shrouded in impenetrable clouds, its surfacehas never been seen, but something is happening there. Professor Sykesreports seeing a distinct flash of light upon the terminator, ormargin of light. It lasted for several seconds and was not repeated.

  "No explanation of the phenomenon is offered by scientists, asconditions on the planet's surface are unknown. Is there life there?Are the people of Venus trying to communicate? One guess is as good asanother. But it is interesting to recall that our scientists recentlyproposed to send a similar signal from Earth to Mars by firing atremendous flare of magnesium.

  "Venus is now approaching the earth; she comes the nearest of allplanets. Have the Venusians penetrated their cloak of cloud masseswith a visible light? The planet will be watched with increasedinterest as it swings toward us in space, in hope of there being arepetition of the unexplained flash."

  * * * * *

  "There," said Lieutenant McGuire,"--doesn't that elevate your mind?Take it off this infernally hot night? Carry you out through the coolreaches of interplanetary space? If there is anything else you want toknow, just ask me."

  "Yes," Captain Blake agree, "there is. I want to know how the gamecame out back in New York--and you don't know that. Let's go over andask the radio man. He probably has the dope."

  "Good idea," said McGuire; "maybe he has picked up a message fromVenus; we'll make a date." He looked vainly for the brilliant star asthey walked out into the night. There were clouds of fog from thenearby Pacific drifting high overhead. Here and there stars showedmomentarily, then were blotted from sight.

  The operator in the radio room handed the captain a paper with theday's scores from the eastern games. But Lieutenant McGuire, despitehis ready amusement at the idea, found his thoughts clinging to thewords he had read. "Was the planet communicating?" he pictured thegreat globe--another Earth--slipping silently through space, comingnearer and nearer.

  Did they have radio? he wondered. Would they send recognizablesignals--words--or some mathematical sequence to prove their reality?He turned to the radio operator on duty.

  "Have you picked up anything peculiar," he asked, and laughed inwardlyat himself for the asking. "Any new dots and dashes? The scientistssay that Venus is calling. You'll have to be learning a new code."

  The man glanced at him strangely and looked quickly away.

  "No, sir," he said. And added after a pause: "No new dots and dashes."

  "Don't take that stuff too seriously, Mac," the captain remonstrated."The day of miracles is past; we don't want to commit you to thepsychopathic ward. Now here is something real: the Giants won, and Ihad ten dollars on them. How shall we celebrate?"

  * * * * *

  The radio man was listening intently as they started to leave. Hisvoice was hesitating as he stopped them; he seemed reluctant to puthis thoughts into words.

  "Just a minute, sir," he said to Captain Blake.

  "Well?" the captain asked. And again the man waited before he replied.Then--

  "Lieutenant McGuire asked me," he began, "if I had heard any strangedots and dashes. I have not; but ... well, the fact is, sir, that Ihave been getting some mighty queer sounds for the past few nights.They've got me guessing.

  "If you wouldn't mind waiting. Captain; they're about due now--" Helistened again to some signal inaudible to the others, then hooked uptwo extra head-sets for the officers.

  "It's on now," he said. "If you don't mind--"

  McGuire grinned at the captain as they took up the ear-phones. "Powerof suggestion," he whispered, but the smile was erased from his lipsas he listened. For in his ear was sounding a weird and wailing note.

  No dots or dashes, as the operator had said, but the signal wasstrong. It rose and fell and wavered into shrill tremolos, a ghostly,unearthly sound, and it kept on and on in a shrill despairing wail.Abruptly it stopped.

  The captain would have removed the receiver from his ear, but theoperator stopped him. "Listen," he said, "to the answer."

  * * * * *

  There was silence, broken only by an occasional hiss and crackle ofsome far distant mountain storm. Then, faint as a whisper, came ananswering, whistling breath.

  It, too, trembled and quavered. It went up--up--to the limit ofhearing; then slid down the scale to catch and tremble and againascend in endless unvarying ups and downs of sound. It was anotherunbroken, unceasing, but always changing vibration.

  "What in thunder is that?" Captain Blake demanded.

  "Communication of some sort, I should say," McGuire said slowly, andhe caught the operator's eyes upon him in silent agreement.

  "No letters," Blake objected; "no breaks; just that screech." Helistened again. "Darned if it doesn't almost seem to say something,"he admitted.

  "When did you first hear this?" he demanded of the radio man.

  "Night before last, sir. I did not report it. It seemed too--too--"

  "Quite so," said Captain Blake in understanding, "but it is some formof broadcasting on a variable wave; though how a thing like that canmake sense--"

  "They talk back and forth," said the operator; "all night, most.Notice the loud one and the faint one; two stations sending andanswering."

  Captain Blake waved him to silence. "Wait--wait!" he ordered. "It'sgrowing louder!"

  * * * * *

  In the ears of the listening men the noise dropped to a loud grumble; roseto a piercing shriek; wavered and leaped rapidly from note to note. It wasincreasing; rushing upon them with unbearable sound. The sense of somethingapproaching, driving toward them swiftly, was strong upon LieutenantMcGuire. He tore the head-phones from his ears and rushed to the door. Thecaptain was beside him. Whoever--whatever--was sending that mysterioussignal was coming near--but was that nearness a matter of miles or ofthousands of miles?

  They stared at the stormy night sky above. A moon was glowing faintlybehind scudding clouds, and the gray-black of flying shadows formed anopening as they watched, a wind-blown opening like a doorway to theinfinity beyond, where, blocking out the stars, was a something thatbrought a breath-catching shout from the watching men.

  Some five thousand feet
up in the night was a gleaming ship. Therewere rows of portholes that shone twinkling against the blacksky--portholes in multiple rows on the side. The craft wasinconceivably huge. Formless and dim of outline in the darkness, itsvast bulk was unmistakable.

  And as they watched with staring, incredulous eyes, it seemed to takealarm as if it sensed the parting of its concealing cloud blanket. Itshot with dizzy speed and the roar of a mighty meteor straight up intothe night. The gleam of its twinkling lights merged to a distant starthat dwindled, shrank and vanished in the heights.

  The men were wordless and open-mouthed. They stared at each other indisbelief of what their eyes had registered.

  "A liner!" gasped Captain Blake. "A--a--liner! Mac, there is no suchthing."

  * * * * *

  McGuire pointed where the real cause of their visitor's departureappeared. A plane with engine wide open came tearing down through theclouds. It swung in a great spiral down over the field and dropped awhite flare as it straightened away; then returned for the landing. Ittaxied at reckless speed toward the hangars and stopped a shortdistance from the men. The pilot threw himself out of the cockpit andraced drunkenly toward them.

  "Did you see it?" he shouted, his voice a cracked scream. "Did you seeit?"

  "We saw it," said Captain Blake; "yes, we saw it. Big as--" He soughtvainly for a proper comparison, then repeated his former words: "Bigas an ocean liner!"

  The pilot nodded; he was breathing heavily.

  "Any markings?" asked his superior. "Anything to identify it?"

  "Yes, there were markings, but I don't know what they mean. There wasa circle painted on her bow and marks like clouds around it, but Ididn't have time to see much. I came out of a cloud, and there thething was. I was flying at five thousand, and they hung there deadahead. I couldn't believe it; it was monstrous; tremendous. Then theysighted me, I guess, and they up-ended that ship in mid-air and shotstraight up till they were out of sight."

  It was the captain's turn to nod mutely.

  "There's your miracle," said Lieutenant McGuire softly.

  "Miracle is right," agreed Captain Blake; "nothing less! But it is nomiracle of ours, and I am betting it doesn't mean any good to us. Someother country has got the jump on us."

  To the pilot he ordered: "Say nothing of this--not a word--get that?Let me have a written report: full details, but concise as possible."

  He went back to the radio room, and the operator there received thesame instructions.

  "What are you going to do?" the lieutenant questioned.

  Captain Blake was reaching for a head-set. "Listen in," he saidbriefly; "try to link up that impossible ship with those messages,then report at once to the colonel and whoever he calls in. I'll wantyou along, Mac, to swear I am sober."

  * * * * *

  He had a head-set adjusted, and McGuire took up the other. Again theroom was still, and again from the far reaches of space the dark nightsent to them its quavering call.

  The weird shrillness cried less loudly now, and the men listened instrained silence to the go and come of that variable shriek. Musicalat times as it leaped from one clear note to another, again it wouldmerge into discordant blendings of half-tones that sent shivers ofnervous reaction up the listeners' spines.

  "Listen," said McGuire abruptly. "Check me on this. There are two ofthem, one loud and one faint--right?"

  "Right," said Captain Blake.

  "Now notice the time intervals--there! The faint one stops, and thebig boy cuts in immediately. No waiting; he answers quickly. He doesit every time."

  "Well?" the captain asked.

  "Listen when he stops and see how long before the faint one answers.Call the loud one the ship and the faint one the station.... There!The ship is through!"

  There was pause; some seconds elapsed before the answer that whisperedso faintly in their ears came out of the night.

  "You are right, sir," the operator said in corroboration of McGuire'sremark. "There is that wait every time."

  "The ship answers at once," said McGuire; "the station only after await."

  "Meaning--?" inquired the captain.

  "Meaning, as I take it, that there is time required for the message togo from the ship to the station and for them to reply."

  "An appreciable time like that," Captain Blake exclaimed, "--withradio! Why, a few seconds, even, would carry it around the world ascore of times!"

  Lieutenant McGuire hesitated a moment. "It happens every time," hereminded the captain: "it is no coincidence. And if that other stationis out in space--another ship perhaps, relaying the messages to yetothers between here and--Venus, let us say...."

  * * * * *

  He left the thought unfinished. Captain Blake was staring at him asone who beholds a fellow-man suddenly insane. But the look in his eyeschanged slowly, and his lips that had been opened in remonstrance camegradually in a firm, straight line.

  "Crazy!" he said, but it was apparent that he was speaking as much tohimself as to McGuire. "Plumb, raving crazy!... Yet that ship _did_ gostraight up out of sight--an acceleration in the upper air beyondanything we know. It might be--" And he, too, stopped at the actualvoicing of the wild surmise. He shook his head sharply as if to rid itof intruding, unwelcome thoughts.

  "Forget that!" he told McGuire, and repeated it in a less commandingtone. "Forget it, Mac: we've got to render a report to sane men, youand I. What we know will be hard enough for them to believe withoutany wild guesses.

  "That new craft is real. It has got it all over us for size and speedand potential offensive action. Who made it? Who mans it? Red Russia?Japan? That's what the brass hats will be wondering; that's what theywill want to find out.

  "Not a word!" he repeated to the radio man. "You will keep mum onthis."

  He took McGuire with him as he left to seek out his colonel. But itwas a disturbed and shaken man, instead of the cool, methodicalCaptain Blake of ordinary days, who went in search of his commandingofficer. And he clung to McGuire for corroboration of his impossiblestory.

  * * * * *

  There was a group of officers to whom Blake made his full report.Colonel Boynton had heard but little when he halted his subordinatecurtly and reached for a phone. And his words over that instrumentbrought a quick conference of officers and a quiet man whom McGuiredid not recognize. The "brass hats," as Blake had foreseen, were avidfor details.

  The pilot of the incoming plane was there, too, and the radio man.Their stories were told in a disconcerting silence, broken only bysome officer's abrupt and skeptical question on one point and another.

  "Now, for heaven's sake, shut up about Venus," McGuire had been told.But he did not need Captain Blake's warning to hold himself strictlyto what he had seen and let the others draw their own conclusions.

  Lieutenant McGuire was the last one to speak. There was silence in theoffice of Colonel Boynton as he finished, a silence that almost echoedfrom the grim walls. And the faces of the men who gathered there werecarefully masked from any expression that might betray their thoughts.

  It was the quiet man in civilian attire who spoke first. He sat besideanother whose insignia proclaimed him of general's rank, but headdressed himself to Colonel Boynton.

  "I am very glad," he said quietly, "very glad. Colonel, that myunofficial visit came at just this time. I should like to ask some fewquestions."

  Colonel Boynton shifted the responsibility with a gesture almost ofrelief. "It is in your hands. Mr. Secretary," he said. "You andGeneral Clinton have dropped in opportunely. There is something herethat will tax all our minds."

  The man in civilian clothes nodded assent. He turned to Captain Blake.

  "Captain," he said, "you saw this at first hand. You have told us whatyou saw. I should like greatly to know what you think. Will you giveus your opinion, your impressions?"

  * * * * *


  The captain arose smartly, but his words came with less ease.

  "My opinion," he stated, "will be of little value, but it is basedupon these facts. I have seen to-night, sir, a new type of aircraft,with speed, climb and ceiling beyond anything we are capable of. Ican only regard it as a menace. It may or may not have been armed, butit had the size to permit the armament of a cruiser; it had power tocarry that weight. It hung stationary in the air, so it is independentof wing-lift, yet it turned and shot upward like a feather in a gale.That spells maneuverability.

  "That combination, sir, can mean only that we are out-flown,out-maneuvered and out-fought in the air. It means that the planes inour hangars are obsolete, our armament so much old iron.

  "The menace is potential at present. Whether it is an actual threat ornot is another matter. Who mans that ship--what country's insignia shecarries--is something on which I can have no opinion. The power isthere: who wields it I wish we knew."

  The questioner nodded at the conclusion of Blake's words, and heexchanged quiet, grave glances with the general beside him. Then--

  "I think we all would wish to know that, Captain Blake," he observed.And to the colonel: "You may be able to answer that soon. It would bemy idea that this craft should be--ah--drawn out, if we can do it. Wewould not attack it, of course, until its mission is proved definitelyunfriendly, but you will resist any offensive from them.

  "And now," he added, "let us thank these officers for their ablereports and excuse them. We have much to discuss...."

  * * * * *

  Captain Blake took McGuire's arm as they went out into the night. Andhe drew him away where they walked for silent minutes by themselves.The eyes of Lieutenant McGuire roamed upward to the scudding cloudsand the glimpse of far, lonely stars; he stumbled occasionally as hewalked. But for Captain Blake there was thought only of mattersnearby.

  "The old fox!" he exclaimed. "Didn't he 'sic us on' neatly? If we mixit with that stranger there will be no censure from the Secretary ofWar."

  "I assumed that was who it was," said McGuire. "Well, they havesomething to think about, that bunch; something to study over....Perhaps more than they know.

  "And that's their job," he concluded after a silence. "I'm going tobed; but I would like a leave of absence to-morrow if that's O. K."

  "Sure," said Captain Blake, "though I should think you would like tostick around. Perhaps we will see something. What's on your mind,Mac?"

  "A little drive to the top of Mount Lawson," said Lieutenant McGuire."I want to talk to a bird named Sykes."

  CHAPTER II

  Lieutenant McGuire, U. S. A., was not given as a usual thing to vainconjectures, nor did his imagination carry him beyond the practicalboundaries of accepted facts. Yet his mind, as he drove for hoursthrough the orange-scented hills of California, reverted time andagain to one persistent thought. And it was with him still, even whenhe was consciously concentrating on the hairpin turns of MountLawson's narrow road.

  There was a picture there, printed indelibly in his mind--a picture ofa monstrous craft, a liner of the air, that swung its glowing lightsin a swift arc and, like a projectile from some huge gun, shot up andup and still up until it vanished in a jet-black sky. Its altitudewhen it passed from sight he could not even guess, but the sense ofever-increasing speed, of power that mocked at gravitation's punyforce, had struck deep into his mind. And McGuire saw plainly thismystery ship going on and on far into the empty night where man hadnever been.

  No lagging in that swift flight that he had seen; an acceleration thatthrew the ship faster and yet faster, regardless of the thin air andthe lessened buoyancy in an ocean of atmosphere that held man-mademachines so close to Earth. That constant acceleration, hour afterhour, day after day--the speed would be almost unlimited;inconceivable!

  He stopped his car where the mountain road held straight for a hundredfeet, and he looked out over the coastal plain spread like a toy worldfar below.

  "Now, how about it?" he asked himself. "Blake thinks I am making afool of myself. Perhaps I am. I wonder. It's a long time since I fellfor any fairy stories. But this thing has got me. A sort of hunch, Iguess."

  * * * * *

  The sun was shining now from a vault of clear blue. It was lighting aworld of reality, of houses where people lived their commonplacelives, tiny houses squared off in blocks a mile below. There was smokehere and there from factories; it spread in a haze, and it meantboilers and engines and sound practical machinery of a practical worldto the watching man.

  What had all this to do with Venus? he asked himself. This was theworld he knew. It was real; space was impenetrable; there were no menor beings of any sort that could travel through space. Blake wasright: he was on a fool's errand. They couldn't tell him anything uphere at the observatory; they would laugh at him as he deserved....

  Wondering vaguely if there was a place to turn around, he looked aheadand then up; his eyes passed from the gash of roadway on themountainside to the deep blue beyond. And within the man some driving,insistent, mental force etched strongly before his eyes that pictureand its problem unanswered. There was the ship--he saw it inmemory--and it went up and still up; and he knew as surely as if hehad guided the craft that the meteor-like flight could be endless.

  Lieutenant McGuire could not reason it out--such power was beyond hisimagining--but suddenly he dared to believe, and he knew it was true.

  "Earthbound!" he said in contempt of his own human kind, and he lookedagain at the map spread below. "Ants! Mites! That's what weare--swarming across the surface of the globe. And we think we're sodamn clever if we lift ourselves up a few miles from the surface!

  "Guess I'll see Sykes," he muttered aloud. "He and his kind at leastdare to look out into space; take their eyes off the world; beimpractical!"

  He swung the car slowly around the curve ahead, eased noiselessly intosecond gear and went on with the climb.

  * * * * *

  There were domed observatories where he stopped: rounded structuresthat gleamed silvery in the air; and offices, laboratories: it was aplace of busy men. And Professor Sykes, he found, was busy. But hespared a few minutes to answer courteously the questions of this slimyoung fellow in the khaki uniform of the air service.

  "What can I do for you?" asked Professor Sykes.

  "No dreamer, this man," thought McGuire as he looked at the short,stocky figure of the scientist. Clear eyes glanced sharply from undershaggy brows; there were papers in his hand scrawled over with strangemathematical symbols.

  "You can answer some fool questions," said Lieutenant McGuireabruptly, "if you don't mind."

  The scientist smiled broadly. "We're used to that," he told the youngofficer; "you can't think of any worse ones than those we have heard.Have a chair."

  McGuire drew a clipping from his pocket--it was the newspaper accounthe had read--and he handed it to Professor Sykes.

  "I came to see you about this," he began.

  The lips of Professor Sykes lost their genial curve; they straightenedto a hard line. "Nothing for publication," he said curtly. "As usualthey enlarged upon the report and made assumptions and inferences notwarranted by facts."

  "But you did see that flash?"

  "By visual observation I saw a bright area formed on theterminator--yes! We have no photographic corroboration."

  "I am wondering what it meant."

  "That is your privilege--and mine," said the scientist coldly.

  "But it said there," McGuire persisted, "that it might have been asignal of some sort."

  "_I_ did not say so: that is an inference only. I have told you,Lieutenant"--he glanced at the card in his hand--"--LieutenantMcGuire--all that I know. We deal in facts up here, and we leave thebrilliant theorizing to the journalists."

  * * * * *

  The young officer felt distinctly disconcerted. He did not knowexactly what he had expected from
this man--what corroboration of hiswild surmises--but he was getting nowhere, he admitted. And heresented the cold aloofness of the scientist before him.

  "I am not trying to pin you down on anything," he said, and his tonecarried a hint of the nervous strain that had been his. "I am tryingto learn something."

  "Just what?" the other inquired.

  "Could that flash have been a signal?"

  "You may think so if you wish: I have told you all that I know. Andnow," he added, and rose from his chair, "I must ask to be excused; Ihave work to do."

  McGuire came slowly to his feet. He had learned nothing; perhaps therewas nothing to be learned. A fool's errand! Blake was right. But theinner urge for some definite knowledge drove him on. His eyes wereserious and his face drawn to a scowl of earnestness as he turned oncemore to the waiting man.

  "Professor Sykes," he demanded, "just one more question. Could thathave been the flash of a--a rocket? Like the proposed experiments inGermany. Could it have meant in any way the launching of aprojectile--a ship--to travel Earthward through space?"

  * * * * *

  Professor Sykes knew what it was to be harassed by the curious mob, toavoid traps set by ingenious reporters, but he knew, too, when he wasmeeting with honest bewilderment and a longing for knowledge. Hisfists were placed firmly on the hips of his stocky figure as he stoodlooking at the persistent questioner, and his eyes passed from theintent face to the snug khaki coat and the spread wings thatproclaimed the wearer's work. A ship out of space--a projectile--thisyoung man had said.

  "Lieutenant," he suggested quietly--and again the smile had returnedto his lips as he spoke--"sit down. I'm not as busy as I pretend tobe. Now tell me: what in the devil have you got in your mind?"

  And McGuire told him. "Like some of your dope," he said, "this is notfor publication. But I have not been instructed to hush it up, and Iknow you will keep it to yourself."

  He told the clear-eyed, listening man of the previous night's events.Of the radio's weird call and the mystery ship.

  "Hallucination," suggested the scientist. "You saw the stars veryclearly, and they suggested a ship."

  "Tell that to Jim Burgess," said McGuire: "he was the pilot of thatplane." And the scientist nodded as if the answer were what heexpected.

  He asked again about the ship's flight. And he, too, bore down heavilyupon the matter of acceleration in the thin upper air. He rose to laya friendly hand on McGuire's shoulder.

  "We can't know what it means," he said, "but we can form our owntheories, you and I--and anything is possible.

  "It is getting late," he added, "and you have had a long drive. Comeover and eat; spend the night here. Perhaps you would like to have alook at our equipment--see Venus for yourself. I will be observing herthrough the sixty-inch refractor to-night. Would you care to?"

  "Would I?" McGuire demanded with enthusiasm. "Say, that will begreat!"

  * * * * *

  The sun was dropping toward the horizon when the two men again cameout into the cool mountain air.

  "Just time for a quick look around," suggested Professor Sykes, "ifyou are interested."

  He took the lieutenant first to an enormous dome that bulged highabove the ground, and admitted him to the dark interior. They climbeda stairway and came out into a room that held a skeleton frame ofsteel. "This is the big boy," said Professor Sykes, "the onehundred-inch reflector."

  There were other workers there, one a man standing upon a raisedplatform beside the steel frame, who arranged big holders forphotographic plates. The slotted ceiling opened as McGuire watched,and the whole structure swung slowly around. It was still, and thetowering steel frame began to swing noiselessly when a man at a desktouched various controls. McGuire looked about him in bewilderment.

  "Quite a shop," he admitted; "but where is the telescope?"

  Professor Sykes pointed to the towering latticework of steel. "Rightthere," he said. "Like everyone else, you were expecting to see a bigtube."

  He explained in simple words the operation of the great instrumentthat brought in light rays from sources millions of light years away.He pointed out where the big mirror was placed--the one hundred-inchreflector--and he traced for the wondering man the pathway of lightthat finally converged upon a sensitized plate to catch and recordwhat no eye had ever seen.

  He checked the younger man's flow of questions and turned him backtoward the stairs. "We will leave them to their work," he said; "theywill be gathering light that has been traveling millions of years onits ways. But you and I have something a great deal nearer to study."

  * * * * *

  Another building held the big refractor, and it was a matter of only afew seconds and some cryptic instructions from Sykes until theeye-piece showed the image of the brilliant planet.

  "The moon!" McGuire exclaimed in disappointed tones when the professormotioned him to see for himself. His eyes saw a familiar half-circleof light.

  "Venus," the professor informed him. "It has phases like the moon. Theplanet is approaching; the sun's light strikes it from the side." ButMcGuire hardly heard. He was gazing with all his faculties centeredupon that distant world, so near to him now.

  "Venus," he whispered half aloud. Then to the professor: "It's allhazy. There are no markings--"

  "Clouds," said the other. "The goddess is veiled; Venus is blanketedin clouds. What lies underneath we may never know, but we do know thatof all the planets this is most like the earth; most probably is aninhabited world. Its size, its density, your weight if you werethere--and the temperature under the sun's rays about double that ofours. Still, the cloud envelope would shield it."

  McGuire was fascinated, and his thoughts raced wildly in speculationof what might be transpiring before his eyes. People, living in thattropical world; living and going through their daily routine underthat cloud-filled sky where the sun was never seen. The margin oflight that made the clear shape of a half-moon marked their daylightand dark; there was one small dot of light forming just beyond thatmargin. It penetrated the dark side. And it grew, as he watched, to abright patch.

  "What is that?" he inquired abstractedly--his thoughts were stillfilled with those beings of his imagination. "There is a light thatextends into the dark part. It is spreading--"

  * * * * *

  He found himself thrust roughly aside as Professor Sykes applied amore understanding eye to the instrument.

  The professor whirled abruptly to his assistant. "Phone ProfessorGiles," he said sharply; "he is working on the reflector. Tell him toget a photograph of Venus at once; the cloud envelope is broken." Hereturned hurriedly to his observations. One hand sketched on a waitingpad.

  "Markings!" he said exultantly. "If it would only hold!... There, itis closing ... gone...."

  His hand was quiet now upon the paper, but where he had marked was acrude sketch of what might have been an island. It was "L" shaped;sharply bent.

  "Whew!" breathed Professor Sykes and looked up for a moment. "Now thatwas interesting."

  "You saw through?" asked McGuire eagerly. "Glimpsed the surface?--anisland?"

  The scientist's face relaxed. "Don't jump to conclusions," he told theaviator: "we are not ready to make a geography of Venus quite yet. Butwe shall know that mark if we ever see it again. I hardly think theyhad time to get a picture.

  * * * * *

  "And now there is only a matter of three hours for observation: I mustwatch every minute. Stay here if you wish. But," he added, "don't letyour imagination run wild. Some eruption, perhaps, this we haveseen--an ignition of gasses in the upper air--who knows? But don'tconnect this with your mysterious ship. If the ship is a menace, if itmeans war, that is your field of action, not mine. And you will befighting with someone on Earth. It must be that some country hasgained a big lead in aeronautics. Now I must get to work."

  "I'll not wait," said
McGuire. "I will start for the field; get thereby daylight, if I can find my way down that road in the dark."

  "Thanks a lot." He paused a moment before concluding slowly: "And inspite of what you say, Professor, I believe that we will havesomething to get together on again in this matter."

  The scientist, he saw, had turned again to his instrument. McGuirepicked his way carefully along the narrow path that led where he hadparked his car. "Good scout, this Sykes!" he was thinking, and hestopped to look overhead in the quick-gathering dark at thatlaboratory of the heavens, where Sykes and his kind delved and probed,measured and weighed, and gathered painstakingly the messages fromsuns beyond counting, from universe out there in space that addedtheir bit of enlightenment to the great story of the mystery ofcreation.

  He was humbly aware of his own deep ignorance as he backed his car,slipped it into second, and began the long drive down the tortuousgrade. He would have liked to talk more with Sykes. But he had nothought as he wound round the curves how soon that wish was to begratified.

  * * * * *

  Part way down the mountainside he again checked his car where he hadstopped on the upward climb and reasoned with himself about hiserrand. Once more he looked out over the level ground below, a vastglowing expanse of electric lights now, that stretched to the oceanbeyond. He was suddenly unthrilled by this man-made illumination, andhe got out of his car to stare again at the blackness above and itsmyriad of stars that gathered and multiplied as he watched.

  One brighter than the rest winked suddenly out. There was aconstellation of twinkling lights that clustered nearby, and they toovanished. The eyes of the watcher strained themselves to see moreclearly a dim-lit outline. There were no lights: it was a blackshape, lost in the blackness of the mountain sky, that was blockingout the stars. But it was a shape, and from near the horizon the palegleams of the rising moon picked it out in softest of outline; a vagueghost of a curve that reflected a silvery contour to the watching eyesbelow.

  There had been a wider space in the road that McGuire had passed; hebacked carefully till he could swing his car and turn it to head oncemore at desperate speed toward the mountain top. And it was less thanan hour since he had left when he was racing back along the narrowfootpath to slam open the door where Professor Sykes looked up inamazement at his abrupt return.

  The aviator's voice was hoarse with excitement as he shouted: "It'shere--the ship! It's here! Where's your phone?--I must call the field!It's right overhead--descending slowly--no lights, but I saw it--I sawit!"

  He was working with trembling fingers at the phone where Sykes hadpointed. "Long distance!" he shouted. He gave a number to theoperator. "Make it quick," he implored. "Quick!"

  CHAPTER III

  Back at Maricopa Flying Field the daily routine had been disturbed.There were conferences of officers, instructions from Colonel Boynton,and a curiosity-provoking lack of explanations. Only with CaptainBlake did the colonel indulge in any discussion.

  "We'll keep this under our hats," he said, "and out of the newspapersas long as we can. You can imagine what the yellow journals would dowith a scarehead like that. Why, they would have us all wiped off themap and the country devastated by imaginary fleets in the first threeparagraphs."

  Blake regarded his superior gravely. "I feel somewhat the same way,myself. Colonel," he admitted. "When I think what this can mean--someother country so far ahead of us in air force that we are back in thedark ages--well, it doesn't look any too good to me if they meantrouble."

  "We will meet it when it comes," said Colonel Boynton. "But, betweenourselves, I am in the same state of mind.

  "The whole occurrence is so damn mysterious. Washington hasn't awhisper of information of any such construction; the Secretaryadmitted that last night. It's a surprise, a complete surprise, toeveryone.

  "But, Blake, you get that new ship ready as quickly as you can.Prepare for an altitude test the same as we planned, but get into theair the first minute possible. She ought to show a better ceiling thananything we have here, and you may have to fly high to say 'Goodmorning' to that liner you saw. Put all the mechanics on it that canwork to advantage. I think they have it pretty well along now."

  "Engine's tested and installed, sir," was Blake's instant report. "Ithink I can take it up this afternoon."

  * * * * *

  He left immediately to hurry to the hangar where a new plane stoodglistening in pristine freshness, and where hurrying mechanicsgrumbled under their breaths at the sudden rush for a ship that wasexpected to take the air a week later.

  An altitude test under full load! Well, what of it? they demanded oneof another; wouldn't another day do as well as this one? And theyworked as they growled, worked with swift sureness and skill, and thefinal instruments took their place in the ship that she might rollfrom the hangar complete under that day's sun.

  Her supercharger was tested--the adjunct to a powerful engine thatwould feed the hungry cylinders with heavy air up in the heights wherethe air is thin; there were oxygen flasks to keep life in the pilot inthe same thin air. And the hot southern sun made ludicrous thatafternoon the bulky, heavily-wrapped figure of Captain Blake as hesat at the controls and listened approvingly to the roaring engine.

  He waved good-by and smiled understandingly as he met the eyes ofColonel Boynton; then pulled on his helmet, settled himself in hisseat and took off in a thunderous blast of sound to begin his longascent.

  * * * * *

  He had long since cracked open the valve of his oxygen flask when theclimb was ended, and his goggles were frosted in the arctic cold sothat it was only with difficulty he could read his instrument board.

  "That's the top," he thought in that mind so light and so curiouslynot his own. He throttled the engine and went into a long spiral thatwas to end within a rod of where he had started on the brown sun-bakedfield. The last rays of the sun were slanting over distant mountainsas he climbed stiffly from the machine.

  "Better than fifty thousand," exulted Colonel Boynton. "Of course yourbarograph will have to be calibrated and verified, but it looks like arecord, Blake--and you had a full load.

  "Ready to go up and give merry hell to that other ship if she showsup?" he asked. But Captain Blake shook a dubious head.

  "Fifty thousand is just a start for that bird," he said. "You didn'tsee them shoot out of sight, Colonel. Lord knows when they quit_their_ climb--or where."

  "Well, we'll just have a squadron ready in any event," the colonelassured him. "We will make him show his stuff or take a beating--ifthat is what he wants."

  They were in the colonel's office. "You had better go and get warmedup," he told the flyer: "then come back here for instructions." ButBlake was more anxious for information than for other comforts.

  "I'm all right," he said: "just tired a bit. Let me stretch out here,Colonel, and give me the dope on what you expect of our visitor andwhat we will do."

  * * * * *

  He settled back comfortably in a big chair. The office was warm, andBlake knew now he had been doing a day's work.

  "We will just take it as it comes," Colonel Boynton explained. "Ican't for the life of me figure why the craft was spying around here.What are they looking for? We haven't any big secrets the whole worlddoesn't know.

  "Of course he may not return. But if he does I want you to go up andgive him the once over. I can trust you to note every significantdetail.

  "You saw no wings. If it is a dirigible, let's know something of theirpower and how they can throw themselves up into the air the way youdescribed. Watch for anything that may serve to identify it and itsprobable place of manufacture--any peculiarity of marking or design orconstruction that may give us a lead. Then return and report."

  Blake nodded his understanding of what was wanted, but his mind was onfurther contingencies: he wanted definite instructions.

  "And," he asked; "if they a
ttack--what then? Is their fire to bereturned?"

  "If they make one single false move," said Colonel Boynton savagely,"give them everything you've got. And the 91st Squadron will be offthe ground to support you at the first sign of trouble. We don't wantto start anything, nor appear to do so. But, by the gods, Blake, thisfellow means trouble eventually as sure as you're a flyer, and wewon't wait for him to ask for it twice."

  * * * * *

  They sat in silence, while the field outside became shrouded in night.And they speculated, as best they could from the few facts they had,as to what this might mean to the world, to their country, tothemselves. It was an hour before Blake was aware of the fact that hewas hungry.

  He rose to leave, but paused while Colonel Boynton answered the phone.The first startled exclamation held him rigid while he tried to piecetogether the officer's curt responses and guess at what was beingtold.

  "Colonel Boynton speaking.... McGuire?... Yes, Lieutenant.... OverMount Lawson?... Yes--yes, the same ship, I've no doubt."

  His voice was even and cool in contrast to the excited tones thatcarried faintly to Blake standing by.

  "Quite right!" he said shortly. "You will remain where you are: act asobserver: hold this line open and keep me informed. Captain Blake willleave immediately for observation. A squadron will follow. Let me knowpromptly what you see."

  He turned abruptly to the waiting man.

  "It is back!" he said. "We're in luck! Over the observatories at MountLawson; descending, so Lieutenant McGuire says. Take the same ship youhad up to-day. Look them over--get up close--good luck!" He turnedagain to the phone.

  There were planes rolling from their hangars before Blake could reachhis own ship. Their engines were thundering: men were rushing acrossthe field, pulling on leather helmets and coats as they ran--all thiswhile he warmed up his engine.

  A mechanic thrust in a package of sandwiches and a thermos of coffeewhile he waited. And Captain Blake grinned cheerfully and gulped thelast of his food as he waved to the mechanics to pull out the wheelblocks. He opened the throttle and shot out into the dark.

  He climbed and circled the field, saw the waving motion of lights inred and green that marked the take-off of the planes of the 91st, andhe straightened out on a course that in less than two hours wouldbring him over the heights of Mount Lawson and the mystery thatawaited him there. And he fingered the trigger grip that was part ofthe stick and nodded within his dark cockpit at the rattle of amachine gun that merged its staccato notes with the engine's roar.

  But he felt, as he thought of that monster shape, as some primordialman might have felt, setting forth with a stone in his hand to wagewar on a saurian beast.

  CHAPTER IV

  If Colonel Boynton could have stood with one of his lieutenants andProfessor Sykes on a mountain top, he would have found, perhaps, theanswer to his question. He had wondered in a puzzled fashion why thegreat ship had shown its mysterious presence over the flying field. Hehad questioned whether it was indeed the field that had been theobject of their attention or whether in the cloudy murk they hadmerely wandered past. Could he have seen with the eyes of LieutenantMcGuire the descent of the great shape over Mount Lawson, he wouldhave known beyond doubt that here was the magnet that drew the eyes ofwhatever crew was manning the big craft.

  It was dark where the two men stood. Others had come running at theircall, but their forms, too, were lost in the shadows of the toweringpines. The light from an open door struck across an open space beyondwhich McGuire and Professor Sykes stood alone, stood silent andspellbound, their heads craned back at a neck-wrenching angle. Theywere oblivious to all discomforts; their eyes and their whole mindswere on the unbelievable thing in the sky.

  Beyond the fact that no lights were showing along the hull, there wasno effort at concealment. The moon was up now to illumine the scene,and it showed plainly the gleaming cylinder with its long body andblunt, shining ends, dropping, slowly, inexorably down.

  "Like a dirigible," said McGuire huskily. "But the size, man--thesize! And its shape is not right; it isn't streamlined correctly; theair--" He stopped his half-unconscious analysis abruptly. "The air!"What had this craft to do with the air? A thin layer of gas that hungclose to the earth--the skin on an apple! And beyond--space! There wasthe ethereal ocean in which this great shape swam!

  The reality of the big ship, the very substance of it, made the spaceship idea the harder to grasp. Lieutenant McGuire found that it waseasier to see an imaginary craft taking off into space than toconceive of this monstrous shape, many hundreds of tons in weight,being thrown through vast emptiness. Yet he knew; he knew!

  And his mind was a chaos of grim threats and forebodings as he lookedat the unbelievable reality and tried to picture what manner of menwere watching, peering, from those rows of ports.

  * * * * *

  At last it was motionless. It hung soundless and silent except for asoft roar, a scant thousand feet in the air. And its huge bulk wasdwarfing the giant pines, the rounded buildings; it threw the men'sfamiliar surroundings into a new and smaller scale.

  He had many times flown over these mountains, and Lieutenant McGuirehad seen the silvery domes of the observatories shining among thetrees. Like fortresses for aerial defense, he had thought, and thememory returned to him now. What did these new-comers think of them?Had they, too, found them suggestive of forts on the frontier of aworld, defenses against invasion from out there? Or did they know themfor what they were? Did they wish only to learn the extent of ourknowledge, our culture? Were they friendly, perhaps?--half-timid andfearful of what they might find?

  A star moved in the sky, a pin-point of light that was plain in itsmessage to the aviator. It was Blake, flying high, volplaning to makecontact and learn from the air what this stranger might mean. Thelight of his plane slanted down in an easy descent; the flyer wasgliding in on a long aerial toboggan slide. His motor was throttled;there was only the whistle of torn air on the monoplane's wings.McGuire was with the captain in his mind, and like him he was waitingfor whatever the stranger might do.

  Other lights were clustered where the one plane had been. The men ofthe 91st had their orders, and the fingers of the watching, silent mangripped an imaginary stick while he wished with his whole heart thathe was up in the air. To be with Blake or the others! His thoughtswhipped back to the mysterious stranger: the great shape was inmotion: it rose sharply a thousand feet in the air.

  * * * * *

  The approaching plane showed clear in the moon's light. It swung andbanked, and the vibrant song of its engine came down to the men asBlake swept in a great circle about the big ship. He was looking itover, but he began his inspection at a distance, and the orbit of hisplane made a tightening spiral as he edged for a closer look. He wasstill swinging in the monotonous round when the ship made its firstforward move.

  It leaped in the air: it swept faster and faster. And it was movingwith terrific speed as it crashed silently through the path of thetiny plane. And Blake, as he leaned forward on the stick to throw hisplane downward in a power dive, could have had a vision, not of a shipof the air, but only of a shining projectile as the great monstershrieked overhead.

  McGuire trembled for the safety of those wings as he saw Blake pullhis little ship out of the dive and shoot upward to a straight climb.

  But--"That's dodging them!" he exulted: "that's flying! I wonder, didthey mean to wipe him out or were they only scared off?"

  His question was answered as, out of the night, a whistling shriekproclaimed the passage of the meteor ship that drove unmistakably atthe lone plane. And again the pilot with superb skill waited until thelast moment and threw himself out of the path of the oncoming mass,though his own plane was tossed and whirled like an autumn leaf in thevortex that the enemy created. Not a second was lost as Blake openedhis throttle and forced his plane into a steep climb.

  "Atta-boy!" said McGuire, as
if words could span across to the man inthe plane. "Altitude, Blake--get altitude!"

  The meteor had turned in a tremendous circle; so swift its motion thatit made an actual line of light as the moon marked its course. And thecurved line straightened abruptly to a flashing mark that shotstraight toward the struggling plane.

  * * * * *

  This time another sound came down to the listening ears of the twomen. The plane tore head on to meet the onslaught, to swing at thelast instant in a frantic leap that ended as before in the maelstromof air back of the ship. But the muffled roar was changed, puncturedwith a machine-gun's familiar rattle, and the stabbing flashes fromBlake's ship before he threw it out of the other's path were a song ofjoy to the tense nerves of the men down below.

  This deadly rush could only be construed as an attack, and Blake wasfighting back. The very speed of the great projectile must hold it toits course; the faster it went the more difficult to swerve it from aline. This and much more was flashing sharply in McGuire's mind.But--Blake!--alone against this huge antagonist!... It was comingback. Another rush like a star through space....

  And McGuire shouted aloud in a frenzy of emotion as a cluster oflights came falling from on high. No lone machine gun now that torethe air with this clattering bedlam of shots: the planes of the 91stSquadron were diving from the heights. They came on a steep slantthat seemed marking them for crashing death against the huge cylinderflashing past. And their stabbing needles of machine-gun fire made adrumming tattoo, till the planes, with the swiftness of hawks, sweptaside, formed to groups, tore on down toward the ground and thencurved in great circles of speed to climb back to the theater ofaction.

  * * * * *

  Lieutenant McGuire was rigid and quivering. He should go to the phoneand report to the colonel, but the thought left him as quickly as itcame. He was frozen in place, and his mind could hold only the scenethat was being pictured before him.

  The enemy ship had described its swift curve, and the planes of thedefenders were climbing desperately for advantage. So slowly theymoved as compared with the swiftness of the other!

  But the great ship was slowing; it came on, but its wild speed waschecked. The light of the full moon showed plainly now what McGuirehad seen but dimly before--a great metal beak on the ship, pointed andshining, a ram whose touch must bring annihilation to anything itstruck.

  The squadron of planes made a group in the sky, and Blake's monoplane,too, was with them. The huge enemy was approaching slowly: was itdamaged? McGuire hardly dared hope ... yet that raking fire might wellhave been deadly: it might be that some bullets had torn andpenetrated to the vitals of this ship's machinery and damaged somepart.

  It came back slowly, ominously, toward the circling planes. Then,throwing itself through the air, it leaped not directly toward thembut off to one side.

  * * * * *

  Like a stone on the end of a cord it swung with inconceivable speed ina circle that enclosed the group of planes. Again and again itwhipped around them, while the planes, by comparison, were motionless.Its orbit was flat with the ground: then tilting, more yet, it made alast circle that stood like a hoop in the air. And behind it as itcircled it left a faint trace of vapor. Nebulous!--milky in themoonlight!--but the ship had built a sphere, a great globe of the gas,and within it, like rats in a cage, the planes of the 91st Squadronwere darting and whirling.

  "Gas!" groaned the watching man: "gas! What is it? Why don't theybreak through?"

  The thin clouds of vapor were mingling now and expanding: theyblossomed and mushroomed, and the light of the moon came in paleiridescence from their billowing folds.

  "Break through!" McGuire had prayed--and he stood in voiceless horroras he saw the attempt.

  The mist was touching here and there a plane: they were engulfed, yethe could see them plainly. And he saw with staring, fear-filled eyesthe clumsy tumbling and fluttering of unguided wings as the greateagles of the 91st fell roaring to earth with no conscious mindsguiding their flight.

  The valleys were deep about the mountain, and their shadowed blacknessopened to receive the maimed, stricken things that came fluttering orswooping wildly to that last embrace, where, in the concealingshadows, the deeper shadows of death awaited....

  * * * * *

  There was a room where a telephone waited: McGuire sensed this butdumbly, and the way to that room was long to his stumbling feet. Hewas blinded: his mind would not function: he saw only those flutteringthings, and the moonlight on their wings, and the shadows that tookthem so softly at the last.

  One plane whistled close overhead. McGuire stopped where he stood tofollow it with unbelieving eyes. That one man had lived, escaped thenet--it was inconceivable! The plane returned: it was flying low, andit swerved erratically as it flew. It was a monoplane: a new ship.

  Its motor was silenced: it stalled as he watched, to pancake and crashwhere the towering pines made a cradle of great branches to cushionits fall.

  No thought now of the colonel waiting impatiently for a report; eventhe enemy, there in the sky was forgotten. It was Blake in that ship,and he was alive--or had been--for he had cut his motor. McGuirescreamed out for Professor Sykes, and there were others, too, who camerunning at his call. He tore recklessly through the scrub andundergrowth and gained at last the place where wreckage hung danglingfrom the trees. The fuselage of a plane, scarred and broken, was stillheld in the strong limbs.

  * * * * *

  Captain Blake was in the cockpit, half hanging from the side. He wasmotionless, quiet, and his face shone white and ghastly as theyreleased him and drew him out. But one hand still clung with a griplike death itself to a hose that led from an oxygen tank. McGuirestared in wonder and slowly gathering comprehension.

  "He was fixed for an altitude test," he said dazedly; "this ship wasto be used, and he was to find her ceiling. He saw what the otherswere getting, and he flew himself through on a jet of pure oxygen--"He stopped in utter admiration of the quickness of thought that couldoutwit death in an instant like that.

  They carried the limp body to the light. "No bones broken so far as Ican see," said the voice of Professor Sykes. "Leave him here in theair. He must have got a whiff of their devilish mist in spite of hisoxygen; he was flying mighty awkwardly when he came in here."

  But he was alive!--and Lieutenant McGuire hastened with all speed nowto the room where a telephone was ringing wildly and a colonel of theair force must be told of the annihilation of a crack squadron and ofa threat that menaced all the world.

  * * * * *

  In that far room there were others waiting where Colonel Boynton satwith receiver to his ear. A general's uniform was gleaming in thelight to make more sober by contrast the civilian clothing of thatquiet, clear-eyed man who held the portfolio of the Secretary of War.

  They stared silently at Colonel Boynton, and they saw the blood recedefrom his face, while his cool voice went on unmoved with its replies.

  "... I understand," he said; "a washout, complete except for CaptainBlake; his oxygen saved him.... It attacked with gas, you say?... Andwhy did not our own planes escape?... Its speed!--yes, we'll have toimagine it, but it is unbelievable. One moment--" He turned to thosewho waited for his report.

  "The squadron," he said with forced quiet, though his lips twitched ina bloodless line, "--the 91st--is destroyed. The enemy put them downwith one blow; enveloped them with gas." He recounted the essence ofMcGuire's report, then turned once more to the phone.

  "Hello, Lieutenant--the enemy ship--where is it now?"

  He listened--listened--to a silent receiver: silent save for the soundof a shot--a crashing fall--a loud, panting breath. He heard thebreathing close to the distant instrument; it ended in a choking gasp;the instrument was silent in his ear....

  He signalled violently for the operator: ordered the ring
ing of anyand all phones about the observatory, and listened in vain for a soundor syllable in reply.

  "A plane," he told an orderly, "at once! Phone the commercial flyingfield near the base of Mount Lawson. Have them hold a car ready forme: I shall land there!"

  CHAPTER V

  To Captain Blake alone, of all those persons on the summit of MountLawson, it was given to see and to know and be able to relate whattranspired there and in the air above. For Blake, although he appearedlike one dead, was never unconscious throughout his experience.

  Driving head on toward the ship, he had emptied his drum of cartridgesbefore he threw his plane over and down in a dive that escaped theonrush of the great craft by a scant margin, and that carried him downin company with the men and machines of the squadron that dived fromabove.

  He turned as they turned and climbed as they climbed for the advantagethat altitude might give. And he climbed faster: his ship outdistancedthem in that tearing, scrambling rush for the heights. The squadronwas spiraling upward in close formation with his plane above them whenthe enemy struck.

  He saw that great shape swing around them, terrible in its silentswiftness, and, like the others, he failed to realize at first the netshe was weaving. So thin was the gas and so rapid the circling of theenemy craft, they were captured and cut off inside of the gaseoussphere before the purpose of the maneuver was seen or understood.

  He saw the first faint vapor form above him; swung over for a steepbank that carried him around the inside of the great cage of gas andthat showed him the spiraling planes as the first wisps of vapor sweptpast them.

  He held that bank with his swift machine, while below him a squadronof close-formed fighting craft dissolved before his eyes into unguidedunits. The formations melted: wings touched and locked; the planesfell dizzily or shot off in wild, ungoverned, swerving flight. The airwas misty about him; it was fragrant in his nostrils; the world wasswimming....

  * * * * *

  It was gas, he knew, and with the light-headedness that was upon him,so curiously like that of excessive altitudes, he reachedunconsciously for the oxygen supply. The blast of pure gas in his facerevived him for an instant, and in that instant of clear thinking hisplan was formed. He threw his weight on stick and rudder, correctedthe skid his ship was taking, and, with one hand holding the tube oflife-giving oxygen before his face, he drove straight down in a divetoward the earth.

  There were great weights fastened to his arm, it seemed, when he triedto bring the ship from her fearful dive. He moved only with greatesteffort, and it was force of will alone that compelled his hands to dotheir work. His brain, as he saw the gleaming roundness of observatorybuildings beneath him, was as clear as ever in his life, but hismuscles, his arms and legs, refused to work: even his head; he wasslowly sinking beneath a load of utter fatigue.

  The observatories were behind him; he must swing back; he could notlast long, he knew; each slightest movement was intolerable effort.

  Was this death? he wondered; but his mind was so clear! There were thebuildings, the trees! How thickly they were massed beyond--

  He brought every ounce of will power to bear ... the throttle!--and aslow glide in ... he was losing speed ... the stick--must--come--back!The crashing branches whipped about him, bending, crackling--and theworld went dark....

  * * * * *

  There were stars above him when he awoke, and his back was wrenchedand aching. He tried to move, to call, but found that the paralysingeffect of the gas still held him fast. He was lying on the ground, heknew: a door was open in a building beyond, and the light in the roomshowed him men, a small group of them, standing silent whilesomeone--yes, it was McGuire--shouted into a phone.

  "... The squadron," he was saying. "... Lost! Every plane down anddestroyed.... Blake is living but injured...." And then Blakeremembered. And the tumbling, helpless planes came again before hiseyes while he cursed silently at this freezing grip that would not lethim cover his face with his hands to shut out the sight.

  The figure of a man hurried past him, nor saw the body lying helplessin the cool dark. McGuire was still at the phone. And the enemyship--?

  His mind, filled with a welter of words as he tried to find phrases tocompass his hate for that ship. And then, as if conjured out ofnothing by his thoughts, the great craft itself came in view overheadin all its mighty bulk.

  It settled down swiftly: it was riding on an even keel. And in silenceand darkness it came from above. Blake tried to call out, but no soundcould be formed by his paralyzed throat. Doors opened in silence,swinging down from the belly of the thing to show in the darknesssquare openings through which shot beams of brilliant yellow light.

  There were cages that lowered--great platforms in slings--and theplatforms came softly to rest on the ground. They were moving withlife; living beings clustered upon them thick in the dark. Oh God! foran instant's release from the numbness that held his lips and throatto cry out one word!... The shapes were passing now in the shelter ofdarkness, going toward the room.... He could see McGuire's back turnedtoward the door.

  Man-shapes, tall and thin, distorted humans, each swathed in bulginggarments; horrible staring eyes of glass in the masks about theirheads, and each hand ready with a shining weapon as they stood waitingfor the men within to move.

  * * * * *

  McGuire must have seen them first, though his figure was halfconcealed from Blake where he was lying. But he saw the head turn;knew by the quick twist of the shoulders the man was reaching for agun. One shot echoed in Blake's ears; one bulging figure spun and fellawkwardly to the ground; then the weapons in those clumsy hands hissedsavagely while jets of vapor, half liquid and half gas, shotblindingly into the room. The faces dropped from his sight....

  There had been the clamor of surprised and shouting men: there wassilence now. And the awkward figures in the bloated casings thatprotected their bodies from the gas passed in safety to the room.Blake, bound in the invisible chains of enemy gas, struggled silently,futilely, to pit his will against this grip that held him. To liethere helpless, to see these men slaughtered! He saw one of thecreatures push the body of his fallen comrade out of the way: it wascast aside with an indifferent foot.

  They were coming back: Blake saw the form of McGuire in unmistakablekhaki. He and another man were carried high on the shoulders of someof the invaders. They were going toward the platforms, the slingsbeneath the ship.... They passed close to Blake, and again he wasunnoticed in the dark.

  A clamor came from distant buildings, a babel of howls and shrieks,inhuman, unearthly. There were no phrases or syllables, but to Blakeit was familiar ... somewhere he had heard it ... and then heremembered the radio and the weird wailing note that told ofcommunication. These things were talking in the same discordant din.

  * * * * *

  They were gathering now on the platforms slung under the ship. Awhistling note from somewhere within the great structure and theplatforms went high in the air. They were loaded, he saw, with papersand books and instruments plundered from the observatories. Some madea second trip to take up the loot they had gathered. Then the blackdoorways closed; the huge bulk of the ship floated high above thetrees; it took form, dwindled smaller and smaller, then vanished fromsight in the star-studded sky.

  Blake thought of their unconscious passenger--the slim figure ofLieutenant McGuire. Mac had been a close friend and a good one; hisready smile; his steady eyes that could tear a problem to pieces withtheir analytic scrutiny or gaze far into space to see those visions ofa dreamer!

  "Far into space." Blake repeated the words in his mind. And: "Good-byMac," he said softly; "you've shipped for a long cruise, I'mthinking." He hardly realized he had spoken the words aloud.

  * * * * *

  Lying there in the cold night he felt his strength returning slowly.The pines sang their soothing, whispered me
ssage, and the faint nightnoises served but to intensify the silence of the mountain. It wassome time before the grind of straining gears came faintly in the airto announce the coming of a car up the long grade. And still later heheard it come to a stop some distance beyond. There were footsteps,and voices calling: he heard the voice of Colonel Boynton. And he wasable to call out in reply, even to move his head and turn it to seethe approaching figures in the night.

  Colonel Boynton knelt beside him. "Did they get you, old man?" heasked.

  "Almost," Blake told him. "My oxygen--I was lucky. But the others--".He did not need to complete the sentence. The silent canyons amongthose wooded hills told plainly the story of the lost men.

  "We will fight them with gas masks," said the colonel; "yourexperience has taught us the way."

  "Gas-tight uniforms and our own supplies of oxygen," Blakesupplemented. He told Boynton of the man-things he had seen come fromthe ship, of their baggy suits, their helmets.... And he had seen asmall generator on the back of each helmet. He told him of the small,shining weapons and their powerful jets of gas. Deadly and unescapableat short range, he well knew.

  "They got McGuire," Blake concluded; "carried him off a prisoner. Tookanother man, too."

  For a moment Colonel Boynton's quiet tones lost their even steadiness."We'll get them," he said savagely, and it was plain that it was theinvaders that filled his mind; "we'll go after them, and we'll getthem in spite of their damn gas, and we'll rip their big ship intoribbons--"

  Captain Blake was able to raise a dissenting hand. "We will have to gowhere they are, Colonel, to do that."

  Colonel Boynton stared at him. "Well?" he demanded. "Why not?"

  "We can't go where _they_ went," said Blake simply. "I laughed atMcGuire; told him not to be a fool. But I was the fool--the blind one;we all were, Colonel. That thing came here out of space. It has goneback; it is far beyond our air. I saw it go up out of sight, and Iknow. Those creatures were men, if you like, but no men that weknow--not those shrieking, wailing devils! And we're going to hearmore from them, now that they've found their way here!"

  CHAPTER VI

  A score of bodies where men had died in strangling fumes in theobservatories on Mount Lawson; one of the country's leadingastronomical scientists vanished utterly; the buildings on themountain top ransacked; papers and documents blowing in vagrant winds;tales of a monster ship in the air, incredibly huge, unbelievablyswift--

  There are matters that at times are not allowed to reach the press,but not happenings like these. And the papers of the United Statesblazed out with headlines to tell the world of this latest mystery.

  Then came corroboration from the far corners of the world. The mysteryship had not visited one section only; it had made a survey of thewhole civilized sphere, and the tales of those who had seen it were nolonger laughed to scorn but went on the wires of the great pressagencies to be given to the world. And with that the censorshipimposed by the Department of War broke down, and the tragic story ofthe destruction of the 91st Air Squadron passed into written history.The wild tale of Captain Blake was on every tongue.

  An invasion from space! The idea was difficult to accept. There werescoffers who tried to find something here for their easy wit. Whyshould we be attacked? What had that other world to gain? There was noanswer ready, but the silent lips of the men who had fallen spokeeloquently of the truth. And the world, in wonder and consternation,was forced to believe.

  Were there more to come? How meet them? Was this war--and with whom?What neighboring planet could reasonably be suspected. What hadscience to say?

  The scientists! The scientists! The clamor of the world was beating atthe doors of science and demanding explanations and answers. Andscience answered.

  A conference was arranged in London; the best minds in the realms ofastronomy and physics came together. They were the last to admit thetruth that would not be denied, but admit it they must. And to some ofthe questions they found their answer.

  * * * * *

  It was not Mars, they said, though this in the popular mind was thesource of the trouble. Not Mars, for that planet was far in theheavens. But Venus!--misnamed for the Goddess of Love. It was Venus,and she alone, who by any stretch of the imagination could bethreatening Earth.

  What did it mean? They had no answer. The ship was the only answer tothat. Would there be more?--could we meet them?--defeat them? Andagain the wise men of the world refused to hazard a guess.

  But they told what they knew; that Venus was past her easternelongation, was approaching the earth. She of all the planets thatswung around the sun came nearest to Earth--twenty-six million milesin another few weeks. Then whirling away she would pass to the westernelongation in a month and a half and drive out into space. Venuscircled the sun in a year of 225 days, and in 534 days she would againreach her eastern elongation with reference to the earth, and drawnear us again.

  They were reluctant to express themselves, these men who made nothingof weighing and analyzing stars a million of light years away, but_if_ the popular conception was correct and _if_ we could pass throughthe following weeks without further assault, we could count on a yearand a half before the menace would again return. And in a year and ahalf--well, the physicists would be working--and we might be prepared.

  Captain Blake had made his report, but this, it seemed, was notenough. He was ordered to come to Washington, and, with ColonelBoynton, he flew across the country to tell again his incrediblestory.

  * * * * *

  It was a notable gathering before which he appeared. All the branchesof the service were represented; there were men in the uniform ofadmirals and generals; there were heads of Departments. And theSecretary of War was in charge.

  He told his story, did Blake, before a battery of hostile eyes. Thiswas not a gathering to be stampeded by wild scareheads, nor by popularclamor. They wanted facts, and they wanted them proved. But thegravity with which they regarded the investigation was shown by theirinvitation to the representatives of foreign powers to attend.

  "I have told you all that happened," Blake concluded, "up to thecoming of Colonel Boynton. May I reiterate one fact? I do not wonderat your questioning my state of mind and my ability to observecorrectly. But I must insist, gentlemen, that while I got a shot oftheir gas and my muscles and my nervous system were paralyzed, mybrain was entirely clear. I saw what I saw; those creatures werethere; they entered the buildings; they carried off Lieutenant McGuireand another man.

  "What they were or who they were I cannot say. I do not know that theywere men, but their insane shrieking in that queer unintelligible talkis significant. And that means of communication corresponds with theradio reception of which you know.

  "If you gentlemen know of any part of this earth that can produce sucha people, if you know of any people or country in this world that canproduce such a ship--then we can forget all our wild fancies. And wecan prepare to submit to that country and that people as the mastersof this earth. For I must tell you, gentlemen, with all theearnestness at my command, that until you have seen that ship inaction, seen its incredible speed, its maneuverability, itslightning-like attack and its curtain of gas, you can have noconception of our helplessness. And the insignia that she carries isthe flag of our conquerors."

  * * * * *

  Blake got an approving nod from the Secretary of War as he took hisseat. That quiet man rose slowly from his chair to add his words. Hespoke earnestly, impressively.

  "Captain Blake has hit the nail squarely on the head," he stated. "Wehave here in this room a representative gathering from the wholeworld. If there is any one of you who can say that this mystery shipwas built and manned by your people, let him speak, and we will sendyou at once a commission to acknowledge your power and negotiate forpeace."

  The great hall was silent, in a silence that held only uneasyrustlings as men glanced one at another in wondering dismay.


  "The time has come," said the Secretary with solemn emphasis, "whenall dissensions among our peoples must cease. Whatever there is orever has been of discord between us fades into insignificance beforethis new threat. It is the world, now, against a power unknown; we canonly face it as a united world.

  "I shall recommend to the President of the United States that acommission be appointed, that it may co-operate with similar bodiesfrom all lands. I ask you, gentlemen, to make like representations toyour governments, to the end that we may meet this menace as onecountry and one man; meet it, God grant, successfully through a WarDepartment of the World."

  * * * * *

  It was a brave gesture of the President of the United States; he daredthe scorn and laughter of the world in standing behind his Secretaryof War. The world is quick to turn and rend with ridicule a falseprophet. And despite the unanswerable facts, the scope and power ofthe menace was not entirely believed. It was difficult for theconscious minds of men to conceive of the barriers of vast space asswept aside and the earth laid open to attack.

  England was slow to respond to the invitation of the President: thismatter required thought and grave deliberation in parliament. It mightnot be true: the thought, whether spoken or unexpressed, was clingingto their minds. And even if true--even if this lone ship had wanderedin from space--there might be no further attack.

  "Why," they asked, "should there be more unprovoked assaults from thepeople of another planet? What was their object? What had they togain? ... Perhaps we were safe after all." The answer that destroyedall hope came to them borne in upon a wall of water that swept theBritish coast.

  The telescopes of the world were centered now on just one object inthe heavens. The bright evening star that adorned the western sky wasthe target for instruments great and small. It was past the half-moonphase now, and it became under magnification a gleaming crescent, acrescent that emitted from the dark sphere it embraced vivid flashesof light. Sykes' report had ample corroboration; the flash was seen bymany, and it was repeated the next night and the next.

  What was it? the waiting world asked. And the answer came not from thetelescopes and their far-reaching gaze but from the waters of theAtlantic. In the full blaze of day came a meteor that swept to theearth in an arc of fire to outshine the sun. There must have beenthose who saw it strike--passengers and crews of passing ships--butits plunge into the depths of the Atlantic spelled death for eachwitness.

  * * * * *

  The earth trembled with the explosion that followed. A gas--some newcompound that united with water to give volumes tremendous--that onlycould explain it. The ocean rose from its depths and flung wave afterwave to race outward in circles of death.

  Hundreds of feet in height at their source--this could only beestimated--they were devastating when they struck. The ocean ragedover the frail bulwark of England in wave upon wave, and, retreating,the waters left smooth, shining rock where cities had been. The stoneand steel of their buildings was scattered far over the desolate landor drawn in the suction of retreating waters to the sea.

  Ireland, too, and France and Spain. Even the coast of America felt theshock of the explosion and was swept by tidal waves of hugeproportions. But the coast of Britain took the blow at its worst.

  The world was stunned and waiting--waiting!--when the next blow fell.The flashes were coming from Venus at regular intervals, just twentyhours and nineteen minutes apart. And with exactly the same timeintervals the bolts arrived from space to lay waste the earth.

  They struck where they would: the ocean again; the Sahara; in themountains of China; the Pacific was thrown into fearful convulsions;the wheat fields of Canada trembled and vanished before a blast offlaming gas....

  Twenty hours and nineteen minutes! Where it would strike, the nextstar-shell, no man might say; that it surely would come was a deadlyand nerve-shattering certainty. The earth waited and prayed underactual bombardment.

  * * * * *

  Some super-gun, said science with conviction; a great bore in theplanet itself, perhaps. But it was fixed, and the planet itself aimedwith an accuracy that was deadly; aimed once as each revolutionbrought its gun on the target. Herein, said science, lay a basis forhope.

  If, in that distant world, there was only one such bore, it must bealtering its aim as the planet approached; the gun must cease to bearupon the earth. And the changing sweep of the missiles' flightconfirmed their belief.

  Each meteor-shell that came rushing into Earth's embrace burnedbrilliantly as it tore into the air. And each flaming arc wasincreasingly bent, until--twenty hours and nineteen minutes hadpassed--twenty minutes--thirty--another hour ... and the peoples ofEarth dropped humbly to their knees in thankful prayer, or raisedvengeful eyes and clenched fists toward the heavens while theirquivering lips uttered blasphemous curses. The menace, for the time,had passed; the great gun of Venus no longer was aiming toward theearth.

  "No more ships," was the belief; "not this time." And the world turnedto an accounting of its losses, and to wonder--wonder--what theplanet's return would bring. A year and one half was theirs; one yearand a half in which to live in safety, in which to plan and build.

  * * * * *

  A column, double leaded, in the _London Times_ voiced the feeling ofthe world. It was copied and broadcast everywhere.

  "Another attack," it concluded, "is not a probability--it is acertainty. They are destroying us for some reason known only tothemselves. Who can doubt that when the planet returns there will be afurther bombardment; an invasion by armed forces in giant ships; bombsdropped from them miles high in the air. This is what we must lookforward to--death and destruction dealt out by a force we are unableto meet.

  "Our munitions factories may build larger guns, but can they reach theheights at which these monster ships of space will lie, with any faintprobability of inflicting damage? It is doubtful.

  "Our aircraft is less than useless; its very name condemns it asinept. Craft of the air!--and we have to war against space ships whichcan rise beyond the thin envelope of gas that encircles the earth.

  "The world is doomed--utterly and finally doomed; it is the end ofhumankind; slavery to a conquering race at the very best, unless--

  "Let us face the facts fairly. It is war--war to the death--betweenthe inhabitants of this world and of that other. We are men. What theyare God alone can say. But they are creatures of mind as are we; whatthey have done, we may do.

  "There is our only hope. It is vain, perhaps--preposterous in itsassumption--but our sole and only hope. We must meet the enemy anddefeat him, and we must do it on his own ground. To destroy theirfleet we must penetrate space; to silence their deadly bombardment wemust go out into space as they have done, reach their distant worldas they have reached ours, and conquer as we would have beenconquered.

  "It is a tenuous hope, but our only one. Let our men of mundanewarfare do their best--it will be useless. But if there be one sparkof God-given genius in the world that can point the way to victory,let those in authority turn no deaf ear.

  "It is a battle now of minds, and the best minds will win. Humanity--allhumankind--is facing the end. In less than one year and a half we mustsucceed--or perish. And unless we conquer finally and decisively, the storyof man in the history of the universe will be a tale that is told, a recordof life in a book that is ended--closed--and forgotten through alleternity."

  CHAPTER VII

  A breath of a lethal gas shot from the flying ship had made CaptainBlake as helpless as if every muscle were frozen hard, and he had gotit only lightly, mixed with the saving blast of oxygen. His heart hadgone on, and his breathing, though it became shallow, did not cease;he was even able to turn his eyes. But to the men in the observatoryroom the gas from the weapons of the attacking force came as adevastating, choking cloud that struck them senseless as if with ablow. Lieutenant McGuire hardly heard the sound of his
own pistolbefore unconsciousness took him.

  It was death for the men who were left--for them the quick darknessnever lifted--but for McGuire and his companion there was reprieve.

  He was lying flat on a hard floor when remembrance crept slowly backto his benumbed brain. An odor, sickish-sweet, was in his nostrils;the breath of life was being forcibly pumped and withdrawn fromlaboring lungs; a mask was tight against his face. He struggled tothrow it off, and someone bending over removed it.

  Someone! His eyes stared wonderingly at the grotesque face like alingering phantasm of fevered dreams. There were others, he saw, andthey were working over a body not far away upon the floor. Herecognized the figure of Professor Sykes. Short, stocky, his clothesdisheveled--but Sykes, unmistakably, despite the mask upon his face.

  He, too, revived as McGuire watched, and, like the flyer, he lookedwonderingly about him at his strange companions. The eyes of the twomet and held in wordless communication and astonishment.

  * * * * *

  The unreal creatures that hovered near withdrew to the far side of theroom. The walls beyond them were of metal, white and gleaming; therewere doorways. In another wall were portholes--round windows of thickglass that framed circles of absolute night. It was dark out beyondthem with a blackness that was relieved only by sharp pin-points ofbrilliance--stars in a night sky such as McGuire had never seen.

  Past and present alike were hazy to the flyer; the spark of life hadbeen brought back to his body from a far distance; there was timeneeded to part the unreal from the real in these new and strangesurroundings.

  There were doorways in the ceiling, and others in the floor near wherehe lay; ladders fastened to the wall gave access to these doors. Agrotesque figure appeared above the floor and, after a curious glanceat the two men, scrambled into the room and vanished through theopening in the ceiling. It was some time before the significance ofthis was plain to the wondering man--before he reasoned that he was inthe enemy ship, aimed outward from the earth, and the pull ofgravitation and the greater force of the vessel's constantacceleration held its occupants to the rear walls of each room. Thatlanky figure had been making its way forward toward the bow of theship. McGuire's mind was clearing; he turned his attention now to thecurious, waiting creatures, his captors.

  There were five of them standing in the room, five shapes like men,yet curiously, strangely, different. They were tall of stature, narrowacross the shoulders, muscular in a lean, attenuated fashion. Buttheir faces! McGuire found his eyes returning in horrified fascinationto each hideous, inhuman countenance.

  A colorless color, like the dead gray of ashes; a skin like that of anAfrican savage from which all but the last vestige of color had beendrained. It was transparent, parchment-like, and even in the light ofthe room that glowed from some hidden source, he could see thethrobbing lines of blood-vessels that showed livid through thetranslucent skin. And he remembered, now, the fingers, half-seen inhis moments of awakening--they were like clinging tendrils, colorless,too, in that ashy gray, and showed the network of veins as if eachhand had been flayed alive.

  * * * * *

  The observer found himself analyzing, comparing, trying to find someearthly analogy for these unearthly creatures. Why did he think ofpotatoes sprouting in a cellar? What possible connection had thesehalf-human things with that boyhood recollection? And he had seen somelaboratory experiments with plants and animals that had been cut offfrom the sunlight--and now the connection was clear; he knew what thisidea was that was trying to form.

  These were creatures of the dark. These bleached, drained faces showedskin that had never known the actinic rays of the sun; their wholeframework proclaimed the process that had been going on throughcountless generations. Here was a race that had lived, if not inabsolute darkness, then in some place where sunlight never shone--aplace of half-light--or of clouds.

  "Clouds!" The exclamation was startled from him. And: "Clouds!" herepeated meditatively; he was seeing again a cloud-wrapped world inthe eye-piece of a big refracting telescope. "Blanketed in clouds,"Professor Sykes had said. The scientist himself was speaking to himnow in bewildered tones.

  "Clouds?" he inquired. "That's a strange remark to make. Where are we,Lieutenant McGuire? I remember nothing after you fired. Are weflying--in the clouds?"

  "A long, long way beyond them, is my guess," said McGuire grimly. Itwas staggering what all this might mean; there was time needed forfuller comprehension. But the lean bronzed face of the flyer flushedwith animation, and in spite of the terrors that must surely lie aheadhe felt strangely elated at the actuality of an incredible adventure.

  * * * * *

  Slowly he got to his feet to find that his muscles still werereluctant to respond to orders; he helped the professor to arise. Andfrom the group that drew back further into the far end of the roomcame a subdued and rasping tumult of discordant sound.

  One, seemingly in charge, held a weapon in his hand, a slender tube nothicker than a common wire; and ending in a cylinder within thecreature's hand. He pointed it in threatening fashion while his voicerose in a shrill call. McGuire and Professor Sykes stood quiet andwaited for what the next moment might have in store, but McGuire wavedthe weapon aside in a gesture that none could fail to read.

  "Steady," he told his companion. "We're in a ticklish position. Donothing to alarm them."

  From up above them came an answering shrill note. Another of thebeings was descending into the room.

  "Ah!" said Lieutenant McGuire softly, "the big boss, himself. Nowlet's see what will happen."

  If there had seemed something of timidity in the repulsive faces ofthe waiting creatures, this newcomer was of a different type. Heopened flabby thin lips to give one sharp note of command. It was assibilant as the hissing of a snake. The man with the weapon returnedit to a holder at his side; the whole group cringed before the powerand authority of the new arrival.

  The men that they had seen thus far were all garbed alike; aloose-fitting garment of one piece that was ludicrously like the playrompers that children might wear. These were dull red in color, thered of drying blood, made of strong woven cloth. But this other wasuniformed differently.

  McGuire noted the fineness of the silky robe. Like the others this wasmade of one piece, loosely fitting, but its bright vivid scarlet madethe first seem drab and dull. A belt of metal about his waist shonelike gold and matched the emblem of precious metal in the turban onhis head.

  * * * * *

  All this the eyes of the flyer took in at a glance; his attention wasonly momentarily diverted from the ashen face with eyes narrow andslitted, that stared with the cold hatred of a cat into those of themen.

  He made a sound with a whistling breath. It seemed to be a questiondirected to them, but the import of it was lost.

  "An exceedingly queer lot," Professor Sykes observed. "And this chapseems distinctly hostile."

  "He's no friend of mine," said McGuire as the thin, pendulous lipsrepeated their whistling interrogation.

  "I can't place them," mused the scientist. "Those facialcharacteristics.... But they must be of some nationality, speak sometongue."

  He addressed himself to the figure with the immobile, horrid face.

  "We do not understand you," he said with an ingratiating smile."_Comprenez vous Francaise?_... _Non?_"... German, perhaps, orSpanish?... "_Sprecken sie Deutsche?_ _Usted habla Espanola?_..."

  He followed with a fusillade of questions in strange and varyingtongues. "I've even tried him with Chinese," he protested inbewilderment and stared amazed at his companion's laughter.

  There had to be a reaction from the strain of the past hours, andLieutenant McGuire found the serious questioning in polyglot tonguesand the unchanging feline stare of that hideous face too much for hismental restraint. He held his sides, while he shook and roared withlaughter beyond control, and the figure before him glared
with evidentdisapproval of his mirth.

  * * * * *

  There was a hissing order, and two figures from the corner sprangforward to seize the flyer with long clinging fingers. Their strengthhe had overestimated, for a violent throw of his body twisted himfree, and his outstretched hands sent the two sprawling across theroom. Their leader took one quick step forward, then paused as ifhesitating to meet this young adversary.

  "Do go easy," Professor Sykes was imploring. "We do not know where weare nor who they are, but we must do nothing to antagonize them."

  McGuire had reacted from his hilarious seizure with an emotional swingto the opposite extreme. "I'll break their damn necks," he growled,"if they get rough with me." And his narrow eyes exchanged glare forglare with those in the face like blood and ashes before him.

  The cold cat eyes held steadily upon him while the scarlet figureretreated. A louder call, shrill and vibrant, came from the thin lips,and a swarm of bodies in dull red were scrambling into the room tomass about their scarlet leader. Above and behind them the face underits brilliant turban and golden clasp was glaring in triumph.

  The tall figures crouched, grotesque and awkward; their long arms andhands with grasping, tendril-like fingers were ready. McGuire waitedfor the sharp hissing order that would throw these things upon him,and he met the attack when it came with his own shoulders dropped tothe fighter's pose, head drawn in close and both fists swinging free.

  There were lean fingers clutching at his throat, a press of blood-redbodies thick about him, and a clustering of faces where color blotchedand flowed.

  The thud of fists in blows that started from the floor was new tothese lean creatures that clawed and clung like cats. But theytrampled on those who went down before the flyer's blows and stoodupon them to spring at his head; they crowded in in overwhelmingnumbers while their red hands tore and twined about his face.

  * * * * *

  It was no place now for long swings; McGuire twisted his body andthrew his weight into quick short jabs at the faces before him. He wasclear for an instant and swung his heavy boot at something that clungto one leg; then met with a rain of hooks and short punches the facesthat closed in again. He saw in that instant a wild whirl of bodieswhere the stocky figure of Professor Sykes was smothered beneath histaller antagonists. But the professor, if he was forgetting thescience of the laboratory, was remembering that of the squaredcircle--and the battle was not entirely one sided.

  McGuire was free; the blood was trickling down his face frominnumerable cuts where sharp-nailed fingers had sunk deep. He wipedthe red stream from his eyes and threw himself at the weaving mass ofbodies that eddied about Sykes in frantic struggle across the room.

  The face of the professor showed clear for a moment. Like McGuire hewas bleeding, and his breath came in short explosive gasps, but he washolding his own! The eyes of McGuire glimpsed a wildly gesticulating,shouting figure in the rear. The face, contorted with rage, was almostthe color of the brilliant scarlet that the creature wore. Theblood-stained man in khaki left his companion to fight his own battle,and plunged headlong at a leaping cluster of dull red, smashed throughwith a frenzied attack of straight rights and lefts, and freed himselfto make one final leap at the leader of this unholy pack.

  He was fighting in blind desperation now; the two were out-numbered bythe writhing, lean-bodied creatures, and this thing that showed inblurred crimson before him was the directing power of them all. Thefigure symbolized and personified to the raging man all the repulsiveugliness of the leaping horde. The face came clear before him throughthe mist of blood, and he put the last ounce of his remaining strengthand every pound of weight behind a straight, clean drive with hisright fist.

  His last conscious impression was of a red, clawing hand that wasclosed around the thick butt of a tube of steel ... then down, andstill down, he plunged into a bottomless pit of whirling, red flashesand choking fumes....

  There were memories that were to occur to Lieutenant McGuireafterward--visions, dim and hazy and blurred, of half-waking momentswhen strange creatures forced food and water into his mouth, then helda mask upon his face while he resisted weakly the breathing of sweet,sickly fumes that sent him back to unconsciousness.

  There were many such times; some when he came sufficiently awake toknow that Sykes was lying near him, receiving similar care. Theirlives were being preserved: How, or why, or what life might hold instore he neither knew nor cared; the mask and the deep-drawn fumesbrought stupor and numbness to his brain.

  A window was in the floor beside him when he awoke--a circular window ofthick glass or quartz. But no longer did it frame a picture of a sky invelvet blackness; no unwinking pin-points of distant stars pricked keenlythrough the night; but, clear and dazzling, came a blessed radiance thatcould mean only sunshine. A glowing light that was dazzling to hissleep-filled eyes, it streamed in golden--beautiful--to light theunfamiliar room and show motionless upon the floor the figure of ProfessorSykes. His torn clothing had been neatly arranged, and his face showedlivid lines of healing cuts and bruises.

  McGuire tried gingerly to move his arms and legs; they were stillfunctioning though stiff and weak from disuse. He raised himselfslowly and stood swaying on his feet, then made his uncertain way tohis companion and shook him weakly by the shoulder.

  Professor Sykes breathed deeply and raised leaden lids from tired eyesto stare uncomprehendingly at McGuire. Soon his dark pupils ceased todilate, and he, too, could see their prison and the light of day.

  "Sunlight!" he said in a thin voice, and he seemed to know now thatthey were in the air; "I wonder--I wonder--if we shall land--whatcountry? ... Some wilderness and a strange race--a strange, strangerace!"

  He was muttering half to himself; the mystery of these people whom hecould not identify was still troubling him.

  * * * * *

  McGuire helped the other man to his feet, and they clung to each tothe other for support as they crossed to kneel beside the floor-windowand learn finally where their captors meant to take them.

  A wilderness, indeed, the sight that met their eyes, but a wildernessof clouds--no unfamiliar sight to Lieutenant McGuire of the UnitedStates Army air service. But to settle softly into them instead ofdriving through with glistening wings--this was new and vastlydifferent from anything he had known.

  Sounds came to them in the silence, penetrating faintly through thickwalls--the same familiar wailing call that trembled and quavered andseemed to the listening men to be guiding them down through the mist.

  Gone was the sunlight, and the clouds beyond the deep-set window weregloriously ablaze with a brilliance softly diffused. The cloud bankwas deep, and they felt the craft under them sink slowly, steadilyinto the misty embrace. It thinned below them to drifting vapor, andthe first hazy shadows of the ground showed through from far beneath.Their altitude, the flyer knew, was still many thousands of feet.

  "Water," said McGuire, as his trained eyes made plain to him what wasstill indistinct to the scientist. "An ocean--and a shore-line--" Moreclouds obscured the view; they parted suddenly to show a portion onlyof a clear-cut map.

  * * * * *

  It stretched beyond the confines of their window, that unfamiliar lineof wave-marked shore; the water was like frozen gold, wrinkled incountless tiny corrugations and reflecting the bright glow from above.But the land,--that drew their eyes!

  Were those cities, those shadow-splashed areas of gray and rose?...The last veiling clouds dissolved, and the whole circle was plain totheir view.

  The men leaned forward, breathless, intent, till the scientist,Sykes--the man whose eyes had seen and whose brain recorded a dimshape in the lens of a great telescope--Sykes drew back with aquivering, incredulous breath. For below them, so plain, sounmistakable, there lay an island, large even from this height, and itformed on this round map a sharp angle like a great letter "L."

&nbs
p; "We shall know that if we ever see it again," Professor Sykes hadremarked in the quiet and security of that domed building surmountingthe heights of Mount Lawson. But he said nothing now, as he stared athis companion with eyes that implored McGuire to arouse him from thissleep, this dream that could never be real. But McGuire, lieutenantone-time in the forces of the U. S. A., had seen it too, and he staredback with a look that gave dreadful confirmation.

  The observatory--Mount Lawson--the earth!--those were the thingsunreal and far away. And here before them, in brain-stunningactuality, were the markings unmistakable--the markings of Venus. Andthey were landing, these two, in the company of creatures wild andstrange as the planet--on Venus itself!

  (_To be continued._)

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