eOMET

Medal Awards for 1941

Short Short Story Award Rules :

1. A Sterling Silver Medal, appropriately engraved, and fifty dollars in cash, will be awarded
to the writer of the best Short Short Story published in COMET magazine each year. The
winning story must be the FIRST published story by the author; outside of amateur
publications and school papers.

2. The winner will be announced in the earliest possible issue after the close of each calendar
year.

3. The editors of COMET will be the judges.

The opinions of COMET readers will count as a vote equal to that of the judges. In case of
disagreement between readers’ and judges’ votes, the jiublishers of COMET will appoint an
outside person to cast the deciding vote.

4. No award will be granted or announced until a sworn statement from too winner attests
that the winning story is his or her first professionally published story.

6. The presentation of the award will be arranged to suit the convenience of the winner
wherever he or she may live.

S-F Fan— Journalism Award Rules:

1. A Sterling Silver medal, appropriately engraved, and twenty-five dollars in cash, will be
awarded each year to the Fan Journal publisher, editor, reporter or contributor who
executes the best journalistic achievement of the year in the opinion of the board of
judges. The award may be given to the publication itself.

2. Nominations will be made in writing to the Editor of COMET, setting forth the basis
for the claim, and attached to a copy of the edition of S-F Fan magazine or paper for
which the award is suggested, or containing the story in point.

3. Ingenuity, inventiveness, initiative, innovation and general excellence will aTi he taken
into consideration. The mere expenditure of money to better appearance does not count.
An unusual, startling news piece, or feature; an attention-attracting stint within the rules
of Journalism, will count heavily.

4. Nominations may be submitted at any time up to Midnight December 31, 1041, for the
1941 award.

5. The committee of judges will be comprised of three members; the editor of COMET, a
S-F writer, and a newspaper editor or columnist.

6. The decision of the judges will he announced as soon as possible after the close of the
year, and presentation of the award will be arranged conveniently for the winner.

Denver Gonvention Award Rules:

1. The 1941 COMET CONVENTION AWARD will be made at the last session of the Denver,
Colorado, “Denvention” (July 4-5-0), to the person who, in the opinion of the award
committee, honorably surmounted the greatest handicap in order to attend.

2. The award is comprised of a sterling silver medal, appropriately engraved, and twenty-
five dollars ($25.00) in cash.

3. The award committee will accept written applications for the award during July 4th, 5th,

and until 12:00 noon July 6th, 1941, at the “Denvention” hall. The applications must be
handed to one of the judges by the applicant or by another who desires to press an

application for the applicant. The applicant must be ready to verify the truth of the claim.

4. An application for the award will contain not more than 200 words written clearly on one

side of the paper, explaining the handicap overcome by the applicant.

5. The award committee will be comprised of three judges, as follows:

1. The chairman of the executive committee of the “Denvention” or an alternate appointed
by him.

2. The editor of COMET or an alternate appointed by him.

3. A prominent science-fiction writer chosen by the first two judges on the first day of
the “Denvention.”

6. The decision of the judges will be final.

^^SBSZSZSHSZSZ5'clSZ5HSZSZSZ5HSE5E5E5^5ZSESaSZSHSHS^SZ5^SZSESZ5ZSZ5Z5^5ES^5?5

ft

VOL. I

Table of Contents

Feature Story rage

The Vortex Blaster 2

The first of a series hy the Author of “The Skylark of S^aco/'

“The Skylark of Vak-iitiV' and the Ler.sa*an sU/rios-

by E. E. Smith, l J h.D.

Novelets

The Devil’s Asteroid 28

In which time reverses itself and speeds its pace.

by Manly Wade Wellman

The Whispering Spheres 100

Energy is life whether it animate, animal or mineral matter.

by It. It. Winterbotham

Short Stories

The Street That Wasn’t There 18

by Clifford D. Simak and Carl Jacobi

The Sky Trap 46

by Frank Belknap Long

A World Is Born . , 56

by Leigh Bracket

The Indulgence of Negu Mah 75

by Robert Arthur

The Beast of Space 32

by F. E. Hardart

The 4-D Doodler 90

by Graph Waldeyer

Short Short Stories

The Bell Tone by Edmund H. Leftwich 117

The Ultimate Experiment L-y Thornton DeKy 120

Features

The Spacean (Interplanetary News) 71

The Door to Tomorrow (Editorial) 123

Rocket Mail (The Readers’ Express) 121

Cover Painting by Leo Morey
Illustrations by Paul, Morey, Forte, and Mirando.

1941. VuL I No. 5. COMBT is published monthly by H-K Publications, Inc., 29 Worthington
St., Springfield, Mass. Editorial and executive offices: 215 Fourth Ave., New York, N Y. Entered as
second-class matter October 11, 1940, at the poet office at Springfield. Massachusetts, under the Act of
M rch 8 1879. Single copies. 20c. Annual subscription 82.00 in the U. S. A. (other countries $3).

Ltopyngbt 1V4I by H-K Publications, Inc. Contents must not be reproduced without permission No actual
Lcr;*m is named or delineated in this fiction magazine. Printed in the U. S. A.

INTRODUCING “Storm” Cloud , who, through tragedy, Is destined to
become the most noted figure in the galaxy— THE

( Complete in this issue!)

by

E. E. SMITH, Ph.D.

Author of “The Skylark,” “Skylark Three,” “The Skylark of Valeron, H
' the Lensman stories, etc.

AFETY devices that do not pro-
tect.

The “unsinkable” ships that,
before the days of Bergenholm and of
atomic and cosmic energy, sank into
the waters of the earth.

More particularly, safety devices
which, while protecting against one
agent of destruction, attract mag-
net-like another and worse. Such as
the arfnored cable within the walls
of a wooden house. It protects the
electrical conductors within against
accidental external shorts; but, in-
adequately grounded as it must of
necessity be, it may attract and up-
on occasion has attracted the stupen-
dous force of lightning. Then, fused,
volatilized, flaming incandescent
throughout the length, breadth, and
height of a dwelling, that dwelling’s
existence thereafter is to be measured
in minutes.

Specifically, four lightning rods.
The lightning rods protecting the
chromium, glass, and plastic home of
Neal Cloud. Those rods were ade-
quately grounded, grounded with cop-
per-silver cables the bigness of a
strong man’s >rm; for Neal Cloud,
atomic physicist, knew his lightning
and he was taking no chances what-
ever with the safety of his lovely
wife and their three wonderful kids.

He did not know, he did not even
suspect, that under certain conditions
of atmospheric potential and of
ground-magnetic stress his perfectly
designed lightning-rod system would
become a super-powerful magnet for
flying Vortices of atomic disintegra-
tion.

And now Neal Cloud, atomic
physicist, sat at his desk in a strained,
dull apathy. His face was a yellowish-
gray white, his tendoned hands grip-
ped rigidly the arms of his chair. His
eyes, hard and lifeless, stared un-
seeingly past the small, three-dimen-
sional block portrait of all that had
made life worth living.

For his guardian against lightning
had been a vortex-magnet at the mo-
ment when a luckless wight had at-
tempted to abate the nuisance of a
“loose” atomic vortex. That wight
died, of course— they almost always
do — and the vortex, instead of being
destroyed, was simply broken up into
an indefinite number of widely-scat-
tered new vortices. And one of these
bits of furious, uncontrolled energy,
resembling more nearly a handful of
material rived from a sun than any-
thing else with which ordinary man
is familiar, darted toward and
crashed downward to earth through
Neal Cloud’s new house.

4

COMET

July

That home did not barn ; it simply
exploded. Nothing of it, in it, or
around it stood a chance, for in a
fractional second of time the place
where it had been was a crater ®f
seething, boiling lava— a crater which
filled the atmosphere to a height of
miles with poisonous vapors; which
flooded all circumambient space with
lethal radiations.

Cosmieally, the whole thing was
infinitesimal. Ever since man learned
how to liberate intra-atomic energy,
the vortices of disintegration had
been breaking out of control. Such
accidents had been happening, were
happening, and would continue in-
definitely to happen. More than one
world, perhaps, had been or would
be consumed to the last gram by such
loose atomic vortices. What of that?
Of what real importance are a few
grains of sand to an ocean beach five
thousand miles long, a hundred miles
wide, and ten miles deep?

And even to that individual grain
of sand called “Earth” — or, in modern
parlance, “Sol Three,” or “Tellus ©f
Sol”, or simply “Tellus”— the affair
was' of negligible importance. One
man had died; but, in dying, he had
added one more page to the thick
bulk of negative results already on
file. That Mrs. Cloud and her children
had perished was merely unfortunate.
The vortex itself was not yet a real
threat to Tellus. It was a “new” ©me,
and thus it would be a long time be-
fore it would become other than a
local menace. And well before that
could happen — before even the oldest
of Tellus’ loose vertices had eaten
away much ©f her mass or poisoned
much of her .atmosphere, her scien-
tists would have solved the problem.
It was unthinkable that Tellus, the
point of origin and the very center of
Galactic Civilization, should cease to
exist.

BUT to Neal Cloud the accident was
the ultimate catastrophe. His personal
universe had crashed in ruins; what
was left was not worth picking up.

Be and Jo had been married for al-
most twenty years and the bonds be-
tween them had grown stronger,
deeper, truer with every passing day.
And the kids. ....... It couldn’t

have happened .... . fate COULD-
N’T do this to him .... but it had

it could. Gone .... gone

. . . GONE. ....

And to Neal Cloud, atomic physi-
cist, sitting there at his desk in torn,
despairing abstraction, with black
maggots of thought gnawing holes in
his brain, the catastrophe was doubly
galling beeause of its cruel irony. For
he was second from the top in the
Atomic "Research Laboratory ; his
life’s work had been a search for a
means of extinguishment of exactly
such loose vortices as had destroyed
his all.

His eyes focussed vaguely upon Hie
portrait. Clear, honest gray eyes ...
lines of character and of humor . . .
sweetly curved lips, ready to smile or
to kiss. ....

He wrenched his eyes away and
scribbled briefly upon a sheet of
paper. Then, getting up stiffly, he
took the portrait and moved woodenly
across the room to a furnace. As
though enshrining it he placed the
plastic block upon a refractory be-
tween the eleetrodes and threw a
switch. After the flaming arc had
done its work he turned and handed
the paper to a tall man, dressed In
plain gray leather, who had been
watching him with quiet, understand-
ing eyes. Significant enough to the
initiated of the importance of this
laboratory is the fact that it was
headed by an Unattached Lensman.

“As of now, Phil, if it’s QX with
you.”

The Gray Lensman took the docu-
ment, glanced at it, and slowly, metic-
ulously, tore it into sixteen equal
pieces.

“Uh, uh, Storm,” he denied, gently.
“Not a resignation. Leave of absence,
yes— indefinite— hut not a resig-
nation.”

“Why ?” It was scarcely a question ;

194!

5

THE VORTEX BLASTER

Cloud's voice 'was level, uninflected.
“I won't be worth the paper I’d
waste."

"Now, no,” the Lensman conceded,
“but the future’s another matter. I
haven’t said anything so far, because
to anyone who knew you and Jo as I
knew you it was abundantly clear that
nothing could be said.” Two hands
gripped and held. "For the future,
though, four words were uttered long
ago, that have never been improved
upon. ‘This, too, shall pass.’ ”

“You think so?”

“I don’t think so, Storm — I know
so. I’ve been around a long time. You
are too good a man, and the world
has too much use for you, for you to
go down permanently out of control.
You’ve got a place in the world, and
you’ll be back — ” A thought struck
the Lensman, and he went on in an
altered tone. “You wouldn’t — but of
course you wouldn’t — you couldn’t.”

“I don’t think so. No, I won’t —
that never was any kind of a solution
to any problem’.”

Nor was it. Until that moment, sui-
cide had not entered Cloud’s mind,
and he rejected it instantly. His kind
of man did not take the easy way out.

After a brief farewell Cloud made
his way to an elevator and was
whisked down to the garage. Into his
big blue DeKhotinsky Sixteen Special
and away.

Through traffic so heavy that
front-, rear-, and side-bumpers al-
most touched he drove with his wont-
ed cool skill ; even though, consciously,
he did not know that the other cars
were there. He slowed, turned,
stopped, “gave her the oof,” all in
correct response to flashing signals
in all shapes and colors — purely auto-
matically. Consciously, he did not
know where he was going, nor care.
If he thought at all, his numbed
brain was simply trying to run away
from its own bitter imaging— which,
if he had thought at all, he would
have known to be a hopeless task. But
he did not think; he simply acted,
dumbly, miserably. His eyes saw, opti-

cally ; his body reacted, mechanically ;
his thinking brain was completely in
abeyance.

Into a one-way skyway he rocketed,
along it over the suburbs and into the
transcontinental super-highway. Edg-
ing inward, lane after lane, he
reached the “unlimited” way — un-
limited, that is, except for being lim-
ited to cars of not less than seven hun-
dred horsepower, in perfect mechani-
cal condition, driven by registered,
tested drivers at speeds not less than
one hundred and twenty-five miles an
hour — flashed his registry number
.at the control station, and shoved his
right foot down to the floor.

NOW everyone knows that an ordi-
nary DeKhotinsky Sporter will do a
hundred and forty honestly-measured
miles in one honestly measured hour ;
but very few ordinary drivers have
ever found out how fast one of those
brutal big souped-up Stxteens can
wheel. They simply haven’t got what
it takes to open one up.

“Storm” Cloud found out that day.
He held that two-and-a-half-ton Jug-
gernaut on the road, wide open, for
two solid hours. But it didn’t help.
Drive as he would, he could not out-
run that which rode with him. Be-
side him and within him and behind
him. For Jo was there. Jo and the
kids, but mostly Jo. It was Jo’s car
as much as it was his. “Babe, the
big blue ox,” was Jo’s pet name for
it; because, like Paul Bunyan’s fabu-
lous beast, it was pretty nearly six
feet between the eyes. Everything
they had ever had was that way. She
was in the seat beside him. Every
dear, every sweet, every luscious,
lovely memory of her was there. . . .
and behind him, just out of eye-corner
visibility, were the three kids. And
a whole lifetime of this loomed ahead
— a vista of emptiness more vacuous
far than the emptiest reaches of inter-
galactic space. Damnation! He could-
n’t stand much more of —

High over the roadway, far ahead,
a brilliant octagon flared red. That

meant “STOP !” in any language.
Cloud eased up his accelerator, eased
down his mighty brakes. He pulled up
at the control station and a trimly-
uniformed officer made a gesture.

“Sorry, sir,” the policeman said,
“but you’ll have . to detour here.
There’s a loose atomic vortex beside
the road up ahead- —

“Oh! It’s Dr. Cloud!” Recognition
flashed into the. guard’s eyes. “I did-
n’t recognize you at first. You can go
ahead, of course. It’ll be two or three
miles before you’ll have to put on
your armor ; you’ll know when better
than anyone can tell you. They didn’t
tell us they were going to send for
you. It’s just a little new one, and
the dope we got was that they were
going to shove it off into the canyon
with pressure.”

“They didn’t send for me.” Cloud
tried to smile. “I’m just driving
around — haven’t my armor along,
even. So I guess I might as well go
back.”

He turned the Special around. A
loose vortex — new. There might be a
hundred of them, scattered over a
radius of two hundred miles. Sisters
of the one that had murdered his
family — the hellish spawn of that
accursed Number Eleven vortex that
that damnably incompetent bungling
ass had tried to blow up. . . . Into his
mind there leaped a picture, wire-
sharp, of Number Eleven as he had
last seen it, and simultaneously an
idea hit him like a blow from a fist.

He thought. Really thought, now;
cogently, intensely, clearly. If he
could do it ... . could actually blow
out the atomic flame of an atomic
vertex .... not exactly revenge,
but .... By Klono’s brazen bowels,
it would work — it’d have to work
— he’d make it work ! And grim-
ly, quietly, but alive In every fiber
now, he drove back toward the city
practically as fast as he had come
away.

IF the Lensman was surprised at
Cloud’s sudden reappearance in the

laboratory he did not show it. Nor did
he offer any comment as his erstwhile
first assistant went to various lock-
ers and cupboards, assembling me-
ters, coils, tubes, armor, and other
paraphernalia and apparatus.

“Guess that’s all I’ll need, Chief,”
Cloud remarked, finally. “Here’s a
blank check. If some of this stuff
shouldn’t happen to be in usable con-
dition when I get done with it, fill it
out to suit, will you ?”

“No,” and the Lensman tore up the
check just as he had torn up the resig-
nation. “If you want the stuff for le-
gitimate purposes, you’re on Patrol
business and it is the Patrol’s risk. If,
on the other hand, you think that
you’re going to try to snuff a vortex,
the stuff stays here. That’s final.
Storm.”

“You’re right — and wrong, Phil,”
Cloud stated, not at all sheepishly.
“I’m going to blow out Number One
vortex with duodee, yes — but I’m
really going to blow it out, not mere-
ly make a stab at it as an excuse for
suicide, as you think.”

“How?” The big Lensman’s query
was skepticism incarnate. “It can’t
be done, except by an almost impos-
sibly fortuitous accident. You your-
self have been the most bitterly op-
posed of us all to these suicidal at-
tempts.”

“I know it — I didn’t have the so-
lution myself until a few hours ago —
it hit me all at once. Funny I never
thought of it before; it’s been right
in sight all the time.”

“That’s the way with most prob-
lems,” the Chief admitted. “Plain
enough after you see the key equa-
tion. Well, I’m perfectly willing to be
convinced, but I warn you that I’ll
take a lot of convincing — and some-
one else will do the work, not you.”
“When I get done you’11 see why
I’ll pretty nearly have to do it myself.
But to convince you, exactly what is
the knot?”

“Variability,” snapped the older
man. “To be effective, the charge of
explosive at the moment of impact

1941

7

THE VORTE

must match, within very close limits,
the activity of the vortex itself. Too
small a charge scatters it around, in
vortices which, while much smaller
than the original, are still large
enough to be self-sustaining. Too large
a charge simply rekindles the original
vortex — still larger — in its original
crater. And the activity that must be
matched varies so tremendously, in
magnitude, maxima, and minima, and
the cycle is so erratic — ranging from
seconds to hours without discoverable
rhyme or reason — that all attempts
to do so at any predetermined instant
have failed completely. Why, even
Kinnison and Cardynge and the Con-
ference of Scientists couldn’t solve it,
any more than they could work out a
tractor beam that could be used as a
tow-line on one.”

“Not exactly,” Cloud demurred.
“They found that it could be forecast,
for a few seconds at least — length of
time directly proportional to the
length of the cycle in question — by
an extension of the calculus of warped
surfaces.”

“Humph!” the Lensman snorted.
“So what? What good is a ten-second,
forecast when it takes a calculating
machine an hour to solve the equa-
tions. ... Oh !” He broke off, staring.

“Oh,” he repeated, slowly, “I forgot
that you’re a lightning calculator — a
mathematical prodigy from the day
you were born — who never has to
use a calculating machine even to com-
pute an orbit. . . . But there are, other
things.”

“I’ll say there are; plenty of them.
I’d thought of the calculator angle
before, of course, but there was a
worse thing than variability to con-
tend with. ...”

“What?” the Lensman demanded.

“Fear,” Cloud replied, crisply. “At
the thought of a hand-to-hand battle
with a vortex my brain froze solid.
Fear — the sheer, stark, natural hu-
man fear of death, that robs a man
of the fine edge of control and brings
on the Very death that he is trying so

X BLASTER

hard to avoid. That’s what had me
stopped.”

“Right .... you may be right,” the
Lensman pondered, his fingers drum-
ming quietly upon his desk. “And you
are not afraid of death — now — even
subconsciously. But tell me, Storm,
please, that you won’t invite it.”

“I will not invite it, sir, now that
I’ve got a job to do. But that’s as far
as I’ll go in promising. I won’t make
any superhuman effort to avoid it. I’ll
take all due precautions, for the sake
of the job, but if it gets me, what the
hell? The quicker it does, the better —
the sooner I'll be with Jo.”

“You believe that?”

“Implicitly.”

“The vortices are as good as gone,
then. They haven’t got any more
chance than Boskone has of licking
the Patrol.”

“I’m afraid so,” almost glumly.
“The only way for it to get me is for
me to make a mistake, and I don’t feel
any coming on.”

“But what’s your angle?” the Lens-
man asked, interest lighting his eyes.
“You can’t use the customary attack;
your time will be too short.”

“Like this,” and, taking down a
sheet of drafting paper, Cloud
sketched rapidly. “This is the crater,
here, with the vortex' at the
bottom, there. From the observ-
ers’ instruments or from a shielded
set-up of my own I get my data on
mass, emission, maxima, minima, and
so on. Then I have them make me
three duodec bombs — one on the mark
of the activity I’m figuring on shoot-
ing at, and one each five percent over
and under that figure — eased in neo-
carballoy of exactly the computed
thickness to last until it gets to the
center of the vortex. Then I take off
in a flying suit, armored and shield-
ed, say about here. ...”

“If you take off at all, you’ll take off
in a suit, inside a one-man flitter,” the
Lensman interrupted. “Too many in-
struments for a suit, to say nothing
of bombs, and you’ll need more screen
thaii a suit can deliver. We can adapt

8

COMET

July

a flitter for bomb-throwing easily
enough.”

“QX ; that would be better, of
course. In that case, I set my flitter
into a projectile trajectory like this,
whose objective is the center of the
vortex, there. See? Ten seconds or so
away, at about this point, I take my
instantaneous readings, solve the
equations at that particular warped
surface for some certain zero
time. . . .”

“But suppose that the cycle won’t
give you a ten-second solution?”

“Then I’ll swing around and try
again until a long cycle does show
up.”

“QX. It will, sometime.”

“Sure. Then, having everything set
for zero time, and assuming that the
activity is'somewhere near my postu-
lated value. . . .”

“Assume that it isn’t — it probably
won’t be,” the Chief grunted.

“I accelerate or decelerate — ”

“Solving new equations all the
while?”

“Sure — don’t interrupt so — until at
zero time the activity, extrapolated
to zero time, matches one of my
bombs. I cut that bomb loose, shoot
myself off in a sharp curve, and
Z-W-E-E-E-T - POWIE ! She’s out!”
With an expressive, sweeping ges-
ture.

“You hope,” the Lensman was
frankly dubious. “And there you are,
right in the middle of that explosion,
with two duodec bombs outside your
armor — or just inside your flitter.”

“Oh, no. I’ve shot them away sev-
eral seconds ago, so that they explode
somewhere else, nowhere near me.”

“ I hope. But do you realize just how
busy a man you are going to be during
those ten or twelve seconds?” .

“Fully.” Cloud’s face grew somber.
“But I will be in full control. I won’t
be afraid of anything that can hap-
pen — anything. And,” he went on, un-
der his breath, “that’s the hell of it.”

“QX,” the Lensman admitted final-
ly. “you can go. There are a lot of
things you haven’t mentioned, but

you’ll probably be able to work them
out as you go along. I think I’ll go" out
and work with the boys in the lookout
station while you’re doing your stuff.
When are you figuring on starting?”

' “How long will it take to get the
flitter ready?”

“A couple of days. Say we meet you
there Saturday morning?”

“Saturday the tenth, at eight
o’clock. I’ll be there.”

ANB again Neal Cloud and Babe, the
big blue ex, hit the road. And as he
rolled the physicist mulled over in his
mind the assignment to which he had
set himself.

Like fire, only worse, intra-atomic
energy was a good servant, but a ter-
rible master. Man had liberated it be-
fore he could really control it. In fact,
control was not yet, and perhaps
never would be, perfect. Up to a cer-
tain size and activity, yes. They, the
millions upon millions of self -limiting
ones, were the servants. They could
be handled, fenced in, controlled; in-
deed, if they were not kept tinder an
exciting bombardment and very care-
fully fed, they would go out. But at
long intervals, for same one of a dozen
reasons — science knew so little, fun-
damentally, of the true inwardness of
the intra-atomic reactions — one of
these small, tame, self-limiting vor-
tices flared, nova-like, into a large,
wild, self-sustaining one. It ceased be-
ing a servant then, and became a mas-
ter. Such flare-ups occurred, perhaps,
only once or twice in a century on
Earth ; the trouble was that they were
so utterly, damn'ably permanent. They
never went out. And mo^data were
ever secured : for every living thing in
the vicinity of a flare-up died ; every
instrument and every other solid
thing within a radius of a hundred
feet melted down into the reeking,
boiling slag of its crater.

Fortunately, the rate of growth
was slow — as slow, almost, as it was
persistent — otherwise Civilization
would scarcely have had a planet left.
And unless something could be done

mi THE VORTI

about loose vortices before too many
years, the consequences would be real-
ly serious. That was why his labora-
tory had been established in the first
place.

Nothing much had been accom-
plished so far. The tractor beam that
would take hold of them had never
been designed. Nothing material was
of any use ; it melted. Pressors
worked, after a fashion : it was by the
use of these beams that they shoved
the vortices around, off into the waste
places — unless it proved cheaper to
allow the places where they had come
into being to remain waste places. A
few, through sheer luck, had been
blown into splf-limiting bits by duo-
dec. Duodecaplylatomate, the most
powerful, the most frightfully deto-
nant explosive ever invented upon all
the known planets of the First Gal-
axy. But duodec had taken an awful
toll of life. Also, since it usually scat-
tered a vortex instead of extinguish-
ing it, duodec had actually caused far
more damage than it had cured.

• No end of fantastic schemes had
been proposed, of course; of varying
degrees of fantasy. Some of them
sounded almost practical. Some of
them had been tried; some of them
were still being tried. Some, such as
the perennially-appearing one of
building a huge hemispherical hull in
the ground under and around the
vortex, installing an inertialess drive,
and shooting the whole neighborhood
out into space, were perhaps feasible
from an engineering standpoint. They
were, however, potentially so capable
of making things worse that they
would not be tried save as last-ditch
measures. In short, the control of
loose vortices was yery much an un-
solved problem.

NUMBER ONE vortex, the oldest
and worst upon Tellus, had been
pushed out into the Badlands; and
there, at eight ©‘dock on the tenth,
Cloud started to work upon it.

The “lookout station,” instead of
being some such ramshackle structure

X BLASTER 9

as might have been deduced from the
Lensman’s casual terminology, was
in fact a fully-equipped observatory.
Its staff was not large — eight men
worked in three staggered eight-hour
shifts of two men each — but the in-
struments! To develop them had re-
quired hundreds of man-years of time
and near-miracles of research, not the
least of the problems having been that
of developing shielded conductors
capable of carrying truly through
five-ply screens of force the converted
impulses of the very radiations
against which those screens were
most effective. For the observatory,
and the one long approach to it as
well, had to be screened heavily ; with-
out such protection no life could exist
there.

This problem and many others had
been solved, however, and there the
instruments were. Every phase and
factor of the vortex’s existence and
activity were measured and recorded
continuously, throughout every min-
ute of every day of every year. And all
of these records were summed up, in-
tegrated, into the “Sigma” curve. This
curve, while only an incredibly and
senselessly tortuous line to the lay-
man’s eye, was a veritable mine of
information to' the initiate.

Cloud glanced along the Sigma
curve of the previous forty-eight
hours and scowled, for one jagged
peak, scarcely an hour old, actually
punched through the top line of the
chart.

“Bad, huh, Frank?” he grunted.

“Plenty bad, Storm, and getting
worse,” the observer assented. “I
wouldn’t wonder if Carlowitz were
right, after all- — if she ain’t getting
ready to blow her top I’m a Zabriskan
fontema’s maiden aunt.”

“No periodicity — no equation, of
course.” It was a statement, not a
question. The Lensman ignored as
completely as did the observer, if not
as flippantly, the distinct possibility
that at any moment the observatory
and all that it contained might be re-
solved into their component atoms.

10 COMET July

“None whatever,” came flatly from observer reported. “They’ll have ’em
Cloud. He did not need to spend hours here in fifteen minutes.”
at a calculating machine; at one “QX — I’ll get dressed, then.”

glance he knew, without knowing how The Lensman and the observer
he knew, that no equation could be helped him into his cumbersome,
made to fit even the weighted-average heavily-padded armor. They checked
locus of that wildly-shifting Sigma his instruments, making sure that the
curve. “But most of the cycles cut this protective- devices of the suit were
ordinate here — seven fifty-one — so I’ll functioning at full efficiency. Then all
take that for my value. That means three went out to the flitter. A tiny
nine point nine or six kilograms of speedster, really; a torpedo bearing
duodec basic charge, with one five the stubby wings and the ludicrous
percent over and one five percent un- tail-surfaces, the multifarious driv-
der that for alternates. Neocarballoy ing-, braking-, side-, top-, and
casing, fifty-three millimeters on the under- jets so characteristic of the
basic, others in proportion. On the tricky, cranky, but ultra-maneuver-
wire?” able breed. But this one had

“It went out as you said it,” the something that the ordinary speedster

THE VORTEX BLASTER

11

>941

or flitter did not carry ; spaced around
the needle beak there yawned the
open muzzles of a triplex bomb-
thrower.

More checking. The Lensman and
the armored Cloud both knew that
every one of the dozens of instru-
ments upon the hitter’s special board
was right to the hair; nevertheless
each one was compared with the
master-instrument of the observatory.

THE bombs arrived and were loaded
in ; and Cloud, with a casually-waved
salute, stepped into the tiny operat-
ing compartment. The massive door —
flitters have no airlocks, as the whole
midsection is scarcely bigger than an

airlock would have to be — rammed
shut upon its fiber gaskets, the heavy
toggles drove home. A cushioned form
closed in upon the pilot, leaving only
his arms and lower kgs free.

Then, making sure that his two
companions had ducked for cover.
Cloud shot his flitter into the air and
toward the seething inferno which
was Loose Atomic Vortex Number
One. For it was seething, no fooling;
and it was an inferno. The crater was
a ragged, jagged hole a full mile from
lip to lip and" perhaps a quarter of
that in depth. It was not, however, a
perfect cone, for the floor, being
largely incandescently molten, was
practically level except for a depres-

12 COMET July

sion at the center, where the actual
vortex lay. The walls of the pit were
steeply, unstably irregular, varying
in pitch and shape with the hardness
and refractoriness of the strata com-
posing them. Now a section would
glare into an unbearably blinding
white puffing away in sparkling vapor.
Again, cooled by an inrushing blast
of air, it would subside into an angry
scarlet, its surface crawling in a slug-
gish flow of lava. Occasionally a part
of the wall might even go black, into
pock-marked scoriae or into brilliant
planes of obsidian.

For always, somewhere, there was
an enormous volume of air pouring
into that crater. It rushed in as ordi-
nary air. It came out, however, in a
ragingly-uprushing pillar, as — as
something else. No one knew — or
knows yet, for that matter — exactly
what a loose vortex does to the mole-
cules and atoms of air. In fact, due
to the extreme variability already re-
ferred to, it probably does not do the
same thing for more than an instant
at a time.

That there is little actual combus-
tion is certain ; that is, except for the
forced combination of nitrogen, ar-
gon, xenon, and krypton with oxygen.
There is, however, consumption :
plenty of consumption. And what that
incredibly intense bombardment im-
pinges up is .... is altered. Pro-
foundly and obscuredly altered, so
that the atmosphere emitted from the
crater is quite definitely no longer
air as we know it. It may be corrosive,
it may be poisonous in one or an-
other of a hundred fashions, it may
be merely new and different; but it
is no longer the air which we
human beings are used to breathing.
And it is this fact, rather than the
destruction of the planet itself, which
would end the possibility of life upon
Earth’s surface.

IT is difficult indeed to describe the
appearance of a loose atomic vortex
to those who have never seen one;
and, fortunately, most people never

have. And practically all of its fright-
ful radiation lies in those octaves of
the spectrum which are invisible to
the human eye. Suffice it to say, then,
that it had an average effective sur-
face temperature of about fifteen
thousand degrees absolute — two and
•one-half times as hot as the sun of
Tellus — and that it was radiating
every frequency possible to that in-
comprehensible temperature, and let
it go at that.

And Neal Cloud, scurrying in his
flitter through that murky, radiation-
riddled atmosphere, setting up equa-
tions from the readings of his various
meters and gauges and solving those
equations almost instantaneously in
his mathematical-prodigy’s mind, sat
appalled. For the activity level was,
and even in its lowest dips remained,
far above the level he had selected.
His skin began to prickle and to burn.
His eyes began to smart and to ache.
He knew what those symptoms
meant; even the flitter’s powerful
screens were not stopping all the ra-
diation; even his suit-screens and his
special goggles were not stopping
what leaked through. But he wouldn’t
quit yet ; the activity might — probably
would — take a nose-dive any instant.
If it did, he’d have to be ready. On the
other hand, it might blow up at any
instant, too.

There were two schools of mathe-
matical thought upon that point. One
held that the vortex, without any
essential change in its physical con-
dition or nature, would keep on grow-
ing bigger. Indefinitely, until, uniting
with the other vortices of the planet,
it had converted the entire mass of
the world into energy.

The second school, of which the
forementioned Carlowitz was the
loudest voice, taught that at a certain
stage of development the internal en-
ergy of the vortex would become so
great that generation-radiation equi-
librium could not be maintained. This
would, of course, result in an explo-
sion; the nature and consequences of
which this Carlowitz was wont to

1941 THE VORTEX BLASTER 13

dwell upon in ghoulishly mathemati-
cal glee. Neither school, however,
could prove its point — or, rather, each
school proved its point, by means of
unimpeachable mathematics — and
each hated and derided the other,
loudly and heatedly.

And now Cloud, as he studied
through his almost opaque defenses
that indescribably ravening fireball,
that esuriently rapacious monstrosity
which might very well have come
from the deepest pit of the hottest hell
of mythology, felt strongly inclined
to agree with Carlowitz. It didn’t
seem possible that anything could get
any worse than that without explod-
ing. And such an explosion, he felt
sure, would certainly blow everything
fojrmiles around into the smitheriest
kind of smithereens.

The activity of the vortex stayed
high, 'way too high. The tiny control
room of the flitter grew hotter and
hotter. His skin burned and his eyes
ached worse. He touched a communi-
cator stud and spoke.

“Phil? Better get me three more
bombs. Like these, except up
around. . . .”

“I don’t check you. If you do that,
it’s apt to drop to a minimum and stay
there,” the Lensman reminded him.
“I.t’s completely unpredictable, you
know.”

“It may, at that .... so I’ll have
to forget the five percent margin and
hit it on the nose or not at all. Order
me up two more, then — one at half of
what I’ve got here, the other double
it,” and he reeled off the figures for
the charge and the casing of the ex-
plosive. “You might break out a jar
of burn-dressing, too. Some fairly hot
stuff is leaking through.”

“We’ll do that. Come down, fasti”

Cloud landed. He stripped to the
skin and the observer smeared his
every square inch of epidermis with
the thick, gooey stuff that was not
only a highly efficient screen against
radiation, but also a sovereign rem-
edy for new radiation burns. He ex-
changed his goggles for a thicker.

darker, heavier pair. The two bombs
arrived and were substituted for two
of the original load.

“I thought of something while I
was up there,” Cloud informed the ob-
servers then. “Twenty kilograms of
duodec is nobody’s firecracker, but it
may fee the least of what’s going to go
off. Have you got any idea of what’s
going to become of the energy inside
that vortex when I blow it out?”
“Can’t say that I have.” The Lens-
man frowned in thought. “No data.”
“Neither have I. But I’d say that
you better go back to the new station
— the one you were going to move to
if it kept on getting worse.”

“But the instruments ” the

Lensman was thinking, not of the in-
struments themselves, which were
valueless in comparison with life, but
of the records those instruments
would make. Those records were
priceless.

“I’ll have everything on the tapes
in the flitter,” Cloud reminded.

“But suppose. . . . .”

“That the flitter stops one, too — or
doesn’t stop it, rather? In that case,
your back station won’t be there,
either, so it won’t make any differ-
ence.” How mistaken Cloud was!

“QX,” the Chief decided. “We’ll
leave when you do — just in case.”

AGAIN in air, Cloud found that the
activity, while still high, was not too
high, but that it was fluctuating too
rapidly. He could not get even five
seconds of trustworthy prediction, to
say nothing of ten. So he waited, as
close as he dared remain to that
horrible center of disintegration.

The flitter hung poised in air, mo-
tionless, upon softly hissing under-
jets. Cloud knew to a fraction his
height above the ground. He knew to
a fraction his distance from the vor-
tex. He knew with equal certainty
the density of the atmosphere and the
exact velocity and direction of the
wind. Hence, sinee he could also read
closely enough the momentary vari-
ations in the cyclonic storms within

14

COMET

the crater, he could compute very
easily the course and velocity neces-
sary to land the bomb in the exact
center of the vortex at any given in-
stant of time. The hard part — the
thing that no one had as yet succeeded
in doing — was to predict, for a time
far enough ahead to be of any use, a
usably close approximation to the
vortex’s quantitative activity. For, as
has been said, he had to over-blast,
rather than under-, if he could not
hit it “on the nose:” to under-blast
would scatter it all over the state.

Therefore Cloud concentrated upon
the dials and gauges before him ; con-
centrated with every fiber of his being
and every cell of his brain.

Suddenly, almost imperceptibly,
the Sigma curve gave signs of flat-
tening out. In that instant Cloud’s
mind pounced. Simultaneous equa-
tions: nine of them, involving nine
unknowns. An integration in four
dimensions. No matter — Cloud did
not solve them laboriously, one factor
at a time. Without knowing how he
had arrived at it, he knew the an-
swer; just as the Posenian or the
Rigellian is able to perceive every
separate component particle of an
opaque, three-dimensional solid, but
without being able to explain to any-
one how his sense of perception
works. It just is, that’s all.

Anyway, by virtue of whatever
sense or ability it is which makes a
mathematical prodigy what he is,
Cloud knew that in exactly eight and
three-tenths seconds from that ob-
served instant the activity of the
vortex would be slightly — but not too
far — under the coefficient of his
heaviest bomb. Another flick of his
mental trigger and he knew the exact
velocity he would require. His hand
swept over the studs, his right foot
tramped down, hard, upon the firing
lever; and, even as the quivering
flitter shot forward under eight Tellu-
rian gravities of acceleration, he
knew to the thousandth of a second
how long he would have to hold that
acceleration to attain that velocity.

July

While not really long — in seconds —
it was much too long for comfort. It
took him much closer to the vortex
than he wanted to be ; in fact, it took
him right out over the crater itself.

But he stuck to the calculated
course, and at the precisely correct
instant he cut his drive and released
his largest bomb. Then, so rapidly
that it was one blur of speed, he again
kicked on his eight G’s of drive and
started to whirl around as only a
speedster or a flitter can whirl. Prac-
tically unconscious from the terrific
resultant of the linear and angular
accelerations, he ejected the two
smaller bombs. He did not care par-
ticularly where they lit, just so they
didn’t light in the crater or near the
observatory, and he had already made
certain of that. Then, without waiting
even to finish the whirl or to
straighten her out in level flight.
Cloud’s still-flying hand darted to-
ward the switch whose closing would
energize the Bergenholm and make
the flitter inertialess.

Too late. Hell was out for noon,
with the little speedster still inert.
Cloud had moved fast, too; trained
mind and trained body had been
working at top speed and in perfect
coordination. There just simply had-
n’t been enough time. If he could have
got what he wanted, ten full seconds,
or even nine, he could have made it,
But

IN SPITE of what happened, Cloud
defended his action, then and there-
after. Damnitall, he had to take the
eight-point-three second reading ! An-
other tenth of a second and his bomb
wouldn’t have fitted — he didn’t have
the five percent leeway he wanted,
remember. And no, he couldn’t wait
for another match, either. His screens
were leaking like sieves, and if he
had waited for another chance they
would have picked him up fried to a
greasy cinder in his own lard !

The bomb sped truly and struck
the target in direct central impact,
exactly as scheduled. It penetrated

1941

THE VORTEX BLASTER

15

perfectly. The neocarballoy casing
lasted just long enough — that fright-
ful charge of duodec exploded, if not
exactly at the center of the vortex, at
least near enough to the center to
do the work. In other words, Cloud’s
figuring had been close — very close.
But the time had been altogether too
short.

The flitter was not even out of the
crater when the bomb went off. And
not only the bomb. For Cloud’s vague
forebodings were materialized, and
more; the staggeringly immense en-
ergy of the vortex merged with that
of the detonating duodec to form an
utterly incomprehensible whole.

In part the hellish flood of boiling
lava in that devil’s cauldron was
beaten downward into a bov/1 by the
sheer, stupendous force of the blow;
in part it was hurled abroad in
masses, in gouts and streamers. And
the raging wind of the explosion’s
front seized the fragments and tore
and worried them to bits, hurling
them still faster along their paths of
violence. And air, so densely com-
pressed as to be to all intents and,
purposes a solid, smote the walls of
the crater. Smote them so that they
crumbled, crushed outward through
the hard-packed ground, broke up
into jaggedly irregular blocks which
hurtled, screamingly, away through
the atmosphere.

Also the concussion wave, or the
explosion front, or flying fragments,
or something, struck the two loose
bombs, so that they too exploded and
added their contribution to the al-
ready stupendous concentration of
force. They were not close enough to
the flitter to wreck it of themselves,
but they were close enough so that
they didn’t do her — or her pilot — a
bit of good.

The first terrific wave buffeted the
flyer while Cloud’s right hand was in
the air, shooting across the panel to
turn on the Berg. The impact jerked
the arm downward and sidewise, both
struck the ledge. The second one, an
bones of the forearm snapping as it

instant later, broke his left leg. Then
the debris began to arrive.

Chunks of solid or semi-molten
rock slammed against the hull, knock-
ing off wings and control-surfaces.
Gobs of viscous slag slapped it liquid-
ly, freezing into and clogging up jets
and orifices. The little ship was hurled
hither and yon, in the grip of forces
she could no more resist than can
the floating leaf resist the waters of
a cataract. And Cloud’s brain was as
addled as an egg by the vicious con-
cussions which were hitting him from
so many different directions and so
nearly all at once. Nevertheless, with
his one arm and his one leg and the
few cells of his brain that were still
at work, the physicist was still in the
fight.

By sheer force of will and nerve he
forced his left hand across the gyrat-
ing key-bank to the Bergenholm
switch. He snapped it, and in the in-
stant of its closing a vast, calm peace
descended, blanket-like. For, fortu-
nately, the Berg still worked ; the
flitter and all her contents and ap-
purtenances were inertialess. Nothing
material could buffet her or hurt her
now ; she would waft effortlessly away
from a feather’s lightest possible
touch.

Cloud wanted to faint then, but he
didn’t — quite. Instead, foggily, he
tried to look back at the crater. Nine-
tenths of his visiplates were out of
commission, but he finally got a view.
Good — it was out. He wasn’t sur-
prised; he had been quite confident
that it would be. It wasn’t scattered
around, either. It couldn’t be, for his
only possibility of smearing the shot
was on the upper side, not the lower.

HIS next effort was to locate the
secondary observatory, where he had
to land, and in that too he was suc-
cessful. He had enough intelligence
left to realize that, v/ith practically
all of his jets clogged and his wings
and tail shot off, he couldn’t land hi3
little vessel inert. Therefore he would
have to land her free.

16

COMET

July

And by dint of light and extremely
unorthodox use of what jets he had
left in usable shape he did land her
free, almost within the limits o# the
observatory’s field; and having land-
ed, he inerted her.

But, as has been intimated, his
brain was not working so well; he
had held his ship inertialess quite a
few seconds longer than he thought,
and he did not even think of the
buffetings she had taken. As a result
of these things, however, her intrinsic
velocity did not match, anywhere
near exactly, that of the ground upon
which she lay. Thus, when Cloud cut
his Bergenholm, restoring thereby to
the flitter the absolute velocity and
inertia she had had before going free,
there resulted a distinctly anti-
climatic crash.

There was a last terrific bump as
the motionless vessel collided with
the equally motionless ground; and
“Storm” Cloud, vortex blaster, went
out like the proverbial light.

Help came, of course; and on the
double. The pilot was unconscious and
the hitter’s door could not be opened
from the outside, but those were not
insuperable obstacles. A plate, already
loose, was sheared away ; the pilot was
carefully lifted out of his prison and
rushed to Base Hospital in the “meat-
can” already in attendance.

And later, in a private office of that
hospital, the gray-clad Chief of the
Atomic Research Laboratory sat and
waited — but not patently.

“How is he, Lacy?” he demanded,
as the Surgeon-General entered the
room. “He’s going to live, isn't he?”

“Oh, yes, Phil — definitely yes,”
Lacy replied, briskly. “He has a good
skeleton, very good indeed. The burns
are superficial and will yield quite
readily to treatment. The deeper, de-
layed effects of the radiation to which
he was exposed can be neutralized
entirely effectively. Thus he will not
need even a Phillips’s treatment for
the replacement of damaged parts,
except possibly for a few torn muscles
and so on.”

“But he was smashed up pretty
badly, wasn’t he ? I know that he had
a broken arm and a broken leg, at
least.”

“Simple fractures only — entirely
negligible.” Lacy waved aside with an
airy gesture such small ills as broken
bones. “He’ll be outdn a few weeks.”

“How soon can I see him?” the
Lensman-physicist asked. “There are
some important things to take up with
him, and I’ve got a personal message
for him that I must give him as soon
as possible.”

Lacy pursued his lips. Then :

“You may see him now,” he de-
cided. “He is conscious, and strong
enough. Not too long, though, Phil —
fifteen minutes at most.”

“QX, and thanks,” and a nurse led
the visiting Lensman to Cloud.’s bed-
side.

“Hi, Stupe !” he boomed, cheerfully.
“ ‘Stupe’ being short for stupendous,
not ‘stupid’ ”.

“Hi, Chief. Glad to see somebody.
Sit down.”

“You’re the most-wanted man in
the Galaxy,” the visitor informed the
invalid, “not excepting even Kimball
Kinnison. Look at this spool of tape,
and it’s only the first one. I brought
it along for you to read at your
leisure. As soon as any planet finds
out that we’ve got a sure-enougl.
vortex-blower-outer, an expert who
can really call his shots — and the
news travels mighty fast — that planet
sends in a double-urgent, Class A-
Prime demand for first call upon your
services.

“Sirius IV got in first by a whisker,
it seems, but Aldebaran II was so
close a second that it was a photo
finish, and all the channels have been
jammed ever since. Canopus, Vega,
Rigel, Spica. They all want you.
Everybody, from Alsakan to Vande-
mar and back. We told them right off
that we would not receive personal
delegations — we had to almost throw
a couple of pink-haired Chickla-
dorians out bodily to make them be-
lieve that we meant it — and that the

1941

THE VORTEX BLASTER

17

age and condition of the vortex
involved, not priority of requisition,
would govern, QX?”

“Absolutely,” Cloud agreed. “That’s
the only way it could be, I should
think.”

“So forget about this psychic
trauma. . . . No, I don’t mean that,”
the Lensman corrected himself hast-
ily. “You know what I mean. The will
to live is the most important factor
in any man’s recovery, and too many
worlds need you too badly to have
you quit now. Not?”

“I suppose so,” Cloud acquiesced,
but somberly. “I’ll get out of here in
short orde . And I’ll keep on pecking
away until one of those vortices
finishes what this one started.”
“You’ll die of old age then, son,”
the Lensman assured him. “We got
full data — all the information we
need. We know exactly what to do
to your screens. Next time nothing

will come through except light, and
only as much of that as you feel like
admitting. You can wait as close to
a vortex as you please, for as long as
you please; until you get exactly the
activity and time-interval that you
want. You will be just as comfortable
and just as safe as though you were
home in bed.”

“Sure of that?”

“Absolutely — or at least, as sure as
we can be of anything that hasn’t
happened yet. But I see that your
guardian angel here is eyeing her
clock somewhat pointedly, so I’d bet-
ter be doing a flit before they toss me
down a shaft. Clear ether Storm!”
“Clear ether, Chief!”

And that is how “Storm” Cloud,
atomic physicist, became the most
narrowly-specialized specialist in all
the annals of science: how he became
“Slorm” Cloud, Vortex Blaster — the
Galaxy’s only vortex blaster.

Qoming

UNIVERSE”

ii

A Smashing Novelet of the Galaxies, by

NAT SCHACHNER

■Author of “He, from Procyon,” “Ancestral Voices/’ and the
new novel, “By the Dim Lamps."

Qoming

JONATHC
:t his hous<
exactly se
d set out c
en, at the
)w, for twi
k never v

down Map]

1941

19

THE STREET THAT WASN'T THERE

stopped to talk with him. Even the
man at the Red Star confectionery,
where he bought his cigar, remained
silent while the purchase was being
made. Mr. Chambers merely tapped
on the glass top of the counter with a
coin, the man reached in and brought
forth the box, and Mr. Chambers took
his cigar. That was all.

For people long ago had gathered
that Mr. Chambers desired to be left
alone. The newer generation of towns-
folk called it eccentricity. Certain un-
couth persons had a different word for
it. The oldsters remembered that this
queer looking individual with his
black silk muffler, rosewood cane and
bowler hat once had been a professor
at State University.

A professor of metaphysics, they
seemed to recall, or some such out-
landish subject. At any rate a furore
of some sort was connected with his
name ... at the time an academic
scandal. He had written a book, and
he had taught the subject matter of
that volume to his classes. What that
subject matter was long had been for-
gotten, but whatever it was had been
considered sufficiently revolutionary
to cost Mr. Chambers his post at the
university.

A silver moon shone over the chim-
ney tops and a chill, impish October
wind was rustling the dead leaves
when Mr. Chambers started out at
seven o’clock.

It was a good night, he told himself,
smelling the clean, crisp air of autumn
and the faint pungence of distant
wood smoke.

He walked unhurriedly, swinging
his cane a bit less jauntily than twen-
ty years ago. He tucked the muffler
more securely under the rusty old top-
coat and pulled his bowler hat more
firmly on his head.

He noticed that the street light at
the corner of Maple and Jefferson
was out and he grumbled a little to
himself when he was forced to step
off the walk to circle a boarded-off
section of newly-laid concrete work
before the driveway of 816.

It seemed that he reached the cor-
ner of Lexington and Maple just a
bit too quickly, but he told himself
that this couldn’t be. For he never did
that. For twenty years, since the year
following his expulsion from the uni-
versity, he had lived by the clock.

The same thing, at the same time,
day after day. He had not deliberately
set upon such a life of routine. A
bachelor, living alone with sufficient
money to supply his humble needs,
the timed existence had grown on him
gradually.

So he turned on Lexington and back
on Oak. The dog at the corner of Oak
and Jefferson was waiting for him
once again and came out snarling and
growling, snapping at his heels. But
Mr. Chambers pretended not to no-
tice and the beast gave up the chase.

A radio was blaring down the street
and faint wisps of what it was blurt-
ing floated to Mr. Chambers.

“ . . . still taking place . . . Empire
State building disappeared . . . thin
air . . . famed scientist, Dr. Edmund
Harcourt ...”

The wind whipped the muted words
away and Mr. Chambers grumbled to
himself. Another one of those fantas-
tic radio dramas, probably. He remem-
bered one from many years before,
something about the Martians. And
Harcourt ! What did Harcourt have to
do with it? He was one of the men
who had ridiculed the book Mr. Cham-
bers had written.

But he pushed speculation away,
sniffed the clean, crisp air again,
looked at the familiar things that ma-
terialized out of the late autumn dark-
ness as he walked along. For there
was nothing . . . absolutely nothing in
the world . . . that he would let upset
him. That was a tenet he had laid
down twenty years ago.

THERE was a crowd of men in front
of the drugstore at the corner of Oak
and Lincoln and they were' talking ex-
citedly. Mr. Chambers caught some
excited words : “It’s happening every-

20

COMET

July

where . . . What do you think it is . . .
The scientists can’t explain ...”

But as Mr. Chambers neared them
they feH into what seemed an abashed
silence and watched him pass. He, on
his part, gave them no sign of recog-
nition. That was the way it had been
for many years, ever since the people
had become convinced that he did not
wish to talk.

Gne of the men half started' for-
ward as if to speak to him, but then
stepped back and Mr. Chambers con-
tinued on his walk.

Back at his own front door he
stopped and as he had done a thou-
sand times before drew forth the
heavy gold wateh from his. pocket.

He started violently. It was only
7:30!

For long minutes he stood there
staring at the watch in accusation.
The timepiece hadn’t stopped, for it
still ticked audibly.

Bi^t 15 minutes too soon ! For twen-
ty years, day, in, day out, he had
started’ out at seven and returned at
a quarter of eight. Now . . .

It wasn’t until then that he realized
something else was wrong. He had
no cigar. For the first time he had
neglected to purchase his evening
smoke.

Shaken, muttering to himself, Mr.
Chambers let himself in his house and
locked the door behind him.

He hung his hat and coat on the
rack in the hall and walked slowly
into the living room. Dropping into
his favorite chair, he shook his head
in bewilderment.

Silence filled the room. A silence
that was measured by the ticking of
the old fashioned pendulum clock on
the mantelpiece.

But silence was no strange thing
to Mr. Chambers. Once he had loved
music . . . the kind of music he could
get by tuning in symphonic orchestras
on the radio. But the radio stood silent
in the corner, the cord out of its sock-
et. Mr. Chambers had pulled it out
many years before. To be precise,
upon the night when the symphonic

broadcast had been interrupted to give
a news flash.

He had stopped reading newspapers
and magazines, too, had exiled himself
to a few city blocks. And as the years
flowed by that self exile had become a
prison, an intangible, impassable wall
bounded by four city blocks by three.
Beyond them lay utter, unexplainable
terror. Beyond them he never went.

3ut recluse though he was, he could
not on occasion escape from hearing
things. Things the newsboy shouted
on the streets, things the men talked
about on the drugstore corner when
they didn’t see him coming.

And so he knew that this was the
year 1960 and that the wars in Europe
and Asia had flamed to an end to be
followed by a terrible plague, a plague
that even now was sweeping through
country after country like wild fire,
decimating populations. A plague un-
doubtedly induced by hunger and
privation and the miseries of war.

But those things he put away as
items far removed from his own small
world. He disregarded them. He pre-
tended he had never heard of them.
Others might discuss and worry over
them if they wished. To him they sim-
ply did not matter.

But there were two things tonight
that did matter. Two curious, incredi-
ble events. He had arrived home fif-
teen minutes early. He had forgotten
his cigar.

Huddled in the chair, he frowned
slowly. It was disquieting to have
something like that happen. There
must be something wrong. Had his
long exile finally turned his mind . . .
perhaps just a very little . . . enough
to make him queer? Had he lost his
sense of proportion, of perspective?

No, he hadn’t. Take this room, for
example. After twenty years it had
come to be as much a part of him as
the clothes he wore. Every detail of
the room was engraved in his mind
with . . . clarity; the old center leg
table with its green covering and
stained glass lamp; the mantelpiece
with the dusty bric-a-brac ; the pendu-

1941

THE STREET THAT WASN'T THERE

21

lum clock that told the time of day as
well as the day of, the week and
month ; the elephant ash tray on the
tabaret and, most important of all,
the marine print.

Mr. Chambers loved that picture.
It had depth, he always said. It showed
an old sailing ship in the foreground
on a placid sea. Far in the distance,
almost on the horizon line, was the
vague outline of a larger vessel.

There were other pictures, too. The
forest scene above the fireplace, the
old English prints in the corner where
he sat, the Currier and Ives above the
radio. But the ship print was directly
in his line of vision. He could see it
without turning his head. He had put
it there because he liked it best.

Further reverie became an effort as
Mr. Chambers felt himself succumb-
ing to ^weariness. He undressed and
went to bed. For an hour he lay
awake, assailed by vague fears he
could neither define nor understand.

When finally he dozed off it was to
lose himself in a series of horrific
dreams. He dreamed first that he was
a castaway on a tiny islet in mid-
ocean, that the waters around the
island teemed with huge poisonous sea
snakes ... . hydrophinnae . . . and that
steadily those serpents were devour-
ing the island.

In another dream he was pursued
by a horror which he could neither
see nor hear, but only could imagine.
And as he sought to flee he stayed in
the one place. His legs worked franti-
cally, pumping like pistons, but he
could make no progress. It was as if
he ran upon a tread way.

THEN again the terror descended on
him, a black, unimagined thing and
he tried to scream and couldn’t. He
opened his mouth and strained his
vocal cords and filled his lungs to
bursting with the urge to shriek . . .
but not a sound came from his lips.

All next day he was uneasy and as
he left the house that evening, at pre-
cisely seven o’clock, he kept saying
to himself: “You must not forget to-

night! You must remember to stop
and get your cigar !”

The street light at the corner of
Jefferson was still out and in front of
816 the cemented driveway was still
boarded off. Everything was the same
as the night before.

And now, he told himself, the Red
Star confectionery is in the next block.
I must not forget tonight. To forget
twice in a row would be just too much.

He grasped that thought firmly in
his mind, strode just a bit more rapid-
ly down the street.

But at the corner he stopped in con-
sternation. Bewildered, he stared
down the next block. There was no
neon sign, no splash of friendly light
upon the sidewalk to mark the little
store tucked away in this residential
section.

He stared at the street marker and
read the word slowly: GRANT. He
read it again, unbelieving, for this
shouldn’t be Grant Street, but Mar-
shall. He had walked two blocks and
the confectionery was between Mar-
shall and Grant. He hadn't come to
Marshall yet . . . and here was Grant.

Or had he, absent-mindedly, come
one block farther than he thought,
passed the store as on the night
before ?

For the first time in twenty years,
Mr. Chambers retraced his steps. He
walked back to Jefferson, then turned
around and went back to Grant again
and on to Lexington. Then back to
Grant again, where he stood astound-
ed while a single, incredible fact grew
slowly in his brain :

There wasn’t any confectionery!
The block from Marshall to Grant had
disappeared!

Now he understood why he had
missed the store on the night before,
why he had arrived home fifteen min-
utes early.

Oh legs that were dead things he
stumbled back to his home. He
slammed and locked the door behind
him and made his way unsteadily to
his chair in the corner.

What was this ? What did it mean ?

COMET

22

July

By what inconceivable necromancy
could a paved street with houses, trees
and buildings be spirited away and
the space it had occupied be closed up?

Was something happening in the
world which he, in his secluded life,
knew nothing about?

Mr. Chambers shivered, reached to
turn up the collar of his coat, then
stopped as he realized the room must
be warm. A fire blazed merrily in the
grate. The cold he felt came from
something . . . somewhere else. The
eold of fear and horror, the chill of
a half whispered thought.

A deathly silence had fallen, a
silence still measured by the pendulum
clock. And yet a silence that held a
-different tenor than he had ever
sensed before. Not a homey, comfort-
able silence . . . but a silenee that
hinted at emptiness and nothingness.

There was something back of this,
Mr. Chambers told himself. Some-
thing that reached far back into one
corner of his brain and demanded
recognition. Something tied up with
the fragments of talk he had heard
©n the drugstore corner, bits of news
broadcasts he had heard as he walked
along the street, the shrieking of the
newsboy calling his papers. Something
to do with the happenings in the world
from which he had excluded himself.

HE brought them back to mind now
and lingered over the one central
theme of the talk he overheard: the
wars and plagues. Hints of a Europe
and Asia swept almost clean of human
life, of the plague ravaging Africa, of
its appearance in South America, of
the frantic efforts of the United States
to prevent its spread into that na-
tion’s boundaries.

Millions of people were dead in
Europe and Asia, Africa and South
America. Billions, perhaps.

And somehow those gruesome sta-
tistics seemed tied up with his own
experience. Something, somewhere,
some part of his earlier life, seemed to
hold an explanation. But try as he

would his befuddled brain failed to
find the answer.

The pendulum clock struck slowly,
its every other chime as usual set-
ting up a sympathetic vibration in the
pewter vase that stood upon the
mantel.

Mr. Chambers got to his feet, strode
to the door, opened it and looked out.

Moonlight tesselated the street in
black and silver, etching the chimneys
and trees against a silvered sky.

But the house directly across the
street was not the same. It was strang-
ly lop-sided, its dimensions out of pro-
portion, like a house that suddenly
had gone mad.

He stared at it in amazement, try-
ing to determine what was wrong with
it. He recalled how it had always
stood, foursquare, a solid piece of mid-
Victorian architecture.

Then, before his eyes, the house
righted itself again. Slowly it drew
together, ironed out its queer angles,
readjusted its dimensions, became
once against the stodgy house he
knew it had to be.

With a sigh of relief, Mr. Chambers
turned back into the hall.

But before he closed the door, he
looked again. The house was lop-sided
... as bad, perhaps worse than before !

Gulping in fright, Mr. Chambers
slammed the door shut, looked it and
double bolted it. Then he went to his
bedroom and took two sleeping,
powders.

His dreams that night were the
same as on the night before. Again
there was the islet in mid-ocean.
Again he was alone upon it. Again
the squirming hydrophinnae were eat-
ing his foothold piece by piece.

He awoke, body drenched with per-
spiration. Vague light of early dawn
filtered through the window. The clock
on the bedside table showed 7 :30. Foi
a long time he lay there motionless.

Again the fantastic happenings of
the night before eame back to haunt
him and as he lay there, staring at
the windows, he remembered them,
one by one. But his mind, still fogged

1941

THE STREET THAT WASN'T THERE

23

by sleep and astonishment, took the
happenings in its stride, mulled over
them, lost the keen edge of fantastic
terror that lurked around them.

The light through the windows
slowly grew brighter. Mr. Chambers
slid out of bed, slowly crossed to the
window, the cold of the floor biting
into his bare feet. He forced himself
to look out.

There was nothing outside the win-
dow. No shadows. As if there might
be a fog. But no fog, however, thick,
could hide the apple tree that grew
close against the house.

But the tree was there . . . shadowy,
indistinct in the gray, with a few
withered apples still clinging to its
boughs, a few shriveled leaves reluc-
tant to leave the parent branch.

The tree was there now. But it had-
n’t been when he first had looked. Mr.
Chambers was sure of that.

AND now he saw the faint outlines of
his neighbor’s house . . . but those
outlines were all wrong. They didn’t
jibe and fit together . . .they were
out of plumb. As if some giant hand
had grasped the house and wrenched
it out of true. Like the house he had
seen across the street the night be-
fore, the house that had painfully
righted itself when he thought of -how
it should look.

Perhaps if he thought of how his
neighbor’s house should look, it too
might right itself. But Mr. Chambers
was very weary. Too weary to think
about the house.

He turned from the window and
dressed slowly. In the living room he
slumped into his chair, put his feet on
the old cracked ottoman. For a long
time he sat, trying to think.

And then, abruptly, something like
an electric shock ran through him.
Rigid, he sat there, limp inside at the
thought. Minutes later he arose and
almost ran across the room to the
old mahogany bookcase that stood
against the wall.

There were many volumes in the
case : his beloved classics on the first

shelf, his many scientific works on
the lower shelves. The second shelf
contained but one book. And it was
around this book that Mr. Chambers'
entire life was centered.

Twenty years ago he had written it
and foolishly attempted to teach its
philosophy to a class of undergrad-
uates. The newspapers, he remem-
bered, had made a great deal of it at
the time. Tongues had been set to
wagging. Narrow-minded townsfolk,
failing to understand either his
philosophy or his aim, but seeing in
him another exponent of some anti-
rational cult, had forced his expulsion
from the school.

It was a simple book, really, dis-
missed by most authorities as merely
the vagaries of an over-zealous mind.

Mr. Chambers took it down now,
opened its cover and began thumbing
slowly through the pages. For a mo-
ment the memory of happier days
swept over him.

Then his eyes focused on the para-
graph, a paragraph written so long
ago the very words seemed strange
and unreal:

Man himself, by the power of mass
suggestion, holds the physical fate of
this earth . . . yes, even the universe.
Billions of minds seeing trees as trees,
houses as houses, streets as streets . . .
and not as something else. Minds that
see things as they are and have kept
things as they were. . . . Destroy those
minds and the entire foundation of
matter > robbed of its regenerative
power, will crumple and slip away like
a column of sand. . . .

His eyes followed down the page:

Yet this would have nothing to do
with matter itself . . . but only with
matter’s form. For while the mind of
man through long ages may have
moulded an imagery of that space in
which he lives, mind would have little
conceivable influence upon the exist-
ence of that matter. What exists in
our known universe shall exist always
and can never be destroyed, only al-
tered or transformed.

24

COMET

But in modern astrophysics and
mathematics we gain an insight into
the possibility . . . yes probability . . .
that there are other dimensions , other
brackets of time and space impinging
on the one we occupy.

If a pin is thrust into a shadow,
would that shadow have any knowl-
edge of the pin? It would not , for in
this case the shadow is two dimen-
sional, the pin three dimensional. Yet
both occwpy the same space.

Granting then that the power of
men’s minds alone holds this universe,
or at least this world in its present
form, may we not go farther and en-
vision other minds in some other
plane watching us, waiting, waiting
craftily for the time they can take
over the domination of matter? Such
a concept is not impossible. It is a
natural conclusion if we accept the
double hypothesis: that mind does
control the formation of all matter;
and that other worlds lie in juxtapo-
sition with ours.

Perhaps we shall come upon a day,
far distant, when our plane, our
world will dissolve beneath our feet
and before our eyes as some stronger
intelligence reaches out from the
dimensional shadows of the very space
we live in and wrests from us the
matter which we know to be our own.

He stood astounded beside the book-
case, his eyes staring unseeing into
the fire upon the hearth.

He had written that. And because of
those words he had been called a
heretic, had been compelled to resign
his position at the university, had
been forced into this hermit life.

A tumultous idea hammered at him.
Men had died by the millions all over
the world. Where there had been
thousands of minds there now were
one or two. A feeble force to hold the
form of matter intact.

THE plague had swept Europe and
Asia almost clean of life, had blighted
Africa, had reached South America
. . . might even have come to the

July

United States. He remembered the
whispers he had heard, the words of
the men at the drugstore corner, the
buildings disappearing. Something
scientists could not explain. But those
were merely seraps of information. He
did not know the whole story . . .
he could not know. He never listened
to the radio, never read a newspaper.

But abruptly the whole thing fitted
together in his brain like the missing
piece of a puzzle into its slot. The
significance of it all gripped him with
damning clarity.

There were not sufficient minds in
existence to retain the material world
in its mundane form. Some other
power from another dimension was
fighting to supersede map’s control
and take his universe into its own
pl&ne! .

Abruptly Mr. Chambers closed the
book, shoved it back in the case and
picked up his hat and coat.

He had to know more. He had to find
someone who could tell him.

He moved through the hall to the
door, emerged into the street. On the
walk he looked skyward, trying to
make out the sun. But there wasn’t
any sun ... only an all pervading
grayness that shrouded everything
. . . not a gray fog, but a gray empti-
ness that seemed devoid of life, of any
movement.

The walk led to his gate and there
it ended, but as he moved forward the
sidewalk came into view and the house
ahead loomed out of the gray, but a
house with differences.

He moved forward rapidly. Visibil-
ity extended only a few feet and as
he approached them the houses ma-
terialized like two dimensional pic-
tures without perspective, like twisted
cardboard soldiers lining up for re-
view on a misty morning.

Onee he stopped and looked back
and saw that the grayness had closed
in behind him. The houses were wiped
out, the sidewalk faded into nothing.

He shouted, hoping to attract atten-
tion. But his voice frightened him.

J941

THE STREET THAT WASN'T THERE

25

It seemed to richochet up and into
the higher levels of the sky, as if a
giant door had been opened to a
mighty room high above him.

He went pii until he came to the
corner of Lexington. There, on the
curb, he stopped and stared. The gray
wall was thicker there but he did not
realize how close it was until he
glanced down at his feet and saw there
was nothing, nothing at all beyond the
curbstone. No dull gleam of wet
asphalt, no sign of a street. It was as
if all eternity ended here at the cor-
ner of Maple and Lexington.

With a wild cry, Mr. Chambers
turned and ran; Back down the street
he raced, coat streaming after him
in the wind, bowler hat bouncing on
his head.

Panting, he reached the gate and
stumbled up the walk, thankful that
it still was there.

On the stoop he stood for a moment,
breathing hard. He glanced back over
his shoulder and a queer feeling of
inner numbness seemed to well over
him. At that moment the gray noth-
ingness appeared to thin . . . the en-
veloping curtain fell away, and he
saw ...

Vague and indistinct, yet cast in
stereoscopic outline, a gigantic city
was limned against the darkling sky.
It was a city fantastic with cubed
domes, spires, and aerial bridges and
flying buttresses. Tunnel-like streets,
flanked on either side by shining
metallic ramps and runways, stretched
endlessly to the vanishing point. Great
shafts of multicolored light probed
huge streamers and ellipses above the
higher levels.

And beyond, like a final backdrop,
rose a titanic wall. It was from that
wall . . . from its crenelated parapets
and battlements that Mr. Chambers
felt the eyes peering at him.

Thousands of eyes glaring down
with but a single purpose.

And as he continued to look, some-
thing else seemed to take form above
that wall. A design this time, that
swirled and writhed in the ribbons of

radiance and rapidly coalesced into
strange geometric features, without
definite line or detail. A colossal face,
a face of indescribable power and evil,
it was, staring down with malevolent
composure.

THEN the city and the face slid out of
focus ; the vision faded like a darkened
magic-lantern, and the grayness
moved in again.

Mr. Chambers pushed open the door
of his house. But he did not lock it.
There was no need of locks . . . not
any more.

A few coals of fire still smouldered
in the grate and going there, he
stirred them up, raked away the ash,
piled on more wood. The flames leaped
merrily, dancing in the chimney’s
throat.

Without removing his hat and coat,
he sank exhausted in his favorite
chair, closed his eyes then opened
them again.

He sighed with relief as he saw the
room was unchanged. Everything in
its accustomed place: the clock, the
lamp, the elephant ash tray, the
marine print oh the wall.

Everything was as it should be.
The clock measured the silence with
its measured ticking ; it chimed
abruptly and the vase sent up its usual
sympathetic vibration. x

This was his room, he thought.
Rooms acquire the personality of the
person who lives in them, become a
part of him. This was his world, his
own private world, and as such it
would be the last to go.

But how long could he . . . his brain
. . . maintain its existence ?

Mr. Chambers stared at the marine
print and for a moment a little breath
of reassurance returned to him. They
couldn’t take this away. The rest of
the world might dissolve because
there was insufficient power of
thought to retain its outward form.

But this room was his. He alone
had furnished it. He alone, since he
had first planned the house’s building,
had lived here.

26

COMET

July

This room would stay. It must stay
on ... it must ...

He rose from his chair and walked
across the room to the book case,
stood staring at the second shelf with
its single volume. His eyes shifted to
the top shelf and swift terror gripped
him.

For all the books weren’t there. A
lot of books weren’t there! Only the
most beloved, the most familiar ones.

So the change already had started
here ! The unfamiliar books were gone
and that fitted in the pattern . . . for
it would be the least familiar things
that would go first.

Wheeling, he stared across the
room. Was it his imagination, or did
the lamp on the table blur and begin
to fade away?

But as he stared at it, it became
clear again, a solid, substantial thing.

For a moment real fear reached out
and touched him with chilly fingers.
For he knew that this room no longer
was proof against the thing that had
happened out there on the street.

Or had it really happened? Might
not all this exist within his own mind ?
Might not the street be as it always
was, with laughing children and
barking dogs? Might %ot the Red
Star confectionary still exist, splash-
ing the street with the red of its neon
sign?

Could it be that he was going mad?
He had heard whispers when he had
passed, whispers the gossiping house-
wives had not intended him to hear.
And he had heard the shouting of
boys when -he walked by. They
thought him' mad. Could he be really
mad?

But he knew fie wasn’t mad. He
knew that he perhaps was the sanest
of all men who walked the earth. For
he, and he alone, had foreseen this
very thing. And tfie others had scoffed
at fiim for it.

Somewhere else the children might
be playing on a street. But it would
be a different street. And the children
undoubtedly would be different too.

For the matter of which the street

and everything upon it had been
formed would now be cast in a dif-
ferent mold, stolen by different minds
in a different dimension.

Perhaps we shall come upon a day,
far distant, when our plane, our
world will dissolve beneath our feet
and before our eyes as some stronger
intelligence reaches out from the di-
mensional shadows of the very space
we live in and wrests from us the
matter which we know to be or own.

But there had been no need to wait
for that distant day. Scant years
after he had written those prophetic
words the thing was happening. Man
had played unwittingly into the
hands of those other minds in the
other dimension. Man had waged a
war and war had bred a pestilence.
And the whole vast cycle of events
was but a detail of a cycoplean plan.

He could see it all now. By an in-
sidious mass hypnosis minions from
that other dimension ... or was it
one supreme intelligence . . . had de-
liberately sown the seeds of dissen-
sion. Tfie reduction of the world’s
mental power had been carefully
planned with diabolic premeditation.

On impulse he suddenly , turned,
crossed tfie room and opened the con-
necting door to the bedroom. He
stopped on the threshold and a sob
forced its way to his lips.

There was no bedroom. Where his
stolid four poster and dresser had
been there was greyish nothingness.

Like an automaton he turned
again and paced to the hall door. Here,
too, he found what he had expected.
There was no hall, no familiar hat
rack and umbrella stand.

Nothing. ...

Weakly Mr. Chambers moved back
to his chair in the corner.

“So here I am,” he said, half aloud.

So there he was. Embattled in the
last corner of the world that was left
to him.

Perhaps there were other men like
him, he thought. Men who stood at
bay against the emptiness that

27

1941 THE STREET THAT WASN'T THERE

marked the transition from one
dimension to another. Men who had
lived elose to the things they loved,
who had endowed those things with
such substantial form power of
mind alone that they now stood out
alone against the power of some
greater mind.

The street was gone. The rest of
his house was gone. This room still
retained its form.

This room, he knew, would stay
the longest. And when the rest of the
room was gone, this corner with his
favorite chair would remain. For this
was the spot where he had lived for
twenty years. The bedroom was for
sleeping, the kitchen for eating. This
room was for living. This was his last
stand.

These were the walls and floors and
prints and lamps that had soaked up
his will to make them walls and prints
and lamps.

He looked out the window into a
blank world. His neighbors’ houses
already were gone. They had not lived
with them as he had lived with this
room. Their interests had been
divided, thinly spread ; their thoughts
had not been concentrated as his
upon an area four blocks by three, or
a room fourteen by twelve.

STARING through the window, he
saw it again. The same vision he had
looked upon before and yet different
in an indescribable way. There was
the city illumined in the sky. There
were the elliptical towers and turrets,
the cube-shaped domes and battle-
ments. He could see with stereoscopic
clarity the “aerial bridges, the gleam-
ing avenues sweeping on into infini-
tude. The vision was nearer this time,
tftit the depth and proportion had
changed ... as if he were viewing it
from two concentric angles at the
same time.

And the face . . . the face of mag-
nitude ... of power of cosmic craft
and evil. . . .

Mr. Chambers turned his eyes
back into the room. The clock was

ticking slowly, steadily. The greyness
was stealing into the room.

The table and radio were the first
to go. They simply faded away and
with them went one corner of the
room.

And then the elephant ash tray.

“Oh, well,” said Mr. Chambers, “I
never did like that very well.”

Now as he sat there it didn’t seem
queer to be without the table or the
radio. It was as if it were something
quite normal. Something one could
expect to happen.

Perhaps, if he thought hard enough,
he could bring them back.

But, after all, what was the use?
One man, alone, could not stand off
the irresistible march of nothing-
ness. One man, all alone, simply
couldn’t do it.

He wondered what the elephant
ash tray looked like in that other
dimension. It certainly wouldn’t be an
elephant ash trjftr nor would the
radio 'be a radio, for perhaps they
didn’t have ash trays or radios or
elephants in the invading dimension.

He wondered, as a matter of fact,
what he himself would look like when
he finally slipped into the unknown.
For he was Matter, too, just as the
ash tray and radio were matter.

He wondered if he would retain his
individuality ... if he still would be a
person. Or would he merely be a
thing?

There was one answer to all of that.
He simply didn’t know.

Nothingness advanced upon him,
ate its way across the room, stalking
him as he sat in the chair underneath
the lamp. And he waited for it.

The room, or what was left of it,
plunged into dreadful silence.

Mr. Chambers started. The clock
had stopped. Funny . . . the first time
in twenty years.

He leaped from his chair and then
sat down again.

The clock hadn’t stopped.

It wasn’t there.

There was a tingling sensation in
his feet.

The

Rock Bred
Evolution
in Reverse

EVIL’S

I T was not very large, as asteroids
go, but about it clung a silvery
mist of atmosphere. Deeper
flashes through the mist betokened
water, and green patches hinted of
rich vegetation. The space-patroller
circled the little world knowledgeably,
like a wasp buzzing around an apple.
In the control room, by the forward
ports, the Martian skipper addressed
his Terrestrial companion.

“I wissh you joy of yourr new
home,” he purred. Like many Mar-
tians, he was braced upright on his
lower tentacles by hoops and buckles
around his bladdery body, so that he

had roughly a human form, over
which lay a strange loose armor of
light plates. In the breathing hole of
his petal-tufted skull was lodged an
artificial voice-box that achieved
words. “I rregrret — ”

Fitzhugh Parr glowered back. He
was tall, even for a man of Earth, and
his long-jawed young face darkened
with wrath. “Regret ’ nothing,” he
snapped. “You’re jolly glad to drop
me on this little hell.”

“Hell?” repeated the Martian re-
proachfully. “But it iss a ssplendid
miniaturre worrld — nineteen of yourr
miless in diameterr, with arrtificial
grravity centerr to hold airr apdwa-
terr; ssown, too, with Terrestrial
plantss. And companionss of yo^r .
own rrace.”

The tufted head wagged. “Underr control-board, made flutelike com-
trreaty between Marrs and Earrth, ments to each other. The tentacle of
judgess of one planet cannot ssen- each twiddled an electro-automatic
tence to death crriminalss frrom the pistol.

otherr, not even ferr murrderr — ” “Rremove tunic and bootss,” di-

“It wasn’t for murder !” exploded rected the skipper. “You will not need
Parr. “I struck in self-defense!” them. Quickly, ssirr!”

“I cannot arrgue the point. Yourr
victim wass a high official perrhapss
inssolent, but you Earrth folk f orrget
how eassy ourr crraniumss crrack un-
derr yourr blowss. Anyway, you do
not die— -you arre exiled. Prreparre
to dissembarrk.”

Behind them three Martian space-
hands, sprawling like squids near the

Parr glared at the levelled weap-
ons of the space-hands, then shucked
his upper garment and kicked off his
boots. He stood up straight and lean-
muscled, in a pair of duck shorts. His
fists clenched at his sides.

“Now we grround,” the skipper
continued, and even as he spoke there
came the shock of the landfall. The

29

30

COMET

July

inner panel opened, then the outer
hatch. Sunlight beat into the cham-
ber. “Goodbye,” said the skipper for-
mally. “You have thirrty ssecondss,
Earrth time, to walk clearr of our
blasstss beforre we take off. Marrch.”

Parr strode out upon dark, rich
soil. He sensed behind him the silent
quiver of Martian laughter, and felt
a new ecstasy of hate for his late
guards, their race, and the red planet
that spawned them. Not until he
heard the rumble and swish of the
ship’s departure did he take note of
the little world that was now his pris-
on home.

At first view it wasn’t really bad.
At second, it wasn’t really strange.
The sky, by virtue of an Earth-type
atmosphere, shone blue with wispy
clouds, and around the small plain on
which he stood sprouted clumps and
thickets of green tropical trees.
Heathery ferns, with white and yel-
low edges to their leaves, grew under
his bare feet. The sun, hovering at
zenith, gave a July "warmth to the
air. The narrow horizon was very
near, of course, but the variety of
thickets and the broken nature of the
land beyond kept it from seeming too
different from the skyline of Earth.
Parr decided that he might learn to
endure, even to enjoy. Meanwhile,
what about the other Terrestrials ex-
iled here? And, as Parr wondered, he
heard their sudden, excited voices.

Threats and oaths rent the balmy
air. Through the turmoil resounded
solid blows. Parr broke into a run,
shoved through some" broad-leafed
bushes, and found himself in the midst
of the excitement.

A DOZEN men, with scraggly beards
and skimpy rags of clothing, were
setting upon an unclassifiable crea-
ture that snarled and fought back. It
was erect and coarsely hairy — Parr
saw that much before the enigma gave
up the unequal fight and ran clumsily
away into a mass of bright-flowered
scrub. Execrations and a volley of
sticks and stones speeded its flight.

Then the mob was aware of Parr.
Every man — they were all male Ter-
restrials — turned toward him, with
something like respect. One of them,
tall and thin, spoke diffidently :

“You just arrived?”

“I was just booted out, ten min-
utes ago,” Parr informed him.
“Why?”

“Because you’re our new chief,”
responded the thin man, bowing. “The
latest comer always commands here.”
Parr must have goggled, for the
thin one smiled through tawny stub-
ble. “The latest comer is always high-
est and wisest,” he elaborated. “He is
healthiest. Best. The longer you stay
on this asteroid, the lower you fail.”
Parr thought he was being joked
with, and scowled. But his informant
smiled the broader. “My name’s Sa-
dau — here under sentence for theft
of Martian government property.”
“I’m Fitzhugh Parr. They said I
was a murderer. It’s a lie.”

One or two chuckled at that, and
the one who called himself Sadau
said: “We all feel unjustly con-
demned. Meet the others — Jeffords,
Wain, Haldocott . . . .” Each man, as
named, bowed to Parr. The final in-
troduction was of a sallow, frowning
lump of a fellow called Shanklin.

“I was boss until you came,” volun-
teered this last man. “Now you take
over.” He waved toward a little clus-
ter of grass huts, half hidden among
ferny palms. “This is our capital city.
You get the largest house — until
somebody new shows up. Then you
step down, like me.”

He spoke with ill grace. Parr did
not reply at once, but studied these
folk who were putting themselves
under his rule. They would not have
been handsome even if shaved and
dressed properly. Indeed, two or
three had the coarse, low-browed look
of profound degenerates. Back into
Parr’s mind came the words of Sadau :
“The longer you stay .... the low-
er you fall.”

“Gentlemen,” said Parr at last,
“before I accept command or other

1941

THE D EE V S L'S AS 7 F. R O E D

31

office, give me information. Just now
you were acting violently. You, Sadau,
started explaining. Go ahead.”

Sadau shrugged a lean freckled
shoulder, and with a jerk of his head
directed his companions to retire to-
ward the huts. They obeyed, with one
or two backward glances. Left alone
with Parr, Sadau looked up with a
wise, friendly expression.

“I won’t waste time trying to be
scientific or convincing. I’ll give you
facts — wa older exiles know them
only too well. This asteroid seems a
sort of Eden to you, I daresay.”

“I told the Martians that I knew
there was a catch somewhere.”

“Your instinct’s sound. The catch
is this: Living creatures — Terrestri-
als anyway — degenerate here. They
go backward in evolution, become — ”
Sadau broke off a moment, for his
lips had begun to quiver, “They be-
come beasts,” he finished.

“What?” growled Parr. “You mean
that men turn into apes?”

“Yes. And the apes turn into low-
er creatures. Those become lower
creatures still.” Sadau’s eyes were
earnest and doleful. “The process may
run back and down to the worm, for
all we can judge. We try not to think
too much about it.”

“This is a joke of some kind,” pro-
tested Parr, but Sadau was not smil-
ing.

“Martian joke, perhaps. The treaty-
keeps them from killing us — and this
is their alternative punishment. It
makes death trivial by compari-
son. . . . You don’t believe. It’s hard.
But you see that some of us, oldest
in point of exile, are sliding back into
bestiality. And you saw us drive away,
as our custom is, a man who had defi-
nitely become a beast.”

“That thing was a man?” prompted
Parr, his spine chilling.

“It had been a man. As you wan-
der here and there, you’ll come upon
queer sights — sickening ones.”

Parr squinted at the huts, around
the doors of which lounged the other

men. “That looks like a permanent
community, Sadau.”

“It is, but the population’s floating.
I came here three months ago — Earth
months — and the place was operat-
ing under the rules I outlined. Latest
comer, necessarily the highest-grade
human being, to be chief; those who
degenerate beyond a certain point to
be driven out; the rest to live peace-
ably together, helping each other.”

Parr only half heard him. “Evolu-
tion turned backward — it can’t be
true. It’s against nature.”

“Martians war against nature,” re-
plied Sadau pithily. “Mars is a dead
world, and its people are deviis.
They’d be the logical explorers to find
a place where such things can be,
and to make use of it. Don’t believe
me if you don’t want to. Time and life
here will convince you.”

IN THE DAYS that followed — the as-
teroid turned once in approximately
twenty-two hours — Parr was driven
to belief. Perhaps the slowness of the
idea’s dawning kept him from some
form of insanity.

Every man of the little group that
called him chief was on the way to be
a man no more. There were stooped
backs among them, a forward hang
to arms, a sprouting of coarse, lank
hair. Foreheads fell away, noses flat-
tened coarsely, eyes grew small and
shifty. Sadau informed Parr that such
evidences of degeneration meant a
residence of a year or so on the exile
asteroid.

“We’ll be driving one or two of
them away pretty soon,” he observed.

“What then?” asked Parr. “What
hanpens to the ones that are driven
out?”

Sometimes we notice them, peer-
ing through the brush, but mostly
they haul out by themselves a little
way from here — shaggy brutes, like
our earliest fathers. There are lower
types still. They stay completely clear
of us.”

Parr asked the question that had
haunted him since his first hour of

32

COMET

exile : “Sadau, do you see any change
in me?”

Sadau smiled and shook his head.
“You won’t alter in the least for a
month.”

That was reasonable. Man, Parr re-
membered, has been pretty much the
same for the past ten thousand years.
If a year brought out the beast in the
afflicted exiles, then that year must
count for a good hundred thousand
years turned backward. Five years
would be five hundred thousand of re-
verse evolution — in that time, one
would be reduced to something defi-
nitely animal. Beyond that, one would
drop into the category of tailed mon-
keys, of rodent crawlers — reptiles
next, and then —

“I’ll kill myself first,” he thought,
but even as he made the promise he
knew he would not. Cowards took the
suicide way out, the final yielding to
unjust, cruel mastery by the Mar-
tians. Parr stiffened his shoulders,
that had grown tanned and vigorous
in the healthy air. He spoke grimly to
Sadau :

“I don’t accept all this yet. It’s hap-
pened to others, but not to me so far.
There’s a way of stopping this, and
paying off those Martian swine. If it
can be done — ”

“I’m with you. Chief!” cried Sadau,
and they shook hands.

Heartened, he made inquiries. The
Martian space-patroller came every
month or so, to drop a new exile. It
always landed on the plain where
Parr had first set foot to the asteroid.
That gave him an idea, and he held
conference in the early evening, with
Sadau, Shanklin, and one or two oth-
ers of the higher grade.

“We could capture that craft,”
urged Parr. “There’s only a skipper
and three Martians — ”

“Yes, with pistols and ray throw-
ers,” objected Shanklin. “Too big a
risk.”

“What’s the alternative?” demand-
ed Sadau. “You want to stay here and
turn monkey, Shanklin? Chief,” he
added to Parr, “I said once that I was

July

on your side. I'll follow wherever you
lead.”

“Me, too,” threw in Jeffords, a
sturdy man of middle age who had
been sentenced for killing a Martian
in a brawl.

“And me,” wound up Haldocott, a
blond youth whose skin was burned
darker than his hair and downy
beard. “We four can pull it off with-
out Shanklin.”

But Shanklin agreed, with some-
thing like good humor, to stand by
the vote of the majority. The others
of the community assented readily,
for they were used to acting at the
will of their wiser companions. And
at the next arrival of the Martian
patroller — an observer, posted by
Parr in a trcetop, reported its com-
ing whole hours away — they made a
quick disposal of forces around the
rocket-scorched plain that did duty
for a landing field. Parr consulted for
a last moment with Sadau, Shanklin,
Jeffords and Haldocott.

“We’ll lead rushes from different
directions,” he said. “As the hatch-
way comes open, the patroller will
stall for the moment — can’t take off
until it’s airtight everywhere. I’ll give
a yell for signal. Then everybody
charge. Jam the tubes by smacking
the soft metal collars at the nozzles
— we can straighten them back when
the ship’s ours. Out to your places
now.”

“The first one at the hatch mil
probably be shot or rayed,” grumbled
Shanklin.

“I’ll be first there,” Parr promised
him. “Who wants to live forever, any-
way? Posts, everybody. Here she
comes in.”

Tense, quick-breathing moments
thereafter as the craft descended and
lodged. Then the hatchway opened.
Parr, crouching in a clump of bushes
with two followers, raised his voice
in a battle yell, and rushed.

A figure had come forward to the
open hatch, slender and topped with
tawny curls. It paused and shrank
back at the sudden apparition of Parr

1941

THE DEVIL'S ASTEROID

33

and his men leaping forward. Tenta-
cles swarmed out, trying to push or
pull the figure aside so as to close the
hatch again. That took more seconds
— then Parr had crossed the interven-
ing space. Without even looking at
the newcoming exile who had so prov-
identially forestalled the closing of
the hatch, he clutched a shoulder and
heaved mightily. The Martian whose
tentacles had reached from within
came floundering out, dragged along
— it was the skipper whose ironic ac-
quaintance Parr had made in his own
voyage out, all dressed in that loose-
plate armor. Parr wrenched a pistol
from a tentacle. Yelling again, he
fired through the open hatchway.
Two space-hands ducked out of sight.

“We’ve won!” yelled Parr, and for
a moment he thought they had. But
not all his followers had charged with
his own bold immediacy.

Sadau on one side of the ship, Jef-
fords and Haldocott at the other, had
run in close and were walloping man-
fully at the nozzles of the rocket tubes.
The outer metal yielded under the
blows, threatening to clog the throats
of the blasts. Only at the rear was
there no attack — Shanklin, and with
him three or four of the lesser men,
had hung back. The few moments’ de-
lay there was enough to make all the
difference.

Thinking and acting wisely, even
without a leader, the Martian space-
hands met the emergency. They had
withdrawn from the open hatchway,
but could reach the mechanism that
closed it. Parr was too late to jump in
after them. Then one of them fired the
undamaged rear tubes.

Swish! Whang! The ship took off
so abruptly that Parr barely dodged
aside in time, dragging along with
him the new Terrestrial whose shoul-
der he clutched, and also the sur-
prised Martian skipper. The rocket
blasts, dragging fiery fingers across
the plain, struck down Haldocott and
Jeffords, and bowled over two of the
laggards with Shanklin’s belated con-
tingent. Then it was away, moving

jumpily with its half-wrecked side
tubes, but nevertheless escaping.

Parr swore a great oath, that made
the stranger gasp. And then Parr had
time to see that this was a woman,
and young. She was briefly dressed i n
blouse and shorts, her tawny hair was
tumbled, her blue eyes wide. To her
still clung the Martian skipper, and
Parr covered him with the captured
pistol. Next instant Shanklin, arriv-
ing at last, struck out with his club
and shattered the flowerlike cranium
inside the plated cap. The skipper fell
dead on the spot.

“I wanted him for a prisoner!”
growled Parr.

“What good would that do?” flung
back Shanklin roughly. “The ship’s
what we wanted. It’s gone. You bun-
gled, Parr.”

Parr was about to reply with the
obvious charge that Shanklin’s own
hesitancy had done much to cause the
failure, when Sadau spoke :

“This young lady — miss, are you
an exile? Because,” and he spoke in
the same fashion that he had once
employed to Parr, “then you’re our
new chief. The latest comer com-
mands.”

“Why — why — ” stammered the
girl.

“Wait a minute,” interposed Parr
again. “Let’s take stock of ourselves.
Haldocott and Jeffords killed — and a
couple of others — ”

Shanklin barked at him. "You don’t
give orders any more. We’ve got a
new chief, and you’re just one of the
rabble, like me.” He made a heavily
gallant bow toward the latest arrival.
“May I ask your name, lady?”

“I’m Varina Pemberton,” she said.
“But what’s the meaning of all this?”

Shanklin and Sadau began to ex-
plain. The others gathered interested-
ly around. Parr felt suddenly left out,
and stooped to look at the dead Mar-
tian. The body wore several useful
things — a belt with ammunition and
a knife-combination, shoes on the
thickened ends of the tentacles, and
that strange armor. As Parr moved to

34

July

COMET

retrieve these, his companions called
out to halt him.

“The new chief will decide about
those things,” said Shanklin officious-
ly. “Especially the gun. Can I have
it?”

To avoid a crisis, Parr passed the
weapon to the girl, who nodded thanks
and slid it into her own waist-belt.
Shanklin asked for, and received, the
knife. Sadau was the only man slen-
der enough to wear the shoes, and
gratefully donned them. Parr looked
once again at the armor, which he
had drawn free of its dead owner.

“What’s that for?” asked Shanklin.'

Parr made no answer, because he
did not know. The armor was too
loosely hung together for protection
against weapons. It certainly was no
space-overall. And it had nothing of
the elegance that might make it a
Martian uniform of office. Casting
back, Parr remembered that the skip-
per had worn it at the time when he,
Parr, was landed — but not during the
voyage out. He shook his head over
the mystery.

“Let that belong to you,” the girl
Varina Pemberton was telling him.
“It has plates of metal that may be
turned to use. Perhaps — ” She seemed
to be on the verge of saying some-
thing important, but checked herself.

“If you’ll come with us,” Sadau told
her respectfully, “we’ll show you
where we live and where you will
rule.”

THEY HELD COUNCIL that night
among the grass huts — the nine that
were left after the unsuccessful at-
tack on the patroller. Varina Pember-
ton, very pretty in her brief sports
costume, sat on the stump that was
chief’s place; but Shanklin did most
of the talking.

“Nobody will argue about our life
and prospects being good here,” he
thundered, “but there’s no use in mak-
ing things worse when they’re bad
enough.” He shook a thick forefinger
at Fitzhugh Parr, who wore the

armor he had stripped frona the dead
Martian. “You were chief, and what
you said goes. But you’re not chief
now — you’re just the man who mur-
dered four of us !”

“Mmm — yes,” growled one of the
lower-fallen listeners, a furry- shoul-
dered, buck-toothed clod named Wain.
“That blast almost got me, right be-
hind Haldocott.” His eyes, grown
small, gleamed nastily at Parr. “We
ought to condemn this man — ”
“Please,” interposed Sadau, who
alone remained friendly to Parr, “it’s
for the chief to condemn.” He looked
to Varina Pemberton, who shook her
head slowly.

“I feel,” she ventured with her eyes
on Parr, “that this ought to be left
up to you as a voting body.”

Shanklin sprang to his feet. “Fair
enough !” he bawled. “I call Parr
guilty. All who think like me, say
aye!”

“Aye!”

“Aye!”

“Aye!”

They were all agreeing except
Sadau, who looked shrunken and sad
and frightened. Shanklin smirked.

“All who think he should be killed
as a murderer — ”

“Hold on,” put in Varina Pember-
ton. “If I’m chief, I’ll draw the line
there. Don’t kill him.”

Shanklin bowed toward her. “I was
wrong to suggest that before a
woman. Then he’s to be kicked out?”
There was a chorus of approving
yells, and all save Sadau jumped up to
look for sticks and stones. Parr laid
his hand on the club he had borne in
the skirmish that day.

“Now wait,” he said clearly and
harshly, and the whole party faced
him — Sadau wanly, the girl question-
ingly, the rest angrily.

“I’m to be kicked out,” Parr re-
peated. “I’ll accept that. I’ll go. But,”
and the club lifted itself in his right
hand, “I’m not going to be rough-
housed. I’ve seen it happen here, and
none of it for me.”

“Oh, no?” Shanklin had picked up

1941 THE DEVIL'S ASTEROID 35

a club of his own, and grinned
fiercely.

“No. Let me go, and I leave without
having to be whipped out of camp.
Mob me, and I promise to die fighting,
right here.” He stamped a foot on the
ground. “I’ll crack a skull or two be-
fore I wink out. That’s a solemn state-
ment of fact.”

“Let him go,” said Varina Pember-
ton again, this time with a ring of
authority. “He wears that armor, and
he’ll put up a fight. We can’t spare
any more men.”

“Thank you,” Parr told her bleak-
ly. He gave Shanklin a last long stare
of challenge, then turned on his heel
and walked away toward the thickets
amid deep silence. Behind him the
council fire made a dwindling hole
in the blackness of night. It seemed
to be his last hope, fading away.

He pushed in among thick, leafy
stems. A voice hailed him:

“Hah !”

And a figure, blacker than the
gloom, tramped close to him across a
little grassy clearing.

“You! They drive you out?” a
thick, unsure voice aecosted him.

Parr hefted his club, wondering if
this would be an enemy. “Yes. They
drove me out. I’m exiled from among
exiles.”

“Uh.” The other seemed perplexed
over these words, as though they
stated a situation too complicated.
Parr’s eyes, growing used to the
darkness, saw that this was a gro-
tesque, shaggy form, one of the de-
generate outcasts from the village.
“Uh,” repeated his interrogator. “You
come to us. Make one more in camp.
Come.”

AMONG TALL TREES, thickly
grown, lay a throng of sleepers. Parr’s
companion led him there, and made an
awkward gesture.

“You lie down. You sleep. To-
morrow — boss talk. Uh!”

So saying, the beast-man curled up
at the root of a tree. Parr sat down
with his back against another trunk,

the club across his knees, but he did
not sleep.

This, plainly enough, was the out-
cast horde. It clung together, the
gregariousness of humanity not yet
winnowed out by degeneration. It had
a ruler, too — “Tomorrow boss talk.”
Talk of what? In what fashion?

Thus Parr meditated during the
long, moonless night. He also took
time to examine once more his cap-
tured armor. Its metal plates, clamped
upon a garment of leatheroid, cov-
ered his body and limbs, even the
backs of his hands, as well as his neck
and scalp. Yet, as he had decided be-
fore, it was no great protection
against violence. As clothing it was
superfluous on this tropical planetoid.
What then?

He could not see, but he could feel.
His fingers quested all over one plate,
probing and tapping. The plate was
hollow — in reality, two saucer-shaped
plates with their concave faces to-
gether. They gave off a muffled clink
of hollowness when he tapped them.
When he shook the armor, there was
something extra in the sound, and
that impelled him to hold a plate close
to his ear. He heard a soft, rhythmic
whirr of machinery.

“There’s a vibration in this stuff,”
he summed up in his mind. “What
for? To protect against what?”

Then, suddenly, he had it.

The greatest menace of the whole
tiny world was the force that reversed
evolution — the vibration must be de-
signed to neutralize that force!

“I’m immune !” cried Fitzhugh Parr
aloud; and, in the early dawn that
now crept into the grove, his sleeping
companions began to waffe and rise
and gape at him.

He gaped back, with the shocked
fascination that any intelligent per-
son would feel at viewing such recon-
structions of his ancestors. At almost
the first glance he saw that the new-
est evolutionary thought was correct
— these were simian, but not apes.
Ape and man, as he had often heard,
sprang from the same common fore-

36

COMET*

July

father, low-browed, muzzle-faced,
hairy. Such were these, in varying
degrees of intensity. None wore
clothes. Grinning mouths exhibited
fanglike teeth, bare chests broadened
powerfully, clumsy hands with short,
ineffectual thumbs made foolish ges-
tures. But the feet, for instance, were
not like hands, they were flat pedes-
tals with forward-projecting toes.
The legs, though short, were power-
ful. Man’s father, decided Parr, must
have had something of the bear about
his appearance . . . and the most
bearlike of the twenty or thirty beast-
men heaved himself erect and came
slouching across toward Parr.

This thing had once been a giant
of a man, and remained a giant of
an animal. None of the others pres-
ent were nearly as large, nor were
any of the men who had driven Parr
forth. Six feet six towered this hair-
thicketed ogre, with a chest like a
drayhorse, and arms as thick as stove-
pipes. One hand — the thumb had
trouble opposing the great cucumber
fingers — flourished a club almost as
long as Parr’s whole body.

“I — boss,” thundered this monster
impressively. “Throw down stick.”

Parr had risen, his own club poised
for defense. The giant’s free hand
pointed to the weapon. “Throw down,”
it repeated, with a growl as bearlike
as the body.

“Not me,” said Parr, and ducked
away from the tree-trunk against
which he might be pinned. “What’s
the idea? I didn’t do anything to
you — ”

“I — boss,” said his threatener
again. “Nobody fight me.”

“True, true,” chorused the others
sycophantically. “Ling, he boss —
throw down club, you new man.”

Parr saw what they meant. With
the other community, the newest and
therefore most advanced individual
ruled. In this more primitive society,
the strongest held sway until a
stronger displaced him. The giant
called Ling was by no means the most
human-seeming creature there, but

he was plainly the ruler and plainly
meant so to continue. Parr was no
coward, but he was no fool. As the
six-foot bludgeon whirled upward be-
tween him and the sky, he cast down
his own stick in token of surrender.

“No argument, Ling,” he said
sensibly.

There was laughter at that, and
silly applause. Ling swung around
and stripped bare his great pointed
fangs in a snarl. Silence fell abruptly,
and he faced Parr again. “You,” he
said. “You got on — ” And he stepped
close, tapping the plates on Parr’s
chest.

“It’s armor,” said Parr.

“Huh! Ah — ar — ” The word was
too much for the creature, whose
brain and mouth alike had forgotten
most language. “Well,” said Ling, “I
want. I wear.”

He fumbled at the fastenings.

Parr jumped clear of him. He had
accepted authority a moment ago, but
this armor was his insurance against
becoming a beast. “It’s mine,” he ob-
jected.

Solemnly Ling shook his great
browless head, as big as a coal-
scuttle and f ripged with bristly beard.
“Mine,” he said roughly. “I boss.
You—”

He caught Parr by the arm and
dragged him close. So quick and
powerful was the clutch that it almost
dislocated Parr’s shoulder. By sheer
instinct, Parr struck with his free
fist.

Square and solid on that coarse-
bearded chin landed Parr’s knuckles,
with their covering of armor plate.
And Ling, confident to the point of
innocence because of his strength and
authority, had neither guarded nor
prepared. His great head jerked back
as though it would fly from his shoul-
ders. And Parr, wrenching loose, fol-
lowed up the advantage because a
second’s hesitation would be his down-
fall.

He hit Ling on the lower end of
the breastbone, where his belly would
be softest. Above him he heard the

1941

THE DEVIL'S ASTEROID

37

beast-giant grunt in pain, and then
Parr swung roundabout to score on
the jaw again. Ling actually gave
back, dropping his immense bludgeon.
A body less firmly pedestalled upon
powerful legs and scoop-shovel feet
would have gone down. It took a mo-
ment for him to recover.

“Aaaah!” he roared. “I kill you!”
Parr had stooped and caught up his
own discarded club. Now he threw it
full at the distorted face of his enemy.
Ling’s hands flashed up like a short-
stop’s, snatched the stick in midair,
and broke it in two like a carrot. An-
other roar, and Ling charged, head
down and arms outflung for a pul-
verizing grapple.

Parr sprang sidewise. Ling blun-
dered past. His stooping head crashed
against a tree, his whole body bounded
back from the impact, and down he
went in a quivering, moaning heap.
He did not get up.

Parr backed away, gazing at the
others. They stood silent in a score
of attitudes, like children playing at
moving statues. Then:

"Huh!” cried one. “New boss!”

A chorus of cries and howls greeted
this. They gathered around Parr with
fawning faces. "You boss! You fight
Ling — beat ’im. Huh, you boss!”

At the racket, Ling recovered a lit-
tle, and managed to squirm into a
sitting posture. "Yes,” he said, "you
boss.”

With one hand holding his half-
smashed skull, he lifted the other in
salute to Parr.

IT TOOK TIME — several days — but
Parr got over his first revulsion at the
bestial traits of his new companions.
After all, in shedding the wit and
grace of man, they were recovering
the honest simplicity of animals. For
instance, Ling was not malicious
about being displaced, as Shanklin
had been. Too, there was much more
real mutual helpfulness, if not so
much talk about it. When one of the
horde found a new crop of berries or
roots or nuts, he set up a yell for his

friends to come and share. A couple
of oldsters, doddering and incompe-
tent gargoyles, were fed and cared
for by the younger beast-men. And
all stood ready to obey Parr’s slight-
est word or gesture.

Thus, though it was a new thought
to them, several went exploring with
him to the north pole of their world.
The journey was no more than fifteen
miles, but took them across grassy,
foodless plains which had never been
worth negotiation. Parr chose Ling
and another comparatively intelligent
specimen who called himself Ruba.
Izak, the mild-mannered one who had
first met and guided Parr on the night
of his banishment from the human vil-
lage, also pleaded to go. Several others
would have joined the party, but the
deterioration of legs and feet made
them poor walkers. The four went
single file — Parr, then big Ling, then
Ruba, then Izak. Each carried, on a
vine sling, a leaf-package of fruit and
a melon for quenching thirst. They
also carried clubs.

The plain was well-grassed, as high
as Ling’s knuckled knee. Occasionally
small creatures hopped or scuttled
away. The beastmen threw stones un-
til Parr told them to stop — he could
not help but wonder if those scurriers
had once been men. The hot sun made
him sweat under his plate-armor, but
not for all the Solar System would he
have laid it aside.

They paused for noonday lunch in
a grove of ferny trees beyond the
plain, then scaled some rough lava-
like rocks. In the early afternoon they
came to what must be the asteroid’s
northern pole.

Like most of the asteroids, this was
originally jagged and irregular. Mar-
tain engineers in fitting it artifically
to support life, had roughed it into a
sphere and pulverized quantities of
the rock into soil. Here, at the apex,
was a ring of rough naked hills en-
closing a pit into which the sun could
not look. Ling, catching up with Parr
on the brow of the circular range,
pointed with his great club.

38

COMET Jufy

“Look like mouth of world,” he
hazarded. “Dark. Maybe world hun-
gry — eat us.”

“Maybe,” agreed Parr. The pit,
about a hundred yards across and full
of shadow, looked forbidding enough
to be a savage maw. Izak also came
alongside.

“Mouth?” he repeated after Ling.
“Mmm! Look down. Men in there.”

There was a movement, sure
enough, and a flare of something — a
torch of punky wood. Izak was right.
Men were inside this polar depression.

“Come on,” said Parr at once, and
began to scramble down the steep,
gloomy inner slope. Ling grimaced,
but followed lest his companions think
him afraid. Ruba and Izak, who feared
to be left behind, stayed close to his
heels.

The light of the torch flared ra*>re
brightly. Parr could make out figures
in its glow — two of them. The torch
itself was wedged in a crack of the
rock, and beneath its flame the couple
seemed to tug and wrench at some-
thing that gleamed darkly, like a
great metal toadstool at the bottom of
the depression. So engrossed were the
workers that they did not notice Parr
and his companions, and Parr, draw-
ing near, had time to recognize both.

One was Sadau, who would have
remained his friend. The other was
Virina Pemberton. In the torchlight
she looked browner and more vigorous
than when he had seen her last.

“What are you doing?” he called
to them.

Abruptly they both snapped erect
and looked toward him. Sadau seized
the torch and whirled it on high, shed-
ding light. Sabine Pemberton peered
at the newcomers.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s you. Parr. Well,
get out of here.”

Parr stood his ground, studying the
toadstool-thing they had been labor-
ing over. It was a wheel-like disk of
metal, set upon an axle that sprouted
from the floor of rock. By turning it,
they could finish opening a great
i rock-faced panel near by. . . .

“Get out,” repeated the girl, with
a hard edge on her voice.

Parr felt himself grow angry.
“Take it easy,” he said. “Your crowd
booted me out, and I’m not under your
rule any more. Neither can this be
said to be your country. We’ve as
much right here as you.”

“Four of us,” added Ruba with
threatening logic. “Two of you. Fight,
uh?”

“Parr,” said Sadau, “do as Miss
Pembei'ton tells you. Leave here.”
“And if I don’t?” temporized Parr,
who felt the eagerness of his beast-
men for some sort of a skirmish.

Varina Pemberton took something
from her belt and pointed it. A brittle
report resounded — which! And an
electro-automatic pellet exploded al-
most between Parr’s feet, digging a
hole in the rock. He jumped back. So
did his three comrades, from whose
memories had not faded the knowl-
edge of firearms.

“The next shot,” she warned, “will
be a little higher and more carefully
placed. Get out, and don’t come back.”
“They win,” said Parr. “Come on,
boys.”

They retired to the upper combing
of rock, with the sun at their backs.
There Parr motioned them into hiding
behind jagged boulders. Time passed,
several hours of it. Finally they saw
Sadau and Varina Pemberton depart
on the other side of the hole.

“Good,” rumbled Ling. “We follow.
Sneak up. Grab. Kill.”

“Not us,” Parr ruled. “No war
against women, Ling. But we’ll go
down where they were working, and
see what it’s all about.”

They groped their way down again.
At the bottom of the pit-valley they
found the metal projection, so like a
mighty steering wheel. Sadau’s torch
lay there, extinguished, and Parr still
carried a radium lighter in the pocket
of his shabby shorts. He made a light,
and looked.

The big panel or rock, that had been
half-open, was closed. As for the
wheel, it had been bent and jammed,

1941

THE DEVIL'S ASTEROID

39

by powerful blows with a rock. He
could not budge it, nor could the
mighty Ling, nor could all of them
together.

“They were inside this asteroid,”
decided Parr, half to himself. “Down
where the Martians planted the arti-
ficial gravity-machinery. Having been
there, they fixed things so nobody will
follow them. Only blasting rays could
open up a way, and those would prob-
ably wreck the mechanism and send
air, water and exiles all flying into
space. All this she did. Why ?”

“Why what?” asked Izak, not com-
prehending.

“Yes, why what?” repeated Parr.
"I can only guess, Izak, and none of
my guesses have been worth much
lately. Let’s go home, and keep an eye
peeled on our neighbors.”

THE MARTIANS HAD come agam
— the same space-patroller, repaired,
and twice as many hands and a new
skipper. They carried no Terrestrial
exile — for once their errand was
different.

Four of them, harnessed into erect
human posture, armed and armored,
stood around the evening fire in the
central clearing of the village now
ruled by Varina Pemberton. The
skipper was being insistent, but not
particularly deadly.

“We rrecognize that fourr dead
among you will ssettle forr one dead
Marrtian,” he told the gathered
exiles. “The morre sso ass you assurre
me that the man rressponssible hass
been drriven frrom among you. But
we make one demand — the arrmorr
taken frrom the body of the dead
Marrtian.”

“I am sorry about that,” the chief-
tainess replied from her side. "We
didn’t know that you valued it. If we
get it back for you — ”

“Ssuch action would rreflect favorr-
ably upon you,” nodded the Martian
skipper. “Get the arrmorr again, and
we will rrefrrain frrom punitive
meassurress.”

“Why do you want that armor so

much?” inquired Shanklin boldly. He
himself had never thought of it as
worth much. He was more satisfied to
have the knife, which he now hid be-
hind him lest the Martians see and
claim. But the skipper only shook his
petalled skull.

“It iss no prroblem of yourrss,” he
snubbed Shanklin. And, to Varina
Pemberton: “What time sshall we
grrant you? A day? Two dayss?. . . .
Come before the end of that time and
rreporrt to me at the patrrol vessel.”

He turned and led his followers
back toward the plain where the ship
was parked.

Night had well fallen, and silence
hung about the vessel. Only a rec-
tangle of soft light showed the open
hatchway. The Martian officer led the
way thither, ducked his head, en-
*te§ed —

Powerful hairy hands caught and
overpowered him. Before he could col-
lect himself for resistance, other
hands had disarmed him and were
dragging him away. His three com-
panions, narrowly escaping the same
fate, fell back and drew their guns
and ray throwers. A voice warned
them sharply:

“Don’t fire, any of you. We’ve got
your friends in here, and we’ve taken
their electro-automatics. Give us the
slightest reason, and we’ll wipe them
out first — you second.”

“Who arre you?” shrilled one of
the Martians, lowering his weapon.

“My name’s Fitzhugh Parr,” came
back the grim reply. “You framed me
into this exile — it’s going to prove the
worst day’s work you Martian flower-
faces ever did. Not a move, any of
you! The ship’s mine, and I’m going
to take off at dawn.”

The three discomfited hands
tramped away again. Inside the con-
trol room, Parr spoke to his shaggy
followers, who grinned and twinkled
like so many gnomes doing mischief.

“They won’t dare rush us,” he said,
“but two of you — Ling and Izak — stay
at the door with those guns. Dead sure
you can still use ’em?. . . . You, Ruba,

40

COMET

July

come here to the controls. You say
you once flew space-craft.”

Ruba’s broad, coarse hand ruffled
the bushy hair that grew on his al-
most browless head. “Once,” he
agreed dolefully. “Now I — many
thing I don’t remember.” His face,
flat-nosed and blubber-lipped, grew
bleak and plaintive as he gazed upon
instruments he once had mastered.

“You’ll remember,” Parr assured
him vehemently. “I never flew any-
thing but a short-shot pleasure
cruiser, but I’m beginning to dope
things out. We’ll help each other,
Ruba. Don’t you want to get away
from here, go home?”

“Home!” breather Ruba, and the
ears of the others — pointed, some of
those ears, and all of them hairy — '
pricked up visibly at that word.

“Well, there you are,” Parr said
encouragingly. “Sweat your brains,
lad. We’ve got until dawn. Then away
we go.”

“You will never manage,” slurred
the skipper from the corner where
the Martian captives, bound securely,
sprawled under custody of a beast-
man with a lever bar for a club.
“Thesse animalss have not mental
powerr — ”

“Shut up, or I’ll let that guard tap
you,” Parr warned him. “They had
mental power enough to fool you all
over the shop. Come on, Ruba. Isn’t
this the rocket gauge? Please remem-
ber how it operates !”

The capture of the ship had been
easy, so easy. The guard had been well
kept only until the skipper and his
party had gone out of sight toward the
human village. Nobody ever expected
trouble from beast-men, and the
watch on board had not dreamed of a
rush until they were down and
secure. But this — the rationalization
of intricate space-machinery — was by
contrast a doleful obstacle. “Please
remember,” Parr pleaded with Ruba
again.

And so for hours. And at last,
prodded and cajoled and bullied, the
degenerated intelligence of Ruba had

partially responded. His clumsy paws,
once so skilful, coaxed the mechanism
into life. The blasts emitted pre-
liminary belches. The whole fabric
of the ship quivered, like a sleeper
slowly wakening.

“Can you get her nose up, Ruba?”
Parr found himself able to inquire at
last.

“Huh, boss,” spoke Ling from his
watch at the door. “Come. I see white
thing.”

Parr hurried across to look.

The white thing was a tattered
shirt, held aloft on a stick. From the
direction of the village came several
figures, Martian and Terrestial. Parr
recognized the bearer of the flag of
truce — it was Varina Pemberton.
With her walked the three Martian
hands whom he had warned off, their
tentacles lifted to ask for parley, their
weapons sheathed at their belts. Sadau
was there, and Shanklin.

“Ready, guns,” Parr warned Ling
and Izak. “Stand clear of us, out
there !” he yelled. “We’re going to
take off.”

“Fitzhugh Parr,” called back Va-
rina Pemberton, “you must not.”
“Oh, must I not?” he taunted her.
“Who’s so free with her orders? I’ve
got a gun myself this time. Better
keep your distance.”

The others stopped at the warning,
but the girl came forward. “You
wouldn’t shoot a woman,” she an-
nounced confidently. “Listen to me.”
Parr looked back to where Ruba
was fumbling the ship into more
definite action. “Go on and talk,” he
bade her. “I give you one minute.”
“You’ve got to give up this foolish
idea,” she said earnestly. “It can’t
succeed — even if you take off.”

“No if about it. We’re doing won-
ders. Make your goodbyes short. I
wish you joy of this asteroid, ma’am.”
“Suppose you do get' away,” she
conceded. “Suppose, though it’s a
small, crowded ship, you reach Earth
and land safely. What then?”

“I’ll blow the lid off this dirty Mar-
tian Joke,” he told her. “Exhibit these

1941

THE DEVIL'S ASTEROID

poor devils, to show what the Mar-
tians do to Terrestrials they convict.
And then — ”

“Yes, and then!” she cut in pas-
sionately. “Don’t you see, Parr? Re-
lations between Mars and Earth are
at breaking point now, They have
been for long. The Martians are tech-
nically within their rights when they
dump us here, but you’ll be a pirate,
a thief, a fugitive from justice. You
can cause a break, perhaps war. And
for what?”

“For getting away, for giving free-
dom to my only friends on this as-
teroid,” said Parr.

“Freedom?” she repeated. “You
think they can be free on Earth? Can
they face their wives or mothers as
they are now — no longer men?”

“Boss,” said Ling suddenly and
brokenly, “she tell true. No. I won’t
go home.”

It was like cold water, that sudden
rush of ghastly truth upon Parr. The
girl was right. His victory would be
the saddest of defeats. He looked
around him at the beast-men who had
placed themselves under his control —
what would happen to them on Earth?
Prison? Asylum? Zoo? . . .

“Varina Pemberton,” he called, “I
think you win.”

The hairy ones crowded around
him, sensing a change in plan. He
spoke quickly:

“It’s all off, boys. Get out, one at a
time, and rush away for cover. No-
body will hurt you — and we’ll be no
worse off than we were.” He raised
his voice again: “If I clear out, will
we be left alone?”

“You must give back that armor,”
she told him. “The Martians insist.”

“It’s a deal.” He stripped the stuff
from him and threw it across the
floor to lie beside the bound prison-
ers. “I’m trusting you, Varina Pem-
berton!’ 8 he shouted. “We’re getting
out.”

They departed at his orders, all of
them, Ling and Izak went last, drop-
ping the stolen guns they had held so
unhandily. Parr waited for all of

41 .

them to be gone, then he himself left
the ship.

At once bullets began to whicker
around him. He dogded behind the
ship, then ran crookedly for cover.
By great good luck, he was not hit.
His beast-men hurried to him among
the bushes.

“Huh, boss?” they asked anxiously.
“Ship no good? What we do?”

He looked over his shoulder. Some-
where in the night enemies hunted
for him. The beast-folk were beneath
contempt, would be left alone. Only
he had shown himself too dangerous
to be allowed life.

“Goodbye, boys,” he said, with real
regret. “I’m not much of a boss if I
bring bullets among you. Get back
home, and let me haul out by myself.

I mean it,” he said sternly, as they
hesitated. “On your way, and don’t
get close to me again — death’s catch-
ing !”

They tramped away into the gloom,
with querulous backward looks. Parr
took a lonely trail in an opposite direc-
tion. After a moment he paused,
tingling with suspense. Heavy feet
were following him.

“Who’s coming?” he challenged,
and ducked to avoid a possible shot.
None came. The heavy tread came
nearer. »

“Boss!” It was Ling.

“I told you to go away,” reminded
Parr gruffly.

“I not go,” Ling retorted. “You no
make me.”

“Ling, you were boss before I came.
Now that I’m gone from you — ”

“You not gone from me. You my
boss. Those others, they maybe pick
new boss.”

“Ling, you fool!” Parr put out a
hand in the night, and grabbed a
mighty shaggy arm. “I’ll be hunted —
maybe killed — ”

“Huh!” grunted Ling. “They hunt
us, maybe they get killed.” He turned
and spat over his shoulder, in con-
tempt for all marauding Martians and
their vassal Earth folk. “You, me — we
stay together, boss.”

“Come on, then,” said Parr. “Ling,
you’re all right.”

“Good talk!” said Ling.

THEY WENT TO the other side of
the little spinning world, and there
nobody bothered them. Time and
space were relative, as once Einstein
remarked to illustrate a rather differ-
ent situation ; anyway, the village un-
der Varina Pemberton numbered
only eight men— Parr and Ling could
avoid that many easily on a world with
nearly nine hundred square miles of
brush, rock and gully.

In a grove among grape-vines they
built a shelter, arid there dwelt for
many weeks. Ling wore well as a sole
friend and partner. Looking at the
big, devoted fellow, Parr did not feel
so revolted as at their first glimpse
of each other. Ling had seemed so
hairy, so misshapen, like a troll out
of Gothic legends. But now ... he
was only big and burly, and not so
hairy as Parr had once supposed. As
for his face, all tusk and jaw and no
brow, where had Parr gotten such an
idea of it? Homely it was, brutal it
wasn’t. ...

“I get it,” mused Parr. “I’m begin-
ning to degenerate. I’m falling into
the beast-man class, closer to Ling’s
type. Like can’t disgust like. Oh, well,
why bother about what I can’t help ?”

He felt resigned to his fate. But
then he thought of another — Yarina
Pemberton, the girl who might have
been a pleasant companion in nappier,
easier circumstances. She had ban-
ished him, threatened him, wheedled
him out of victory. She, too, would be
slipping back to the beast. Her body
would warp, her skin grow hairy, her
teeth lengthen and sharpen — Ugh !
That, at least, revolted him.

“Look, boss,” said Ling, rising
from where he lounged with a cluster
of grapes in his big hand. “People
coming — two of ’em.”

“Get your club,” commanded Parr,
and caught up his own rugged length
of tough torn- wood. “They’re men,

not beast-men — they must be looking
for trouble.”

“Couldn’t come to a better place to
find it,” rejoined Ling, spitting be-
tween his palm and the half of his
cudgel to tighten his grip. The two of
them walked boldly into view.

“I see you, Sadau!” shouted Parr
clearly, for there was no mistaking
the gaunt, freckled figure in the lead.
“Who’s that with you?”

The other man must be a new
arrival. He was youngish and merry-
faced as he drew closer, with black
curly hair and a pointed beard. There
was a mental-motive look to him, as
if he were a high grade engineer or
machinist. He wore a breech-clint of
woven grasses, and looked expectant-
ly at Parr.

“They aren’t armed,” pointed out
Ling, and it was true. The pair car-
ried sticks, but only as staffs, not
clubs.

“Parr!” Sadau was shouting back.
“Thank heaven I’ve found you — we
need you badly.” He came close, and
Parr hefted his club.

“No funny business,” he chal-
lenged, but Sadau gestured the chal-
lenge aside.

“I’m not here to fight. I say, you’re
needed. Things have gone wrong, aw-
fully. The others got to feeling that
there was no reason to obey a woman
chief, even though Miss Pemberton
has many good impulses—”

“I agree to that,” nodded Parr, re-
membering the girl’s many strange
behaviors. “I daresay she wasn’t much
of a leader.”

Sadau did not argue the point.
“Shanklin, as the previous newest
man, grabbed back the chieftaincy,”
he plunged ahead. “Those other fools
backed him. When I tried to defend
Miss Pemberton, they drove me out.
I stumbled among the others — that
crowd you used to capture the patrol-
ler — and got a line on where you were.
I came for help.”

One phase had stuck in Parr’s mind.
“You tried to defend that girl. They
were going to kill her?”

1941

THE DEVI L'S ASTEROID

43

“No. Shanklin, as chief and king,
figures he needs a queen. She’s not
bad looking. He’s going to marry her,
unless — ”

Parr snorted, and Sadau’s voice
grew angry. “Curse it, man, I’m not
casting you for a knight of the Table
Round, or the valiant space-hero who
arrives in the nick of time at the tele-
vision drama! Simplify it, Parr.
You’re the only man who ever had
the enterprise to do anything actual
here. You ought to be chief still, run-
ning things justly. And it isn’t justice
for a girl to be married unofficially
to someone she doesn’t like. Miss Pem-
berton despises Shanklin. Now, do
you get my point, or are you afraid?”
It was Ling who made answer : “My
boss isn’t afraid of anything. He’ll
straighten that mess out.”

Parr glanced at the big fellow.
“Thanks for, making up my mind for
me. Ling.' Well, you two have talked
me into something. Sadau, shake
Ling’s big paw. And,” he now had
time to view the stranger at close
hand, “who’s this with you?”

The man with the black curls
looked genially surprised. “You know
me, boss. I’m Frank Rupert.”

Parr stared. “Never heard of you.”
“You’re joking. Why, 1 almost got
that Martian patroller into space,
when Miss Pemberton —

Parr sprang at him and caught him
by his shoulders. "You were Ruba —
Rupert ! It’s only that you didn't talk
plain before. What’s happened to you,
man?”

Sadau hastily answered : “The de-
generation force is obviated. Re-
versed. All those who were beast-men
are coming back, some of the later
arrivals completely normal again.
Haven’t you noticed a change in this
big husk ?”

Parr turned and looked at Ling. So
that was it! Day by day, the change
had not been enough to impress him.
As Ling had climbed back along his
lost evolutionary trail, Parr had
thought that he himself was slipping
down. ...

“Don’t stop and scratch your head
over it, Parr,” Sadau scolded him.
“It’ll take a lot of explaining, and we
haven’t time. You said you’d help get
Miss Pemberton out of her jam.
Come on.”

IT WAS LIKE the television thrillers,
after all, Parr reflected. But Sadau
was right on one count — Parr didn't
quite fill the role of the space-hero.
He had neither the close-clipped
moustache nor the gleaming top boots.
But he did have the regulation deep,
unfathomable eyes and the murder-
ous impulse.

It was just after noon. Shanklin, as
chief -king, had also set up for a priest.
In the center of the village clearing,
he stood holding a sullen and pale
Varina Pemberton by one wrist, while
he recited what garblings of the mar-
riage service he remembered. His
subordinates were gathered to leer
and applaud. They did not know of
the rush until it was all over them.

Parr smote one on the side of the
neck and spilled him in a squalling
heap. Sadau, Ling and Rupert over-
whelmed the rest of the audience,
while Parr charged on into Shanklin.
His impact interrupted the words “I
take this woman” just after the ap-
propriate syllable “wo”. As once be-
fore with Ling, Parr dusted Shank-
lin’s jaw with his fist, followed with
a digging jab to the solar plexus, and
swung again to the jaw. Shanklin
tottered, reeled back, and Parr closed
in again.

“I always knew I could lick you,”
Parr taunted. “Come on and fight,
bridegroom. I’ll raise a knot on your
head the size of a wedding cake.”

Shanklin retreated another two
paces, and from his girdle snatched
the Martian knife. He opened its long-
est blade with a snap. Varina Pember-
ton screamed. Then, above the commo-
tion of battle, sounded the flat smack
of an electro-automatic. Shanklin
swore murderously, dropping his
knife. His knuckles were torn open
by the grazing pellet.

44

COMET

July

And Parr, glancing in the direction
whence the shot came, realized with
savage disgust that the space-hero
had come after all. There stood a gor-
geous young spark in absolutely con-
ventional space-hero costume, not
forgetting the top-boots or the close-
clipped moustache. Parr moved back,
as if to allow this young demigod the
center of the stage.

But Varina Pemberton was not
playing the part of heroine. Instead
of rushing in and embracing, she set
her slim hands on her hips. She spoke,
and her voice was acid: “It’s high
time you came, Captain Worrall. I
did my part of the job weeks ago.”
The handsome fellow in uniform
chuckled. “We weren’t late, at least.
We’ve been hiding here for some time
— saw what this fellow I shot loose
from the knife had in mind whole
hours ago. But we also saw these
others,” and he nodded toward Parr.
“They sneaked up in such a business-
like manner, I hadn’t the heart to
spoil their rescue.”

OTHER UNIFORMED MEN— hands
of the Terrestrial Space Fleet — were
coming into view from among the
boughs. They, too, were armed. Ling
walked across to Parr, a struggling
captive under each arm.

“What are these strangers up to,
boss?” he demanded. “Say the word
and I’ll wring that officer’s neck. I
never liked officers, anyway.”

“Wait,” Parr bade him. Then, to
the man called Captain Worrall:
“Just what are you doing here?”
“This asteroid,” replied Worrall,
“is now Terrestrial territory. We’re
fortifying it against the Martians.
War was declared three weeks ago,
and we made rocket-tracks for this
little crumb. It’s an ideal base for a
flanking attack.”

Parr scowled. “You’re fortifying?”
he repeated. “Well, you’d better shag
out of here. There’s a power — not
working just now, but — ”

“No fear of that,” Varina Pember-
ton told him. She was smiling.

“I can explain best by starting at
the start. Recently we got a report of
what the Martians were doing out
here. We realized that Earth must
take care of her own, these poor devils
who were being pushed back into
animalism. Also, with war in-
evitable — ”

“You aren’t starting at the start,”
objected Parr. “Where do you fit into
all this? You’re no soldier.”

“Oh, but she is,” Captain Worrall
said, offering Parr a cigarette from a
platinum case. “She’s a colonel of in-
telligence — high ranking. Wonderful
job you’ve done, Colonel Pemberton.”

She took up the tale again : “If the
reverse-evolution power could be de-
stroyed, this artificially habitable
rock in space would be a great prize
for our navy to capture. So I took a
big chance — got myself framed to a
charge of Murder on Mars, and was
the first woman ever sent here. I knew
fairly accurately when war would
break out, and figured I had months
to do my work in. That captured ar-
mor gave me the clue.”

“All I knew was that it gave off a
vibration,” nodded Parr.

“Exactly. Which meant that the
evolution-reverse was vibratory, too.
I confided in Sadau, and he and I
pieced the rest of the riddle together.
The vibrator would be inside, where
nobody would venture for fear of
jamming the gravity-core — but we
ventured — ”

"And shut it off !” cried Parr.

“More than that. We reversed it,
started it again at .top speed to cause
a recovery from the degeneration
process. Clever, these Martians — they
fix it so you can shuttle to and fro in
development. Already the higher
beast-men are back to normal, like
Rupert there, and the others will be
all right, soon.”

“You had every right to chase me
off at the end of a pistol,” said Parr.
“I might have gummed the works
badly.”

“You nearly did that anyway,” Va-

1941

THE DEVIL'S ASTEROID

45

rina Pemberton accused. “Fighting,
raiding, stirring up the Martians who
might have put a crimp in my plans
any moment — but, being the type you
are, you couldn't do otherwise. I rec-
nized that when I gave you the pro-
tective armor.”

He gazed at her. “Why didn't you
keep it for yourself?”

“No,” and she shook her tawny
head. “I figured to win or lose very
promptly. But you, armored against
degeneration, might live after me and
be ah awful problem to the Martians.
Remember, I didn't make you give it
back until I had done what I came to
do.”

Worrall spoke again: “Colonel,
these exiles must stay until all effects
of the degeneration influence is gone.
They’ll figure as civilians, with col-
onists’ rights. That means they must
have a governor, to cooperate with
the military garrison. Will that be
you ?”

Shanklin dared to speak: “I am
chief — ”

“Arrest that man,” the girl told
two space-hands. “No, Captain. But

I’m senior officer, and I’ll make an ap-
pointment. By far the best fitted per-
son for the governorship is Fitzhugh
Parr.”

The other exiles had pressed close
to listen. Sadau, the diplomatic, at
once set up a cheer. Ling added his
own loyal bellow, and the others
joined in. Parr’s ears burned with
embarrassment.

“Have it your way,” he said to them
all. “We’ll live here, get normal, and
help all we can. But first; what have
we to eat? We’ve got guests.”

“No, governor, you’re the guest of
the garrison,” protested Captain
Worrall. “Come aboard my ship yon-
der. ril lend you a uniform, and
you’ll preside at the head of the table
tonight.”

“Varina Pemberton,” Parr ad-
dressed the girl who had caused so
much trouble and change on the little
world of exile, “will you come and
sit at my right hand there?”

“A pleasure,” she smiled, and put
her arm through his.

Everybody cheered again, and both
Parr and the girl blushed.

Treats in Stores

THE IMAGINATIVE GENIUS

by RICHARD O. LEWIS

THE KISS OF DEATH

by HENRY J. KOSTKOS

THE CAT THAT HAD NIKE LIVES

by CLIFFORD D. SIMAK and CARL JACOBI
Set for the Next Issue WATCH FOR THEM

The SKY TRAP

by FRANK BELKNAP LONG

L AWTON enjoyed a good fight.
He stood happily trading blows
with Slashaway Tommy, his
lean-fleshed torso gleaming with
sweat. He preferred to work the
pugnacity out of himself slowly, to
savor it as it ebbed.

“Better luck next time, Slash-
away,” he said, and unlimbered a left
hook that thudded against his oppo-
nent’s jaw with such violence that

the big, hairy ape crumpled to the
resin and rolled over on his back.

Lawton brushed a lock of rust-
colored hair back from his brow and
stared down at the limp figure ly-
ing on the descending stratoship’s
slightly tilted athletic deck.

“Good work, Slashaway,” he said.
“You’re primitive and beetle-browed,
but you’ve got what it takes.”
Lawton flattered himself that he

46

1941 THE SKY TRAP 47

was the opposite of primitive. High
in the sky he had predicted the
weather for eight days running, with
far more accuracy than he could have
put into a punch.

They’d flash his report all over
Earth in a couple of minutes now.
From New York to London to Singa-
pore and back. In half an hour he’d
be donning street clothes and step-
ping out feeling darned good.

He had fulfilled his weekly obliga-
tion to society by manipulating me-
teorological instruments for forty-
five minutes, high in the warm, upper
stratosphere and worked off his pug-
nacity by knocking down a profes-
sional gym slugger. He would have
a full, glorious week now to work
off all his other drives.

The stratoship’s commander. Cap-
tain Forrester, had come up, and was
staring at him reproachfully. “Dave,
I don’t hold with the reforming John-
nies who want to re-make human
nature from the ground up. But
you’ve got to admit our generation
knows how to keep things humming
with a minimum of stress. We don’t
have world wars now because we
work off our pugnacity by sailing into
gym sluggers eight or ten times a
week. And since our romantic emo-
tions can be taken care of by tactile
television we’re not at the mercy of
every brainless bit of fluff’s calculat-
ed ankle appeal.”

Lawton turned, and regarded him
quizzically. “Don’t you suppose I re-
alize that? You’d think I just blew
in from Mars.”

“AH right. We have the outlets,
the safety valves. They are supposed
to keep us civilized.. But you don’t
derive any benefit from them.”

“The heck I don’t. I exchange
blows with Slashaway every time I
board the Perseus. And as for wom-
en — well, there’s just one woman in
the world for me, and I wouldn’t ex-
change her for all the Turkish images
in the tactile broadcasts from Stam-
boul.”

“Yes, I know. But you work off

your primitive emotions With too
much gusto. Even a cast-iron gym
slugger can bruise. That last blow
was— brutal. Just because Slashaway
gets thumped and thudded all over
by the medical staff twice a week
doesn’t mean he can take—”

The stratoship lurched suddenly.
The deck heaved up under Lawton’s
feet, hurling him against Captain
Forrester and spinning both men
around so that they seemed to be
waltzing together across the ship.
The still limp gym slugger slid down-
ward, colliding with a corrugated
metal bulkhead and sloshing back
and forth like a wet mackerel.

A full minute passed before Law-
ton could put a stop to that. Even
while careening he had been alive to
Slashaway’s peril, and had tried to
leap to his aid. But the ship’s steadily
increasing gyrations had hurled him
away from the skipper and against
a massive vaulting horse, barking
the flesh from his shins and spilling
him with violence to the deck.

He crawled now toward the prone
gym slugger on his hands and knees,
his temples thudding. The gyrations
ceased an instant before he reached
Slashaway’s side. With an effort he
lifted the big man up, propped him
against the bulkhead and shook him
until his teeth rattled. “Slashaway,”
he muttered. “Slashaway, old fel-
low.”

Slashaway opened blurred eyes,
“Phew!” he muttered. “You sure
socked me hard, sir.”

“You went out like a light,” ex-
plained Lawton gently. “A minute
before the ship lurched.”

“The ship lurched, sir?”
“Something’s very wrong, Slash-
away. The ship isn’t moving. There
are no vibrations and — Slashaway,
are you hurt? Your skull thumped
against that bulkhead so hard I was
afraid — ”

“Naw, I’m okay. Whatd’ya mean,
the ship ain’t moving? How could it
stop ?”

Lawton said. “I don’t know, Slash-

48 COMET July

away.” Helping the gym slugger to
his feet he stared apprehensively
about him. Captain Forrester was
kneeling on the resin testing his hocks
for sprains with splayed fingers, his
features twitching.

“Hurt badly, sir?”

The Commander shook his head.
“I don’t think so. Dave, we are twenty
thousand feet up, so how in hell could
we be stationary in space?”

“It’s all yours, skipper.”

“I must say you’re helpful.”
Forrester got painfully to his feet
and limped toward the athletic com-
partment’s single quartz port — a
small circle of radiance on a level
with his eyes. As the port sloped
downward at an angle of nearly sixty
degrees all he could see was a dif-
fuse glimmer until he wedged his
brow in the observation visor and
stared downward.

Lawton heard him suck in his
breath sharply. “Well, sir?”

“There are thin cirrus clouds di-
rectly beneath us. They’re not mov-
ing.”

Lawton gasped, the sense of being
in an impossible situation swelling
to nightmare proportions within him.
What could have happened?

DIRECTLY behind him, close to a
bulkhead chronometer, which was
clicking out the seconds with un-
abashed regularity, was a misty blue
visiplate that merely had to be
switched on to bring the pilots into
view.

The Commander hobbled toward it,
and manipulated a rheostat. The two
pilots appeared side by side on the
screen, sitting amidst a spidery net-
work of dully gleaming pipe lines
and nichrome humidification units.
They had unbuttoned their high-
altitude coats and their stratosphere
helmets were resting on their knees.
The Jablochoff candle light which
flooded the pilot room accentuated
the haggardness of their features,
which were a sickly cadaverous hue.
The captain spoke directly into the

visiplate. “What’s wrong with the
ship?” he demanded. “Why aren’t we
descending? Dawson, you do the
talking !”

One of the pilots leaned tensely
forward, his shoulders jerking. “We
don’t know, sir. The rotaries went
dead when the ship started gyrating.
We can’t work the emergency torps
and the temperature is rising.”

“But — it defies all logic,” Forrester
muttered. “How could a metal ship
weighing tons be suspended in the
air like a balloon? It is stationary,
but it is not buoyant. We seem in all
respects to be frozen in.”

“The explanation may be simpler
than you dream,” Lawton said.
“When we’ve found the key.”

The Captain swung toward him.
“Could you find the key, Dave?”

“I should like to try. It may be
hidden somewhere on the ship, and
then again, it may not be. But I
should like to go over the ship with
a fine-tooth comb, and then I should
like to go over outside, thoroughly.
Suppose you make me an emergency
mate and give me a carte blanche,
sir.”

Lawton got his carte blanche. For
two hours he did nothing spectacular,
but he went over every inch of the
ship. He also lined up the crew and
pumped them. The men were as com-
pletely in the dark as the pilots and
the now completely recovered Slash-
away, who was following Lawton
about like a doting seal.

“You’re a right guy, sir. Another
two or three cracks and my noggin
would’ve split wide open.”

“But not like an eggshell, Slash-
away. Pig iron develops fissures un-
der terrific pounding but your crani-
um seems to be more like tempered
steel. Slashaway, you won’t under-
stand this, but I’ve got to talk to
somebody and the Captain is too busy
to listen.

“I went over the entire ship be-
cause I thought there might be a
hidden source of buoyancy some-
where. It would take a lot of air

1941

THE SKY TRAP

49

bubbles to turn this ship into a bal-
loon, but there are large vacuum
chambers under the multiple series
condensers in the engine room which
conceivably could have sucked in a
helium leakage from the carbon pile
valves. And there are bulkhead po-
rosities which could have clogged.

“Yeah,” muttered Slashaway,
scratching his head. “I see what you
mean, sir.”

“It was no soap. There’s nothing
inside the ship that could possibly
keep us up. Therefore there must be
something outside that isn’t air. We
know there is air outside. We’ve
stuck our heads out and sniffed it.
And we’ve found out a curious thing.

“Along with the oxygen there is
water vapor, but it isn’t H 2 0. It’s
HO. A molecular arrangement like
that occurs in the upper Solar at-
mosphere, but nowhere on Earth.
And there’s a thin sprinkling of hy-
drocarbon molecules out there too.
Hydrocarbon appears ordinarily as
methane gas, but out there it rings
up as C .H. Methane is C H 4. And
there are also scandium oxide mole-
cules making unfamiliar faces at us.
And oxide of boron — with an equa-
tional limp.”

“Gee,” muttered Slashaway. “We’re
up against it, eh?”

Lawton was squatting on his hams
beside an emergency ’chute opening
on the deck of the Penguin’s weather
observatory. He was letting down a
spliced beryllium plumb line, his
gaze riveted on the slowly turning
horizontal drum of a windlass which
contained more than two hundred
feet of gleaming metal cordage.

Suddenly as he stared the drum
stopped revolving. Lawton stiffened,
a startled expression coming into his
face. He had been playing a hunch
that had seemed as insane, rationally
considered, as his wild idea about the
bulkhead porosities. For a moment
he was stunned, unable to believe
that he had struck pay dirt. The
winch indicator stood at one hun-

dred and three feet, giving him a
rich, fruity yield of startlement.

One hundred feet below him the
plummet rested on something solid
that sustained it in space. Scarcely
breathing, Lawton leaned over the
windlass and stared downward. There
was nothing visible between the ship
and the fleecy clouds far below ex-
cept a tiny black dot resting on va-
cancy and a thin beryllium plumb line
ascending like an interrogation point
from the dot to the ’chute opening.

“You see something down there?”
Slashaway asked.

Lawton moved back from the wind-
lass, his brain whirling. “Slashaway
there’s a solid surface directly be-
neath us, but it’s completely invis-
ible.”

“You mean it’s like a frozen cloud,
sir ?”

“No, Slashaway. It doesn’t shim-
mer, or deflect light. Congealed water
vapor would sing instantly to earth.”

“You think it’s all around us, sir?”

Lawton stared at Slashaway aghast.
In his crude fumblings the gym slug-
ger had ripped a hidden fear right out
of his subconsciousness into the light.

“I don’t know, Slashaway,” he mut-
tered. “I’ll get at that next.”

A HALF hour later Lawton sat be-
side the captain’s desk in the con-
trol room, his face drained of all
color. He kept his gaze averted as he
talked. A man who succeeds too well
with an unpleasant task may develop
a subconscious sense of guilt.

“Sir, we’re suspended inside a hol-
low sphere which resembles a huge,
floating soap bubble. Before we
ripped through it it must have had
a plastic surface. But now the tear
has apparently healed over, and the
shell all around us is as resistant as
steel. We’re completely bottled up, sir.
I shot rocket leads in all directions to
make certain.”

The expression on Forrester’s face
sold mere amazement down the river.
He could not have looked more
startled if the nearer planets had

50

COMET

yielded their secrets chillingly, and
a super-race had appeared suddenly
on Earth.

“Good God, Dave. Do you suppose
something has happened to space?”
Lawton raised his eyes with a shud-
der. “Not necessarily, sir. Something
has happened to us. We’re floating
through the sky in a huge, invisible
bubble of some sort, but we don’t
know whether it has anything to do
with space. It may be a meteorologi-
cal phenomenon.”

“You say we’re floating?”

“We’re floating slowly westward.
The clouds beneath us have been re-
ceding for fifteen or twenty minutes
now.”

“Phew !” muttered Forrester. “That
means we’ve got to — ”

He broke off abruptly. The Perseus’
radio operator was standing in the
doorway, distress and indecision in
his gaze. “Our reception is extremely
sporadic, sir,” he announced. “We can
pick up a few of the stronger broad-
casts, but our emergency signals
haven’t been answered.”

“Keep trying,” Forrester ordered.
“Aye, aye, sir.”

The captain turned to Lawton.
“Suppose we call it a bubble. Why are
we suspended like this, immovably?
Your rocket leads shot up, and the
plumb line dropped one hundred feet.
Why should the ship itself remain
stationary?”

Lawton said : “The bubble must
possess sufficient internal equilibrium
to keep a big, heavy body suspended
at its core. In other words, we must
be suspended at the hub of converg-
ing energy lines.”

“You mean we’re surrounded by an
electromagnetic field ?”

Lawton frowned. “Not necessarily,
sir. I’m simply pointing out that
there must be an energy tug of some
sort involved. Otherwise the ship
would be resting on the inner surface
of the bubble.”

Forrester nodded grimly. “We
should be thankful, I suppose, that we
can move about inside the ship. Dave,

July

do you think a man could descend to
the inner surface?”

“I’ve no doubt that a man could, sir.
Shall I let myself down ?”

“Absolutely not. Damn it, Dave, I
need your energies inside the ship. I
could wish for a less impulsive first
officer, but a man in my predicament
can’t be choosy.” •

“Then what are your orders, sir?”

“Orders ? Do I have to order you to
think? Is working something out for
yourself such a strain? We’re drift-
ing straight toward the Atlantic
Ocean. What do you propose to do
about that?”

“I expect I’ll have to do my best,
sir.”

Lawton’s “best” conflicted dynami-
cally with the captain’s orders. Ten
minutes later he was descending,
hand over hand, on a swaying emer-
gency ladder.

“Tough-fibered Davie goes down to
look around,” he grumbled.

He was conscious that he was flirt-
ing with danger. The air outside was
breathable, but would the diffuse, un-
orthodox gases injure his lungs? He
didn’t know, couldn’t be sure. But he
had to admit that he felt all right so
far. He was seventy feet below the
ship and not at all dizzy. When he
looked down he could see the purple
domed summits of mountains between
gaps in the fleecy cloud blanket.

He couldn’t see the Atlantic Ocean
—yet. He descended the , last thirty
feet with mounting confidence. At the
end of the ladder he braced himself
and let go.

He fell about six feet, landing on
his rump on a spongy surface that
bounced him back and forth. He was
vaguely incredulous when he found
himself sitting in the sky staring
through his spread legs at clouds and
mountains.

He took a deep breath. It struck
him that the sensation of falling could
be present without movement down-
ward through space. He was begin-
ning to experience such a sensation.

1941

THE SKY TRAP

51

His stomach twisted and his brain
spun.

He was suddenly sorry he had tried
this. It was so damnably unnerving he
was afraid of losing all emotional con-
trol. He stared up, his eyes squinting
against the sun. Far above him the
gleaming, wedge-shaped bulk of the
Perseus loomed colossally, blocking
out a fifth of the sky.

Lowering his right hand he ran his
fingers over the invisible surface be-
neath him. The surface felt rubbery,
moist.

He got swayingly to his feet and
made a perilous attempt to walk
through the sky. Beneath his feet the
mysterious surface crackled, and
little sparks flew up about his legs.
Abruptly he sat down again, his face
ashen.

From the emergency ’chute open-
ing far above a massive head ap-
peared. "You all right, sir,” Slash-
away called, his voice vibrant with
concern.

“Well, I—”

“You’d better come right up, sir.
Captain’s orders.”

“All right,” Lawton shouted. “Let
the ladder down another ten feet.”

Lawton ascended rapidly, resent-
ment smouldering within him. What
right had the skipper to interfere ? He
had passed the buck, hadn’t he?

LAWTON got another bad jolt the
instant he emerged through the
’chute opening. Captain Forrester
was leaning against a parachute rack
gasping for breath, his face a livid
hue.

Slashaway looked equally bad. His
jaw muscles were twitching and he
was tugging at the collar of his gym
suit.

Forrester gasped: “Dave, I tried
to move the ship. I didn’t know you
were outside.”

“Good God, you didn’t know—”

“The rotaries backfired and used
up all the oxygen in the engine room.
Worse, there’s been a carbonic oxide
seepage. The air is contaminated

throughout the ship. We’ll have to
open the ventilation valves immedi-
ately. I’ve been waiting to see if — if
you could breathe down there. You’re
all right, aren’t you? The air is
breathable?”

Lawton’s face was dark with fury.
"I was an experimental rat in the sky,
eh?”

“Look, Dave, we’re all in danger.
Don’t stand there glaring at me.
Naturally I waited. I have my crew to
think of.”

“Well, think of them. Get those
valves open before we all have con-
vulsions.”

A half hour later charcoal gas was
mingling with oxygen outside the
ship, and the crew was breathing it
in again gratefully. Thinly dispersed,
and mixed with oxygen it seemed all
right. But Lawton had misgivings. No
matter how attenuated a lethal gas is
it is never entirely harmless, 'to make
matters worse, they were over the At-
lantic Ocean.

Far beneath them was an emer-
ald turbulence, half obscured by east-
ward moving cloud masses. The bub-
ble was holding, but the morale of the
crew was beginning to sag.

Lawton paced the control room.
Deep within him unsuspected ener-
gies surged. “We’ll last until the oxy-
gen is breathed up,” he exclaimed.
“We’ll have four or five days, at most.
But we seem to be traveling faster
than an ocean liner. With luck, we’ll
be in Europe before we become car-
bon dioxide breathers.”

“Will that help matters, Dave?”
said the captain wearily.

“If we can blast our way out, it
will.”

The Captain’s sagging body jack-
knifed erect. “Blast our way out?
What do you mean, Dave?”

“I’ve clamped expulsor disks on the
cosmic ray absorbers and trained
them downward. A thin stream of
accidental neutrons directed against
the bottom of the bubble may disrupt
its energies— wear it thin. It’s a long

COMET

52

gamble, but worth taking. We’re stak-
ing nothing, remember?”

Forrester sputtered: “Nothing but
our lives! If you blast a hole in the
bubble you’ll destroy its energy bal-
ance. Did that occur to you? Inside a
lopsided bubble we may careen dan-
gerously or fall into the sea before we
can get the rotaries started.”

“I thought of that. The pilots are
standing by to start the rotaries the
instant we lurch. -Jf we succeed in
making a rent in the bubble we’ll
break out the helicoptic vanes and
descend vertically. The rotaries won’t
backfire again. I’ve had their burnt-
out cylinder heads replaced.”

An agitated voice came from the
visiplate on the captain’s desk : “Tun-
ing in, sir.”

Lawton stopped pacing abruptly.
He swung about and grasped the desk
edge with both hands, his head touch-
ing Forrester’s as the two men stared
down at the horizontal face of petty
officer James Caldwell.

Caldwell wasn’t more than twenty-
two or three, but the screen’s opa-
lescence silvered his hair and misted
the outlines of his jaw, giving him an
aspect of senility.

“Well, young man,” Forrester
growled. “What is it? What do you
want?”

The irritation in the captain’s voice
seemed to increase Caldwell’s agita-
tion. Lawton had to say: “All right,
lad, let’s have it,” before the informa-
tion which he had seemed bursting to
impart could be wrenched out of him.

It came in erratic spurts. “The
bubble is all blooming, sir. All around
inside there are big yellow and pur-
ple growths. It started up above,- and
— and spread around. First there was
just a clouding over of the sky, sir,
and then — stalks shot out.”

For a moment Lawton felt as
though all sanity had been squeezed
from his brain. Twice he started to
ask a question and thought better
of it.

Pumpings were superfluous when
he could confirm Caldwell’s statement

July

in half a minute for himself. If Cald-
well had cracked up —

Caldwell hadn’t cracked. When
Lawton walked to the quartz port and
stared down all the blood drained
from his face.

The vegetation was luxuriant, and
unearthly. Floating in the sky were
serpentine tendrils as thick as a man’s
wrist, purplish flowers and ropy fun-
gus growths. They twisted and
writhed and shot out in all directions,
creating a tangle immediately be-
neath him and curving up toward the
ship amidst a welter of seed pods.

He could see the seeds dropping —
dropping from pods which reminded
him of the darkly horned skate egg
sheaths which he had collected in his
boyhood from sea beaches at ebb tide.

It was unwholesomeness of the
vegetation which chiefly unnerved
him. It looked dank, malarial. There
were decaying patches on the fungus
growths and a miasmal mist was de-
scending from it toward the ship.

The control room was completely
still when he turned from the quartz
port to meet Forrester’s startled gaze.

“Dave, what does it mean?” The
question burst explosively from the
captain’s lips.

“It means — life has appeared and
evolved and grown rotten ripe inside
the bubble, sir. All in the space of an
hour or so.”

“But that’s — impossible.”

Lawton shook his head. “It isn’t at
all, sir. We’ve had it drummed into
us that evolution proceeds at a snail-
ish pace, but what proof have we that
it can’t mutate with lightning-like ra-
pidity? I’ve told you there are gases
outside we can’t even make in a
chemical laboratory, molecular ar-
rangements that are alien to earth.”

“But plants derive nourishment
from the soil,” interpolated For-
rester.

“I know. But if there are alien
gases in the air the surface of the
bubble must be reeking with unheard
of chemicals. There may be com-
pounds inside the bubble which have

THE SKY TRAP

53

1941

so sped up organic processes that a
hundred million year cycle of muta-
tions has been telescoped into an
hour.”

Lawton was pacing the floor again.
“It would he simpler to assume that
seeds of existing plants became some-
how caught up and imprisoned in the
bubble. But the plants around us
never existed on earth. I’m no botan-
ist, but I know what the Congo has
on tap, and the great rain forests of
the Amazon.”

“Dave, if the growth continues it
will fill the bubble. It will choke off all
our air.”

“Don’t you suppose I realize that?
We’ve got to destroy that growth be-
fore it destroys us.”

IT was pitiful to watch the crew’s
morale sag. The miasmal taint of the
ominously proliferating vegetation
was soon pervading the ship, spread-
ing demoralization everywhere.

It was particularly awful straight
down. Above a ropy tangle of livid
vines and creepers a kingly stench
weed towered, purplish and bloated
and weighted down with seed pods.

It seemed sentient, somehow. It
was growing so fast that the evil odor
which poured from it could be corre-
lated with the increase of tension in-
side the ship. From that particular
plant, minute by slow minute, there
surged a continuously mounting of-
fensiveness, like nothing Lawton had
ever smelt before.

The bubble had become a blooming
horror sailing slowly westward above
the storm-tossed Atlantic. And all the
chemical agents which Lawton
sprayed through the ventilation
valves failed to impede the growth or
destroy a single seed pod.

It was difficult to kill plant life
with chemicals which were not harm-
ful to man. Lawton took dangerous
risks, increasing the unwholesome-
ness of their rapidly dwindling air
supply by spraying out a thin diffu-
sion of problematically poisonous
acids.

It was no sale. The growths in-
creased by leaps and bounds, as
though determined to show their re-
sentment of the measures taken
against them by marshalling all their
forces in a demoralizing plantkrieg.

Thwarted, desperate, Lawton
played his last card. He sent five
members of the crew, equipped with
blow guns. They returned screaming.
Lawton had to fortify himself with a
double whiskey soda before he could
face the look of reproach in their eyes
long enough to get all of the prickles
out of them.

From then on pandemonium
reigned. Blue funk seized the petty
officers while some of the crew ran
amuck. One member of the engine
watch attacked four of his com-
panions with a wrench ; another went
into the ship’s kitchen and slashed
himself with a paring knife. The as-
sistant engineer leapt through a
’chute opening, after avowing that he
preferred impalement to suffocation.

He was impaled. It was horrible.
Looking down Lawton could see his
twisted body dangling on a crimson-
stippled thornlike growth forty feet
in height.

Slashaway was standing at his el-
bow in that Waterloo moment, his
rough-hewn features twitching. “I
can’t stand it, sir. It’s driving me
squirrelly.”

“I know,,. Slashaway. There’s some-
thing worse than marijuana weed
down there.”

Slashaway swallowed hard. “That
poor guy down there did the wise
thing.”

Lawton husked: “Stamp on that
idea, Slashaway — kill it. We’re
stronger than he was. There isn’t an
ounce of weakness in us. We’ve got
what it takes.”

“A guy can stand just so much.”

“Bosh. There’s no limit to what a
man can stand.”

From the visiplate behind them
came an urgent voice: “Radio room
tuning in, sir.”

Lawton swung about. On the flick-

COMET

54

July

ering screen the foggy outlines of a
face appeared and coalesced into
sharpness.

The Perseus radio operator was
breathless with excitement. “Our re-
ception is improving, sir. European
short waves are coming in strong.
The static is terrific, but we’re get-
ting every station on the continent,
and most of the American stations.”

Lawton’s eyes narrowed to exultant
slits. He spat on the deck, a slow tre-
mor shaking him.

“Slashaway, did you hear that?
We’ve done it. We’ve won against
hell and high water.”

“We done what, sir?”

“The bubble, you ape — it must be
wearing thin. Hell’s bells, do you
have to stand there gaping like a mo-
ronic ninepin? I tell you, we’ve got
it licked.”

“I can’t stand it, sir. I’m going
nuts.”

“No you’re not. You’re slugging the
thing inside you that wants to quit.
Slashaway, I’m going to give the crew
a first-class pep talk. There’ll be no-
stampeding while I’m in command
here.”

He turned to the radio operator.
“Tune in the control room. Tell the
captain I want every member of the
crew lined up on this screen immedi-
ately.”

The face in the visiplate paled* “I
can’t do that, sir. Ship’s regula-
tions — ”

Lawton transfixed the operator
with an irate stare. “The captain told
you to report directly to me, didn’t
he?”

“Yes sir, but — ”

“If you don’t want to be cashiered,
snap into it.’’

“Yes — yessir.”

The captain’s startled face preced-
ed the duty-muster visiview by a full
minute, seeming to project outward
from the screen. The veins on his neck
were thick blue cords.

“Dave,” he croaked. “Are you out
of your mind? What good will talking
do now?”

“Are the men lined up?*’ Lawton
rapped, impatiently.

Forrester nodded. “They’re all in
the engine room, Dave.”

“Good. Block them in.”

The captain’s face receded, and a
scene of tragic horror filled the opar
lescent visiplate. The men were not
standing at attention at all. They
were slumping against the Perseus’
central charging plant in attitudes of
abject despair.

MADNESS burned in the eyes of
three or four of them. Others had torn
open their shirts, and raked their
flesh with their nails. Petty officer
Caldwell was standing as - straight
as a totem pole, clenching and un-
clenching his hands. The second as-
sistant engineer was sticking out his
tongue. His face was deadpan, which
made what was. obviously a terror re-
flex look like an idiot’s grimace.

Lawton moistened his lips. “Men,
listen to me. There is some sort of
plant outside that is giving off de-
liriant fumes. A few of us seem to be
immune to it.

“I’m not immune, but I’m fighting
it, and all of you hoys can fight it too.
I want you to fight it to the top of
your courage. You can fight anything
when you know that just around the
corner is freedom from a beastliness
that deserves to be licked — even if it’s
only a plant.

“Men, we’re blasting our way free.
The bubble’s wearing thin. Any min-
ute now the plants beneath us may
fall with a soggy plop into the At-
lantic Ocean.

“I want every man jack aboard this
ship to stand at his post and obey or-
ders. Right this minute you look like
something the cat dragged in. But
most men who cover themselves with
glory start off looking even worse
than you do.”

He smiled wryly.

“I guess that’s all. I’ve never had
to make a speech in my life, and I’d
hate like hell to start now.”

It was petty officer Caldwell who

1941

THE SKY TRAP

55

started the chant. He started it, and
the men took it up until it was coming
from all of them in a full-throated
roar.

I’m a tough, true-hearted skyman,
Careless and all that, d’ye see?

Never at fate a railer,

What is time or tide to me?

All must die when fate shall will it,

I can never die but once,

I’m a tough, true-hearted skyman;

He who fears death is a dunce.

Lawton squared his shoulders.
With a crew like that nothing could
stop him ! Ah, his energies were surg-
ing high. The deliriant weed held no
terrors for him now. They were stout-
hearted lads and he’d go to hell with
them cheerfully, if need be.

It wasn’t easy to wait. The next
half hour was filled with a steadily
mounting tension as Lawton moved
like a young tornado about the ship,
issuing orders and seeing that each
man was at his post.

“Steady, Jimmy. The way to fight a
deliriant is to keep your mind on a
set task. Keep sweating, lad.”

“Harry, that winch needs tighten-
ing. We can’t afford to miss a trick.”

“Yeah, it will come suddenly. We’ve
got to get the rotaries started the in-
stant the bottom drops out.”

He was with the captain and Slash-
away in the control room when it
came. There was a sudden, grinding
jolt, and the captain’s desk started
moving toward the quartz port, carry-
ing Lawton with it.

“Holy Jiminy cricket,” exclaimed
Slashaway.

The deck tilted sharply ; then right-
ed itself. A sudden gush of clear, cold
air came through the ventilation
valves as the triple rotaries started
up with a roar.

Lawton and the captain reached the
quartz port simultaneously. Shoulder
to shoulder they stood staring down
at the storm-tossed Atlantic, electri-
fied by what they saw.

Floating on the waves far beneath
them was an undulating mass of vege-

tation, its surface flecked with glint-
ing foam. As it rose and fell in wan-
ing sunlight a tainted seepage spread
about it, defiling the clean surface of
the sea.

But it wasn’t the floating mass
which drew a gasp from Forrester,
and caused Lawton’s scalp to prickle.
Crawling slowly across that Sargas-
so-like island of noxious vegetation
was a huge, elongated shape which
bore a nauseous resemblance to a
mottled garden slug.

Forrester was trembling visibly
when he turned from the quartz port.

“God, Dave, that would have been
the last straw. Animal life. Dave, I
— I can’t realize we’re actually out of
it.”

“We’re out, all right,” Lawton said,
hoarsely. “Just in time, too. Skipper,
you’d better issue grog all around.
The men will be needing it. I’m taking
mine straight. You’ve accused me of
being primitive. Wait till you see me
an hour from now.”

Dr. Stephen Halday stood in the
door of his Appalachian mountain
laboratory staring out into the pine-
scented dusk, a worried expression
on his bland, small-featured face. It
had happened again. A portion of his
experiment had soared skyward, in a
very loose group of highly energized
wavicles. He wondered if it wouldn’t
form a sort of sub-electronic macro-
cosm high in the stratosphere, alter-
ing even the air and dust particles
which had spurted up with it, its un-
charged atomic particles combining
with hydrogen and creating new
molecular arrangements.

If such were the case there would
be eight of them now. His bubbles,
floating through the sky. They
couldn’t possibly harm anything —
way up there in the stratosphere. But
he felt a little uneasy about it all the
same. He’d have to be more careful
in the future, he told himself. Much
more careful. He didn’t want the
Controllers to turn back the clock of
civilization a century by stopping all
atom-smashing experiments.

M EL GRAY flung down his hoe
with a sudden tigerish fierce-
ness and stood erect. Tom
Ward, working beside him, glanced
at Gray’s Indianesque profile, the
youth of it hardened by war and the
hells of the Eros prison blocks.

A quick flash of satisfaction crossed
Ward’s dark eyes. Then he grinned
and said mockingly.

“Hell of a place to spend the rest
of your life, ain’t it?”

Mel Gray stared with slitted blue
eyes down the valley. The huge sun

of Mercury seared his naked body.
Sweat channeled the dust on his skin.
His throat ached with thirst. And the
bitter landscape mocked him more
than Wade’s dark face.

“The rest of my life,” he repeated
softly. “The rest of my life!”

He was twenty-eight.

Wade spat in the damp black earth.
“You ought to be glad — helping the
unfortunate, building a haven for the
derelict. ...” t

“Shut up !” Fury rose in Gray, hot-
ter than the boiling springs that ran

IS BORN

from the Sunside to water the valleys.
He hated Mercury. He hated John
Moulton and his daughter Jill, who
had conceived this plan of building a
new world for the destitute and des-
perate veterans of the Second Inter-
planetary War.

“I’ve had enough ‘unselfish serv-
ice’,” he whispered. “I’m serving my-
self from now on.”

Escape. That was all he wanted.
Escape from these stifling valleys,
from the snarl of the wind in the bar-
ren crags that towered higher than

by LEIGH
BRACKETT

Everest into airless space. Escape
from the surveillance of the twenty
guards, the forced companionship of
the ninety-nine other veteran-con-
victs.

Wade poked at the furrows be-
tween the sturdy hybrid tubers. “It
ain't possible, kid. Not even for ‘Duke’
Gray, the ‘light-fingered genius who
held the Interstellar Police at a stand-
still for five years’.” He laughed. “I
read your publicity.”

Gray stroked slow, earth-stained
fingers over his sleek cap of yellow

58

COMET

July

hair. “You think so?” he asked softly.

Dio the Martian came down the
furrow, his lean, wiry figure silhouet-
ted against the upper panorama of the
valley; the neat rows of vegetables
and the green riot of Venusian wheat,
dotted with toiling men and their
friendly guards.

Dio’s green, narrowed eyes studied
Gray’s hard face.

“What’s the matter, Gray? Trying
to start something?”

“Suppose I were?” asked Gray silk-
ily. Dio was the unofficial leader of the
convict-veterans. There was about his
thin body and hatchet face some of
the grim determination that had made
the Martians cling to their dying
world and bring life to it again.

“You volunteered, like the rest of
us,” said the Martian. “Haven’t you
the guts to stick it?”

“The hell I volunteered ! The IPA
sent me. And what’s it to you?”
“Only this.” Dio’s green eyes were
slitted and ugly. “You’ve only been
here a month. The rest of us came
nearly a year ago — because we want-
ed to. We’ve worked like slaves, be-
cause we wanted to. In three weeks
the crops will be in. The Moulton
Project will be self-supporting. Moul-
ton will get his permanent charter,
and we’ll be on our way.

“There are ninety-nine of us, Gray,
who want the Moulton Project to suc-
ceed. We know that that louse Caron
of Mars doesn’t want it to, since pitch-
blende was discovered. We don’t know
whether you’re working for him or
not, but you’re a troublemaker.

“There isn’t to be any trouble, Gray.
We’re not giving the Interplanetary
Prison Authority any excuse to re-
voke its decision and give Caron of
Mars a free hand here. We’ll see to
anyone who tries it. Understand?”

MEL GRAY took one slow step for-
ward, but Ward’s sharp, “Stow it! A
guard,” stopped him. The Martian
worked back up the furrow. The
guard, reassured, strolled back up the
valley, squinting at the jagged streak

of pale-grey sky that was going black
as low clouds formed, only a few hun-
dred feet above the copper cables that
ran from cliff to cliff high over their
heads.

“Another storm,” growled Ward.
“It gets worse as Mercury enters peri-
helion. Lovely world, ain’t it?”

“Why did you volunteer?” asked
Gray, picking up his hoe.

Ward shrugged. “I had my rea-
sons.”

Gray voiced the question that had
troubled him since his transfer.
“There were hundreds on the waiting
list to replace the man who died. Why
did they send me, instead?”

“Some fool blunder,” said Ward
carelessly. And then, in the same casu-
al tone, “You mean it, about escap-
ing?”

Gray stared at him. “What’s it to
you ?”

Ward moved closer. “I can help
you ?”

A stab of mingled hope and wary
suspicion transfixed Gray’s heart.
Ward’s dark face grinned briefly into
his, with a flash of secretive black
eyes, and Gray was conscious of dis-
trust.

“What do you mean, help me?”

Dio was working closer, watching
them. The first growl of thunder rat-
tled against the cliff faces. It was
dark now, the pink flames of the Dark-
side aurora visible beyond the valley
mouth.

“I’ve got — connections,” returned
Ward cryptically. “Interested?”

Gray hesitated. There was too much
he couldn’t understand. Moreover, he
was a lone wolf. Had been since the
Second Interplanetary War wrenched
him from the quiet backwater of his
country home an eternity of eight
years before and hammered him into
hardness — a cynic who trusted nobody
and nothing but Mel ‘Duke’ Gray.

“If you have connections,” he said
slowly, “why don’t you use ’em your-
self?”

“I got my reasons.” Again that se-
cretive grin. “But it’s no hide off you,

1941

A WORLD IS BORN

59

is it? All you want is to get away.”

That was true. It would do no harm
to hear what Ward had to say.

Lightning burst overhead, streak-
ing down to be caught and grounded
by the copper cables. The livid flare
showed Dio’s face, hard with worry
and determination. Gray nodded.

“Tonight, then,” whispered Ward.
“In the barracks.”

OUT from the cleft where Mel Gray
worked, across the flat plain of rock
stripped naked by the wind that raved
across it, lay the deep valley that shel-
tered the heart of the Moulton Proj-
ect.

Hot springs joined to form a steam-
ing river. Vegetation grew savagely
under the huge sun. The air, kept at
almost constant temperature by the
blanketing effect of the hot springs,
was stagnant and heavy.

But up above, high over the copper
cables that crossed every valley where
men ventured, the eternal wind of
Mercury screamed and snarled be-
tween the naked cliffs.

Three concrete domes crouched on
the valley floor, housing barracks, tool-
shops, kitchens, store-houses, and ex-
ecutive quarters, connected by under-
ground passages. Beside the smallest
dome, joined to it by a heavily barred
tunnel, was an insulated hangar, con-
taining the only space ship on Mer-
cury.

In the small dome, John Moulton
leaned back from a pile of reports,
took a pinch of Martian snuff, sneezed
lustily, and said.

“Jill, I think we’ve done it.”

The grey-eyed, black-haired young
woman turned from the quartzite win-
dow through which she had been
watching the gathering storm over-
head. The thunder from other valleys
reached them as a dim barrage which,
at this time of Mercury’s year, was
never still.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems
that nothing can happen now, and
yet .... It’s been too easy.”

“Easy!” snorted Moulton. “We’ve
broken our backs fighting these val-
leys. And our nerves, fighting time.
But we’ve licked ’em!”

He rose, shaggy grey hair tousled,
grey eyes alight.

“I told the IPA those men weren’t
criminals. And I was right. They can’t
deny me the charter now. No matter
how much Caron of Mars would like
to get his claws on this radium.”

He took Jill by the shoulders and
shook her, laughing.

“Three weeks, girl, that's all. First
crops ready for harvest, first pay-ore
coming out of the mines. In three
weeks my permanent charter will
have to be granted, according to agree-
ment, and then. ...

“Jill,” he added solemnly, “we’re
seeing the birth of a world.”

“That’s what frightens me.” Jill
glanced upward as the first flare of
lightning struck down, followed by a
crash of thunder that shook the dome.

“So much can happen at a birth. I
wish the three weeks were over!”
“Nonsense, girl ! What could possi-
bly happen?”

She looked at the copper cables,
burning with the electricity running
along them, and thought of the one
hundred and twenty-two souls in that
narrow Twilight Belt — with the fierce
heat of the Sunside before them and
the spatial cold of the Shadow side
at their backs, fighting against wind
and storm and heat to build a world
to replace the ones the War had taken
from them.

“So much could happen,” she whis-
pered. “An accident, an escape. . . .”
The inter-dome telescreen buzzed
its signal. Jill, caught in a queer mood
of premonition, went to it.

The face of Dio the Martian ap-
peared on the screen, still wet and
dirty from the storm-soaked fields,
disheveled from his battle across the
plain in the chaotic winds.

“I want to see you, Miss Moulton,”
he said. “There’s something funny I
think you ought to know.”

“Of course,” said Jill, and met her

60

COMET

July

father’s eyes. “I think we’ll see, now,
which one of us is right.”

THE barracks were quiet, except for
the mutter of distant thunder and the
heavy breathing of exhausted men.
Tom Ward crouched in the darkness
by Mel Gray’s bunk.

“You ain’t gonna go soft at the last
minute, are you ?” he whispered. “Be-
cause I can’t afford to take chances.”
“Don’t worry,” Gray returned
grimly. “What’s your proposition?”

“I can give you the combination to
the lock of the hangar passage. All
you have to do is get into Moulton’s
office, where the passage door is, and
go to it. The ship’s a two-seater. You
can get her out of the valley easy.”
Gray’s eyes narrowed in the dark.
“What’s the catch?”

“There ain’t none. I swear it.”
“Look, Ward. I’m no fool. Who’s
behind this, and why?”

“That don’t make no difference. All
you want .... owl”

Gray’s fingers had fastened like
steel claws on his wrist.

“I get it, now,” said Gray slowly.
“That’s why I was sent here. Some-
body wanted me to make trouble for
Moulton.” His fingers tightened agon-
izingly, and his voice sank to a slow
drawl.

“I don’t like being a pawn in some-
body else’s chess game.”

“Okay, okay ! It ain’t my fault. Lem-
rne go.” Ward rubbed his bruised
wrist. “Sure, somebody — I ain’t say-
in’ who — sent you here, knowin’ you’d
want to escape. I’m here to help you.
You get free, I get paid, the Big Boy
gets what he wants. Okay?”

Gray was silent, scowling in the
darkness. Then he said.

“All right. I’ll take a chance.”
“Then listen. You tell Moulton you
have a complaint. I’ll. . .

Light flooded the dark as the door
clanged open. Ward leaped like a
startled *rabbit, but the light speared
him, held him. Ward felt a pulse of
excitement beat up in him.

The long ominous shadows of the

guards raised elongated guns. The
barracks stirred and muttered, like a
vast aviary waking.

“Ward and Gray,” said one of the
guards. “Moulton wants you.”

Gray rose from his bunk with the
lithe, delicate grace of a cat. The mo-
notony of sleep and labor was ended.
Something had broken. Life was once
again a moving thing.

JOHN MOULTON sat behind the un-
tidy desk. Dio the Martian sat grimly
against the wall. There was a guard
beside him, watching.

Mel Gray noted all this as he and
Ward came in. But his cynical blue
eyes went beyond, to a door with a
ponderous combination lock. Then
they were attracted by something else
— the tall, slim figure standing against
the black quartz panes of the far wall.

It was the first time he had seen
Jill Moulton. She looked the perfect
sober apostle of righteousness he’d
learned to mock. And then he saw the
soft cluster of black curls, the curve
of her throat above the dark dress, the
red lips that balanced her determined
jaw and direct grey eyes. ?•'"

Moulton spoke, his shaggy head
hunched between his shoulders,

“Dio tells me that you, Grky, are
not a volunteer.”

“Tattletale,” said Gray. He was
gauging the distance to the hangar
door, the positions of the guards, the
time it would take to spin out the
combination. And ne knew he couldn’t
do it.

“What were you and Ward up to
when the guards came?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” said Gray amia-
bly. “He was te/ling me bedtime sto-
ries.” Jill Moulton was lovely, he
couldn’t deny that. Lovely, but not
soft. She gave him an idea.

Moulton’s jaw clamped. “Cut the
comedy, Gray. Are you working for
Caron of Mars?”

Caron of Mars, chairman of the
board of the Interplanetary Prison
Authority. Dio had mentioned him.
Gray smiled in understanding. Caron

1941

A WORLD IS BORN

61

of Mars had gent him, Gray, to Mer-
cury. Caron of Mars was helping
him, through Ward, to escape. Caron
of Mars wanted Mercury for his own
purposes — and he could have it.

“In a manner of speaking, Mr.
Moulton,” he said gravely, “Caron of
Mars is working for me.” ,

He caught Ward’s sharp hiss of
remonstrance. Then Jill Moulton
stepped forward.

“Perhaps he doesn’t understand
what he’s doing, Father.” Her eyes
met Gray’s. “You want to escape,
don’t you?”

Gray studied her, grinning as the
slow rose flushed her skin, the corners
of her mouth tightening with anger.

“Go on,” he said. “You have a nice
Voice.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she held
her temper.

“You must know what that would
mean, Gray. There are thousands of
veterans in the prisons now. Their
offenses are mostly trivial, but the
Prison Authority can’t let them go,
because they have no jobs, no homes,
no money.

“The valleys here are fertile. There
are mines rich in copper and pitch-
blende. The men have a chance for a
home and a job, a part in building a
new world. We hope to make Mercury
an independent, self-governing mem-
ber of the League of Worlds.”

“With the Moultons as rulers, of
course,” Gray murmured.

“If they want us,” answered Jill,
deliberately missing the point. “Do
you think you have the right to de-
stroy all we’ve worked for?”

Gray was silent. Rather grimly, she
went on.

“Caron of Mars would like to see
us defeated. He didn’t care about Mer-
cury before radium was discovered.
But now he’d like to turn it into a
prison mining community, with con-
vict labor, leasing mine grants to cor-
porations and cleaning up big for-
tunes for himself and his associates.

“Any trouble here will give him an
excuse to say that we’ve failed, that

the Project is a menace to the Solar
System. If you try to escape, you
wreck everything we’ve done. If you
don’t tell the truth, you may cost thou-
sands of men their futures.

“Do you understand? Will you co-
operate?”

Gray said evenly, “I’m my own
keeper, now. My brother will have to
take care of himself.”

It was ridiculously easy, she was so
earnest, so close to him. He had a brief
kaleidoscope of impressions — Ward’s
sullen bewilderment, Moulton’s angry
roar, Dio’s jerky rise to his feet as the
guards grabbed for their guns.

Theri he had his hands around her
slim, firm throat, her body pressed
close to his, serving as a shield against
bullets.

“Don’t be rash,” he told them all
quietly. “I can break her neck quite
easily, if I have to. Ward, unlock that
door.”

In utter silence, Ward darted over
and began to spin the dial. At last he
said, “Okay, c’mon.”

Gray realized that he was sweating.
Jill was like warm, rigid marble in his
hands. And he had another idea.

“I’m going to take the girl as a host-
age,” he announced. “If I get safely
away, she’ll be turned loose, her health
and virtue still intact. Good night.”

The clang of the heavy door had a
comforting sound behind them.

THE ship was a commercial job, fair-
ly slow but sturdy. Gray strapped Jill
Moulton into one of the bucket seats
in the control room and then checked
the fuel and air gauges. The tanks
were full.

“What about you?” he said to
Ward. “You can’t go back.”

“Nah. I’ll have to go with you.
Warm her up, Duke, while I open the
dome.”

He darted out. Gray set the atmo-
sphere motors idling. The dome slid
open, showing the flicker of the auro-
ras, where areas of intense heat and
cold set up atmospheric tension by

62

COMET

rapid fluctuation of adjoining air

masses.

Mercury, cutting the vast magnetic
field of the Sun in an eccentric orbit,
tortured by the daily change from
blistering heat to freezing cold in the
thin atmosphere, was a powerful gen-
erator of electricity.

Ward didn’t come back.

Swearing under his breath, tense
for the sound of pursuit in spite of
the girl, Gray went to look. Out be-
yond the hangar, he saw a figure run-
ning.

Running hard up into the narrow-
ing cleft of the valley, where natural
galleries in the rock of Mercury led
to the places where the copper cables
were anchored, and farther, into the
unexplored mystery of the caves.

Gray scowled, his arrogant Roman
profile hard against the flickering au-
rora. Then he slammed the lock shut.

The ship roared out into the tearing
winds of the plain. Gray cut in his
rockets and blasted up, into the air-
less dark among the high peaks.

Jill Moulton hadn’t moved or
spoken.

Gray snapped on the space radio,
leaving his own screen dark. Present-
ly he picked’ up signals in a code he
didn’t know.

“Listen,” he said. “I knew there was
some reason for Ward’s running out
on me.”

His Indianesque face hardened. “So
that’s the game! They want to make
trouble for you by letting me escape
and then make themselves heroes by
bringing me in, preferably dead.

“They’ve got ships waiting to* get
me as soon as I clear Mercury, and
they’re getting stand-by instructions
from somebody on the ground. The
somebody that Ward was making
for,”

Jill’s breath made a smill hiss.
“Somebody’s near the Project . . .”

Gray snapped on his transmitter.

“Duke Gray, calling all ships off
Mercury. Will the flagship of your re-
ception committee please come in?”

His screen flickered to life. A man’s

July

face appeared — the middle-aged, soft-
fleshed, almost stickily innocent face
of one of the Solar Systems greatest
crusaders against vice and crime.

Jill Moulton gasped. “Caron of
Mars!”

“Ward gave the game away,” said
Gray gently. “Too bad.”

The face of Caron of Mars never
changed expression. But behind those
flesh-hooded eyes was a cunning brain,
working at top speed.

“I have a passenger,” Gray went
on. “Miss Jill Moulton. I’m responsible
for her safety, and I’d hate to have
her inconvenienced.”

The tip of a pale tongue flicked
across Caron’s pale lips.

“That is a pity,” he said, with the
intonation of a preaching minister.
“But I cannot stop the machinery set
in motion. ...”

“And besides,” finished Gray acidly,
“you think that if Jill Moulton dies
with me, it’ll break John Moulton so
he won’t fight you at all.”

His lean hand poised on the switch.

“All right, you putrid flesh-tub. Try
and catch us !”

The screen went dead. Gray
hunched over the controls. If he could
get past them, lose himself in the glare
of the Sun . . .

He looked aside at the stony-faced
girl beside him. She was studying him
contemptuously out of hard gray eyes.

“How,” she said slowly, “can you be
such a callous swine?”

“Callous?” He controlled the quite
unreasonable anger that rose in him.
“Not at all. The war taught me that
if I didn’t look out for myself, no one
would.”

“And yet you must have started out
a human being.”

He laughed.

The ship burst into searing sun-
light. The Sunside of Mercury blazed
below them. Out toward the velvet
dark of space the side of a waiting
ship flashed burning silver.

Even as he watched, the flare of its
rockets arced against the blackness.
They had been sighted.

1941 A WORLD IS BORN 63

Gray’s practised eye gauged the
stranger’s speed against his own, and
he cursed softly. Abruptly he wheeled
the ship and started down again, cut-
ting his rockets as the shadow swal-
lowed them. The ship was eerily silent,
dropping with a rising scream as the
atmosphere touched the hull.

“What are you going to do?” asked
Jill almost too quietly.

He didn’t answer. Maneuvering the
ship on velocity between those stu-
pendous pinnacles took all his atten-
tion. Caron, at least, couldn’t follow
him in the dark without exhaust flares
as guides.

They swept across the wind-torn
plain, into the mouth of the valley
where Gray had worked, braking hard
to a stop under the cables.

“You might have got past them,”
said Jill.

“One chance in a hundred.”

Her mouth twisted. “Afraid to
take it?”

He smiled harshly. “I haven’t yet
reached the stage where I kill women.
You’ll be safe here — the men will find
you in the morning. I’m going back,
alone.”

“Safe!” she said bitterly. “For
what? No matter what happens, the
Project is ruined.”

“Don’t worry,” he told her brutally.
“You’ll find some other way to make a
living.”

Her eyes blazed. “You think that’s
all its means to us? Just money and
power ?” She whispered, “I hope they
kill you, Duke Gray!”

HE rose lazily and opened the air lock,
then turned and freed her. And,
sharply, the valley was bathed in a
burst of light.

“Damn !” Gray picked up the sound
of air motors overhead. “They must
have had infra-red search beams.
Well, that does it. We’ll have to run
for it, since this bus isn’t armed.”

With eerie irrelevancy, the telera-
dio buzzed. At this time of night, after
the evening storms, some communica-
tion was possible.

Gray had a hunch. He opened the
switch, and the face of John Moulton
appeared on the screen. It was white
and oddly still.

“Our guards saw your ship cross
the plain,” said Moulton quietly. “The
men of the Project, led by Dio, are
coming for you. I sent them, because
I have decided that the life of my
daughter is less important than the
lives of many thousands of people.

“I appeal to you, Gray, to let her go.
Her life won’t save you. And it’s very
precious to me.”

Caron’s ship swept over, low above
the cables, and the grinding concus-
sion of a bomb lifted the ship, hurled
it down with the stern and twisted to
uselessness. The screen went dead.

Gray caught the half stunned girl.
“I wish to heaven I could get rid of
you!” he grated. “And I don’t know
why I don’t!”

But she was with him when he set
out down the valley, making for the
cliff caves, up where the copper cables
were anchored.

Caron’s ship, a fast, small fighter,
wheeled between the cliffs and turned
back. Gray dropped flat, holding the
girl down. Bombs pelted them with
dirt and uprooted vegetables, started
fires in the wheat. The pilot found a
big enough break in the cables and
came in for a landing.

Gray was up and running again. He
knew the way into the explored gal-
leries. From there on, it was anybody’s
guess.

Caron was brazen enough about it.
The subtle way had failed. Now he
was going all out. And he was really
quite safe. With the broken cables to
act as conductors, the first thunder-
storm would obliterate all proof of his
activities in this valley. Mercury, be-
cause of its high electrical potential,
was cut off from communication with
other worlds. Moulton, even if he had
knowledge of what went on, could not
send for help.

Gray wondered briefly what Caron
intended to do in case he, Gray, made
good his escape. That outpost in the

64 COMET July

main valley, for which Ward had been
heading, wasn’t kept for fun. Besides,
Gar on was too smart to have only one
string to his bow.

Shouts, the spatter of shots around
them. The narrow trail loomed above.
Gray sent the girl scrambling up.

The sun burst up over the high
peaks, leaving the black shadow of the
valley still untouched. Caron’s ship
roared off. But six of its crew came
after Gray and Jill Moulton.

THE CHILL dark of the tunnel mouth
swallowed them. Keeping right to
avoid the great copper posts that held
the cables, strung through holes
drilled in the solid rock of the gallery’s
outer wall, Gray urged the girl along.

The cleft his hand was searching
for opened. Drawing the girl inside,
around a jutting shoulder, he stopped,
listening.

Footsteps echoed outside, grew
louder, swept by. There was no light.
But the steps were too sure to have
been made in the dark.

“Infra-red torches and goggles,”
Gray said tersely. “You see, but your
quarry doesn’t. Useful gadget. Come
on.”

“But where? What are you going to
do?”

“Escape, girl. Remember? They
smashed my ship. But there must be
another one on Mercury. I’m going to
find it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You probably never will. Here’s
where I leave you. That Martian Gala-
had will be along any minute. He’ll
take you home.”

Her voice came soft and puzzled
through the dark.

“I don’t understand you, Gray. You
wouldn’t risk my life. Yet you’re turn-
ing me loose, knowing that I might
save you, knowing that I’ll hunt you
down if I can. I thought you were a
hardened cynic.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“If you were, you’d have kicked me
out the waste tubs of the ship and

gone on. You’d never have turned
back.”

“I told you,” he said roughly, “I
don’t kill women.” He turned away,
but her harsh chuckle followed him.

“You’re a fool, Gray. You’ve lost
truth — and you aren’t even true to
your lie.”

He paused, in swift anger. Voices
the sound of running men, came up
from the path. He broke into a silent
run, following the dying echoes of
Caron’s men.

“Run, Gray!” cried Jill. “Because
we’re coming after you !”

The tunnels, ancient blowholes for
the volcanic gases that had tortured
Mercury with the raising of the
titanic mountains, sprawled in a laby-
rinthine network through those same
vast peaks. Only the galleries lying
next the valleys had been explored.
Man’s habitation on Mercury had
been too short.

Gray could hear Caron’s men cir-
cling about through connecting tun-
nels, searching. It proved what he had
already guessed. He was taking a des-
perate chance. But the way back was
closed — and he was used to taking
chances.

The geography of the district was
clear in his mind — the valley he had
just left and the main valley, forming
an obtuse angle with the apex out on
the wind-torn plain and a double
range of mountains lying out between
the sides of the triangle.

Somewhere there was a passage
through those peaks. Somewhere
there was a landing place, and ten to
one there was a ship on it. Caron
would never have left his men
stranded, on the off chance that they
might be discovered and used in evi-
dence against him.

The men now hunting him knew
their way through the tunnels, prob-
ably with the aid of markings that
fluoresced under infra-red light. They
were going to take him through, too.

They were coming closer. He wait-
ed far up in the main gallery, in the
mouth of a side tunnel. Now, behind

1941

A WORLD IS BORN

65

them, he could hear Dio’s men. The
noise of Caron’s outfit stopped, then
began again, softly.

Cray smiled, his sense of humor
pleased. He tensed, waiting.

THE RUSTLE of cloth, the furtive
creak of leather, the clink of metal
equipment. Heavy breathing. Some-
body whispered,

“Who the hell’s that back there?”

“Must be men from the Project.
We’d better hurry.”

“We’ve got to find that damned
Gray first,” snapped the first voice
grimly. “Caron’ll burn us if we don't."

Gray counted six separate foot-
steps, trying to allow for the echoes.
When he was sure the last man was
by, he stepped out. The noise of Dio’s
hunt was growing — there must be a
good many of them.

Covered by their own echoes, he
stole up on the men ahead. His grop-
ing hand brushed gently against the
clothing of the last man in the group.
Gauging his distance swiftly, he went
into action.

One hand fastened over the fellow’s
mouth. The other, holding a good-
sized rock, struck down behind the
ear. Gray eased the body down with
scarcely a sound.

Their uniforms, he had noticed,
were not too different from his prison
Jgarb. In a second he had stripped gog-
gles, cap, and gun-belt from the body,
and was striding after the others.

They moved like five eerie shadows
now, in the queer light of the leader’s
lamp. Small fluorescent markings
guided them. The last man grunted
over his shoulder,

“What happened to you?”

“Stumbled,” whispered Gray terse-
ly, keeping his head down. A whisper
is a good disguise for the voice. The
other nodded.

“Don’t straggle. No fun, getting
lost in here.”

The leader broke in. “We’ll circle
again. Be careful of that Project
bunch — they’ll be using ordinary
light. And be quiet !”

They went, through connecting
passages. The noise of Dio’s party
grew ominously loud. Abruptly, the
leader swore.

“Caron or no Caron, he’s gone. And
we’d better go, too.”

He turned off, down a different tun-
nel, and Gray heaved a sigh of relief,
remembering the body he’d left in the
open. For a time the noise of their
pursuers grew remote. And then, sud-
denly, there was an echoing clamor of
footsteps, and the glare of torches on
the wall of a cross-passage ahead.

Voices came to Gray, distorted by
the rock vaults.

“I’m sure I heard them, just then.”
It was Jill’s voice.

“Yeah.” That was Dio. “The trou-
ble is, where ?”

The footsteps halted. Then, “Let’s
try this passage. We don’t want to get
too far into this maze.”

Caron’s leader blasphemed softly
and dodged into a side tunnel. The
man next to Gray stumbled and cried
out with pain as he struck the wall,
and a shout rose behind them.

The leader broke into a run, twist-
ing, turning, diving into the maze of
smaller tunnels. The sounds of pursuit
faded, were lost in the tomblike si-
lence of the caves. One of the men
laughed.

“We sure lost ’em!”

“Yeah,” said the leader. “We lost
’em, all right'.” Gray caught the note
of panic in his voice. “We lost the
markers, too.”

“You mean . . . ?”

“Yeah. Turning off like that did it.
Unless we can find that marked tun-
nel, we’re sunk !”

Gray, silent in the shadows, laughed
a bitter, ironic laugh.

THEY WENT ON, stumbling down
endless black halls, losing all track of
branching corridors, straining to
catch the first glint of saving light.
Once or twice they caught the echoes
of Dio’s party, and knew that they,
too, were lost and wandering.

Then, quite suddenly, they came out

66

COMET

July

into a vast gallery, running like a
subway tube straight to left and right.
A wind tore down it, hot as a draught
from the burning gates of Hell.

It was a moment before anyone
grasped the significance of that wind.
Then someone shouted,

“We’re saved! All we have to do is
walk against it 1” -*

They turned left, almost running in
the teeth of that searing blast. And
Gray began to notice a peculiar thing.

The air was charged with elec-
tricity. His clothing stiffened and
crackled. His hair crawled on his
head. He could see the faint dis-
charges of sparks from his compan-
ions.

Whether it was the effect of the
charged air, or the reaction from the
nervous strain of the past hours, Mel
Gray began to be afraid.

Weary to exhaustion, they strug-
gled on against the burning wind.
And then thfy blundered out into a
cave, huge as a cathedral, lighted by
a queer, uncertain bluish light.

Gray caught the sharp smell of
ozone. His whole body was tingling
with electric tension. The bluish light
seemed to be in indeterminate lumps
scattered over the rocky floor. The
rush of the wind under that tremen-
dous vault was terrifying.

They, stopped, Gray keeping to the
background. Now was the time to
evade his unconscious helpers. The
moment they reached daylight, he’d
be discovered.

Soft-footed as a cat, he was already
hidden among the heavy shadows of
the fluted walls when he heard the
voices.

They came from off to the right, a
confused shout of men under fearful
strain, growing louder and louder, un-
derscored with the tramp of footsteps.
Lights blazed suddenly in the ca-
thedral dark, and from the mouth of
a great tunnel some hundred yards
away, the men of the Project poured
into the cave.

And then, sharp and high and un-
expected, a man screamed.

THE LUMPS of blue light were mov-
ing. And a man had died. He lay on
the rock, his flesh blackened jelly,
with a rope of glowing light running
from the metal of his gun butt to the
metal buttons on his cap.

All across' the vast floor of that
cavern the slow, eerie ripple of mo-
tion grew. The scattered lumps melted
and flowed together, converging in
wavelets of blue flame upon the men.

The answer came to Gray. Those
things were some form of energy-life,
born of the tremendous electric ten-
sions on Mercury. Like all electricity,
they were attracted to metal.

In a sudden frenzy of motion, he
ripped off his metal-framed goggles,
his cap and gun-belt. The Moultons
forbade metal because of the danger
of lightning, and his boots were made
of rubber, so he felt reasonably safe,
but a tense fear ran in prickling waves
across his skin.

Guns began to bark, their feeble
thunder all but drowned in the vast
rush of the wind. Bullets struck the
oncoming waves of light with no more
effect than the eruption of a shower
of sparks. Gray’s attention, some-
how, was riveted on Jill, standing
with Dio at the head of her men.

She wore ordinary light slippers,
having been dressed only for indoors.
And there were silver ornaments at
waist and throat.

He might have escaped, then, quite
unnoticed. Instead, for a reason even
he couldn’t understand, he ran for Jill
Moulton.

The first ripples of blue fire touched
the ranks of Dio’s men. Bolts of it
leaped upward to fasten upon gun-
butts and the buckles of the cartridge
belts. Men screamed, fell, and died.

An arm of the fire licked out, driv-
ing in behind Dio and the girl. The
guns of Caron’s four remaining men
were silent, new.

Gray leaped over that hissing elec-
tric surf, running toward Jill. A
hungry worm of light reared up,
searching for Dio’s gun. Gray’s hand
swept it down, to be instantly buried

1941

67

A WORLD IS BORN

in a mass of glowing ropes. Dio's
hatchet face snarled at him in startled
anger.

Jill cried out as Gray tore the silver
ornaments from her dress. “Throw
down the guns !" he yelled. “It's metal
they want!”

He heard his name shouted by men
torn momentarily from their own ter-
ror. Dio cried, “Shoot him!” A few
bullets whined past, but their imme-
diate fear spoiled both aim and atten-
tion.

Gray caught up Jill and began to
run, toward the tube from which the
wind howled in the cave. Behind him,
grimly, Dio followed.

The electric beasts didn’t notice
him. His insulated feet trampled
through them, buried to the ankle in
living flame, feeling queer tenuous
bodies break and reform.

The wind met them like a physical
barrier at the tunnel mouth. Gray put
Jill down. The wind strangled him.
He tore off his coat and wrapped it
over the girl’s head, using his shirt
over his own. Jill, her black curls
whipped straight, tried to fight back
past him, and he saw Dio coming, bent
double against the wind.

He saw something else. Something
that made him grab Jill and point, his
flesh crawling with swift, cold dread.

THE ELECTRIC BEASTS had fin-
ished their pleasure. The dead were
cinders on the rock. The living had
run back into the tunnels. And now
the blue sea of fire was flowing again,
straight toward the place where they
stood.

It was flowing fast, and Gray
sensed an urgency, an impersonal
haste, as though a command had been
laid upon those living ropes of flame.

The first dim rumble of thunder
rolled down the wind. Gripping Jill,
Gray turned up the tunnel.

The wind, compressed in that nar-
row throat of rock, beat them blind
and breathless, beat them to their bel-
lies, to crawl. How long it took them,
they never knew.

But Gray caught glimpses of Dio
the Martian crawling behind them,
and behind him again, the relentless
flow of the fire-things.

They floundered out onto a rocky
slope, fell away beneath the suck of
the wind, and lay still, gasping. It was
hot. Thunder crashed abruptly, and
lightning flared between the cliffs.

Gray felt a contracting of the heart.
There were no cables.

Then he saw it — the small, fast
fighter flying below them on a flat
plateau. A cave mouth beside it had
been closed with a plastic door. The
ship was the one that had followed
them. He guessed at another one be-
hind the protecting door.

Raking the tumbled blond hair out
of his eyes, Gray got up.

Jill was still sitting, her black curls
bowed between her hands. There
wasn’t much time, but Gray yielded to
impulse. Pulling her head back by the
silken hair, he kissed her.

“If you ever get tired of virtue,
sweetheart, look me up.” But some-
how he wasn’t grinning, and he ran
down the slope.

He was almost to the open lock of
the ship when things began to hap-
pen. Dio staggered out of the wind-
tunnel and sagged down beside Jill.
Then, abruptly, the big door opened.

Five men came out — one .in pilot’s
costume, two in nondescript apparel,
one in expensive business clothes, and
the fifth in dark prison garb.

Gray recognized the last two. Caron
of Mars and the errant Ward.

They were evidently on the verge of
leaving. But they looked cheerful.
Caron’s sickly-sweet face all but oozed
honey, and Ward was grinning his
rat’s grin.

Thunder banged and rolled among
the rocks. Lightning flared in the
cloudy murk. Gray saw the hull of a
second ship beyond the door. Then the
newcomers had seen him, and the two
on the slope.

Guns ripped out of holsters. Gray’s
heart began to pound slowly. He, and
Jill and Dio, were caught on that

naked slope, with the flood of electric
death at their backs.

His Indianesque face hardened.
Bullets whined round him as he
turned back up the slope, but he ran
doubled over, putting all his hope in
the tricky, uncertain light.

Jill and the Martian crouched stiff-
ly, not knowing where to turn. A flare
of lightning showed Gray the first of
the firethings, flowing out onto the
ledge, hidden from the men below.

“Back into the cave !” he yelled. His
urgent hand fairly lifted Dio. The
Martian glared at him, then obeyed.
Bullets snarled against the rock. The
light was too bad for accurate shoot-
ing, but luck couldn’t stay with them
forever.

Gray glanced over his shoulder as
they scrambled up on the: ledge., Caron
waited by his ship. Ward and the
others were charging the slope. Gray’s
teeth gleamed in a cruel grin.

Sweeping Jill into his arms, he
stepped into the lapping flow of fire.
Dio swore viciously, but he followed.
They started toward the cave mouth,
staggering in the rush of the wind.

“For God’s sake, don’t fall,”
snapped Gray. “Here they come !”

The pilot and one of the nondescript
men were the first over. They were
into the river of fire before they knew,
it, and thgn it was too late. One col-
lapsed and was buried. The pilot fell
backward, and then other man died
under his body, of a broken neck.

Ward stopped. Gray could see his
face, dark and hard and calculating.
He studied Gray and Dio, and the
dead men. He turned and looked back
at Caron. Then, deliberately, he
stripped off his gun belt, threw down
his gun, and waded into the river.

Gray remembered, then, that Ward
too wore: rubber boots, and, had no
metal on him.

WARD CAME ON, the glowing ropes
sliding surf-like around his hoots.
Very carefully, Gray handed Jill to
Dio.

“If I die too,” he said, “there’s only

Caron down there. He’s too fat to
stop you.”

Jill spoke, but he turned his back.
He was suddenly conf used, and it was
almost pleasant to be able to lose his
confusion in fighting. Ward had
stopped some five feet away. Now he
untied the length of tough cord that
served him for a belt.

Gray nodded. Ward would try to
throw a twist around his ankle and:
trip him.. Once his body touched those
swarming creatures ....

He tensed, watchfully. The rat’s
grin was set on Ward’s dark face. The
cord lieked out.

But it caught Gray’s throat instead
of his ankle!'

Ward laughed and braced himself.
Cursing, Gray caught at the rope. But
friction held it, and Ward pulled, hard.
His face purpling, Gray could still
commend Ward’s strategy. In, taking.
Gray off guard, he’d more than made
up what he lost in point of leverage.

Letting his body go with the pull,,
Gray flung, himself at Ward. Blood,
blinded him, his heart was pounding,
but he thought he foresaw Ward’s
next move. He let himself be pulled
almost within striking distance.

Then, as Ward, stepped, aside, jerk-
ing the rope and thrusting out a trip-
ping foot, Gray made a catlike shift
of balance and bent over.

His hands almost touched that
weird,, flowing- surf as they clasped
Ward’s boot. Throwing all his
strength into the lift, he hurled Ward
backward.

Ward screamed once and disap-
peared under the blue fire, Gray
clawed the rope from his neck. And.
then, suddenly, the world began to
sway under him. He knew he was.
falling.

Some one’s hand caught him, held
him up. Fighting down his vertigo as
his breath came back, he saw that it
was Jill.

“Why?” he gasped, but her answer
was lost in a titanic roar of thunder.
Lightning blasted down, Dio’s voice

1941

A WORLD I S BORN

69

reached him, thin and distant through
the clamor.

“We'll be killed ! These damn things
will attract the bolts!”

It was true. All his work had been
for nothing. Looking up into that low,
angry sky, Gray knew he was going
to die.

Quite irrelevantly, Jill's words in
the tunnel came back to him. “You’re
a fool .... lost truth .... not true
to lie!”

Now, in this moment, she couldn't
lie to him. He caught her shoulders
cruelly, trying to read her eyes.

Very faintly through the uproar, he
heard her. “I’m sorry for you, Gray.
Good man, gone to waste.”

Dio stifled a scream. Thunder
crashed between the sounding boards
of the cliffs. Gray looked up.

A titanic bolt of lightning shot
down, straight for them. The burn-
ing blue surf was agitated, sending
up pseudopods uncannily like wor-
shipping arms. The bolt struck.

The air reeked of ozone, but Gray
felt no shock. There was a hiss, a
vast stirring of creatures around
him. The blue light glowed, purpled.

Another bolt struck down, and an-
other, and still they were not dead.
The fire-things had become a writh-
ing, joyous tangle of tenuous bodies,
glowing bright and brighter.

Stunned, incredulous, the three hu-
mans stood. The light was now an
eye-searing violet. Static electricity
tingled through them in eerie waves.
But they were not burned.

“My God,” whispered Gray. “They
eat it. They eat lightning !”

Not daring to move, they stood
watching that miracle of alien life,
the feeding of living things on raw
current. And when the last bolt had
struck, the tide turned and rolled back
down the wind-tunnel, a blinding riv-
er of living light.

Silently, the three humans went
down the rocky slope to where Caron
of Mars cowered in the silver ship.
No bolt had come near it. And now
Caron came to meet them.

His face was pasty with fear, but
the old cunning still lurked in his
eyes.

“Gray,” he said. “I have an offer
to make.”

“Well?”

“You killed my pilot,” said Caron
suavely. “I can’t fly, myself. Take me
off, and I’ll pay you anything you
want.”

“In bullets,” retorted Gray. “You
won’t want witnesses to this.”

“Circumstances force me. Physical-
ly, you have the advantage.”

Jill’s fingers caught his arm. “Don’t,
Gray! The Project. . . .”

Caron faced her. “The Project is
doomed in any case. My men carried
out my secondary instructions. All the
cables in your valley have been cut.
There is a storm now ready to break.

“In fifteen minutes or so, every-
thing will be destroyed, except the
domes. Regrettable, but. . . .” He
shrugged.

Jill’s temper blazed, choking her
so that she could hardly speak.

“Look at him, Gray,” she whis-
pered. “That’s what you’re so proud
of being. A cynic, who believes in
nothing but himself. Look at him !”
Gray turned on her.

“Damn you!” he grated. “Do you
expect me to believe you, with the
world full of hypocrites like him?”
Her eyes stopped him. He remem-
bered Moulton, pleading for her life.
He remembered how she had looked
back there at the tunnel, when they
had been sure of death. Some of his
assurance was shaken.

“Listen,” he said harshly. “I can
save your valley. There’s a chance in
a million of coming out alive. Will
you die for what you believe in?”

She hesitated, just for a second.
Then she looked at Dio and said,
“Yes.”

Gray turned. Almost lazily, his fist
snapped up and took Caron on his
flabby jaw.

“Take care of him, Dio,” he grunt-
ed. Then he entered the ship, herding
the white-faced girl before him.

70

COMET

THE SHIP HURTLED up into airless
space, where the blinding sunlight lay-
in sharp shadows on the rock. Over
the ridge and down again, with the
Project hidden under a surf of storm-
clouds.

Cutting in the air motors, Gray
dropped. Black, bellowing darkness
swallowed them. Then he saw the val-
ley, with the copper eables fallen, and
the wheat already on fire in several
places.

Flying with every bit of his skill,
he sought the narrowest part of the
valley and flipped over in a racking
loop. The stern tubes hit rock. The
nose slammed down on the opposite
wall, wedging the ship by sheer
weight.

Lightning gathered in a vast jav-
elin and flamed down upon them. Jill
flinched and caught her breath. The
flame hissed along the hull and van-
ished into seared and blackened rock.

“Still willing to die for principle?”
asked Gray brutally.

She glared at him. “Yes,” she
snapped. “But I hate having to die
in your company !”

She looked down at the valley.
Lightning struck with monotonous
regularity on the hull, but the valley
was untouched. Jill smiled, though
her face was white, her body rigid
with waiting.

It was the smile that did it. Gray

looked at her, her tousled black curls,
the lithe young curves of throat and
breast. He leaned back in his seat,
scowling out at the storm.

“Relax,” he said. “You aren’t going
to die.”

She turned on him, not daring to
speak. He went on, slowly.

“The only chance you took was in
the landing. We’re acting as lightning
rod for the whole valley, being the
highest and best conductor. But, as a
man named Faraday proved, the
charge resides on the surface of the
conductor. We’re perfectly safe.”

“How dared you !” she whispered.

He faced her, almost angrily.

“You knocked the props out from
under my philosophy. I’ve had enough
hypocritical eyewash. I had to prove
you. Well, I have.”

She was quiet for some time. Then
she said, “I understand, Duke. I’m
glad. And now what, for you?”

He shrugged wryly.

“I don't know. I can still take
Caron’s other ship and escape. But I
don’t think I want to. I think per-
haps I’ll stick around and give virtue
another whirl.”

Smoothing back his sleek fair hair,
he shot her a sparkling look from un-
der his hands.

“I won’t,” he added softly, “even
mind going to Sunday School, if you
were the teacher.”

Coming —

A LEGEND OF MARS

by RAYMOND VAN HOUTEN

A Great “First” Story

— In the Next COMET

1941

71

THE SPACEAN

EXTRA!

Special dispatch from Eddy Pratt,
from the flagship of Admiral Alan H.
Smith of the heavy battle fleet; on
Binaries expedition.

“A weapon has been found to stop
the integrator ray!!!

Every man on the expedition is
smiling again — when we saw no
chance of ever returning a few days
ago. For weeks we have dodged back
and forth through space, trying to
avoid the Binaries fleet but now we
will meet them. Our engineers have
labored night and day to find an an-
swer to the new weapon, and they
have discovered a perfect shield.

We are all working in shifts to
protect every ship, and as each one
is finished it is sent forth to watch
the enemy and keep us posted on their
location. The trouble will soon be
over. Within a few days they will be
as much at our mercy as we were
at theirs on the first encounter. I
can’t reveal the substance we are
using as the enemy may pick up my
report, but they already suspect that
we are no longer helpless. They will
either surrender unconditionally and
stand trial for murder — or they will
be completely destroyed.”

FLASH AAA

The strange metal coating that was
brought to port by Space liner X Q 20
has been given a new name and added
to the list of planetary metals. It con-
tains peculiar radium qualities and
has been called radicium (Atomic

weight 226.80). Instead of being in-
jurious it has great health giving
qualities and may be a safe cure for
some of the more serious Space dis-
eases.

FLASH ★ * ★

Engineer McGilligan on Space Cut-
ter M V 33 has made a discovery that
will increase space travel consider-
ably. By adding a small quantity of
the formula he has developed, the
power of the blast tubes is more than
doubled. The additional expansion of
the gases does not take place until
after the pressure is lowered, which
means the power may be controlled
without extra equipment.

FLASH ★ ★ ★

Mary Gordon Smythe has been
commissioned the first woman com-
mander of a commercial space ship.
She is to have the new X Q 990, on
the Earth-Mars run. (She's not so bad
looking either.)

FLASH ★ * ★

Escaped prisoners from Martian
mines have stolen space cutter M V
16 and are free in space. The ship
was fully stocked and their destina-
tion is unknown. They may head for
outer space. All ships must keep a
sharp lookout and report sighting
any ship immediately. They are all
armed and may be dangerous. Cutters
M V 91, M V 104 and M V 216 are
searching, but so far without suc-
cess.

72

COMET

My

Jmne

2

THE SPACEAN

PAR CATS!!

KITTENS

OR

MATURE

THE FIRST

ACCLIMATED

IMPORTS

FOR FULL INFORMATION
WRITE TO

SPACE PETS, Inc.

BLASTPORT

ENGLAND

PLANET EARTH

A FUTURE IS ASSURED
IF YOU KNOW

SPACEHAND

*

THE

UNIVERSAL

SHORTHAND

COURSE BY
SPACEPOST

SCHOOL OF
SPACE BUSINESS

HOTWATER, TEXAS
USA EARTH

Please mention the
Spaceman when answering
advertisements

ORDERS

Admiral Zardow, to command of
Jupiter circuit space patrol, to take
effect immediately.

Captain Pitkin, to artic 'observa-
tory, for special research on weather,
and climatic control.

Lt. Jones Barker, from cutter M V
56 to M V 311, after next patrol run.

ARRIVALS

Jupiter Meridian expedition, with
complete data on climate and living
conditions. Their weather conditioned
ship carries many scars, but the men
are all healthy and enjoyed the ex-
perience.

M V 26 after three year patrol. All
men receive one year’s vacation and
bonus with traveling rights. One
casualty reported.

L V 22 with 90 passengers and 400
tons of freight, from Venus.

M Q 20 from Saturn, with 54 pas-
sengers and 260 tons of saturn-wood.
Ship heavily dented from meteorites,
but no serious damage or casualties
reported.

DEPARTURES

M V 83 for Earth-Mars patrol cir-
cuit.

M V 181 for Jupiter, special assign-
ments.

L V 3 with 12 passengers and 306
tons of manufactured merchandise
for Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune.

SPACE LANE GOSSIP!

A certain well known engineer, has
a little wife trouble. He decided one
wasn’t enough and acquired a second
while on < upiter. Right now he is
thinking it over in the “Hot Box” on
Venus.

Captain — fainted when he arrived,
from space patrol and found three
new additions to his family. Yes —

1941

THE SPACJEAN

73

2,009

THE SPACEAN

3

they all arrived at once! Two girls
and a boy.

Pill Tooley, who has bragged for
years about being a woman hater, has
finally been discovered. He has a wife
in Mobile, Alabama, Earth, also four
children. Strange bachelor, don’t you
think?

The honorable stiff shirt discipli-
narian, Admiral — broke all officers on
space patrol cutter M V 301, the mo-
ment he heard that they had a woman
on board coming in from Mars. He
also confined the men to their quar-
ters, before investigation. The lady
happened to be the daughter of Com-
mander — -and was saved from a
spaceboat after her private ship was
wrecked by meteors. I’m afraid the
Admiral’s face must be kind of
red, and also that the officers will be
reinstated without a trial. I know
that we all hope the Admiral’s garters
never show — to embarrass him.

Lt. Gardner Paterson and hostess
Mary Morley appear to recognize
each other when their ships pass
within a few million miles in space.
Ain’t love grand?

TWENTY YEARS AGO
IN THE SPACE WAYS

The first accident at the terminal
at Rocketville, Maine, U. S. A.,
Earth, cost the lives of three men.
Mixed signals are blamed for the
Stratosphere crash; all equipment is
to be re-designed.

The space patrol cutter M Y 2
arrived in port with only one Mast
operating. When no one emerged the
emergency port was opened. The only
man able to move was the second of-
ficer, who was asleep over the con-
trols. Every other man was down
with scarlet fever. He had succeed-
ed in bringing the ship in, but fell
asleep the moment it was safely on
the ground.

SPACE MAN
CIGARETTES

A PERFECT
BLEND OF EARTH
TOBACCO AND
MARTIAN YETO

IN 30’s,. 50’s
AND A YEAR'S

SUPPLY CARTON

IF YOU DON’T
ENJOY THIS PLEASURE
. YOUR TRIP IS
•NOT COMPLETE

Please mention the
Spacean when answering
advertisements

74

COMET

July

4 THE SPACEAN June

FORTY YEARS AGO
IN THE SPACEWAYS

The strangers, who arrived in the
black spaceship have been learning
English very quickly. They can make
themselves understood somewhat,
and it is believed they come from a
planet of which we know nothing.
They even appear doubtful of their
ability to return to their own uni-
verse. Their fuel is low and it is un-
known whether we will be able to re-
place it. It contains an unknown ele-
ment.

Scientific Research, Incorporated,
reports the development of a new
blast fuel with amazing power. If it
tests up to the claims made for it,
space travel can be extended to twice
our present limits. The weight is al-
most cut in half, with the gas develop-
ment remaining unchanged. It is also
said to be much cheaper than the
present type, and more easily ob-
tained.

A new band of stratobandits is be-
coming more active daily. In the past
month three ships have been boarded
and the passengers as well as mail
robbed. The stratopatrol has searched
constantly for some sign of their
base, as they are not using a space
ship, but so far all efforts have
proven fruitless.

They are able to blanket all radio
communication when approaching
and always destroy the equipment
while on board. Every ship that has
been attacked has been unable to re-
port until they make port. The only
casualties have been guards placed
on board, the standard crewmen are
never injured. Several million in pur-
ple metal has been stolen and one in-
surance company has gone bankrupt.

FIFTY YEARS AGO

The EDMONTON works are em-
ploying more men each day and their
buildings are extending over many

acres. With Edmonton’s genius, and
Interplanetary funds, they should be
able to accomplish wonders. The press
is invited through the plant one day
each week and each visit shows the
gigantic hulls farther toward com-
pletion. One of the ships is already
having the interior fitting installed
and we will soon see it starting out
on test runs. Ground crews are in
training and will be prepared by the
time they have work to do.

Today we can look forward to
space travel as we once looked for-
ward to flying. Perhaps the time will
come when we will watch for new
models of space ships, and prepare to
turn in our old ones, as we now look
forward to the new styles of planes
that each company brings out. There
may even be Space shows to replace
the aviation shows of today.

NEW PROJECTS

The intercity stratosphere ports
are nearing completion. It will make
several minutes’ difference in travel-
ing time to be able to disembark, in
the center of a metropolis, instead of
an outlying port and then entering
the city by surface travel. The steel
structures are the greatest engineer-
ing feat ever attempted, with the
landing stage almost a mile above the
ground level. In some of the larger
ports a few accommodations for stop-
over passengers are provided, al-
though the greatest number directly
connect with some hotel on ground
below.

It has been planned that the struc-
tures shall all be high enough above
the city buildings so that only a small
amount of light will be blocked out.
The steel girders have little effect,
this way, as they are only eighteen
feet in diameter at the base. All cross
bracing has been eliminated until
after the structure is above the twelve
hundred foot level. The greatest light
block is from elevator shafts.

In silence Negu Mah and Sliss stood silent gazing at the moon drenched

held.

The Indulgence of
Negu Mah

by ROBERT ARTHUR

I N his garden, Negu Mah, the an instant as she entered the shell of
Callisto uranium merchant, sat pure vitrite which covered the garden,
sipping a platinum mug of molkai giving it the illusion of out-of-door-
with his guest, Sliss the Venusian. ness.

Nanlo, his wife, pushing before her Negu Mah sat at his ease, his broad,
the small serving cart with its merry, half-Oriental face good-
platinum molkai decanter, paused for humored, his features given a ruddy

75

76

COMET

Ally

tinge by the light of rising Jupiter,
the edge of whose sphere was begin-
ning to dominate the horizon. Sliss,
the intelligent amphibian, squatted
across from him in the portable tub
of water which he carried with him
whenever absent from the swamps of
his native Venus.

The amphibian’s popping eyes
turned toward her, the wide frog-face
split in a smile of appreciation as
Nanlo approached. She refilled their
mugs deftly and withdrew. But be-
fore she reentered the house she could
not resist hesitating to glance toward
rising Jupiter and the slim shaft of
the rocketship silhouetted now against
its surface.

The ship was the cargo rocket Vul-
can, newest and swiftest of Negu
Mah’s freighter fleet. Fully fueled and
provisioned, storage space jammed
with refrigerated foods that in space
the cold of the encompassing void
would keep perfectly for generations
were it necessary, she would take off
in the morning from the close-by land-
ing port for Jupiter’s other satellites,
then go on to the Saturnian system,
returning finally with full holds of
uranium for Negu Mah’s refineries on
Callisto.

She was a beautiful craft, the Vul-
can, and one man could manage her,
though her normal crew was seven.
She had cost a great sum. But Negu
Mah was wealthy.

Nanlo’s face, sylph-like in its
beauty, hardened. Negu Mah was
wealthy indeed. Had he not bought
her, and had she not cost him more,
much more, than the Vulcan?

But no, it was not quite accurate to
say that Negu Mah had bought her.
However, since time immemorial
beautiful daughters had been, if not
sold, yet urged into marriages to
wealthy men for the benefit of their
impoverished families. And though
science had made great strides, con-
quering the realms of the telescope
and invading those below the level of
the microscope, finding cures for al-
most every disease the flesh of man

was heir to, there Was one ailment it
had not yet conquered — poverty.

Nanlo’s father had been a rocket
port attendant. Once he had been a
pilot, but a crash had crippled him for
life. Thereafter, his wages had been
quite insufficient to sustain him, his
brood of half a dozen children, and
their hard-working mother.

But Nanlo, growing up, had de-
veloped into a mature beauty that
rivaled the exotic loveliness of the
wild orchids of Io. And in debarking
at the rocket port on a business trip
to earth, because hurricanes had
forced him to land far south of New
York, Negu Mah had seen her.

Thereafter — But that is a story as
ancient as history too.

It was a truth Nanlo conveniently
overlooked now that she had not been
unwilling to be Negu Mah’s bride. It
was true she had driven a sharp bar-
gain with him — her father’s debts
paid, and sufficient more to ease her
parents’ life and educate her brothers
and sisters. Plus a marriage settle-
ment for herself, and a sum in escrow
in the Earth Union bank, should she
ever divorce him for cruelty or mis-
treatment. But that had been only
innate shrewdness. She would still
have married him had he refused her
demands for her family. For his
wealth fascinated her, and the pros-
pect of being a virtual queen, even of
a distant outpost colony such as that
on Callisto, appealed to her.

And she had thought that she was
taking little risk, for if she were dis-
satisfied, the law these days was very
lenient toward unhappy marital re-
lationships. It required only definite
proof of misconduct, mistreatment, or
oppression of any kind to win f reedom
from an unwanted partner. Nanlo had
been confident that after a year or
two she would be able to shake free
of the bonds uniting her to Negu Mah
and take flight for herself into a world
made vastly more pleasant by the
marriage settlement remaining to her.

But now she had been married, and
had lived on Callisto, for a full five

77

vm THE INDULGING! ©F NEGU MAH

years, and her tolerance of Negu Mah
had long since turned to bitter hate.
Not because he was a bad husband,
but because he was too good a one !

THERE was an ironic humor in the
situation, but Nanlo was not disposed
to recognize it. Lenient as the law
was, yet it required some grounds be-
fore it could free her. And she had
n© grounds whatever. Negu Mah was
at all times the model of courtesy and
consideration toward her. He granted
every reasonable wish and some that
were unreasonable — although when
he refused one of the latter, it was
with a firmness as unshakeable as a
rock.

Their home was as fine as any on
earth. She had more than adequate
help in taking care of it. She had am-
ple time for any pursuits that inter-
ested her. But she used it only to be-
come more and more bitter against
Negu Mah because she could find no
excuse to divorce him.

So great had her bitterness become
that, if she could have gotten off
Callisto in any way, she would have
deserted him. This would have meant
forfeiting her marriage settlement
and the sum that was in escrow. It
would also have left her father in debt
to Negu Mah for all that Negu Mah
had given him. But Nanlo’s passionate
rebellion had reached such a state of
ferment in her breast that she would
have accepted all this to strike a blow
at the plump, smiling man who now
sat drinking molkai in their garden
with their guest from Venus.

The answer t© that was — Negu Mah
would not let her leave Callisto. The
journey to earth, he logically argued,
was still one containing a large ele-
ment of danger. There was no reason
for her to visit any other planet, and
law and custom required that she look
after their home while he himself was
away on business.

In this he was unshakeable. There
was a stern and unyielding side to
him, inherited perhaps from his East-
ern ancestors, that left Nanlo shaken

and frightened when it appeared. She
had seen it the one time she had seri-
ously gone into a tantrum in an effort
to make him let her take a trip to
earth. It had so startled and terrified
her that she had never used those
tactics again.

But now, as she wheeled away the
molkai decanter and left Negu Mah
and Sliss to themselves, joy and exul-
tation was singing in her. Doubly, For
she was going to run away from Negu
Mah, run away with the man she
loved, and in their flight they were go-
ing to steal the Vulean. Thus Negu
Mah would be doubly punished. He
would be hurt in his pride and in his
pecketbook. And all through the
Jupiter and Saturn systems, where
his wealth, his position, and his beau-
tiful wife were openly envied, he
would be laughed at and derided.

Humming lightly under her breath,
Nanlo put the molkai decanter away
in a little pantry and hurried on to
her own apartment. Molkai was a
powerful, though non-habit-forming
drink. Under its influence one became
talkative, but disinclined to move-
ment. Sliss and her husband would re-
main as they were for hours, leaving
her free to do as she would. The serv-
ants were asleep in another part of
the building, and there was no one to
note as she changed her clothes swift-
'ly for a light, warm travelling suit,
caught up two smaH bags, one hold-
ing her personal things, the other her
jewels, and let herself out through her
own private entrance into the dark-
ness of the rear gardens.

Where in the shadows the tall,
blonde young engineer, Hugh Neils,
was waiting for her. ...

NEGU MAH, when his beautiful wife
had left the garden, sighed and put
to one side his mug of molkai.

“Sliss, my friend,” he said to the
Venusian, who was regarding him
with large, unbMnking pop-eyes, “I
am troubled in my mind. Tonight I
must dispense justice. Justice to my-

78

COMET

July

self and justice to another. To be just
is often to be terribly cruel.”

Sliss blinked, once, a film moving
horizontally across his large eyes and
retracting, to show that he under-
stood. Due to the difficulty of using
his artificial speech mechanism, he
refrained from speaking until speech
was necessary.

“My wife, Nanlo,” Negu Mah said
heavily, “is unhappy. I have done all
that is in my power to make her
happy, but I have failed. She has made
some requests that I have denied,
namely, to be permitted freedom to
visit earth. That I denied because I
knew the paths she intended to tread
would not have led her to happiness
either, and I hoped that in the end,
here she would find contentment. I
have hoped in vain. Tonight she in-
tends to take matters into her own
hands.”

Sliss blinked again, politely, to in-
dicate that he was interested if Negu
Mah cared to tell him more. Negu Mah
rose.

“My friend,” he said, “if you will
come with me, I will show you what
I mean.”

Sliss grasped the edge of his tub
with webbed hands and swung his
webbed, yellow-skinned feet free
from the water which kept the sensi-
tive membranes from drying, and at
the same time supplied his body tis-
sues with liquid. Falling upon all
fours, like a great, misshapen pet, he
waddled awkwardly after his host.

Negu Mah led him to an elevator
within the house. This took them to a
higher floor, and there they followed
a corridor to the rear of the building.
Here Negu Mah, without showing a
light, opened a door, and in silence
they moved out upon a small balcony
overlooking the rear gardens, which
were shrouded in darkness because
rising Jupiter was on the opposite
side of the building.

They had stood there only a moment
when below them a door opened, and
a small figure slipped through. An-
other figure appeared from beneath

the shadows of a cluster of slender,
purple neklo trees and moved forward
to greet the first. They met in the
center of a tiny open space, where a
fountain spurting through holes in
crystal made a sweet murmuring
music. And to the two watchers rose
whispered words — “Nanlo ! Nanlo,
my darling!” “Hugh! Oh, Hugh, my
love, hold me close and tell me that
everything is ready for us to leave!”

HUGH NEILS’ arms held her close,
and his lips were hot on hers. That
he was here as they had planned
meant that he had succeeded in the
other plans they had agreed upon.
Exultation soared higher in Nanlo's
breast.

“Then we can go? Go now?” she
asked eagerly, as Hugh Neils re-
leased her. “The crew is asleep ? You
were able to arrange it?”

The young engineer looked down
at her, his thin face a pale blur in the
darkness.

“In five minutes, just five minutes,
Nanlo, my own,” he whispered. “I left
the guard half an hour ago, drinking
molkai into which I put a sleeping
powder. Give him five more minutes
to fall asleep, then we can go to the
ship unseen, unchecked. Until then,
we can wait here in the garden.”

He led her toward the trilling foun-
tain and they sat down upon a bench
before it, of rare Callisto crystal.
They still were in darkness, but the
flame-like Jupiter light touched the
tops of the neklo trees above them
with a ruddy light which brought
faint glimmerings from the radio-
active leaves.

Hugh Neils was a recent college
graduate whom Negu Mah had hired
as an assistant supervisor in the re-
fining mills on Callisto, where the
precious uranium 235 was separated
from the ordinary metal. It was not
a desirable job, but the best Hugh
Neils could get. His college record of
reckless scrapes and entanglements
with women had been against him.
Indeed, this position had only come

1941

THE INDULGENCE OF NEGU MAH

79

to him because his home was in the
same section as Nanlo’s, and Negu
Mah had thought that perhaps his
company on occasion would help
alleviate Nanlo’s restlessness.

It had — but to an extent Negu Mah
had not foreseen.

“In less than a quarter of an hour,
Nanlo my darling,” Hugh Neils whis-
pered now, “we’ll be gone from here,
and you’ll belong only to me. We’ll
leave this infernal barren satellite to
spin itself dizzy out here in no place.
We’ll leave that humpty-dumpty hus-
band of yours and his hypocritical
good-nature to whistle for his wife
and his ship. We won’t care. We’ll be
together, always together from now
on, and he’ll never see us again.”

Nanlo leaped against his shoulder,
the prospect that he painted seemed
very sweet to her.

“You’re sure you can manage the
ship alone?” she asked. “But of course,
I can help, a little anyway. You can
teach me.”

“Of course,” Hugh Neils answered
confidently, and bent to kiss . her
again. “I’ve been studying her for a
wee^, asking questions, making
friends with the crew. I can handle
her one-handed. We’ll take off and
circle Jupiter first. They may think
we landed on the other side* in the
Outlaw Crevice. Or they may figure
that we went on to Saturn, and will
hide somewhere in the system there.

“But we won’t do either, and they
won’t know where to look for us. In-
stead of turning back on the other
side of Jupiter, we’ll make a tangen-
tial angle out into space. We’ll hold
it for a month, for safety’s sake. We
could hold for fifty years, or a hun-
dred, if we needed to. There’s fuel and
provisions, meant for the mines,
enough to last that long.

“At the end of the month, we’ll
swing back, cut into the path of the
sun, and pick up Mars as she comes
in from behind Sol.

“Qn Mars, we can sell the Vulcan.
There’s an outfit in the Equator Zone,
in the mountains west of the Great

Canal, that will buy her and no ques-
tions asked. I learned about them
from a fraternity brother while I
was in college. He’d run into some
hard luck, they gave him a job, and
he was making money hand over fist.
They’re asteroid miners. The work
they do is illegal, but it’s perfectly
justified morally. What right have
men with more money than they know
what to do with to own everything in
the Solar System? How can a young
fellow get a start any more, when
corporations and rich old fogies own
everything ?

“Maybe I’ll join up with this outfit.
After we’ve sold the ship I’ll see. How
does that sound to you?”

“Wonderful, Hugh,” Nanlo whis-
pered. "But I don’t care about that.
All I want is for us to be together.
Always. You and me, and our love,
together for eternity. That’s all I
want.”

“That’s all I want, too, darling
Nanlo,” Hugh Neils told her passion-
ately, and kissed her. “Together, for-
ever. Just you and me.”

Nanlo sighed, with luxuriant hap-
piness, and peered at his radiumite
wrist watch.

“The five minutes are up,” she mur-
mured. “Can’t we go now ?”

Hugh Neils nodded.

“We’ve waited plenty long enough,”
he decided. “The guard will be asleep
by now. The crew were that way when
I left them, in the dormitory. I saw
that they had plenty of spiked molkai
at dinner. Pretended it was my birth-
day celebration. And the ship’s all
ready and waiting for the take-off. All
we have to do is lock the port and
close the rising switch.”

The two on the bench by the foun-
tain rose, and for a long minute were
locked in an embrace. Then they
turned toward the dark-shadowed
trees and disappeared beneath them,
in the direction of the nearby space
port.

NEGU MAH silently turned back into
thehouse. Sliss shuffled after him. The

80

COMET

July

uranium merchant led the way back
to the vitrite covered garden and
there, a little wearily, resumed his
seat and picked up his mug again.
Sliss climbed back into his tub of
water, sighed gratefully at the com-
fort it gave him, and then turned his
pop-eyes toward his host. He blinked
once, inquiringly, and Negu Mah un-
derstood that the intelligent amphib-
ian was asking if he intended to do
nothing to stop the pair who were
running away.

Negu Mah sipped pensively at his
drink.

“If she had only told me,” he mur-
mured. “If she had only come to me
and said she desired her freedom. If
they had only both come together and
faced me, saying that though it meant
giving up all they had, they wanted
only each other! I would have been
generous. I would have been indul-
gent. But they did not. They had not
the courage. They were afraid of me.
And they hated me.”

Negu Mah was silent for a moment.
Both he and his guest stared toward
the graceful shaft of the Vulcan, now
fully silhouetted against the whole
tremendous bulk of Jupiter, sitting
like a titanic scarlet egg upon the
horizon of Callisto. The Jupiter light
flooded the vitrite garden, gave the
plants there, chosen with an eye to
this, strange, exotic, glowing colors,
flushed Negu Mah and Sliss with a
ruby radiance.

Towards that dark, waiting craft
the two they had watched were even
now stealing, tense with the weight of
their daring and their crime. In a
moment they would reach her, enter
her, actuate machinery that was
miraculous in its complex simplicity,
and be gone then on the wings it gave
them into the concealing embrace of
universal space.

“You see, my friend Sliss,” Negu
Mah said finally, “Nanlo is beautiful,
but there is nothing within. Her
beauty deceived me. I thought that
where such loveliness existed, there
must be a soul to animate it. I was

wrong. She is like an imitation gem
— beautiful on the surface, paste
within. Yet the mistake was mine,
and I did not blame her. I indulged
her, and still hoped that something
real would bloom within her.”

He drained the molkai in his mug,
one great gulp, and slumped back.

“The young man, too, Hugh Neils.
I thought he would be a companion
for her. But he too is weak. Yet they
say they love each other. They swear
— we heard them — that they want
only each other and their love for all
time.”

Sliss blinked, twice, and Negu Mah
nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “If they carry out
their plans as we heard them, that
feeling will soon go. The sale of the
Vulcan, even as stolen property,
would give them many credits. After
that — luxury, self-indulgence. And
their natures are too weak to with-
stand the ravages of such things. So
I have been troubled to know what
to do.

“You see, my friend from Venus,
though I would have let Nanlo go had
she asked me, my own honor is at
stake when she seeks to deal me an
injury by slipping away in the night,
and stealing from me the Vulcan. She
is doing evil, and must be punished.
The young man, too — indulgent as I
am, I can not let him dishonor me thus
without paying any penalty.”

Sliss’ eye membranes shut, ques-
tioningly.

“Yet,” the uranium merchant went
on, “I have a fondness for Nanlo. I
will not prevent her from doing as
she has chosen to do, for the intent
would still be there, and knowing it
as I do, all between us is over. I can
not aid her to fulfill her plans, either,
for that is to injure her and myself
too. But there is another course. I
have chosen that.”

He gestured with one plump hand
toward the silhouetted ship.

“I believe they have entered the
Vulcan,” he announced. “I saw light
as the entrance port opened then.”

1941 THE INDULGENCE OF NEGU MAH 81

The amphibian's great, frog head
nodded agreement.

“So," Negu Mah continued, “I have
decided to exercise what indulgence
I can in the face of the injury they
would do me. They shall have their
chance.”

He fell silent again. Sliss leaned
forward in his tub. Both of them
watched intently. A flare of greenish
light had sprung up beneath the black
pillar that was the Vulcan. For just
an instant the freighter stood there,
green radiance expanding around
her. Then she leaped into the sky.

With her leap, she seemed to suck
the radiance along. It became a great
eone of glowing light that, arrow-like,
raced away upward. For a long in-
stant the black length of the ship, and
the greenish fan of flame, were out-
lined against the scarlet background
of Jupiter. Then the freighter rocket,
flinging herself upward at three
gravities or better, passed the edge
of the planet had vanished.

Negu Mah sat very quiet for some
moments. But at last he stirred again.
Sliss’ eyes turned toward him, im-
mobile.

“Sometimes love transforms the
weak,” the uranium merchant said
slowly. “Like fire giving temper to
soft metal. Sometimes a mutual love
will endure for all eternity, and the
two who share it will gain from it a
soul they did not have before. Nanlo
and Hugh Neils have this chance.
Both said they wanted only the other,
and their love, for all eternity. To
gain this, both were willing to cheat,
to steal, to dishonor me and them-
selves.

“So, Sliss, my understanding
friend, they have paid the price, they
shall have what they ask for.

“As the man, Hugh Neils, said,
there is fuel and food in the holds of
the Vulcan to run the motors and last
the lifetime of a man — or a man and
a woman. Indeed, two lifetimes, or
three, for I was aware of their plans,
and secretly I placed aboard the craft
many’ additional supplies. Fuel, and

food, and books, and tools. And one
additional thing the two who flee now
there in space have not counted upon.

“Into the controls of the Vulcan
one of my engineers has placed a
small device. After two hundred
hours, or when they are well beyond
Jupiter, this device will swing the
Vulcan straight toward Proxima
Centauri, the nearest star. In that
position the controls will lock. And
for twenty years, a generation, it will
be impossible either to alter the course
of the Vulcan or to shut her blast
motors off.

“At the end of that time the last
tank of reserve fuel will be exhausted,
and they will cease automatically.
Then once more the Vulcan may be
controlled by those aboard. They may-
switch the motors onto the tanks of
fuel in the cargo holds, and continue
onwards. If they were celestial navi-
gators, they might try to turn, and
seek earth again. But they are not
navigators, and the sun will be but a
tiny spark in the limitless darkness,
one with a million others, not to be
told apart. They will know that only
Proxima Centauri in all space may the
Vulcan hope to reach in their life-
time, or perhaps even in that of their
descendants, for a message to that
effect they will find presently.

“So it may be that they will con-
tinue onward of their own choice. If
they make no choice, momentum will
carry them onward, perhaps forever.

“But in any case, Nanlo and Hugh
Neils will have exactly what they have
asked for — each other, for all eternity.
If truly that was what they wanted,
a great destiny may be theirs. A
lifetime of travel can bring them to
the stars. They or their descendants
can be the first humans to bridge the
gap of nothingness that has thus far
daunted the stoutest hearts.”

As they watched, the green dart of
light dwindled and was gone. And
quite invisible at last in the arms of
outer darkness, the Vulcan sped its
two passengers onward toward the
stars.

1941

THE BEAST OF SPACE

83

H ERE the dark cave, along
which Nat Starrett had been
creeping, broadened into what
his powerful searchlight revealed to be
a low, wide, smoothly circular room.
At his feet lapped black, thick-looking
waves of an underground lake, a pool
of viscous substance that gave off a
penetrating, poignant odor of acid,
sweetish and intoxicating, unlike any
acid he knew. The smell rolled up in
a sickening, sultry cloud that pene-
trated his helmet, made him cough
and choke. Near its center projected
from the sticky stuff what appeared
to be the nose of a spaceship.

He looked down near his feet at the
edge of the pool where thick, slowly-
moving tongues of the liquid appeared
to reach up toward him, as if intent
on pulling him into its depths. As each
hungry wave fell back, it left a slimy,
snake-like trail behind.

Now came a wave of strange music,
music such as he had never heard be-
fore. Faintly it had begun some time
back, so faintly he was barely aware
of it. Now it swelled into a smooth,
impelling wail lulling him into drowsi-
ness. He did not wonder why he could
hear through the soundproof space
helmet he wore; he ceased to wonder
about anything. There was only the
strange sweetness of acid and the
throbbing music.

Abruptly the spell was broken by
something shrilling in his brain, send-
ing little chills racing up and down
his spine. Digger! A small, oddly
canine-like creature with telepathic
powers, a space-dweller which men
found when first they came to the
asteriods. The relationship between
spacehounds and men was much the
same as between man and dog in the
old, earthbound days. Appropriate
name for the beast, Digger. With
those large, incredibly hard claws, de-
signed for rooting in the metal make-
up of the asteriods for vital elements,
the spacehound could easily have
shredded the man’s spacesuit and
helmet, could, at any time tear huge
chunks out of men’s fine ships.

The half-conscious man jerked his
thin form erect. His mouth, which had
gaped loosely, closed with a snap into
firm lines.

“She isn’t in this hell hole, Digger.
You wouldn’t expect her to be where
we could find her easily.”

Scooping the small beast up under
his good arm, he quickly climbed the
steep, slimy slope of the cave. The
other arm in his suit hung empty.
That empty arm in the space suit told
the story of an earthman become
voluntary exile, choosing the desola-
tion of space to the companionship of
other humans who would deluge him
with unwonted sympathy. The space-
hound was friendly in its own fashion ;
fortunately, such complex things as
sympathy were apparently outside its
abilities. The two could interchange
impressions of danger, comfort, pleas-
ure, discomfort, fear, and apprecia-
tion of each other’s company, but little
more. Whether or not the creature
could understand his thoughts, he
could not tell.

As he went on, he reviewed, men-
tally, the events leading up to his land-
ing here. The sudden appearance on
his teleview screen of the face and'
slim shoulders of a girl. Her attrac-
tiveness plainly distinguishable
through her helmet ; for a moment he
forgot that he disliked women. The
call for help, cut short . . . but not
before he had learned that apparently
she was being held prisoner on As-
teroid Moira. He knew he’d have to
do what he could even if it meant un-
wonted company for an indefinite
length of time. The spell was gone
soon after her face vanished; he re-
membered former experiences with
attractive-looking girls. Damn tradi-
tions !

A change in his course and a land-
ing on Asteroid Moira. Here he’d
found a honeycomb of caves, all lead-
ing from one large main tunnel. The
cavern walls had been of a translu-
cent, quartz-like substance, ranging in
color from yellowish-brown to violet-
grey. It looked vaguely familiar, yet he

84 COMET July

could not place it. There was not time
to examine it more carefully.

The room in which he’d found the
evil, hungry lake had been the first
one to the right. Now he crossed to
the opening in the opposite wall. The
mouth of this cave was much larger,
wider than the other. He stood in the
opening, slowly swung the beam of his
torch around the smooth walls, still
holding Digger, who, by now, was ini-
dieating that he’d like to be set down.
Nat released him unthinkingly, his
mind fully taken up with what the
light revealed.

SPACESHIPS ! The room was paeked
with them— all sizes, old and new. A
veritable sargasso. At first, he thought
they might be craft belonging to
nameless inhabitants of this world,
but, as he approached them, he recog-
nized Terrestial identifications.

The first was a scout ship of Ameri-
can Spaceways ! Nat recognized the
name: Ceres, remembered a telecast
account of its disappearance in space.
There was a neat little reward for in-
formation as to its whereabouts. Nat’s
tips curled in derision : it wouldn’t
equal the expense of his journey out
here. There was a deep groove in the
smooth material of the floor where the
ship had been dragged through the
doorway into the room. What ma-
chines could have done this work with-
out leaving their own traees? He went
to the other ships: all were small,
mostly single or two-passenger craft.
The last entry in the logs of many was
to the effect that they were about to
land on the Asteroid Moira to rescue
a girl held captive there.

None had crashed; all ships were
in perfect order. But all were deserted.
Two doors were gone from the interi-
or of one of the vessels. They might
have been removed for any of a hun-
dred reasons — but why here ?

Nat’s glance swept the room, came
to rest on the figure of a heavy duty
robot of familiar design. Semi-human
in form, it looked like some mishap-
pen, bent, headless giant. He inspect-

ed it: Meyers Robot, Inc. Earth de-
signed for mining operations on Mars.

“Well, Digger, I can see now how
these ships were brought in here ; that
robot could move any one of these
with ease. But that doesn’t explain
where the humans have gene. It might
be space pirates using this asteroid
for a base, or it might be some alien
form of life. We’re still free. Shall we
beat it or stay and try to eheck this
out?”

He did not know how much of this
got over to the spacehound, but the
impressions he received in answer
were those of approving their remain-
ing where they were.

“I suppose the best system is to ex-
plore the rest of the caves in order ;
let’s go.”

Followed by Digger, he walked
quietly toward the next cave on the
left, slipped through the doorway,
and, standing with his back against
the wall, swung the light of his torch
in a wide, swift arc about the room.
Halfway around, he stopped abruptly ;
a slim, petite figure appeared clearly
in the searchlight’s glare. The girl he
had seen on the televisor stood in the
middle of the room, facing a telecast-
er, her back toward him. She did not
seem aware of him as he moved for-
ward. What could be wrong; surely
that light would arouse her.

The figure did not turn as he ap-
proached. So near was he now that he
could seize her easily, still she made
no move. Nat stepped to one side,
flashed his torch in her face. Her
beautifully-lashed eyes stared straight
ahead unblinkingly ; the expression on
her lovely composed face did not
change. A robot ! He laughed bitterly.
But then, he was not the only one. . . .

She was an earth product; Nat
opened her helmet and found the
trade-mark of Spurgin’s Robots hung
like a necklace about her throat. But
whoever had lured him here easily
could have removed her from one of
the vessels in the front cave. It did
not seem like the work of pirates,

1941

THE BEAST OF SPACE

85

more likely unknown intelligent
beings.

He turned to examine the televisor.
It, too, was an earth product. The
mechanism was of old design; evi-
dently it had been taken from the
first of the ships to land here. Outside
of the telecaster and the solitary robot,
there was nothing to be seen in this
cave.

A sound behind him. He whirled,
heat-rod poised for swift, stabbing
action. Nothing — except — small bowl-
,ing-ball things rolling in through a
narrow door. Ridiculous things of the
same yellowish-quartz material as
composed the cave-walls. At regular
intervals a dull, bluish light poured
forth from rounded holes in their
smooth sides. And issuing forth from
within these comic globes was the
same weird, compelling music he had
heard before. They rolled up to him,
brushed against his toes ; a shrilling in
his brain told him that Digger was
aware of them.

“Back, Digger!” he thought as he
drew away from the globes. They
poured their penetrating blue light
over him, inspectingly, while the
music from within rose and fell in
regular cadences, sweetly impelling
and dulling to the senses as strong ori-
ental incense.

But Digger was not soothed. The
space-hound lunged at one of the
globes; instead of slashing its sides,
he found himself sailing through the
air toward it. Nat received impres-
sions of irritation combined with as-
tonishment. Within the globes, the
music rose to a furious whine while
one of the things shot forth long ten-
tacles from the holes in its side. Light-
ning-swift they shot forth, wrapped
themselves about the body of the
space-hound, constricting. Digger
writhed vainly, his claws powerless to
tear at the whiplike tentacles. Nat
severed the tentacles at their base with
the heat-beam.

He turned, strode toward the door
watching the spheres apprehensively
out of the corner of his eye, ready to

jump aside should they roll toward
him suddenly. But they followed at re-
spectful distances, singing softly.

Before he reached the door, he
found himself walking in rhythm to
the music, his head swaying. It came
slowly, insidiously ; before he was
aware, his body no longer obeyed his
will. Muscles refused to move other
than in coordination with the music.
His arm relaxed, the heat-rod sliding
from his grasp.

BUT DIGGER ! The spacehound sent
out a barrage of vibrations that fairly
rocked his brain out of his skull. Si-
multaneously, the beast attacked the
nearest globes, tearing fiercely at
them. Rapidly the others rolled away,
but two lay torn and motionless, the
music within them stilled.

Nat reached down, retrieved the
heat-rod. “I think we’d better look for
a ‘squeaker’. Next time they might get
you, Digger.”

They returned to the room of the
spaceships, seeking one of the small,
portable radio-amplifiers used for
searching out radium. It was known as
a “squeaker” because of the constant
din it made while in use; the noise
would cease only when radium was
within a hundred feet of the mechan-
ism. He found one after searching a
few of the smaller ships.

With the portable radio strapped to
his back, power switched on, he start-
ed again down the main tunnel. The
globes set up their seductive rhythms
as before, but he could not hear them
above the discord of his squeaker.
Failing to lure him as before, they
sought to force him in the direction
they desired him to go by darting at
him suddenly, lashing him with their
tentacles. But it was a simple thing
to elude them. Still remained the ques-
tion : why could they want to lure him
into that stinking pool of acid?

He flashed a beam of heat at the
nearest of the annoying globes. Un-
der the released energy it glowed, yet
did not melt. But the tentacles sheared
off and the blue lights faded. The flow

86

COMET

of music changed to shrill whines as
of pain and its rolling ceased. The
others drew back; he turned down
another tunnel.

They stopped at the cave beyond the
one where he had found the robot-girl.
It was sealed by a locked door, one of
the airlock-doors from that space ves-
sel, firmly cemented into the natural
opening of the cave.

Nat bent forward, listening, his
helmeted head pressed against the
door. No sound. He was suddenly
aware of the dead silence that pressed
in on him from all sides now that the
globes no longer sang and his “squeak-
er” had been turned off. The powerful
energy of his heat-beam sputtered as
it melted the lock into incandescent
droplets which sizzled as they trickled
down the cold metal of the door. The
greasy, quartz-like material at the
side of the door glowed in the heat
from his rod, but no visible effect upon
it could be seen. What was that materi-
al? He knew, yes, he knew — but he
could not plaee a mental finger on it.

He thrust the shoulder of his good
arm against the heavy door, swung it
inwards, stepped inside. The light of
his torch piereed the silence, picked
out a human skeleton in one corner.
He hurried toward it — no, it was not
entirely a skeleton as yet. The flesh
and bone had been eaten away from
the lower part of the body to halfway
up the hips, as though from some
strong acid. The rest of the large,
sturdy frame lay sunken under the
remains of a space-suit which was tied
clumsily around the middle to retain
all the air possible in the upper half
of it. Evidently some acid had eaten
away the lower half of the man’s body
after he had suffocated. The face was
that of a Norwegian.

By one outstretched hand a small
notebook lay open with the leather
back upward. The corners of several
pages were turned under carelessly —
Nat swung the torch around the room.
It was bare. The notebook — quickly he
picked it up. The page on which the

July

writing began was dated May 10,
2040. About two months ago.

“Helmar Swenson. My daughter,
Helena, aged nineteen, and I were
lured into the maw of this hellish mon-
ster by a robot calling for help in our
television screen. This thing, known
to man as Asteroid Moira, is, in ac-
tuality, one of the gigantic mineral
creatures which inhabited a planet be-
fore it exploded, forming the aster-
oids. Somehow it survived the catas-
trophe, and, forming a hard, crus-
taeeous shell about itself, has contin-
ued to live here in space as an asteroid.

“It is apparently highly intelligent
and has acquired an appetite for hu-
man flesh. The singing spheres act as
its sensory organs, separated from
the body and given locomotion. It uses
these to lure victims into its stomach
in the first cave. I escaped its lure at
first because of the ‘squeaker’ I car-
ried with me. We set up these two
doors as a protection from the beast
while we stayed here to examine it.
But the monster got me when I fell
and the ‘squeaker’ was broken. My
daughter rescued me after the acid
of the pool had begun eating away my
flesh.

“My Helena is locked in the room
opposite this one. She has food and
water to last until July 8th. Oxygen
seeps in there somehow — the beast
wants to keep her alive until it can
get her out of the room to devour her.”

Here the writing became more
cramped and difficult to read.

“I have put the key in my mouth to
prevent the spheres from opening the
door should they force their way into
this room. Some one must come to
save my Helena. I can’t breathe — ”

The writing ended in a long scrawl
angling off the page. The pencil lay
some distance from the body.

July 8th! But that had been almost
a week ago !

HE UNSCREWED the man’s helmet,
tried to pry the jaws ©pen. They would
not move ; the airless void surrounding
the tiny planetoid had frozen the body

1941 THE BEAST OF SPACE 87

until now it was as solid as the quartz
cave-walls. There was but one thing
to do : the other door must be melted
down.

He leaped halfway across the room
toward the door in the opposite wall.
Could it be possible that he was in
time? Anxiously he flung a bolt of
energy from his heat rod toward the
lock, holding a flashlight under the
other stump of an arm. The molten
metal flowed to the floor like a rivulet
of lava.

The door, hanging off balance,
screeched open ; air swooshed past him
in its sudden escape from the room.
He squeezed himself through, peered
carefully about to see a slim space suit
start to crumple floorward in a cor-
ner. The girl was alive !

He started toward her ; the slim fig-
ure pulled itself erect again. He saw
a drawn, emaciated face behind the
helmet. Then, with a fury that un-
nerved him, she whipped out a heat
rod, shot a searing bolt in his direc-
tion. He felt the fierce heat of it as it
whizzed past his shoulder ; in his brain
Digger’s thoughts of attack came to
him, he flung an arm around the
spacehound, dragged it back as he
withdrew toward the door. The girl
continued to fire bolt after bolt
straight ahead, her eyes wide and
staring.

They made the door, waited outside
while the firing within continued.
When at last it was still within, he
peered around the corner of the room.
She lay in a crumpled heap in the
corner; quietly he re-entered, picked
her up awkwardly. Through the thin,
resistant folds of the space-suit, he
could feel the warmth of her, but could
not tell whether the heart still beat
or not. They would have to take her
to one of the ships.

Her limp form was held tightly un-
der his good arm as Nat hurried down
the main tunnel. Digger apparently
realized the seriousness of the situa-
tion, for he received impressions of
“must hurry” from the beast and an-
other creature, looking much like him,

surrounded by small creatures of the
same type, trapped in a crevice.
“Aren’t you a bit premature, old fel-
low,” he chided.

Halfway there, the globes met them
again. The things were not singing;
from their many eyes poured a fierce,
angry blue light. They rolled with a
determination that frightened him.
Yet he strode on, until they were bare-
ly a foot away.

“Jump, Digger !”

The spheres stopped short, reversed
their direction toward the little group
at a furious rate, flinging out long,
whip-like tentacles. One wrapped it-
self around Nat’s ankle, drew him
down. He shifted the limp form over
to his shoulder, slipped out his heat-
rod. Quickly the tentacle was severed.
But now others took their place; he
continued firing at them, making each
bolt tell, but the numbers were too
great.

Digger sprang into action, rending
the globes with those' claws that were
capable of tearing the hulls of space-
ships. But tentacles lashed around him
from the rear, snaked about him so
that he was helpless.

The girl was slipping off Nat’s
shoulder. He could not raise the stump
of an arm to balance her ; it was stiff
and useless. He stopped firing long
enough to make the shift, even as the
spheres attacked again. The bolts had
put out the lights in fully half of the
marauders but the others came on un-
afraid.

Nat straddled Digger’s writhing
body, held the Spacehound motionless
between his legs. At short range, he
seared off the imprisoning tentacles,
knowing that it would take far more
than a heat-bolt to damage the well-
night impregnable creature. He
swooped the dog up under his good
arm and fled from the madly-pursuing
spheres, thanking nameless deities that
the gravity here permitted such her-
culean feats. The spheres rolled fast-
er, he soon found, than he could jump ;
so long as he was above them, all was
well, but by the time the weak gravity

88

COMET July

permitted him to land, they were wait-
ing for him. He tried zig-zagging.
Good! It worked. He eluded them up
to the mouth of the cave, then jumped
for the door of his ship’s outer air-
lock.

NAT PLACED the girl in his bunk,
removed the cumbersome spacesuit.
Her eyes blinked faintly, then sprang
open. But they did not see him; they
were staring straight ahead. Her
mouth opened and shut weakly as
though she were speaking, but no
sound issued from it. He brought her
water, but when he returned she had
fallen asleep. He returned to the kitch-
en to prepare some food.

“You’re still running around in that
pillow case,” he remarked to Digger
as he extracted the spacehound from
it. “Attend me, now. We know why
and how those people disappeared. It
would take the Space Patrol ship at
least a month to arrive here; I don’t
intend to perch of the back of this
devil as long as that. And if we leave,
old thing, it’ll just lure other chival-
rous fools to very unpleasant ends.

“And we’ve got to get this kid back
to civilization. She needs a doctor’s
care, preferably a doctor with two
arms.”

Digger’s vibrations were one of gen-
eral approval.

“We could poison it,” he went on.
“Only I’m not a chemist ; even if I
knew the compounds contained in that
reeking stomach I wouldn’t know
what would destroy them. Might blow
it up, but we haven’t enough explo-
sive.

“No, we’ll have to get down into the
thing’s insides again. In fact — ” He
paused suddenly, mouth open. “Con-
gratulate me. Digger! I have it!”

The smell of burning vegetables cut
short his soliloquy. He fed the
starved, half-blind girl, then left her
sleeping exhaustedly as he squirmed
into his suit.

No sooner had he entered the mouth
of the eave than a half-dozen of the
singing sensory organs rolled quickly,

yet not angrily, toward him. The
beast was apparently optimistic, for
the globes sang in their most sooth-
ing, seductive tones. They tried to
herd him into the first cave on the
right, but he had remembered the
squeaker; they could not distract him.

Effortlessly he leaped over them to-
ward the mouth of the cave on the left.
That was where the space ships lay,
pointing in all directions like a care-
lessly-dropped handful of rice.

All the ships were in running or-
der. Good; had there been one vessel
he could not move, then all was lost.
The fuel in several ran low, but after
a few moments of punching levers
and pulling chokes, the under rockets
thundered in the big room.

Taking care not to injure the motor
compartments of the other ships, us-
ing only the most minute explosion-
quantities, he joekeyed each ship
around until all their noses pointed in
one direction. The exhausts pointed
out through the wide doorway. It was
well that the beast had formed eurved
corners in the room, otherwise the
scheme would not have worked. The
exhausts which did not point toward
the door, directly, were toward the
curved walls which would deflect the
foreeful gasses expelled doorward.

When he emerged from the ship,
the spheres attacked. He seared off
their tentacles throughout what
seemed to be eternities. His body was
becoming a mass of bruises from the
lash of their tentacles. Hp burned his
way through the swarm on to ship
after ship.

As he stepped from the last vessel
there was a rumbling beneath his
feet. Did the monster understand his
intent? Was it stirring in its shell?
Most of the globes had disappeared;
now a nauseatingly sweet odor pene-
trated the screen in his headpiece,
whieh permitted him to smell without
allowing the oxygen to escape. He
hurried around to the rear of the ship,
an apprehensive, sickening feeling at
the pit of his stomach. A thick jelly-
like wave of liquid was rolling over

1941

89

THE BEAST

the floor — the reeking, deadly juices
from the beast’s stomach. If the liquid
touched him, it would eat through the
heavy fabric, exploding the ail pres-
sure from around his body. How was
he to escape from the cave?

The answer came to him suddenly.
Quickly he darted back toward the
nearest vessel. Two of the screaming
spheres blocked his way; he sent bolt
after searing bolt into them, more of
a charge than he had given any of the
others. The lights in the globes went
out; their voices ceased. And they
burst into slowly mounting incandes-
cence. Yet, they were not consumed by
their fire, only glowed an intense
white light like that of a lighthouse.

“Lighthouse !” The word flashed
through his mind clearly, strongly.
They glowed liked the “zirconia
lights” of a light-house. Why hadn’t
he recognized the greasy, quartz-like
material before? It was zirconia, a
compound of zirconium, of course. A
silicate base creature could easily
have formed a shell of it about itself.

Zirconia — one of the compounds
he’d intended prospecting for on the
moons of Saturn. Worth over a hun-
dred dollars per pound. Because of its
resistance to heat, it was used to line
the tubes of rockets; Terra’s supply
had long been used up. Here was a
fortune all around him ; but that for-
tune was about to Be destroyed, he
along with it, if he did not hurry.

If he could only reach the timing
mechanism to yank from it the wires
connecting it to the other ships. It
was at the other end of the line. He
started in that direction, but a surge
of fatal, thick acid rolled before him,
reaching for him with hungry, quest-
ing tongues.

When it was almost touching his
toes, he leaped. As he floated toward
the floor, he placed a chair beneath
him so that his feet landed on the seat.
The legs of the chair sank slowly into
the liquid.

Again he leaped, his moment re-
tarded by the fluid which now reached
halfway up the chair legs, sucked and

OF SPACE

clung there. The sweetly-evil smell-
ing stuff was rising rapidly. But the
next leap carried him into the main
cave. Abandoning the chair, he leaped
once more, out through the cave’s
mouth, pursued by the waving tenta-
cles of the sensory spheres.

HE HAD LOST precious minutes
eluding that deadly acid. It would take
at least five minutes to get his ship
away from the asteroid; he must hur-
ry before all those rocket motors were
thrown into action, or it would be too
late.

Leap and leap again. It seemed ages,
but he reached the ship, bolted the
door shut. Thumps against the door
as the pursuing globes ran up against
it. A thought came to him ; swiftly he
opened the door, permitted a few of
them to enter, them slammed it shut.
With the heat gun he sheared off their
tentacles ; he could sell the zirconia in
the entities. Then he turned to the con-
trols and the ship zoomed up and out.

Nat had barely raised his ship from
the Asteroid Moira when he saw the
small planetoid lurch suddenly, bound-
ing off its orbit at almost a right angle.
The sudden combined driving force
of all the rockets within the cave had
sent it hurtling away like a rocket
itself.

The asteroid housing the monster
was heading into the Flora group of
Asteroids. There the fifty-seven odd
solid bodies of that group would grind,
crack, and rend that dangerous beast
into harmless, dead fragments.

“A good job,” said a weak, but soft-
ly friendly voice behind him. He
whirled. The girl stood in the door-
way of the pilot room, supporting her-
self against the door frame. Digger
rubbed thoughtfully against her legs.

“We’ll just follow that asteroid.
Miss,” he said, “and see if we can’t
pick up some odd fragment of zirconia
when it’s smashed in the grindstone
there. Then we’ll light out for Terra.”

She smiled. Earth, to him, seemed
like a very good place to go as soon as
possible.

The 4-D DOODLER

by GRAPH WALDEYER

T>

„ 0 you believe, Professor
Gault, that this four dimen-
sional plane contains life —
intelligent life?”

At the question, Gault laughed
shortly. “You have been reading
pseudo-science, Dr. Pillbot,” he twit-
ted. “I realize that as a psychiatrist,

you are interested in minds, in living
beings, rather than in dimensional
planes. But I fear you will find no
minds to study in the fourth dimen-
sion. There aren’t any there !”

Professor Gault paused, peered
from beneath bushy white brows out
over the laboratory. To his near sight-

90

1941

THE 4 - D DOODLER

91 :

ed eyes the blurred figure of Harper,
his young assistant, seemed busily at
work over his mathematical charts.
Gault hoped sourly that the young
man was actually working and not
just drawing more of his absurd,
senseless designs amidst the mathe-
matical computations . . .

“Your proof,” Dr. Pillbot broke into
his thoughts insistently, “is purely
negative. Professor ! How can you
know there are no beings in the fourth
dimension, unless you actually enter
this realm, to see for yourself?”
Professor Gault stared at the fat,
puffy face of his visitor, and snorted
loudly.

“I am afraid, Pillbot, you do not
comprehend the impossibility of such
a passage. We can not possibly break
from the confines of our three dimen-
sional world. Here, let me explain by
a simple illustration.”

Gault took up a book, held it so that
a shadow fell onto the surface of the
desk.

“That shadow,” he said, “is two di-
mensional, has length and breadth, but
no thickness. Now in order to enter
the third dimension, our plane, the
shadow would have to bulge out in
some way, into the dimension of thick-
ness an obvious impossibility. Simi-
larly, we can not enter the fourth di-
mension. Do you see?”'

“No!” retorted Pillbot with some
heat. “In the first place, we are not
two dimensional shadows, and — why,
what is the matter ?”

Professor Gault’s lanky form had
stiffened, his near sighted eyes glar-
ing out over the laboratory to the rear
of Pillbot. The psychiatrist wheeled
around, followed his host’s gaze.

It was Harper. That young man’s
antics drew an amazed grunt from
Pillbot. He was describing peculiar
motions in the air with his pencil. Cir-
cles, whorls, angles, abrupt jabs for-
ward. He bent over the paper on the
desk, made a few sweeps of the pen-
cil, then the pencil rose again into
the air to describe more erratic mo-

tions. Harper himself seemed in &
trance.

Suddenly Pillbot gave a stifled
gasp. It seemed to him that Harper’s
arm vanished at the elbow as it
stabbed forward, then reappeared.
Once again the phenomenon hap-
pened.

Pillbot blinked rapidly, rubbed his
eyes. It must have been illusion, he
decided. It was too . . . unlikely . . .

“Harper!” Gault’s voice was like
the snapping of a steel trap.

Startled, Harper came to with a
jerk. Seeing he was being watched, he
flushed redly, then bent over his
charts again. An apologetic murmur
floated from his desk.

“What was he doing?” Pillbot
asked puzzledly.

“Doodling!” Gault spat out the
word disgustedly.

“Doodling?” echoed the psychia-
trist. “Why that is a slang term we
use in psychiatry, to describe the ab-
sent-minded scrawls and designs peo-
ple make while their attention is else-
where occupied. An overflow of the
unconscious mind, we call it. Many
famous people are ‘doodlers.’ Their
doodles often are a sign of special abil-
ity — ”

“Exactly !” snapped Gault. “It
shows a special ability to waste time.
And Harper has become worse since
I hired him to do some of my mathe-
matical work. Some influence in this
laboratory — I blush to confess — seems
to bring it on. ‘Four dimensional doo-
dling’ we call it, because, as you saw,
he doesn’t confine it to the surface of
the paper !”

Pillbot looked startled. “By jove,”
he cried. “I believe you’ve hit on some-
thing new to psychiatry. This young
man may have some unknown facul-
ty of mind — an instinctive perception
of the fourth dimension. Just as some
people have an unerring sense of di-
rection, so perhaps Harper has a senge
of — of a fourth direction — the fourth
dimension! I should like to examine
some of his ‘doodles’.”

Harper looked up in alarm as his

92

COMET

July

crusty tempered employer appeared,
followed by the stout figure of Pillbot.
He rose and stood aside unassuming-
ly, as Pillbot bent over the scrawls on
his charts, clucking interestedly.

Harper flickered a worried glance
over to the corner. He hoped they
wouldn’t notice his stress-analyzing
clay model standing there. It looked
like a futurist’s nightmare, with
angles, curves and knobs stuck out
at all angles. Professor Gault might
not understand. . .

F OR one of his retiring tempera-
ment, Harper was aiming high.
There was a standing award of
$50,000 for the lucky mathematician
who would solve the mystery of the
“stress-barrier” encountered by sky-
scrapers as they were built up toward
the 150 story mark. At this height,
they encountered stress and strains
which mathematical computations
and engineering designs had been un-
able to solve. Harper believed the
“stress-barrier” was due to an unde-
tected space-bending close to the
earth’s surface, a bending of space
greater than ever provided for in the
prediction of Einstein. And if he was
right, and could win that award, then
there might be wedding bells, and a
little bungalow with Judith. . . .

Harper’s greatest fear was that he
would do something to annoy Gault
into firing him, thus depriving him
of the privilege of using the mathe-
matical charts and computing ma-
chines available in the laboratory.
Right now, he hoped Gault wouldn’t
notice that statue in the corner —
“What’s that!”

Harper’s heart leaped. The Profes-
sor was glaring at the statue, as
though it were something the cat
brought in.

Pillbot looked up from examination
of the “doodles” and followed Gault
over to the futuristic statuary.

As Gault made strangled noises,
Pillbot stared interestedly. “Why — its
like some of the designs in his dood-
ling,” he exclaimed.

“And made with some of my best
modeling clay for reproducing geo-
metric solids!” rasped Gault. He
wheeled upon Harper.

“Get that thing out of here ! I won’t
stand for such rot in this laboratory.
Throw it into the hall for the jani-
tor !”

“Ye-yessir,” said Harper, gulping.
He took hold of the statue, pulled at
it.

“It — it won’t budge,” he exclaimed
amazedly.

“Eh? Won’t move? It’s not heavy,
is it?” demanded the Professor.

“No — about thirty pounds, but it
wont move!”

Gault took hold of one of the angles
of the thing, jerked at it savagely. He
gave it up with an oath, returned to
Harper’s desk muttering.

Harper suddenly noticed the top
portion of the statue. It didn’t seem
to be all there ! He was positive there
had been another section on top,
shooting off at an angle, representing
a problem in tangential stress. What
had happened to that top section?

He would figure that out later,
when the occasion was more propi-
tious. Right now, he realized that only
the presence of Dr. Pillbot prevented
Gault from firing him. He cast an ap-
prehensive glance toward his em-
ployer.

With trepidation, he saw Gault
reach for something projecting from
behind a bench. Gault pulled it out,
held it dangling before him. A stran-
gled exclamation of wrath came from
him. His long nose pointed accusing-
ly toward Harper, like a finger point-
ing out a criminal.

“I was afraid of that!” he grated.
“Cutting paper dolls !” Gault was hold-
ing up a large paper cutout of a hu-
man figure — a long, rangy man.

“This is the last straw,” Gault went
on, his voice rising. “I have stood
enough — ”

“It — it wasn’t me, sir,” Harper
cried quickly, with visions of his job
and $50,000 vanishing. “It was your
ten year old nephew, Rudolph, when

1941

THE 4-D DOODLER

93

he was here yesterday. He cut it out,
said it looked like — like his uncle — ”

Harper stopped as Gault seemed
about to explode. Then the mathema-
tician subsided, a malicious expres-
sion crept over his face.

“H-m-m,” he said. “Might be just
what I need to explain things to Dr.
Pillbot.”

“I shall take this matter before the
Psychiatric Society,” Pillbot was say-
ing excitedly. “Undoubtedly you have
some strange faculty — an instinctive
perception of four dimensional laws
. . . what was that, Professor?”

“I said if you will step over to this
desk I will explain to you in elemen-
tary terms — very elementary and easy
to understand — why you will never
be able to study four dimensional be-
ings — if any exist !” Gault’s voice was
tinged with sarcasm.

Pillbot came over, followed by
Harper, who was interested in any
explanations about the fourth dimen-
sion-even elementary ones. . . .

Gault, with a glint in his eye,
pressed the paper figure flatly on the
surface of Harper’s desk.

“This paper man, we will say, , rep-
resents a two dimensional creature.
We lay him flatly against the desk,
which represents his world — Flat-
land, we mathematicians call it. Mr.
Flatlander can’t see into our world.
He can see only along the flat plane
of his own world. To see us, for in-
stance, he would have to look up,
which is the third dimension, a direc-
tion inconceivable to him. Now, Doc-
tor, are you beginning to understand
why we can never see four dimen-
sional beings?”

Pillbot frowned thoughtfully, then
looked up. “And what about the view-
point of the four dimensioners them-
selves — what would, prevent them
from seeing us?’’

Harper hardly heard the Profes-
sor’s snort of disgust. This two dimen-
sional cutout in “Flatland” fascinated
him. An idea occurred to him. Now,
just supposing the. . . .

A S Gault and Pillbot argued, Har-
per grasped the paper cutout,
and bent it, “jacknifed” it, creasing
it firmly in the middle. Then he raised
the upper half so that it rose ver-
tically from the desk, while the lower
half was still pressed flatly against the
desk surface. *

“Now,” he murmured to himself,
“the Flatlander would appear to his
fellows to have vanished from the
waist up, because from the waist up
he is bent into the third dimension . . .
so far as they are concerned . .
“E-e-e-e-e !”

At the wavering scream. Harper
looked up quickly. Pillbot was staring
frozenly in front of him, toward the
floor. Harper followed his glance —
and saw it.

Professor Gault had vanished from
the waist up.

His lower body still stood before
Pillbot, swaying slightly, but the up-
per body was unconditionally missing.
From the large feet planted solidly on
the floor, long legs rose majestically,
terminating in slim, angular hips —
and from thence vanished abruptly
into nothingness. It was as though the
upper body had been sheared away,
neatly and precisely, at the waist.

Pillbot stared from the visible por-
tion of Gault to slack-jawed Harper
and back again, sweat splashing from
his puffy face.

“Why, why really my dear fellow,”
he quavered, addressing the half-
figure. “This — this is a bit rude of
you, vanishing in the midst of my
sentence. I — I trust you will — ah, re-
turn at once!” Then, as the full im-
port of the phenomenon penetrated to
his understanding, his eyes became
glazed and he backed away.

The portion of Professor Gault ad-
dressed failed to give any indication
it had heard the remonstrance. Slow-
ly, the legs began to feel their way,
like a blind man, about the floor.
Harper stared wildly, white show-
ing around his pale blue irises.

“No!” he bleated. “The Professor
didn’t do it himself — I caused it to

94

happen. I bent the paper cutout, and
— and Something saw me do it, and
imitated me by bending the Profes-
sor into the fourth dimension!” Har-
per moaned f faintly, wringing his
hands.

Pillbot at the moment got little sat-
isfaction from this demonstration of
his point about four dimensional life.
He glanced fearfully at the half-fig-
ure.

“You — you mean to say,” he quailed,
“that we are under scrutiny by some
Being of the fourth dimension?”

“That’s it,” replied Harper with a
whinny. “I — I know it, I can feel it.
It became aware of our three dimen-
sional life in some way, and its at-
tention is now concentrated on the
laboratory!” He wrung his hands. “I
just know something else terrible is
going to happen!” He backed away
quickly as the occupied pair of pants
moved toward him.

His retreat was halted by his desk,
upon which reposed two large Cali-
fornia oranges, an inevitable accom-
paniment to Harper’s lunch. To him,
orange juice was a potent, revivifying
drink. Now he automatically reached
for one of the oranges, as a more
hardy individual might reach for a
whisky and soda in a moment of men-
tal shock.

His eyes wide on the shuffling ap-
proach of Gault’s underpinnings,
Harper nervously dug sharp finger-
nails into the orange, tore off large
chunks of skin.

A sudden blur seen from the cor-
ner of his eyes pulled his gaze back
to the desk. The other orange had
vanished.

Phwup!

It dropped to the floor before Har-
per, but now it was a squashy mess,
the insides standing out like petals,
the juice running from it.

The other orange slipped from Har-
per’s nerveless fingers, rolled along
the desk top. Harper pounced on the
squashy thing on the floor, feverish-
ly pushed back the projecting insides,

July

closely examined it. He looked up
wide-eyed at Pillbot.

“Tuned inside out,” he gasped
hoarsely, “without breaking its skin !”

Pillbot’s expression indicated that
the scientific attitude was slowly re-
placing his former fright. He snapped
his fingers.

“Imitation again !” he said, half to
himself. He looked at Harper. “When
you bent the paper figure this — this
fourth dimensional entity imitated
your action by bending the Professor.
Now, as you started to peel the orange,
your action was again imitated — in a
four dimensional manner — by this en-
tity turning the other orange inside
out.”

His voice dropped, as he muttered,
“Imitativeness — the mark of a mind
of low evolutionary order, or of . . .”
his words faded off, his expression
thoughtful.

More white showed around Har-
per’s eyes. “You — you mean I am be-
ing specially watched by this Being—
that He — It — imitates everything I
do . . . ?”

“That’s it,” clipped Pillbot. “Be-
cause you possess this strange percep-
tion of Its realm the Being has been
especially attracted to you, imitates
whatever you do, but in a four dimen-
sional manner. A Being of inexplicable
powers and prerogatives, with weird
power over matter, but with a men-
tality that is either very primitive,
or — ”

Harper leaped into the air with a
yell, as Professor Gault’s abbreviated
body sidled up to him from behind. As
he leaped, the inside out orange flew
out of his grasp.

“I just know,” he quavered, “that
Professor Gault wants me to do some-
thing, is probably barking orders at
me from that other dimension — oh
dear, I’ve dropped the orange on the
Professor’s — where his stomach
should be!”

The squashy orange had landed on
the area of Gault that was the line
of demarkation between his visible
and invisible portions — the area that

COMET

1941 THE 4 - D

his stomaeh would occupy normally,
ft rested there in plain sight of the
two startled men.

“I — I’d better remove it,” said
Harper weakly. He moved with a
dreadful compulsion toward the sway-
ing- half -figure, one slender hand ex-
tended tremblingly toward the in-
verted orange.

Abruptly, the orange vanished.
Harper halted like he’d run into a
brick wall. Staring blankly ahead, he
put his hands to his stomach, moan-
ing faintly.

"What’s the matter?” cried Pillbot.

“The ©range — it’s in my — stom-
ach!”

“See, what did I tell you,” exulted
Pillbot. “Another act of imitativeness.
It saw you drop the orange on Gault’s
— where his stomach should be, and
imitated by putting the orange in your
stomach. It proves I’m right about the
Being — glug!” With a loud belch,
Pillbot broke off. He stared blankly
at Harper, then his hands slowly
came up to clutch at his stomach.

Harper looked quickly at the desk
top.

“The other orange,” he gasped. “It’s
gone !”

“Into — my — stomach !” groaned
Pillbot. “Be — be careful what you do 1
My God, don’t do anything. Don’t
even think. This — this four dimen-
sional creature will surely imitate
whatever you do in some weird man-
ner.”

Rubbing his stomach, Pillbot
glanced about at the various articles
©f furniture. He blanched. “I wouldn’t
want any of that stuff inside of me,”
he yammered.

Harper flicked a despairing glance
at the half-body, now gliding along
in the vicinity of the paper cutout.

“We— we must do something to get
the Professor back,” he said wor-
riedly.

H E thought incongruously of a
restaurant where he used to or-
der * lemon pie — and invariably get
apple. Finally be ( found. that he could

DOODLER 95

get lemon by ordering peach. Now the
problem was, what did he have to
“order” to get his employer extricated
from being stuck between dimensions,
like a pig under a fence? Anything
he did would be imitated in a manner
that might prove tragic.

The upright portion of the cutout
was leaning over backward, the head
drooping down like a wilted flower,
as the tension at the crease slowly
lessened.

Gathering together what resolution
he could, Harper determined to take
the bull by the horns. He would get
the Professor returned by pressing
the upper portion of the cutout flatly
onto the desk surface. With trem-
bling hands, he pressed down on it — ■
then sprang back with a muffled yell.

Three feet above the half -body, the
Professor’s head had flashed into vis-
ibility.

“You only pressed the head onto
the desk,” said Pillbot disgustedly, “so
the Being only impressed Galt’s head
back into the laboratory. Now press
down the rest of the body.”

The Professor’s head, suspended
above the body, glared about, affixed
Harper with a smouldering glance.
The mouth moved rapidly, but , no
words came.

“Professor, I can’t hear you,”
whimpered Harper. “Your lungs and
vocal cords are in the other dimen-
sion. Here, I’ll have you completely
returned.” He reached a hand toward
the cutout, the torso of which still
bulged upward from the desk.

Gault’s head wagged in vigorous
negation of Harper’s contemplated
act. His mouth moved in what, if
audible, would have been clipped,
burning aecents.

Harper drew back his hand as if
he had touched a red hot poker. “The
Professor doesn’t want me to touch
the cutout,” he said helplessly.

Gault’s head hovered over the cut-
out like a gaunt moon. It swooped
down toward the paper figure, seemed
to be studying its position on the desk

96

COMET

closely. Pillbot watched him for a
sign of his intentions or wishes.

Harper wandered distractedly over
toward the high wall bench. He had
it! He would distract the attention
of the Entity from Gault by making
another cutout. He would then experi-
ment with that second one, without
endangering Gault. He’d be careful
not to make this one thin and tall,
so as not to resemble the Professor
in outline. Perhaps with it, he could
trick the Entity into releasing the
missing part of Gault’s body. . . .

He scraped in the bench drawer for
the scissors, and started to sheer
through a large stiff piece of paper.

A moment later he looked up as Pill-
bot walked over.

“Gault has some reason for not
wanting his silhouette touched,” he
said. “Can’t quite make out his lip
movements, but he seems afraid some
permanent mark may be left on him
by his return. He wants time to fig-
ure out — why, what are you doing?”

“I’ve made another cutout for ex-
periment,” explained Harper. “And
this one doesn't look like the Profes-
sor, isn’t tall and thin. See — ?” He
lifted the second cutout from the flat
surface of the bench, held it suspended
before him.

“This one is short and fat — Harper
halted abruptly, the breath whooshing
from his lungs.

There was no use talking to thin
air. Pillbot had been whisked into
nothingness. Where the portly figure
of the eminent psychiatrist had stood
was now nothing, not even a half man.

Too late, Harper realized that
when he had lifted the paper figure
from the surface of the bench, the En-
tity had imitated him by “lifting” Pill-
bot into the fourth dimension . Be-
latedly, he knew that the cutout which
he held dangling, resembled Pillbot in
outline.

Harper dashed back and forth in
little rushes, carrying the paper fig-
ure. He dared not put it down, for fear
of seeing some segment of Pillbot

July

flash back. He did not know what to
do with it.

Finally he compromised by sus-
pending it to a low hanging chandlier,
where it dangled swaying in the slight
air currents.

G AULT was watching his as-
sistant’s antics with a bleak ex-
pression that changed to sardonic sat-
isfaction as he realized Pillbot was in
a predicament like his — only more so.
Abruptly he frowned, staring ahead,
and Harper guessed that Pillbot had
located Gault’s torso in the other
realm, was nudging him to indicate
the fact.

Suddenly Harper knew that he him-
self must enter this fourth dimension-
al realm. That strange instinct told
him the solution to everything was
there — somewhat as a woman’s intui-
tion impells her to act in a certain way,
without knowing why.

How to get there? Another paper
cutout? He glanced toward the Pro-
fessor — the occupied trowsers, and
swimming above it, the man’s head.
The head was watching him, the ex-
pression savage.

No, there must be no more cutouts,
Harper decided. While the four dimen-
sional entity distinguished between
the outlines of a thin silhouette and a
fat one, something in between, like
Harper’s form, would be testing It too
far.

He, Harper would take the place of
his own cutout!

Gault’s head reared up, glared fixed-
ly at his assistant as the young matt
swung his legs onto the desk, then lay
down flat. A moment he lay there, in
“Flatland” — then leaped to his feet.

It was as though he had leaped into
a different world. He was no longer
in the laboratory. He wasn’t on any
floor at all, as far as he could make
out. His feet rested on nothing — and
yet there was some sort of tension
under him — like the surface tension of
water.

He was — he suddenly knew it —
standing on a segment of warped

1941

THE 4 - D DOODLER

97

space ! There was a spacial strain here
that acted as a solid beneath him!

Harper looked “up” — that is, over-
head. There was nothing there but
vast stretches of emptiness— at first.
Then he saw that this emptiness was
lined and laced with filmy striations,
like cellophane. They bore a strange
resemblance to his “doodlings,” as
though that strange faculty of his en-
abled him to somehow perceive this
place of the fourth dimension. And in-
stinctively Harper knew that these
lacings were the boundaries of a vast
enclosure — a four dimensional en-
closure, the “walls” of which con-
sisted of joined and meshed space-
warps.

Abruptly he became aware of move-
ment. He became aware of solidity
there above him. And the solidity was
in motion.

Harper knew he was gazing upon
a being of the fourth dimension —
doubtless the Entity that had caused
thfe phenomena in the laboratory,
which had snatched him into the
fourth dimension, and was even now
observing him with its four dimen-
sional sight ! There was a shape above
him that strained his eyes, gave hint
of Form just beyond his comprehen-
sion.

Harper hardly noticed that Pillbot
was beside him, shaking him. He had
suddenly grasped a fundamental law
of spacial stresses, and he whipped out
a pad and pencil, began scribbling
down the mathematical formula of
these laws. He began to see now why
skyscrapers encountered the “stress-
barrier” at a certain height. He un-
derstood it just as a person of innate
musical ability, hearing music for the
first time, would understand the laws
of that music.

“Look out, It’s moving, descend-
ing !” Pillbot was yelling into his ear.
“It is about to act. Became active the
moment you got here. How did you in-
duce it to bring you here?”

“Huh?” Harper looked up from his
scribbling. “Oh.” Harper explained

quickly how he had induced the Being
to act on himself.

“That’s it!” cried Pillbot hoarsely.
“You switched the pattern of imita-
tion on It — tricked It into bringing
you here. That’s what made it an-
gry — ”

“Angry?” Harper almost dropped
his pad, clutched at Pillbot as there
was a sudden upheaval of the invisible
tension-surface on which they stood.
A violent shake sprawled them on the
“ground” and now Harper saw the
torso of Gault, a few feet away, ap-
parently hovering above the surface.

“Yes, angry!” Pillbot was pale. “As
long as you merely gave it something
to imitate it was pacified. But now it
recognizes opposition, an effort to out-
wit it due to your switching the pat-
tern of imitation. Its condition is dan-
gerous — it’s bound to react violently.
We have to get out of here. You must
know some way — ”
s Harper again scribbled some fig-
ures on his pad. “As soon as I’ve
worked out this formula—”

Pillbot shook him frantically. “Can’t
you understand! This Creature is a
mental patient of a violent type. We
are in a fourth dimensional insane
asylum!” Pillbot gazed upward fear-
fully at a descending mass. “The pat-
tern of its action fits perfectly,” he
went on. “Some violent type of in-
sanity, combined with delusions of
grandeur. Any slightest opposition
will cause a spasm of fury. It recog-
nizes such opposition in the way you
tricked it into bringing you here. At
first I thought it was a primitive men-
tality, but now I know it is a highly
evolved, but insane creature, thinks
it’s Napoleon, wants to conquer the
three dimensional plane which its at-
tention has been attracted to in some
way — ”

Harper looked up in surprise.
“Does it know about Napoleon?”

“Of course not, you fool !” screamed
Pillbot. “It has the Napoleonic com-
plex, identifies itself with some great
conqueror of its own realm. And now
it’s on the rampage. We have to get

98 COM ET July

out of here — ” He clutched at Harper
as another upheaval of the surface
threw them down.

R ISING, Harper put away his pad.

His calculations were complete.
He could now show engineers how to
build high buildings, taking advantage
of space stress instead of trying to
fight the stress.

For the first time, the danger of
their position seemed to penetrate to
his consciousness. He looked about —
and his eyes rested on a strange fa-
miliar projection rising from the in-
visible floor a few feet away. It was
the section of Ms clay statue that had
vanished — vanished because its pe-
culiar shape had somehow caused it
to be warped into the fourth dimen-
sion !

Why hadn’t he been able to move it
— Professor Gault moved about freely.

He and Pillbot went over to it, tried
to move it. A slight filmy webwork
around the projection caught Har-
per’s eye. Now he knew — the Being
had somehow affixed it to the spot as
a landmark, so It could locate the
laboratory. It must have been this
projection that had first attracted Idle
Being’s attention to the three dimen-
sional world, since, ordinarily, It
would never have noticed the presence
of three dimensional life, any more
than humans would notice the pres-
ence of two dimensional life if such
existed !

Harper looked up at a bleat from
Pillbot. Above them was a sudden fu-
rious play of lights and shades. Vast
masses seemed shifting in crazq juxta-
positions, now descending rapidly to-
ward them.

“Quick,” Harper, now fully aroused,
gasped to Pillbot. “Climb down this
projection!”

“Climb down it — ?”

“Yes, there is a fluid condition of
space where it penetrates between the
two planes. By hugging its contours
you will emerge into the laboratory —
I hope!”

Pillbot glanced overhead nervously,

then experimentally slid a foot down
the projection. The foot vanished.
With a cry of relief, Pillbot lowered
himself until only head and shoulders
were visible. Then that too vanished.

Harper looked up. Some monstrous
suggestion of Form was almost upon
him. He grasped the projection and
just as his head sank out of sight the
Form seemed to smash down on him.

Pillbot helped Harper to his feet,
from where he had sprawled at the
base of the statue, on the laboratory
floor.

“Quick,” he gasped. “The Creature
will be infuriated now, by our escape
from Its realm. A maniacal spasm is
sure to follow. We must get Gault back
in some way, then leave the labora-
tory.”

Even as they dashed over toward
the appreviated form of Gault, the
laboratory shook. Invisible strains
seemed to be bulging the walls in-
ward.

Harper rushed to the desk upon
which still reposed the cutout, the sec-
tion between neck and waist still
arched off the surface. As Harper
reached toward the cutout to press it
flat, Gault’s eyes widened, his mouth
opened in a soundless shout of oppo-
sition. Harper hesitated.

“Never mind him,” yammered Pill-
bot. “Press the figure flat!”

Harper pressed it flat.

For an instant the laboratory
stopped its ominous vibration. Then
the figure of Gault flew through the
air, came up against a wall — but it
was his complete figure.

“More signs of violence,” cried Pill-
bot. “But that action won’t appease
It — we must get out of here—”

Even as he spoke there was a thun-
derous crackling and roaring. Harper
felt himself flying about, and for an
instant of awful vertigo he did not
know up from down. Forces seemed
to be tearing at him. He felt as though
he were a piece of iron being attracted
simultaneously in several directions
by powerful electro magnets.

There was a flare of colored lights,

a deafening detonation — and he felt
himself knocked breathless against a
wall.

He picked himself up, looked
around.

O N one side of him was the fa-
miliar south wall of the labora-
tory. To the north, east and west was
— open air. He was standing on a sec-
tion of laboratory flooring that jutted
out over empty space from the wall.
His desk was a few feet away, right
at the edge of the jutting floor. Gault
and Pillbot were picking themselves
up to one side of the desk.

The pair looked over the edge of
the floor, then recoiled, frenziedly hug-
ging the flooring under them,

Harper crawled over, looked over
the edge, quickly backed away. Sev-
eral hundred feet below, the traffic of
the city roared!

Gault went over to the door in the
one wall, opened it, then stepped back
quickly, his face pale.

“The laboratory has been turned in-
side out !” he shouted. “We are on the
outside !”

“We must get away from here,”
squalled Pillbot. “Another spasm of
the creature will precipitate us into
the street !”

Gault forgot his apprehensions long
enough to freeze Harper with a
glance. “This is all your doing,” he
bawled. “You with your absurd dood-
ling, which attracted the attention of
some Being of the fourth dimension !”
In his anger, he overlooked the fact
that he was contradicting his former-
ly held opinion.

“The laboratory wrecked,” he con-
tinued, “and that isn’t all !” He stalked
up to the cringing Harper, thrust his
face toward him.

“Do you know,” he yelled, “why I
didn’t want to be returned hastily —
why I didn’t want you to bring me
back by flattening out the paper cut-
out? You dolt, did you ever try to

get a crease out of a piece of paper ?”
“I — I don’t understand,” murmured
Harper.

“That paper doll was creased,
wasn’t it?” shouted Gault.

“Once a piece of paper is creased,”
he resumed heatedly, “it can’t be per-
fectly flattened out again. At the
crease a thin cross-section continues to
bulge — into the third dimension in
the case of that paper cut-out. Into the
fourth dimension in my case! I’m
creased too, at the line where I was
bent into the fourth dimension ! Sure-
ly you aren’t blind ?”

Harper staggered back as he saw it
— a thin, horizontal line of light shin-
ing through Gault’s body — across his
waistline, through clothes and all.

“I shall have to go through life this
way,” Gault snarled, “due to your im-
becilic ‘doodling’, your meddling with
what you don’t understand. Go about
constantly with a slit of daylight
showing through me. You’re fired!”
“Gentlemen,” cried Pillbot. “The
entity — we must get away. Another
spasm will surely follow — ”

Harper didn’t think so. A few feet
away he had noticed something — his
statue lying on its side. It was all
there, including the portion that had
been in the fourth dimension. The En-
tity’s “landmark” was gone. Harper
didn’t believe It would locate this par-
ticular area of the third dimension
again.

The scream of a fire siren rose up
to them. As a ladder scraped over the
projecting floor, Harper fondly felt
the pad in his pocket with the formula
on it. He wasn’t worried now about
having been fired. He was seeing
visions of a small cottage with Ju-
dith. ...

Of course, he would have to be
careful in the future with his “dood-
ling” ! He could not again risk attract-
ing the attention of some four dimen-
sional Being — not with Judith to
think about!

The Whispering Spheres

An alien life-form — metallic sinister — threatening all mankind with

annihilation.

by R. R. WINTERROTHAM

CHAPTER I
The Cauldron

T HE factory saw-toothed the
horizon with its hideous profile
as the moon rose in the east.
The red glow of the furnaces bathed
the tall buildings, the gigantic scaf-
folds, the cord-like elevated pipelines
and the columnar smokestacks in the
crimson of anger. Even the moon
seemed to fade as the long-fingered
smokestacks reached toward it belch-
ing their pollution. The air, which
should have been clean, was filled with
the reek of unfamiliar odors.

From the machine shop, where
giant cannon were forged into smooth,
sleek instruments of death, came
noise: unchecked, unmuffled, blas-
phemous din. But something odd was
afoot. There was a sudden hush. It
seemed as if a giant hand had covered
the metal city to muffle its screams.

In the nearby city of box-like
houses, where the workers lived,
there was an echoing stir. Lights
glowed in the windows of the tiny
homes. People were awakened in the
night by the sudden cessation of din.

Something was wrong in the
factory.

But there couldn’t be anything
wrong. The factory was enclosed by a
high, electrified fence. There were
guards on duty night and day, armed
to the teeth and ready to shoot an in-
truder who failed to give an account
of himself. There were wars and
rumors of wars on the face of the
earth and there was need for the un-
interrupted production of sleek can-
non.

But, if something were wrong, why
didn’t the whistle blow? There were
signals: three short blasts, repeated
many times, meant fire ; one long blast
meant a breakdown ; five toots meant
a layoff. But now the whistle was
silent.

Heads popped from the windows of
the houses in the city. They listened.
Was it a whistle that the workers
heard? No. It was a whispering,
barely audible at first, then louder.
It was the whisper of tongues of
flame. But no flames were visible.
Only the red glow of the furnaces
lighted up the factory’s profile.

One by one the lights of the city
went out as workers went back to bed,
to toss restlessly. Without noise there
could be no sleep.

The tongues of flame still whis-
pered.

A CAR moved rapidly through the
streets of the city. At the wheel was
a man dressed in a captain’s uniform.
The machine whirled onto the high-
way that led toward the factory. A
barricade, lighted by torch-lanterns,
barred his path. A sentry with a
bayoneted gun stood to one side,
signaling a halt.

The car slowed.

“Captain Ted Taylor, ordnance de-
partment!” the captain said, extend-
ing his pass toward the sentry.

The sentry signaled him on.

The car came within a stone’s throw
of the factory, where it turned into a
parking lot. The officer climbed out,
noiselessly, and moved into the
shadows.

Once Captain Taylor had been a

101

102

COMET

July

scientist, but that was long ago, be-
fore wars had made biology very un-
exciting.

Out of the shadows a second figure
moved. He was a short, stocky man,
compared with the slender, graceful
figure of the captain.

“Ps-st! Captain!”

“Masters !”

“You got my short-wave call, I see.
I was afraid you would be asleep. He
came late, but he’s in the tunnel now.”

“Who is it?”

“The fellow we’ve suspected all
along. Poses as an ignorant laborer,
but he’s not ignorant by a long shot.
His name is Hank Norden.”

Masters pointed toward a clump of
bushes. As he did, he caught the cap-
tain’s arm with his left hand. The
bushes were moving.

A black hole appeared at the base
of the bushes and from it emerged
the head and shoulders of a man. Tay-
lor drew his pistol. The man’s head
turned, searching the shadows to see
if he was observed. He failed to detect
the figures of Taylor and Masters,
huddled nearby in the shadows.

The man scrambled from the hole.
He closed the trap door behind him
and then started to move rapidly
away.

“Halt!” barked Taylor.

The man began to run. The cap-
tain’s pistol spat, kicking up dust be-
side the running feet. The fleeing man
jumped to one side, to spoil Taylor’s
aim on the next shot, but as he did
so, he stumbled and fell.

A moment later Taylor had landed
on top of him, pinning him to the
ground.

The faded moonlight showed angry
eyes, a jutting, undershot jaw and a
sharp, pointed nose.

“Damn you !” spat the captive.

Taylor removed a revolver from
the prisoner’s clothing and tossed it
to Masters.

“It’s Norden, all right,” Masters
said, scrutinizing the captive. “I’d
know that jaw in a million. What are
you doing here, fellah ?”

“I'm blowing the factory to hell!”
Norden said between his teeth. “You
can’t stop me. Everything’s fixed. In
a minute a bomb’ll go off. You, I,
everyone will be smashed to atoms.
And I’m glad. For the fatherland.”
“We know why you’re doing it,”
Taylor said. “Come on, Masters. Get
your short-wave working. Notify the
factory office. Where’s the bomb,
Norden? Come on, speak up, or I’ll
pull you to pieces!”

Norden said nothing. Masters was
calling the office. He turned to the
captain:

“I can’t raise anyone.”

“We’ll go to the gate.” Taylor
prodded the prisoner ahead on the
run,

“You can’t make it in time,” Norden
panted.

“We’ll die trying!”

A floodlight turned the area in
front of the gate into a patch of day-
light. An armed sentry challenged
from a small building. The captain
answered.

“Sorry, but you can’t come in. Strict
Orders. After hours,” the sentry
said, when the captain asked to be al-
lowed to pass.

“But it’s urgent — life or death.
We’ve got to use your telephone. Or —
you call the office. Tell the super
there’s a bomb in the plant — ”

The sentry’s jaws gaped, but only
for an instant. Down the road inside
the plant came a running, bareheaded
figure — screaming :

“Let me out ! Let me out of here !”
“Halt !” shouted the sentry.

The figure stumbled to a stop at the
gate. The light showed the pale,
sweating face trembling with fear.

“What’s the matter with you ?”. the
sentry asked.

“The metal pots! They’re alive!
Big, orange bubbles are floating from
the cauldrons !”

“Nuts!” said the ‘sentry. “You’re
drunk.”

But as the soldier spoke there was
a trembling movement of the ground
beneath the feet of the men at the

1941

THE 4- D DOODLER

103

gate. Captain Taylor threw himself
on the ground. But there was no blast.

The red of the sky-glow suddenly
faded to orange. Up through the roof
of the casting room crashed a huge,
glowing sphere then floated like a
will-o’-the wisp in the moonlight.

CHAPTER II
The Spheres

WHEN the sentry faced the captain
again, he stared into the mouth of a
service pistol.

“Sorry,” said the officer, “but I’ve
got to get inside.” Captain Taylor
turned to Masters. “Keep him covered.
I’ll be back unless the bomb goes off.”

“The bomb,” whispered Norden,
fearfully, "should have exploded. I
was double-crossed. They sent me here
to get caught ! The dirty—”

“Watch Norden, and you might
keep your eye on Funky, here,” Tay-
lor said, pointing to the slobbering
man who had dropped to his knees at
the sight of the orange sphere. "I’m
going inside.”

The captain moved through the
gate. The silence was uncanny. Since
the war began this factory had never
been idle. Thousands of cannon made ;
contracts for countless more! But
now quiet, save for an undescribable,
whispering overtone that seemed to
permeate the air.

Something glowed in the semi-dark-
ness ahead like a pile of hot ashes on
the ground.

Taylor entered the long forge room.
A white hot splinter of metal hung
from the crane. There were a dozen
heaps of the glowing ashes scattered
about the room, but no sign of life.

He moved on into the finishing
room, where the long tubes of howit-
zers and field pieces lay in various
stages of construction. Still there was
silence.

The whispering grew louder, like a
breeze stirring dry cornstalks.

The silence suddenly was broken by

a scream. Then another. There was a
sound of running footsteps.

Taylor dropped behind a lathe.

Through the door came an orange
glow. Sharply outlined against the
eerie light ran a human figure, a man
in overalls, carrying a hammer. On
the fellow’s face was frozen fear. He
halted, turned and looked behind him.

The darkness vanished as through
the doorway floated a huge, orange
sphere of light.

“Stop! Go back! I mean you no
harm!” screamed the workman.

The ball of orange fire floated on to-
ward him. The man’s arm raised. He
hurled the hammer straight at the
sphere.

The missile rang, bounced back and
fell to the sandy floor.

A small flicker of flame wafted over
the surface of the sphere. Then it
lashed out like a whip toward the
trembling man. His entire body
glowed like a torch, then crumpled to
the floor in a heap of ashes.

SCARCELY daring to breathe, the
captain watched the sphere float over
the ashes of its victim for a moment ;
then, apparently satisfied that the
man no longer lived, floated back
through the doorway.

Taylor took a deep breath. It might
be well if the bomb would explode,
but he knew now it had been silenced.

In an insulated panel on the wall
were the remains of an electric
switchboard. The copper switches
were fused, the wires burned ihrough.
The huge cables that brought the
electric current to the switchboard
lay molten on the floor.

The bomb probably was electrical
and undoubtedly had been fused like
the switchboard.

The captain had one objective now,
to get out of the plant before the
orange spheres discovered him. He
didn’t know what he faced, but some-
thing told him that it had never faced
mankind before. He had no weapon to
combat the sphere.

Taylor reached the forge room

COMET

104

again. He stepped over more glowing
piles of ashes.

Then his ears caught a crescendo
of the whispering that he had heard
before. He looked behind him. In the
doorway was an orange glow. The
sphere was coming — looking for him !

Behind the forge was a machine
which had been used to operate the
crane. Beyond it was stygian dark-
ness. He might hide there.

The captain slipped toward the ma-
chine. Every bit of electrical wiring
on the controls had been fused.

The room grew lighter, the whisper-
ing louder and then, through the door-
way, floated the dazzling sphere.

Something gripped Taylor’s shoul-
der muscles. A mild electrical shock
coursed through his body, as if an in-
visible feeler had passed over him.

The sphere halted, changed its di-
rection and floated slowly toward the
captain.

Instinctively, Taylor backed into
the corner behind the machine. He
dropped to. his hands and knees and
was free of the invisible feeler ! Again
the orange sphere halted, as if trying
to relocate its victim.

Taylor rounded a pillar which sup-
ported the track for the crane. His
fingers struck an accumulation of rub-
bish that had been tossed into the
corner. He started to push it out of
the way, when the floor beneath it
moved. It was a trap door !

A gasp of surprise came from Tay-
lor’s lips. He had a chance. But the
sound gave him away. The electrical
feeler touched him again. The shock
jerked at his muscles and the sphere
started floating nearer.

The trap door swung back. Taylor’s
right boot touched the top rung of the
ladder. He moved his left boot down to
the next rung. Each movement seemed
to take ages and every exertion of his
muscles was agony as the electrical
shock gripped him with increasing
intensity.

He forced his body down into the
opening. He saw the flame flickering

July

over the surface of the sphere as the
thing prepared to strike.

The sphere seemed to pulse briefly
as he released his grasp on the rim of
the opening and shoved himself down-
ward into the hole. He dropped sev-
eral feet.

Above him a brilliant flash of fire
lie the opening.

The sphere itself hovered above the
hole.

CHAPTER III

Primary Objectives

THE sphere pulsed again. But this
time no flaming whip sprang from its
surface. There was a single flash. For
an instant Taylor caught a glimpse of
bestial eyes, looking angrily at him
from the center of the flash. Then
there was nothing. He was in the
darkness of a tunnel. Even the charred
embers of the wooden trap door above
him seemed dimmed by a cloud of
dust.

The sphere had simply exploded.

Taylor had no time to analyze the
situation. His hands groped along the
side of the tunnel, the one Norden had
used to enter the plant on his spying
expeditions. Taylor crawled slowly,
feeling his way. It seemed eternity
until at last he reached the end of the
passage and felt the trap door over-
head.

A minute later he rejoined the
others, huddled in darkness outside
the gate. .

“The searchlight went out,” Mas-
ters explained. “Something wrong
with the power, I guess.”

“I know what it was,” Taylor said
gruffly. He turned to the disarmed
sentry. “Has anyone come out of here
since the factory stopped working?”

“Nobody but him, sir,” the soldier
said, jerking his thumb at the sobbing
man huddled against Norden. “He said
his name was Orkins — Jim Orkins. He
works in the warehouse. But you can’t
tell anything about the rest o’ what
he says. He just babbles, sir. Some-
thing about livin’ lightnin’ and balls

1941

THE 4-D DOODLER

105

of fire. He ain’t drunk, sir, so he must
be crazy.”

“Help him get up,” Taylor ordered.
“Masters, you take charge of Norden.
We’re going back to the car.”

“Excuse me, sir,” the sentry said,
hesitantly. “But that’s against orders.
I can’t leave. I’m to guard this gate,
sir.”

“Your orders are canceled,” the
captain said.

“If I desert my post, it’s court mar-
tial,” the sentry explained. “How do
I know you aren’t a spy? Captains
don’t go around making privates break
the orders of the day. If you’ve got
business in the plant, why was I told
to keep everyone out? Why didn’t they
tell me to pass Captain Taylor ? I got a
duty here and I’ll do it if it kills me.
So help me, sir. Sergeant o’ the
guard !”

The echo of the sentry’s bellow rat-
tled against the bleak factory build-
ings. A sphere bobbed up through the
hole in the roof. Orkins opened his
mouth to scream, but Norden clapped
his hand over the man’s lips, choking
him off.

“Quiet!” Taylor ordered hoarsely.
He addressed the sentry: “See that
thing? It means death to you, to all
of us if it finds us. The sergeant of
the guard, probably all of the other
sentries are dead. Every workman in
the plant is dead. Somehow we were
missed. The searchlight power went
off before they found this post, I sup-
pose. Now then, all of you follow Mas-
ters back to the car. I’ll bring up the
rear.”

“I won’t leave,” the sentry said,
stubbornly.

Masters stepped forward and put
his pistol against the soldier's back.

“You’ll go,” he said. “Maybe this
ain’t regulation, but neither are the
spheres.”

The stubby little secret service man
pushed the soldier ahead of him. The
sentry marched with his hands in the
air.

Drawing his own pistol, Taylor
turned to Norden.

“Help Orkins t® the car,” he said.

Norden drew himself up stiffly.

“Go ahead and shoot,” he said. “It’ll
save the firing squad some trouble.”

Taylor took one step forward. Nor-
den faced him unflinchingly. Taylor’s
hand shot out, caught Norden’s coat
and threw him after Masters.

“Don’t leave me alone !” Orkins
cried, crawling after Norden and clasp-
ing him about the legs. Norden kicked
him aside.

“Keep moving!” Taylor ordered
Norden, who had halted.

Norden did not move.

Taylor swung his fist. The blow con-
nected and the officer caught the fall-
. ing man, swung him over his shoulder,
then turned to the cringing Orkins.

“If you don’t want to be left here
alone, follow us,” he said.

Orkins suddenly regained his ability
to use his muscles.

Masters, watching over his shoul-
der, chuckled. There was a faint wink
of one eye visible in the moonlight.

“Kinda screwy, ain’t he?” he said,
jerking his head in Orkins’ direction.

“I don’t know that I blame him,
much,” Taylor said. “Look at the
plant.”

Over the roof and the smokestacks
floated the yellowish-red ball of fire.
Another sphere was emerging from
the hole in the roof.

“What are they? A new kind of
bomb ?” Masters asked.

“Norden’s bomb never had a chance.
Compared with what actually hap-
pened in there, a bomb would have
been a picnic. There’s not a living per-
son left in the whole place.”

“Not a — hold on there, Cap ! Do you
know how many were working ?”

“They’re all dead,” Tayior said.
Briefly he outlined what he had seen
in the plant.

“Norden, the blankety-blank !” Mas-
ters swore. “Shooting’s too good for
him.”

“This isn’t connected with the war
— at least not directly. It’s something
else, Masters. What, I don’t know yet,
but I’m beginning to think that it's

106

COMET

July

something the human race has never
met before. Those spheres have killed
a couple of hundred workers with bolts
of energy — ”

“I’m no scientist, captain.”

“That’s the best I can describe this
force, Masters. I might call it heat-
bolts, but it’s probably partly electric
and partly heat, not entirely either.
You see, Masters, heat is energy, just
like electricity and light. The energy
these spheres shoot out is a mixture of
energies. We can imagine a spark of
electricity shooting out and striking
a man like a bolt of lightning, but it's
hard to visualize heat behaving that
way.”

“Say, mister,” the sentry inter-
rupted, “my arms are getting tired.”
“Okay, buddy,” Masters replied. “If
I let you put your arms down, will you
behave like a nice little boy ?”

“I’ll be a perfect angel,” the sentry
said, lowering his arms.

“You’ll be an angel if you aren’t,
too,” Masters added.

“What’s your name, soldier?” Tay-
lor asked the sentry.

“Private Pember, sir. Company A,
110th infantry—”

“All right, Private Pember, you can
carry this fellow.”

Taylor shifted the faintly stirring
Norden to the shoulders of the soldier.

“If it will make you feel any easier,
Pember,” the captain went on, “I can
assure you that exigencies demanded
your removal from your post. Your
life was in danger and you could do no
good by remaining there. In fact, there
was nothing left to guard. You can
do more good for your country by
coming with us.”

“Yes, sir,” Pember said. “I guess
you are right, captain.”

“You’re a good soldier, Pember,”
Taylor went on. “A situation like this
is unique. It demands use of individual
initiative, rather than blind obedience
to orders. Do you understand ?”

"Yes, sir,” Pember said, adjusting
the burden on his shoulder.

THEY reached the car.

A dozen of the orange-red globes
now floated above the plant. They
were circling slowly, in widening arcs,
toward the limits of the factory
grounds.

“Searching for human beings,”
Taylor decided, watching them.

Orkins clutched Taylor’s coat tails.
“They’re coming out!” he cried.
“There’s hell to pay.”

Taylor took Orkins’ arm and forced
him down on the running board of the
car, where Norden already was com-
ing out of his daze.

“Keep quiet!” Taylor ordered.
“They’ll discover us.”

“They’ll find us anyway!” Orkins
said, frantic with fear. He groaned
loudly.

“Okay. He asked for it,” Masters
said.

There was a splatting sound as Mas-
ters’ fist landed. Masters made a face
over a distasteful duty done and
turned to Pember :

“Put them both in the car.” He in-
dicated Norden. “Here’s handcuffs.
Lock them together.”

Taylor and Masters watched the
circling spheres. Suddenly one darted
down. From its pulsating body shot a
flash of flame. A human scream rent
the air.

“It’s the darnedest thing I ever
saw,” Masters said with a shudder.
"Those fireballs squirt heat-electricity
out at a guy and roast him !”

“Yes,” Taylor said with a nod, “and
that isn’t all. Those spheres act as
though they were alive. When that
one went out above the opening of the
tunnel, I thought I saw a pair of eyes.”
Masters studied the assertion, then
spoke :

"Captain, I may look dumb, but I’ve
been in the secret service long enough
to be found out if I really am. I’ve a
hunch you killed that sphere.”

“I’ve thought of that, but how could
I ? I didn’t touch him.”

“Maybe you don’t have to touch ’em
to kill ’em. We don’t know what they
are, except they’re different — ”

“We don’t know the real natures of

1941

THE 4 - D DOODLER

107

anything, as far as that goes. Man’s a
mixture of chemicals, but that doesn’t
explain him. The spheres are a mix-
ture of energies — we can observe that
much, but it still doesn’t explain them.
Where are they from ? Why did they
come here? What are their primary
objectives ?”

“Primary objectives? That’s a
military term, ain’t it?”

“Partly military, and partly scien-
tific. We know the secondary objective
of the spheres. It’s the same as man’s
or any other living ereature. The
spheres are alive and their objective
is to keep on living, but that isn’t their
primary motif . The primary objective
is the difference between a good man
and a bad one. Whatever is more im-
portant to a man than life itself is his
primary objective.”

“Life’s pretty important,” Masters
said, solemnly.

“Yes, but life isn’t everything. Any
man, no matter hew yellow or mean
he is, has some ideal he’s willing to
die for — or at least he’s willing to risk
dying to attain. Look at Norden. He’s
hard, cold-blooded and he doesn’t
think twic^ about putting a bomb in
a plant to wipe out scores of lives. He
dared me to kill him, rather than help
us. His code as a spy is his primary
objective. Look at Pember. He must
have been frightened by the spheres,
but we had to force him to leave his
post. We’ve shown him that his duty
now is with us — he realizes that the
spheres are the immediate enemy of
his country and he’ll do his best fight-
ing them. And you and I have ideals
— we know each other too well to list
them.”

“I getcha so far, but what about
Orkins ?”

“The man’s not afraid of death, but
afraid of the unknown. Men like him
commit suicide rather than face
reality. He wants security. He’s afraid
of uncertainty. He lives in an unreal,
imaginary world and when uncertain-
ty, which is reality, intrudes, he is
completely lost.”

“You make me feel sorry for the
poor devil.”

“That’s because you understand
why he’s funky. Primary objectives
make men do what they do — but un-
derstanding Orkins doesn’t solve our
problem.

“No. What are the spheres? Are
they alive? If so, they must want
something. What do they want?”

“A conquest of the human race?”
Taylor pondered. “Maybe. But it isn’t
likely. They can’t gain much by con-
quering us. It wouldn’t do man any
good to stage a conquest of earth-
worms and swordfish, since neither
could pay taxes. The spheres are as
different from man as man from an
angle-worm. Are we a menace to the
spheres? Apparently the only time
we really menace them is when we
crawl into a hole like a rabbit — maybe
there’s something in that that will
help us, but I don’t think that’s why
they kill us. Are we a nuisance? If
so, why? Are we a food? There is
energy in sunlight and chemicals in
the human body. A creature of energy
would feed on something like sunlight,
not chemicals. His menu would be
electric wires, storage batteries — ”
“Great Scott, Captain !” Masters in-
terrupted. “Let’s get away from this
car. There’s a battery in it — food for
the spheres !”

Masters looked nervously up at the
circling globes. Taylor, deep in
thought, did not stir. Instead, he con-
tinued his speculation :

“Maybe they kill us for sport.”

He was thinking of small boys tor-
turing frogs; of Roman emperors at
the circus ; of sportsmen exterminat-
ing game; of the mob watching the
guillotine on the streets of Paris. It
was Zarathustra who said that when
gazing at tragedies, bull fights and
crucifixions, man has felt his happiest;
and when man invented hell, he made
hell his heaven on earth. Couldn’t this
be a characteristic of all life ? Couldn't
the spheres be cruel and ruthless, too?

Man, the mighty hunter, had be-
come Hie prey.

108

COMET

July

A sphere detached itself from the
group and circled toward the car.

“I guess you’re right, Masters,”
Taylor decided as he watched the
spheres. “We’d better move.”

CHAPTER IV
Prey

M ASTERS unlocked the handcuffs
of the two men in the car. He
disposed of his short-wave set in a
ditch, for it, too, had batteries which
might attract the spheres.

“Get out of the car, Orkins,” he
ordered.

“Watch him, Masters,” Taylor
warned. “If he starts yelling, choke
him.”

“But not too hard,” Masters added.
“If we’re going to be rabbits, human
values will change. Men who run into
holes will live to eat turnips, those
who bare their teeth won’t. Orkins
might be the forefather of a new race
— a helluva race. Come on, Orkins.
Get out. Hurry up, Father Abraham,
or I’ll drag you out.”

Orkins, cringing, emerged.

Taylor took charge of Norden, who
followed Orkins out of the machine.

“I hate your guts, Norden/’ he said.
“You’re a dirty, lousy rat and you
ought to be shot. But after all, you’re
a man. You’ve courage and I admire
it, as much as I hate the way you use
it. Overseas there’s a war between
countries. Here there’s another war
between humanity and a species of
alien monsters. Whether we like it or
not, we’re allies.”

Nor den’s undershot jaw moved in a
grin.

“I know about the spheres, Cap-
tain,” Norden replied. “I overheard
your remarks to Mr. Masters. I’ve
listened to Orkins’ babble.”

“Will you help us?”

“I will bargain with you.”

“For your life? You know I can’t
do anything about that. I’ll do my best
— I’ll speak a good word at your trial,

try to save you from the firing squad,
but I’m only a captain. That’s all I
can do. I haven’t the power to do any-
thing more.”

“Then I will not help.”

“Do you know what we’re up
against ?”

“It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it, Cap-
tain. But consider my hopeless case.”
“We have a chance, Norden. 1 know,
more than any other living man per-
haps, what those spheres are. I’ve seen
them close at hand. Any hope of de-
feating them rests in us, using the
meager knowledge I’ve gained from
contact. What happens to your father-
land after the spheres finish on this
side of the ocean depends on whether
we conquer them, or they exterminate
us.”

Norden stopped smiling.

“When you put it that way, Cap-
tain, how could I refuse?” he asked.
“I’ll cooperate, not to help you, but
to help the fatherland.”

The moonlight showed a gleam in
Nor den’s deep-set eyes that Taylor did
not like.

THEY moved to a wooded spot in a
nearby field. There was a feeling or’
semi-security as they settled down to
rest under the trees. Orkins’ moans of
fear were silenced by sleep. Norden
sat motionless and Taylor could not
tell whether he was asleep or awake.
Pember removed his pack and used it
for a pillow. Masters snored peace-
fully on the grass.

Only Taylor remained awake. A
sphere floated overhead. Taylor,
watching, saw the leaves of the tree
stir restlessly as the invisible feelers
probed toward the earth.

It was a reddish-orange orb, like the
setting sun. Taylor once more got the
impression of deeply embedded eyes
glowering beneath the shining sur-
face.

Were the eyes an illusion? Did the
creatures really have eyes, like those
of higher forms of animal life? Illu-
sion or not, the eyes seemed to be

1941

THE 4 - D DOODLER

109

there, intense, glaring and savage.
They seemed to peer into the depths
of Taylor’s soul.

Taylor sat motionless, almost posi-
tive he was under observation. He
expected to feel the jerk of the electric
shock of the feeler. Instead, the
sphere drifted on. The eyes had not
seen.

A moment later dame streaked
down from the sphere toward the
parking lot. There was a roar as a
gasoline tank exploded and flame shot
skyward.

“There goes the battery!” Taylor
muttered.

The others were roused by the ex-
plosion. Orkins sobbed hysterically.
Masters, Pember and Norden watched
the roaring flame.

“We’ll never escape them!” Orkins
moaned. “They’ll find us sooner or
later. They can sense us.”

“They’re not infallible,” Taylor
said. “Remember I got away from
them in the tunnel.” He turned know-
ingly toward the others. “Perhaps, if
we dug a cave — ”

“Sure!” said Masters. “It’s a good
idea.”

“Yes, sir!” Pember said with a nod.
He pulled his trench tool from his pack
and handed it to Orkins. “Maybe you’d
like to dig, Mr. Orkins. It’ll keep your
mind off them things.”

Orkins seized the small shovel al-
most instantly. Taylor half-smiled. He
had made the suggestion for Orkins’
benefit. The cave probably would never
be finished. One deep enough to offer
a refuge for five men could hardly
be dug in a practical length of time.

Dawn was not far off and the
spheres were drifting over the town.
Already streets were filled with panic-
stricken people. The appearance of
the strange balls of fire brought resi-
dents from their homes in the middle
of the night. Some fled in terror, be-
lieving a new type of raider had been
invented by the enemy. Others stood
watching.

The spheres circled. Taylor watched

them, realizing he could do nothing to
stop what would happen. There was
no way to warn these helpless people
that the spheres dealt death in a most
sudden and violent form.

Something nagged at Taylor’s mind.
Why had the sphere gone out when he
crept into the tunnel? What had
caused it to die ? Had the sphere been
grounded, trying to reach him under
the surface of the earth? Not likely,
otherwise the creatures would not be
able to attack a man standing on the
ground. The bolt, besides, was not
electricity, like lightning, but heat,
which is not grounded easily.

Where had the spheres come from ?
They surely were not of this world. On
the basis of biological evolution they
could not be the children of any life
known to science. Had they evolved
suddenly, by accident? Some scien-
tists thought all life had grown by
accident ; the right combination of cir-
cumstances had occurred and a chemi-
cal action had followed. Had the right
combination for the spheres come
about as the result of the war and the
releasing of untold amounts of
energy?

But even if life had begun on earth
by accident, all other types had taken
ages to develop. These spheres, think-
ing creatures, could not have evolved
overnight.

These seemingly invincible crea-
tures could not have come from this
world. Biological development comes
through struggle and survival. An in-
vincible creature does not have to
worry about its existence — in fact,
struggle was necessary to develop an
invincible being. These spheres must
be from another world. Refugees, per-
haps, from another, even more power-
ful race ; or maybe they were seeking
a new world to conquer.

One was circling overhead again.
The "leaves rustled. Taylor thought
he heard a choked-off scream. Orkins.
He gritted his teeth grimly.

There was only one link of hope in
Taylor’s chain of thought. There must

COMET

July

1 10

always be a check to every form of
life. Terrestrial plagues of insects
were followed suddenly by flocks of
birds. In western states an increase
in the number of jackrabbits always
is a forerunner of an increase in the
number of coyotes. But the jack-
rabbits carried parasites fatal to the
coyotes. If man was a rabit, then per-
haps he harbored the check to these
creatures of flame.

What check would limit the whis-
pering spheres ? No germ, surely.
What possible check was there except
man’s nature? What part of man’s
nature? That was the answer Taylor
wanted to know.

His chain of thought was suddenly
interrupted.

Pember was coming on the run. The
private saluted the captain.

“Something’s wrong, sir! Orkins is
throwing a fit.”

“Can’t you quiet him ? The spheres
are near.”

“Norden held his hand over Orkins’
mouth, but it made Orkins worse. I
— I think it’s serious, sir.”

Taylor followed Pember to the place
where Orkins had been digging. Nor-
den was there, bending over Orkins,
who lay on the ground. Masters,
standing behind Norden, shook his
head.

“He’s dead,” Norden said, straight-
ening.

“He was scared to death by the
spheres,” Masters said. “No one
harmed him, except to hold a hand
over his mouth. He wasn’t choked. He
could have breathed through his
nostrils — ”

“Wait—”

Taylor held up his hand. Something
clicked in his brain.

Masters had said something about
the spheres that fitted. He said,
Maybe you don’t have to touch ’em to
Mil ’em. Figuratively speaking, Or-
kins hadn’t been seriously touched
either.

The answer!

CHAPTER V
An Escape

T AYLOR ordered Pember and
Norden to bury Orkins where he
had been digging, then the officer took
Masters aside.

“We’ve got a weapon,” Taylor an-
nounced.

Masters grunted:

“Yeah? Indians had bows and ar-
rows, too. Look at what happened to
them.”

“This is different. A new weapon.
We can beat the spheres through their
emotions.”

“You mean fear, love, hate — all that
stuff ? How do you know these spheres
have emotions?”

“What is life but a series of sensa-
tions and emotions ? If the spheres are
alive, they must have something
which correspond to emotions. The
emotions may be different from ours,
but they’ll be emotions just the same.
Orkins died of fear. Of course, you can
call it heart attack, but fear brought
it on. That sphere that had me cor-
nered in the plant died, too. Do you
see ?”

“Was the sphere afraid of you or
the tunnel?”

“Don’t be flippant. The emotion
wasn’t fear. It might not have been
any emotion we have, but an emotion
that we’d expect a creature made of
energy to have. An emotion of frus-
tration ! It had me cornered. I escaped.
The energy sphere met resistance.
When energy meets resistance it
changes !”

“I don’t get it.”

“Look, Masters. If the spheres are
mixtures of energies, like we are mix-
tures of chemicals, death means ex-
tinction, just as biological death
means the extinction of the chemical
action in our lives. Theologians say
we don’t die — that there’s a change
and we go on existing in a spiritual
life. Now let’s take a peep at what
science tells us about energy : Newton
says energy is never extinguished.
When it ceases in one form, it changes

1941

THE 4 - D DOODLER

111

to another. What happens when you
run electricity through a resistance
coil?”

“It turns to heat, of course!”

“And when you enclose light where
it can’t escape ?”

“It turns to heat!” Masters’ face
brightened. “And if you pen up heat,
it turns to light. I learned that in
school. Resistance causes a change.
But what do the spheres turn to ?”

“Radio energy, Masters ! Something
absolutely harmless to man. These liv-
ing, energy spheres will change to
radio energy when they meet resist-
ance. Frustration is resistance. Frus-
tration is an emotion. An overwhelm-
ing emotion for the spheres! The
sphere is frustrated — meets resist-
ance — it disappears. In other words,
it dies !” .

FROM the city came screams and
cries. The spheres had attacked at
last.

The jmen in the wooded field eould
see the darting balls sending their
searing bolts down on the heads of
hapless victims. The crashing roar of
the slaughter sounded like distant
thunderstorms.

Streets were jammed with panic-
stricken human beings, fleeing from
the unknown menaee which slashed
with bolts of heat energy.

From the hole in the factory roof
poured more spheres to join the de-
struction.

“They breed fast, the devils !” said
Masters.

A figure in khaki aproached Taylor.
It was Pember with blood running
from a cut on the side of his head.
He saluted briskly.

“Norden escaped, sir!” he blurted.
“The dir£y so-and-so cracked me over
the head with the trench tool and got
away I”

“I never thought he’d turn yellow,”
Masters said. “Well, maybe it's a good
thing he’s gone. I never trusted him
anyhow.”

“Which way did he go?” Taylor
asked.

“He went toward the factory, sir !"
Pember replied. “He didn’t knock me
out. Just a glancing blow. I was too
dazed to stop him, but I saw him run-
ning toward the factory.”

“He’d rather take it that way than
the firing squad, I guess,” Masters
decided.

“Masters,” Taylor said. “We over-
looked something. Norden knows
something we don’t know. He was
around Grkins most of the time after
we left the plant. He listened to what
Orkins said. Orkins was in the factory
when the spheres first appeared. I
overlooked Orkins as having an an-
swer to the problem. I thought I knew
it all, but I was wrong! Orkins knew
more than I know about the spheres.”
“Sure ! I should have thought of it,
too. How did Orkins get away when
everyone else got killed ? I never asked
that. I just took it for granted that
he got away by accident. Orkins might
have known enough to help Norden
get the spheres on his side !”

Taylor already was running toward
the factory. At his heels came Masters
and Pember.

CHAPTER VI
Inferno

T HEY found no sign of Norden as
they approached the factory. Sev-
eral times they had to take cover in
ditches and weeds as whispering
spheres floated overhead in search of
prey. But they escaped the electrical
feelers which stirred the grass and
brush around them.

Pember recovered his Garand rifle,
which had been left near the sentry
box during the retreat.

Taylor led the group into the tun-
nel, with Masters following and Pem-
ber bringing up the rear.

The din of the slaughter in the town
and the shrill whistle of the spheres
was blotted out underground. They
reached the far end, where the ladder
led upward to the sphere-haunted
factory.

112

COMET

July

Taylor ascended. He could hear the
shrill whistle of spheres dinning
through the bleak building. He peeped
into the forge room. The first flush
of dawn was streaming through the
windows.

Norden was there, creeping along
the barrels of some naval guns toward
the casting room.

Norden halted at the door. He took
a deep breath. Prom his lips came a
shrill, whispering whistle, a close
imitation of the call of the spheres.

An orange light was reflected from
the room beyond.

Still whistling, Norden stepped back
a few paces. Through the door, float-
ing toward the spy came an orange
sphere.

Taylor watched, expecting to see a
bolt of heat lash out toward the spy.
But the sphere pulsed slowly, as if
half pleased by the sound Norden
made with his lips.

So this is how Orkins escaped from
the plant, Taylor thought. Orkins had
imitated the creatures. They had
spared him as a pet, like a man keeps
a talking parrot.

Norden stood very still, whistling
while the sphere approached. A little
tentacle of flame reached out toward
him.

Taylor expected to see Norden dis-
appear in a flash of fire, but the flame
seemed to caress. A soft glow seemed
to diffuse from the man’s clothing
and body.

The sphere, too, seemed to change,
growing softer and more mellow. It
wasn’t a tangible substance, but some-
thing ethereal, like the flicker of flame
over an open hearth. Some tremendous
force seemed to hold the sphere in
globular shape.

Taylor could see the chimerical eyes
peering through the surface of the
sphere. He looked into the depths of
those eyes and still could not be sure
they were not an illusion. The inten-
sity of the creatures’ intelligence
seemed to shine from within, giving
the impression of staring, haunting
eyes. They were not organs of sight,

but they were the windows of the
mind. They were the source of those
tenuous flames that seemed to caress
Norden.

As Taylor looked at the eyes he felt
plunged into the pathless depths of a
vast, powerful brain. He was in con-
tact with an infinity of intelligence
far beyond limits of human compre-
hension. It was a surging intelligence
of energy, abysmal, vaprous and limit-
less, transcending the dimensions, out-
reaching boundless time, overshadow-
ing matter.

The eyes made Taylor forget he was
a man. His own mind seemed merged
in the intellectual energy floating
among the monster machines of the
forge room. Dimly, he was conscious
that this power was not directed at
him, but at Norden who stood, still
whistling, in front of the globe.

The sphere was whistling, too, and
the sound transformed itself into
music of the stars.

A discordant note rose in the song
from Norden’s imitation ©f the voice.
Norden was shrieking hatred for
Taylor’s nation, for all those who op-
posed the self -designated supermen of
the world.

“My race must be preserved!”

The thought was Norden’s, reflected
to Taylor from the shoreless depths
of the energy brain.

“All other peoples are evil, decadent,
and are doomed to slavery under the
man of the future. The future man
will be a child of my race. My race is
superior. From it the uberman will
rise. You must help. Prey on these
inferior peoples. They do not deserve
to live.”

The sphere’s hues changed, reddish,
then yellow, back to orange.

“Is this Norden a man ?” came the
sphere’s questioning thought. “Why
doesn’t he flee ? Why doesn’t he
scream in terror ? He’s different from
the others. Perhaps he is, as he claims,
a superior being. There was one, who
called himself Orkins, who talked with
Us. But when Orkins saw us slay he

1941

113

THE 4-D DOODLER

ran away in terror. This Norden begs
us to kill.”

"It is only through destruction of
the weak that the strongest survive,”
Norden answered. "Man is a cruel, but
noble creature. Those who fail to kill
are weak.”

The sphere’s whistle grew thun-
derous.

“You speak the philosophy of my
world !” it said.

From the depths of the sphere a
rhythm of thought arose. A whispered
epic sang through the fibres of Tay-
lor’s mind, telling of a world of energy,
whipped into a storm ol war. Spheres
of energy, ‘overwhelmed a weaker race
made up of gaseous clouds of atoms.

In the midst of this titanic battle a
huge disc appeared, carried by the
gaseous clouds. It was a concave lens,
like some powerful optical instrument.
But instead of focusing beams of
light, it reflected, not only light but
all forms of energy. As the spheres
attacked they were shattered into
spores and shot away through space.

The whispered song told of the
flight through space. Behind lay a
world, unlike the earth, which the
spheres called home. It was a gaseous,
flaming world where matter and en-
ergy mingled as one substance. It was
mottled with spots of cold gases which
warred with the whispering spheres.
It was the sun.

The sun was power, yet a ceaseless
struggle between energy and matter.
But neither energy nor matter was in
control. Should matter control, the
sun would cool. If energy triumphed,
the sun would explode. It was war,
like the wars of the earth, where one
philosophy was based on power, and
the other seeking justice. A victory
for might would make a ruthless
world. Justice was worthless without
injustice. The ideals were mutually
dependent, yet always at war.

"The cold gases tricked us,” whis-
pered the sphere. “The weak have no
right to outwit the strong. The weak
has no right to survive. Justice is an
unnatural condition. Progress means

nothing, except on the road to glory.
Your race, sharing our philosophy, can
build another great energy reflector
to send us back. We can aid our people
in triumphing over these inferior
beings who claim rights in a world
of might.”

"We can built what you wish,”
Norden promised.

It was a promise like other promises
Norden had made, Taylor thought.
Norden once had promised to help
Taylor fight the spheres.

"I will call the others !”

The sphere floated upward tov/ard
the hole in the roof. It circled the fac-
tory and moved away, toward the
town, where a score of other majestic,
glowing globes floated like bubbles of
fire.

Norden watched, a smile cracking
his jutting jaw.

There was still a whispering sound.
A single shrill hiss came from the
casting room.

"Why do you claim superiority,
Norden?” Taylor spoke.

The spy turned. For the first time
he saw Taylor.

“Himmel!”

Norden’s eyes looked beyond Taylor
and rested on Masters, who was
emerging from the tunnel.

"Is it because you pose the doctrine
of slavery and destruction? Is it be-
cause your cultural contributions are
keyed to military conquest? Is it be-
cause of your lies and broken prom-
ises? Is it because you are more
skillful in butchery ? It is because you
have refined the art of terrorism ?”

Taylor was advancing, half crouch-
ing, toward Norden.

Norden’s arm swished in a swift
motion. He drew an automatic pistol
from his pocket and leveled it at Tay-
lor and Masters.

"Because I am the stronger!” Nor-
den said.

Taylor had not expected Norden to
be armed. He had overlooked the pos-
sibility that the spy might have an
extra weapon hidden in the tunnel.

114

COMET

CHAPTER VII

Humanity’s Army

T AYLOR and Masters raised their
arms. They were caught.

“There is nothing you can do now
to save yourself, or your country,”
Norden said. “Nothing. The spheres
will destroy you and your people. They
will destroy every living creature who
does not surrender to my nation.
Might will come into its own.”

“Are you sure the spheres are so
invincible?” Taylor asked. “Remem-
ber, they were expelled from the sun.
They must have been checked on the
sun many times, otherwise they would
have destroyed the creatures who op-
posed them.”

“They are greater than anything on
the earth,” Norden said.

“The spheres are not for the earth.
Our battles are not theirs. By betray-
ing your world to these creatures,
you are betraying the whole human
race.”

“This is not so !” Norden said, thick-
ly. “I know how to handle them. Or-
kins told me. He said he imitated their
whistle and they spared him, while
they killed the others in the plant.
He didn’t realize the value of his dis-
covery. He was too much of a coward.”
Norden beckoned his prisoners to
him and disarmed them. He pointed
to the door of the casting room.
“Look !”

In the center of the room was a
metal pot used for small castings. It
was filled with molten, glowing metal.
Beside it sat a single orange sphere,
spraying the pot with bolts of heat
to keep the contents warm, for the
electrical energy that had supplied the
melting pot had long-since been cut
off.

In the center of the pot an orange-
red bubble was rising from the metal.
A sphere was forming on the sur-
face of the metal.

“The rise of living energy !” Norden
said. “Our own kind of life may have
begun ages ago in much the same way.
A spore from some far off world may

July

have drifted here through space,
found conditions just right, and taken
root. Thus the spore of the sun — the
whispering spheres — found a set of
conditions fitted for growth. That
metal pot is filled with seeds of the
spheres. One by one they will hatch
and grow into a force that will bring
extinction to all men, except those of
my race. The spheres do not want the
world, they want tfye sun. We will see
that they go back to the sun, after
they have had their sport, killing the
weaklings of your nation.”

Taylor shuddered as he looked at
the growing sphere. This deep, in-
tense intelligence, which found sport
in killing human beings, already
seemed to be pouring from the depths
of its half-formed body.

“The fact that I am alive, proves
my superiority,” Norden said. “Your
people ran in terror at the sight of
the spheres, but I bargained with
them. I made an alliance.”

“You and your superiority!” Mas-
ters growled. “If you really were
smart, you’d have counted us. Don’t
you know there are three of us who
aren’t afraid of the spheres?” '

As Masters spoke, the point of Pem-
ber’s bayonet touched the small of
Norden’s back. The soldier had crept
from the tunnel, unobserved by Nor-
den, who was engrossed in the mental
torture of his prisoners.

With a cry of rage Norden whirled
and fired.

But Taylor had expected such a
move. Even as Norden swung around,
the officer sprang, knocking the spy
off his feet and spoiling hiis aim.

A warning whistle came from the
sphere heating the cauldron.

“Back ! Out of the doorway !” Taylor
shouted, grappling with Norden. “I’ll
take care of him!”

Pember obeyed orders. He jumped
back, dragging Masters with him.

Taylor wrenched the gun from Nor-
den’s hand, just as the spy landed a
jarring blow to the body. Taylor stag-
gered, lost his balance and dropped
the gun.

115

1941 THE 4 - D

Norden leaped forward to retrieve
the weapon, but Taylor blocked the
move. He drove Norden back with a
hard right. The two men closed in and
stood toe to toe, trading blows.

The screaming of the sphere grew
louder. The creature by the metal pot
seemed to be calling the others over
the town. The half-formed sphere in
the melting pot joined and the entire
building rang with the shrill screams - .

Taylor was slowly driving Norden
back toward the door of the casting
room. A tentacle of flame reached out
from the monster by the metal pot,
but it only circled the men. Apparent-
ly it was afraid to strike, for fear of
destroying friend as well as enemy.

Norden’ s knee came up. Taylor
dodged in time to avoid a crippling
blow, but the leg caught him on the
thigh, sending him back and upset-
ting him on the floor.

With a cry of triumph, Norden
dived toward his foe. But Taylor rolled
on his back, doubled his legs and met
the hurtling body with a two-footed
kick.

Norden grunted with pain. He stag-
gered back, straight toward the sphere
by the metal pot.

A whistled warning" had no effect. .
The momentum carried Norden crash-
ing into the orange nucleus of en-'
ergy. There was a blinding flash.

A small pile of glowing ashes ap-
peared on the floor.

The whistle of the sphere stopped.

It pulsed once. A feeble ray of heat
lashed out toward Taylor, but the bolt
halted in mid-air.

A plop cracked in Taylor’s ear. The
sphere disappeared like a bursting
soap bubble.

“Cap! Are you all right!”

Masters appeared in the doorway
behind Taylor.

“Gosh !” His eyes settled on the pile
of ashes, the remains of Norden. He
turned to Taylor. “Are you all right,
Cap?”

Taylor nodded.

“Where’s the sphere?” asked Mas-
ters.

DOODLER

“He died of frustration — or sorrow
— over having killed the wrong man,”
Taylor said grimly. Taylor indicated
the half-formed monster in the pot.
“Now we’ve got to get rid of that one
and all the unhatched spores.”

“If that metal pot hatches ’em, we
will,” said Masters. “We’ll dump the
metal.”

The undeveloped sphere made no
move to launch a deadly bolt toward
the men. Apparently at this stage of
incubation the spheres were harmless.'

“Pember !”

“Yes, sir!” the soldier appeared in
the doorway, carrying his bayonetted
gun.

“Keep a lookout for other spheres.
Masters and I are going to dump this
metal pot.”

“Yes, sir!”

An electric motor ordinarily
dumped the pot into molds, but this
motor, like everything else electrical
in the plant, now was out of com-
mission. Masters, however, found a
block and tackle and rigged it to a
beam above the pot. The hook he at-
tached to the bottom of the pet.

“Grab hold, Cap!” he said, taking
the end of the rope.

Taylor loosened his tunic and seized
the rope.

“Heave!” Masters chanted.

The two men strained. Slowly the
pot tilted.

Pember, standing at a window,
called out over his shoulder:

“They’re coming back!”

Above the creak of the pulleys rose
the murmuring whisper of the
spheres.

“Heave !” Both men joined in the
rhythmic call, putting their weight
on the rope. The pot tilted more.

The half-formed sphere whistled
loudly and the spheres circling over
the plant answered.

“Hurry !” Pember urged.

“Heave !” chorused the men on the
ropes. The pulleys creaked.

The room suddenly blazed with a
brilliant orange glow as a maddened
sphere floated through the hole in the

COMET

T 1 6

July

roof. It hung in the air, pulsating,
scanning what was taking place
below. ^

“Heave !” cried the two men. The
pot was at an angle. The hatching
sphere screamed to the globe above.

The floating sphere shrieked. Flame
danced over its surface.

“It — It’s got — eyes !” Masters said,
spacing 1 his words with tugs on the
ropes.

“Don’t look!” Taylor warned.
“Heave!”

Pember faced the sphere. He patted
his Garand. •

“Give ’im hell, boy!”

He swung the rifle to his shoulder
and fired. The bullet whined off the
sphere as if it were steel. Pember
jerked his head in despair. Angrily
he fired again. His tin hat slid to one
side of his head at a rakish angle.

“You spawn of hell !” he cried.

Pember lowered Ms gun. The sphere
pulsed ominously. Then the doughboy
charged.

Beneath the brim of his helmet
Pember’s jaws were set. His half-
closed eyes, glazed by the dazzling
light from the sphere, wore two slits
of savage determination.

There was something glorious in
that charge. It was a soldier going
into battle against hopeless odds. And
it was more. The army of human
civilization at that moment consisted
of one buck private, pitting every-
thing he had against something that
even -science could not analyze.

The sudden attack seemed to sur-
prise the sphere. It bounded back,
moving swiftly out of the way of the
advancing one-man army.

Pember roared. There were no
words in what he shouted. It was just
a cry, the battle cry of humanity.

“Heave !” chorused Taylor and
Masters.

They too had a battle cry. Every
man was doing his best and would die
doing it, if necessary.

There was a crack and a hiss. A
flicker of flame flashed over the charg-

ing soldier. An odor of charred human
flesh filled the room. < .

Then came a new sound, the hiss-
ing splash of spilled metal.

The pot was dumped.

Taylor dropped the rope and faced
the sphere. He saw the charred pile of
ashes beside the inhuman creature.
Nearby was a fused tube of metal, all
that was left of Pember’s rifle.

“Aff right, you devil !” shouted Tay-
lor. “Strike and be damned ! There’s
on® thing you can’t fix, and that’s the
metal pot. Your spores are dead. Your
mistake was in having a metal pot for
a mother !”

Taylor sensed understanding in the
sphere. Those eyes that were not eyes,
but windows of the mind, seemed to
fade. Flame licked out again from the
monster, but it did not launch toward
Taylor. Nor was Masters the target.

Instead, the flame reached toward
the fading yellow hemisphere and the
cooling pool of metal on the floor.
There lay the hopes of the species on
this planet, wrecked with a block and
tackle.

Plop!

The hemisphere exploded like a
bubble.

Plop!

The mourning sphere disappeared.

Plop. Plop. Plop.

Three more spheres appeared in
the opening in the roof and vanished.

Masters tugged on Taylor’s sleeve.

"Come on! We’ve got a chance, if
we can get to the tunnel !”

Taylor shook his head.

“No need. We’re safe now. If
they’ve changed to radio energy, the
big broadcast is on.”

The sky was filled with exploding
spheres as the whispers sobbed the
tale of the disaster. A score of the
energy monsters, bred from the metal
pot overnight, burst in the rays of the
rising sun. Energy, meeting resist-
ance, was changing to something else.
The war of energy and matter might
continue on the molten surface of the
sun, but on earth there would be only
the wars Of ideals.

Here is the opportunity department for newcomers. Every month we
will publish short shorts, giving preference to FIRST STORIES. If
you have wanted to write science-fiction, now is the time to start. This
department will discover the coming favorites. — -The Editor.

THE BELL-
TONE

by

EDMUND H.
LEFTWIGH

It is no use. It's too late.

The earth — I must dig —
alone.

To Whom It May Concern:

In order to clear up any misunder-
standing or false impressions regard-
ing the amazing case of my beloved
friend and co-worker, Professor How-
ard E. Edwards, I submit herewith,
extracts from the professor’s note-
book, which I found on the desk.

Evans Baeclay, B.S. Fellow IRE.

Jan. 25.

Last night, in my dreams, I was a
monstrous ant, and had been digging
myself a burrow in the soft fresh
earth. The dream was intensely real,
and when I awoke', I felt as tired as if
I had actually been digging. My arms
ached, and I was astonished, upon
examining my hands, to find them raw.

118

'COMET

July

Dressing hastily, I rushed to the
back yard, and there, sure enough,
near the fence, was a large hole about
two feet deep and three feet long.
Hurriedly, I filled it in and returned
to the house.

I must rest for a few days, as I
feel that the intense excitement caused
by my investigations, is preying too
heavily upon my mind.

At this time, I feel that I should
make a brief summary of my findings
in respect to the ants, so that Barclay
may go over these notes upon his-re-
turn from his vacation.

First: The ant colony is the source
of a powerful bell-like tone which is
radiated continuously on two wave-
lengths, .0018 meter, and .00176 me-
ter. This tone acts as a radio-beacon,
and directs the ants to the colony,
no matter where they may be locat-
ed. The .0018 meter wave is used by
the ants for their “clacking” conver-
sations, by means of whieh they com-
municate with each other and the col-
ony, receiving orders from the direct-
ing intelligence, reporting the location
of food, and requesting help, when
needed.

The wave .00176 meter, is used for
sending thought images or pictures
which may be sent with the “clack-
ing” code, or independently. I cannot
conceive a more efficient or highly spe-
cialized communications system. I
must learn their secret, their methods.

Jan. JO.

This morning, while sitting at the
receiver in a semi-doze, with the bell-
tone ringing in my ears, I fell into that
state known as “day-dreaming.” Lit-
tle “Nippy,” my beloved fox terrier,
and constant companion, rushed into
the laboratory and ran up to me.

For a moment my mind went blank.
My hands shot out. I grasped the dog
around the throat and began to throt-
tle him. I had risen from my chair,
and the dog was nearly dead, when I
slipped and fell, pulling the phone
plug out of the receiver.

Instantly, my mind cleared, and

words cannot express the remorse I
felt at my inhuman actions. Nippy
would have nothing to do with me,
and crawled dejectedly from the room,
a terrified look in his eyes.

1 have no explanation for my ac-
tions.

Feh. 3.

The transmitter is ready for opera-
tion.! have constructed a pair of met-
al disc-electrodes which clamp tightly
to my head and press upon my tem-
’ptes. This device will pick up the
thought impulses from my brain, feed
them directly into the radio-frequency
amplifier, where they will be ampli-
fied, and then radiated in a tight di-
rected beam.

My two ants were in their little en-
closure under the microscope when I
threw the switch to the “send” po-
sition. I pictured myself as I looked
as a man, and sent the thought, “I am
a man.”

Hastily, I threw the switch to the
“receive” position. I looked through
the microscope.

The ants were lying on their sides.
Somehow, I felt that the power was
too great, and had stunned them.
Keeping my eye to the microscope, I
again threw the switch to “send,” and
cut the power to half.

“Get up, friends . . . get , up,” I
thought, as I pictured them rising.
Sure enough . . . the ants slowly re-
gained their feet. They looked about
in apparent bewilderment. Back
again, in “receive” position, I was
conscious of the thought image,

“The man . . . he is the man. The
man holds us here. He is killing us.
We must kill the man.”

They gnashed their fierce-looking
mandibles. I snapped back to “send”
and thought.

“No . . . you must not kill the man.
The man will not harm you . . . he is
your friend. He will help you.”

As I watched, the ants seemed to
become less excited. From the larger
of the two, I received the thought,

“We are dying. The man is killing

1941

THE BELL TONE

119

us with his strong vibrations. We
must kill the man.”

Then a very powerful thought im-
pression burst upon my brain.

It seemed to come from the colony,
three feet away.

“Warning to the man. Stop your
thought transmissions at once ! Your
vibrations are killing us. We want
nothing from you. We have every-
thing we need. You will learn noth-
ing from us. You will stop at once!”

I threw the switch to “send.”
Viewed through the microscope, the
two ants were lying on their backs
. . . dead, to all appearances.

“What if I don’t stop?” I sent the
thought question, “I want to learn the
secret of your communication. In re-
turn, I will teach you many things. I
can’t stop now !”

I changed to receive, and the answer
came back,

“If you do not stop ... we will kill
you !”

I turned off the apparatus, but the
powerful bell tone continued to pound
incessantly into my brain.

I laughed. They’d kill me . . . would
they? Those tiny insects . . . what
could they do? Well — let them try, but
I’d get what I was after. I would not
quit now, with success so near. What
if my transmissions did kill a few of
them? Of what importance were the
lives of a few ants as compared to
the advancement of the science of
Communication ?

Feb. 9.

I found myself digging again in the
back yard yesterday. As before, I had
been “day-dreaming,” when an over-
whelming desire to go outside and feel
the cool moist earth between my fin-
gers and on my face took possession
of me.

I rushed out into the back yard, and
began digging feverishly . . . madly,
until finally I fell, exhausted. Then my
mind cleared and I filled in the hole.

About half the ants have died, due
no doubt to the strength of my radia-
tions. No matter how low I cut the

power, they still cannot live but a
short time under the force of my
transmissions. They have stopped
sending thought impressions entirely,
and are using only their “clacking”
code signals, which they seem to real-
ize I cannot understand.

I feel that they are undertaking
some sort of campaign against me.
For hours they congregate, closely
packed, their antennae stiffly pointed
straight up. Their thought currents
seem to be flowing into and merging
with the bell tone, which grows
stronger and more penetrating day
by day.

In my back yard, there are four
large ant hills, and at each hill, curi-
ously, there is no activity except the
same mass concentration of the ants.
Have they, too, been affected by my
radiations and joined forces with the
original colony against myself?

The bell tone continues to grow
stronger.

Feb. 11

Mrs. Winslow, the middle-aged
widow, who comes to clean my house
and laboratory twice a week, was here
this morning.

She is short, dumpy, and inclined
to be stout. As she went about her
work, I noticed particularly the fat
firm flesh of her neck, just below the
jaw. I felt an uncontrollable desire to
sink my teeth deep into that flesh, and
enjoy the taste of the warm fresh
blood.

I had actually risen from my chair
to accomplish my desire, when the
telephone rang . . . and my mind
cleared.

Feb. H.

I have decided to stop my experi-
ments with the ants.

As they refuse to send any more
thought impressions, there is nothing
further I can learn from them. Some-
how, I feel that they are gaining a hold
upon my mind, and that every time I
listen in on the receiver, that hold be-
comes stronger. I firmly believe that I

COMET

120

July

would have attacked poor Mrs. Win-
slow, had not the ringing of the ’phone
so opportunely interrupted me. I have
sent word for her to stay away . . .
as I cannot trust myself.

I keep a box of fresh earth on the
table in my laboratory. I often run my
hands through it, and taste it. It is
remarkable how much this soothes my
nerves.

Feb. 16.

It is too late !

For two days, I have kept my ap-
paratus shut off. I have not so much
as looked at the ants, but still that
confounded bell tone rings in my ears
with all the insistence of African tom-
toms. Hour by hour . . . the tone be-
comes more penetrating. I cannot
sleep, and can eat but little.

As a last resort, I destroyed my ant
colony. I even went so far as to pour
boiling water on the four ant hills in
my yard.

Still . . . the bell tone persists. I can
stand it no longer !

Perhaps if I were to dig . . .again
in the yard ... in the soothing earth,
I could forget. ...

(News Clipping: From Philadelphia
Banner)

RADIO COMMUNICATIONS
ENGINEER DEAD

Howard E. Edwards, Suicide

Philadelphia, Feb. 18. The body of
Howard E. Edwards, B.S., PhD.,
Member I. R. E., eminent authority
on Radio Communications, aged 56,
was found this morning in the back
yard of his residence, 1427 Raines
Avenue. The body was almost com-
pletely buried in a long narrow hole
in the ground.

At first, foul-play was suspected,
but later it appeared that Edwards
had dug himself into the ground and
died of suffocation, as his nostrils and
mouth were filled with dirt.

Dr. P. A. Hofner, who examined
the body, found no wounds, stated
that Edwards had been dead for about
two days, and pronounced the death
as a clear case of suicide, the strange
means employed probably due to an
unbalanced mental condition.

Elaborate radio apparatus upon
which Edwards had been working had
been smashed to bits.

The

Ultimate

Experiment

by

THORNTON DeKY

No living sold breathed upon the
earth. Only robots, carrying on the
last great order.

K'T'HEY were all gone
A now, The Masters, all

dead- and their atoms scattered to ever increasing fury. That had been

the never ceasing winds that swept the last wish of each as he had
the great crysolite city towers in passed away, dying from sheer old

1941

121

THE ULTIMATE EXPERIMENT

age. True they had fought on as
long as they could to save their
kind from utter extinction but the
comet that had trailed its poisoning
wake across space to leave behind it,
upon Earth, a noxious, lethal gas
vapor, had done its work too well.”

No living soul breathed upon the
Earth. No one lived here now, but
Kiron and his kind.

“And,” so thought Kiron to him-
self, “he might as well be a great un-
thinking robot able to do only one
thing instead of the mental giant he
was, so obsessed had he become with
the task he had set himself to do.”

Yet, in spite of a great loneliness
and a strong fear of a final frustra-
tion, he worked on with the others of
his people, hardly stopping for any-
thing except the very necessities need-
ed to keep his big body working in per-
fect coordination.

Tirelessly he worked, for The Mas-
ters had bred, if that is the word to
use, fatigue and the need for restora-
tion out of his race long decades ago.

Sometimes, though, he would stop
his work when the great red dying
sun began to fade into the west and
his round eyes would grow wistful as
he looked out over the great city that
sketched in towering minarets and
lofty spires of purest crystal blue for
miles on every side. A fairy city of
rarest hue and beauty. A city for the
Gods and the Gods were dead. Kiron
felt, at such times, the great loneliness
that the last Master must have known.

They had been kind, The Masters,
and Kiron knew that his people, as
they went about their eternal tasks
of keeping the great city in perfect
shape for The Masters who no longer
needed it, must miss them as he did.

Never to hear their voices ringing,
never to see them again gathered in
groups to witness some game or to
play amid the silver fountains and
flowery gardens of the wondrous city,
made him infinitely saddened. It would
always be like this, unless. ...

But thinking, dreaming, reminiscing
would not bring it all back for there

was only one answer to still the long-
ing; work. The others worked and did
not dream, but instead kept busy tend-
ing to the thousand and one tasks The
Masters had set them to do — had left
them doing when the last Master
perished. He too must remember the
trust they had placed in his hands
and fulfill it as best he could.

From the time the great red eye of
the sun opened itself in the East until
it disappeared in the blue haze beyond
the crysolite city, Kiron labored with
his fellows. Then, at the appointed
hour, the musical signals would peal
forth their sweet, sad chimes, whis-
pering goodnight to ears that would
hear them no more and all operations
would halt for the night, just as it had
done when The Masters were here to
supervise it.

Then when morning came he would
start once more trying, testing, ex-
perimenting with his chemicals and
plastics, forever following labyrinth
of knowledge, seeking for the great
triumph that would make the work
of the others of some real use.

His hands molded the materials
carefully, lovingly to a pattern that
was set in his mind as a thing to
cherish. Day by day his experiments
in their liquid baths took form under
his careful modeling. He mixed his
chemicals with the same loving touch,
the same careful concentration and
painstaking thoroughness, studying
often his notes and analysis charts.

Everything must be just so lest his
experiment not turn out perfectly. He
never became exasperated at a failure
or a defect that proved t© be the only
reward for his faithful endeavors but
worked patiently on toward a goal
that he knew would ultimately be his.

Then one day, as the great red sun
glowed like an immense red eye over-
head, Kiron stepped back to admire
his handiwork. In that instant the
entire wondrous city seemed to
breathe a silent prayer as he stood
transfixed by the sight before him.
Then it went on as usual, hurrying
noiselessly about its business. The sur-

122

COMET

July

face cars, empty though they were,
fled swiftly about supported only by
the rings of magnetic force that held
them to their designated paths. The
gravoships^ raised from the tower-
dromes to speed silently into the eye
of the red sun that was dying.

“No one now,” Kiron thought to
himself as he studied his handiwork.
Then he walked unhurriedly to the
cabinet in the laboratory corner and
took from it a pair of earphones re-
sembling those of a long forgotten
radio set. Just as unhurriedly, though
his mind was filled with turmoil and
his being with excitement, he walked
back and connected the earphones to
the box upon his bench. The phones
dangled into the liquid bath before
him as he adjusted them to suit his
requirements.

Slowly he checked over every step
of his experiments before he went
farther. Then, as he proved them for
the last time, his hand went slowly
to the small knife switch upon the box
at his elbow. Next he threw into con-
nection the larger switch upon his
laboratory wall bringing into his lab-
oratory the broadcast power of the
crysolite city.

The laboratory generators hummed
softly, drowning out the quiet hum
of the city outside. As they built up,
sending tiny living electrical impulses
over the wires like minute currents
that come from the brain, Kiron sat
breathless; his eyes intent.

Closer to his work he bent, watch-
ing lovingly, fearful least all might
not be quite right. Then his eyes took
on a brighter light as he began to see
the reaction. He knew the messages
that he had sent out were being re-
ceived and coordinated into a unit that
would stir and grow into intellect.

Suddenly the machine flashed its
little warning red light and auto-
matically snapped off. Kiron twisted
quickly in his seat and threw home
the final switch. This, he knew, was
the ultimate test. On the results of the
flood of energy impulses that he had
set in motion rested the fulfillment of

his success — or failure.

He watched with slight misgivings.
This had never been accomplished be-
fore. How could it possibly be a suc-
cess now? Even The Masters had
never quite succeeded at this final
test, how could he, only a servant? Yet
it must work for he had no desire in
life but to make it work.

Then, suddenly, he was on his feet,
eyes wide. From the two long, coffin-
like liquid baths, there arose two per-
fect specimens of the Homo sapiens.
Man and woman, they were, and they
blinked their eyes in the light of the
noonday sun, raised themselves drip-
ping from the baths of their creation
and stepped to the floor before Kiron.

The man spoke, the woman re-
mained silent.

“I am Adam Two,” he said. “Cre-
ated, by you Kiron from a formula
they left, in their image. I was cre-
ated to be a Master and she whom you
also have created is to be my wife.
We shall mate and the race of Man
shall be reborn through us and others
whom I shall help you create.”

The Man halted at the last declara-
tion he intoned and walked smilingly
toward the woman who stepped into
his open arms returning his smile.

Kiron smiled too within his pump-
ing heart. The words the Man had in-
toned had been placed in his still
pregnable mind by the tele-teach
phones and record that the last Master
had prepared before death had halted
his experiments. The actions of the
Man toward the Woman, Kiron knew,
was caused by the natural con-
stituents that went to form his chem-
ical body and govern hie human-
ness. .

He, Kiron, had created a living man
and woman. The Masters lived again
because of him. They would sing and
play and again people the mag-
nificent crysolite city because he loved
them and had kept on until success
had been his. But then why not such
a turnabout? Hadn’t they, The Mas-
ters, created him a superb, thinking
robot?

THE DOOR TO TOMORROW

^">AN you imagine the thrill that possessed the Wright brothers when
on a carefully selected day in 1903, they accomplished the first power-
driven flight by plane? There is something so tremendous hinging on one
breathless minute that we can scarcely conceive how they must have felt.

Today that thrill still lives when men take wing — but it is different,
for it is a thrill of certainty and confidence, and surety of flight. Yet each
day, each month, each year brings new triumphs in the air. Nations that
built vast fleets of planes found them obsolete, slow, outmoded and useless,
two years later. New speeds, new altitudes, new powers had been attained in
'he air.

And the tide rolls on as inexorably as the earth moves in its spiralled
orbit about the sun. Earth, a tiny planet, a green globe with a single
lifeless satellite, has seen civilizations rise and fall — yet each has risen to
a greater height than the one before.

And we today are a part of a great force blasting a way into the future
with words! Our imaginative tales of the future pictured advance after
advance before it came; and the turning of imagination into accomplish-
ment is no more strange than the discovery of Sulfanilimide in medical
circles. Deadly poison fulminates into curative — unsuspected for centuries;
a chemical wonder as great as the wildest imageries of science-fiction.

Unbelievable? Not if it is true science-fiction. Unaccomplished, yes, but
not unbelievable — for much of it will one day be accomplished fact.

So it is with a feeling of confidence inspired by surety that we come
to you with this new issue of COMET. At last our wings are tapered to
new speeds, our aelerons hinged to new efficiencies for today. Not for
tomorrow of course ! Tomorrow there will be new speeds, new altitudes.
Those of you who have followed every issue up to now will recognize the
fact that COMET is not static or conventional. It is interesting because it
is freshly new in its thought presentations issue after issue after issue.
And the next issue will maintain the pace, and the next, and the next
because the knowledge of today opens the way to new discoveries tomorrow.

—THE EDITOR.

123

Dr. Smith Explains
“Inertialesa Collisions”

Dear Readers : —

Some of you may have read my “Lens-
man” stories. If so, you will recognize the
universe of “Vortex Blaster.” I used that
universe deliberately ; because I like it. Ever
since the “Skylark” I have been experiment-
ing with the Cosmos; changing it a little
here and there, until finally I have it ar-
ranged to suit.

“Having it, why not keep it?” I asks my-
self, and “Why not, indeed?” myself replies
— so here we are.

In one way, however, difficulties arose. In
any short story explanations must be cut
to the bone ; yet the universe of the Lensmen
is no easy dose for a neweomer to swallow
unexplained. Furthermore, those of you who
are already familiar with the concepts in-
volved would resent the necessarily repeti-
tive explanations; yet those of you to whom
the things are brand-new would with equal
justice resent the presence of such entirely
unorthodox mechanics without an explana-
tion. What to do?

After considerable thought Mr. Tremaine
and I decided to cut the explanations in the
story itself to an absolute minimum, but
to put a couple of the most needful here in
“Rocket Mail.”

A scientist of the future, Dr. Bergenholm,
discovered how to neutralize the inertia of
matter. This concept was not original with
me — I got it in 1912 from no less an austere
scientist than old Bigelow himself — then
head of the Department of Chemistry at the
University of Michigan. According to him, it

was strictly theoretically possible, even ’way
back in those pre-Uranium-285 days.

Vessels in the inertialess, or “free” state
are not limited to the velocity of light, but
assume instantaneously the velocity at which
the friction of the medium exactly equals
the force of the driving thrust. It is axio-
matic that an inertialess vessel cannot be
harmed by any possible collision, as it sim-
ply assumes instantaneously and without
any shock the velocity possessed by the inert
body with whieh it comes in contact. And
so on — the Bergenholm neutralizes inertia
COMPLETELY.

However, no energy is either gained or
lost, and we do not get something for noth-
ing. The Bergenholm generates, not power,
but a FORCE which makes all matter with-
in its volume of action inertialess. But it
takes a prodigious amount of power to run
the Bergenholm, and in the instant of cessa-
tion of action of the neutralizing force, the
matter which has been constrained to re-
main inertialess resumes instantaneously
the exact velocity, both in magnitude and
direction, which it had in the instant of
going free.

Thus, a free vessel always has an “in-
trinsic” velocity — that which it had imme-
diately before becoming inertialess and
which it will have again in the instant it
next becomes inert. To all my pilots this
“intrinsic” velocity is an extremely im-
portant thing indeed.

This explains the “motionless collision”
which finishes knocking out Neal Cloud when
he lands his flitter free and then inerts her
on the ground. He should have inerted her
in the air, but he couldn’t — he had to land

1941

ROCKET MAIL

125

her fre» She was motionless, so was the
ground — but when Cloud cut his Bergenholm
the flitter resumed the inert velocity she
had had in the. air over the crater, and
the result was the same crash that would
have ensued had he driven her into the
ground at that original speed and angle.

I tried to work in a little more explana-
tion of that crash in the story proper, but
it couldn’t be done. No matter how I worded
it, any more than the few lines I allowed
myself made the story drag — and I do- not
like stories that drag!

As it is, it balances — I hope. I also hope
that I have made things clear in this ex-
planatory note. If not, I apologize, and' will
try to clear up any remaining obscure points
if you will be kind enough to tell either
Tremaine or me what they are.

Cordially yours,

Edward E. Smith, Ph.B.

Mooberry Wants to Pitch!

Gentlemen : —

This is the first and I hope last letter of
comment, that I have or will ever write,
but truly I am all burned up.

I have been reading S.F. since the days of
the Flying Ring, published in the Post, in
’14 or ’16, and never to my knowledge have
I had the bad luck to find sueh a mess of
gibberish in one issue of a “Quickie” as I
found in your Mareh issue.

You have a good sounding roster of au-
thors, but I guess it’s their turn to: be full
of Cosmic Gas. The only story in the book
that was worth reading was the “Healing
Rays in Space,” and even Brother Haggard
slipped a couple of times, with illogical
angles — “strong sunlight beyond the last
planet,” etc

I am, and always will be addicted to
gambling my time reading magazines that
I discover on racks, while searching for new
issues of the regulars — I found the “Black
Plane" in this manner.

I guess that all magazines have to go
through the growing pain stage, because I
remember that I skipped “ Amazing ” for a
couple of years waiting for them to “grow
up.”

It seems to me that I ran into this dodo,
“Lee Garth” once before “burning news-
papers on a corner in San Francisco,” and
after many pages of— “Iridescent globes of
(now get this) RAVENING POWER ” he
took off for Mars on a bolt of Iridescent
Lightning, leaving behind “a bottomless pit
where once stood one erf Colorado's mightiest
mountains.”

I can write that same story in five lines —
(Dark Reality)..

Two millyun yars, an’ all was still,
’Cept way up high upon a hill,

A Dorg yped upward at the stars,
That’s all there be,

In two millyun yars!!

At least the above makes sense. (At least
Mr. Moore left the pointers off the tower,
this time.)

Now look fellers, if you’re havin’ trouble
finding material to round out your maga-
zine, I’ll get back in harness and pitch a
couple of FIRSTS your way. “It’s the hook
in my nose that makes me ask, what are
your rates for acceptable material — NO
XIDDIN’.”

Let’s have better stuff in the future.
Sincerely,

Lyle N. Mogrerry,

136 North First St.,
Klamath Falls, Oregon.

Real Praise t

Dear Mr, Tremaine : —

Thanks a lot for your latest letter. I sure
appreciate any news on Comet. Glad you
have secured “Skylark” Smith. You really
get the big ones! Now your only goal is
A. Merritt, but I guess that’s asking too
much.

The March Comet, I’m pleased to say, was
very much colossal! You have gained that
distinctive flavor the old Astounding had.
Incidentally, it was one of your early
Astounding’s that started, and kept me,
reading STF. You published more classics
than any mag. I know of.

Topping this issue, as was expected, is
“The Immortal.” You didn’t exaggerate a bit
in the blurbs. “Dark Reality” is just about
the best thing Williams has done to date. It
really had something, “atmosphere,” I’d call
it. MORE, MORE. Williamson’s masterpiece
lived up to every expectation. Though I
figured out the mystery of the hailstones
from the beginning, it was still super. &
Coblentz! & Haggard! MORE.

You really are going great guns; keep up
the swell work.

One thing that baffles me is your lack of
ads. How do you do it? Keep it up, by all
means, if you can.

The cover drawing had an indefinite some-
thing that got me. I have never liked a Morey
cover, till this one. Short-short department
— ultra! Keep the cover the way it is what-
ever you do. No lettering on the drawing,
please!

Good luck.

.Very cordially,

Tom Wright,

1140 Bush Avenue*
Martinez, Calif.

126

COMET July

Asimov to Brown
Dear Mr. Tremaine:

Mr. Sylvester Brown, Jr., of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, is hereby warned in a spirit
of utter kindliness that the last three people
who addressed me by that foul epithet
“Asenion” met horrible deaths. The police
are still searching for the bodies, because
they don’t know I used my own patent
atomic disintegrator. The good thing about
the disintegrator is that it leaves no corpus
delicti and without that they can’t touch me.
That is just a reminder, Mr. Brown.

Also, I am gradually becoming enraged
competing with myself, by writing letters
better than my stories. I don’t mind hav-
ing people say “Asimov is good, but Eugene
O’Neill is better!” I am essentially a modest
person and disparaging comparisons with
Sinclair Lewis are met with humble mien
and downcast brow. I smile bravely through
my tears and admit with a sigh, “Yes, per-
haps Joseph Steinbeck does surpass me
slightly — so far.”

But, damn it, when I have to go around
competing with myself, by writing letters
which people claim are better than my
stories (not so much intending to compli-
ment my letters either), I balk. Flesh and
blood are flesh and blood and too much is
too much.

I know what I’m going to do. I’m going
to start writing punk letters. I shall misspell
my words. I shall split infinitives. I shall
dangle my participles. I shall perform prodi-
gies of grammatical horrors. And then peo-
ple will write in to editors and say: “Dear
Sir, I have just read Mr. Asimov’s ‘Planet of
Putrescence’ and must say that although
it is easily the worst story in the issue, it is
far better than the letter by him that ap-
pears in the same issue.”

What more can an author ask? (At that
I can think of a few more things — such as
myriads of sales and fat bonuses, but can
one have everything?)

Well, as long as I’m here at my typewriter
I ought to say a few words about the fourth
issue of Comet. The story I liked best in
the issue was Binder’s “We Are One.” It’s a
curious coincidence but in three of the first
four issues of Comet a Binder story ap-
peared, and each time I stamped it as most
enjoyable in the issue. That’s pretty good.
In fact, that’s damned good.

Also, I am panting heavily with excite-
ment while waiting for E. E. Smith’s novelet
in the next issue. I order you to see to it
that future stories of the series be printed
in consecutive issues for an indefinite period.
If Smith refuses to write that fast, give him
a shot of adrenalin, or argue his boss into

firing him — so that he can have more time
.to write.

Sincerely yours,

Isaac Asimov,

174 Windsor Place,
Brooklyn, N. Y.

S-F Likes to Do the Impossible!

Dear Mr. Tremaine :

I am not writing this with any expecta-
tions of seeing this in print — I don’t, it is
practically an impossibility. But they say
an editor usually reads the fans’ mail, and
so I am writing this anyway.

Today is the first opportunity I have had
to peruse Comet. On the side of town I live
on, we never see any Comets anywhere, and
it was just by chance that I happened to
pick up the January issue.

You have a magazine here, and a good
one. The editorial was read with interest,
and was the best bit in the issue. I am happy
to see that you do not shout about CMT
being the “finest you can get” and that it
is “outclassing the ether magazines” to such
an extent that they are lost, as certain other
editors .... pardon me, as a CERTAIN
other editor I know of does (guess who).
The Editor’s Notebook is something that
every magazine should have, but most of
them don’t, unfortunately. I have heard that
you are about the squarest editor in fandom
(via SSP and others) and now I must be-
lieve it. In what other magazine do we see
the editor actually following all that his
readers demand? You, sir, actually outdo
yourself to please, it seems. By the by, you
should not have said that you would welcome
shorts from newcomers to writing — 1 am
soon to plague you with one — so PREPARE !

Letters interesting enough. I like com-
ments the way they are.

The Spacean is good. The stories could
stand improvement, and plenty. But as I say,
I have only the second issue .... they
probably have improved. No need to say
good luck — you have it — and it isn’t luck.
Sincerely,

Philip "A. Schumann,

Editor, Centaur and Frontier,
2767 N. 41st Street,

Milwaukee, Wise.

SO-SO

Dear Mr. Tremaine:

Hurray, Hurray! ! ! !At last an issue worth
looking at twice. Volume I, No. 3, had every-
thing but a cover and interior illustrations.
“Star of Dreams,” “Healing Rays in Space,”
“The Immortal,” “Headhunters of Nu-
america,” and “Cosmic Tragedy” in that
order, were all a good crop of Science
Fiction.

1941 ROCKfT MAIL 127

But alas, with such a splendid oppor-
tunity for a neat, little- cover drawing you
stick Morey out there with a cover which
only vaguely resembles any of the stories.
If I remember correctly, the girl 1 didn't see
him until after he entered the ship, but
there she is, staring him right square in
the face.

Glanz, Mirando and Forte are only fair in
the art department; while Giunta, Kyle and
Taurasi are positively rotten.

Short Story Department and Rocket Mail
are good departments but The Spacean id a
waste of time and space, (There’s a sem-
blance of a pun around there somewhere.)

Twenty cents is a lot of money for a pulp
mag. ; so remember, there’s always room for
improvement. Wishing you the best of luck
and good material.

Clifford Coleman,
S59 Center Street,
West Haven, Conn.

Well, I liked “The Immortal” too!- — F.Q.T.

Dear Mr. Tremaine :

If you keep on at the rate you are going
now I’ll soon, have to cut a hole in the roof
over my graph of the S-F mags. The first
issue was quite good, the second a bit better
and now the third shows a great jump in
the general quality of the mag. “The Im-
mortal” is a truly great story, it perhaps
equals Rocklynne’s “Water for Mars.” “Star
of Dreams” is a typical Williamson yarn
and he is almost always good. “The Psycho-
logical Regulator” was a good story with an
old-time atmosphere. Coblentz has always
been popular with me and “Headhunter of
Nuamerica” is a good example of his work.
Rather timely, too. Selective Decapitation
Draft — heh-heh.

“The Spacean” seems a bit childish but
it is an idea, at that. Haggard did a pretty
good job with his yarn. “Dark Reality”
speaks volumes for your editorial ability.
Williams, usually a factory for stinkeroos,
turned out a better than average yarn. “Lie
on the Beam” and the shorts were OK. I
like the eover plan with no printing on the
picture. Please, let’s have Bold again.

Martin Alger,

Box 520,

Mackinaw City, Michigan.

Mirando in the Army

Dear Mr. Tremaine:

May issue of Comet received and read
and enjoyed-. The classic of this issue is “The
Facts of Life,” by P. Schuyler Miller. I
haven’t had such a kick reading a story
since you were editing Astounding, In my
opinion “The Facts of Life” is the first
“true” classic of Comet. I’m looking for
more in future issues!

The cover by Paul was super swell, the
best you’ve had to date. When it comes to
putting STF in a drawing, Paul is the
man for it. You should have Paul on every
cover and do quite a bit of your inside work.
Mirando is picking up swell, though he
should not use the peneil shading, as your
paper does not take it right. (The same goes
for Forte!) Too bad Mirando had to go
in the U. S. Army. I don’t imagine he will
be doing any drawing for quite a spell.
Where is Giunta? He was coming along
swell. Maybe you’ll use him now that
Mirando is gone!

I’d like to inform your readers again of
my amateur magazine, Cosmic Tales. The
April-May-June issue is now out. H. P.
Lovecraft, Sam Moskowitz and Thos. S.
Gardner have fiction in this issue. Frank R.
Paul has done the cover. Giunta and Taurasi
have done the inside illustrations. Sixteen
pages mimeographed. Starting with the
July issue Cosmic Tales will be published
monthly. Fiction and illustrations by the
best - in the pro and fan field. Try a copy!

When ! OH, WHEN are you going month-
ly ! Bi-monthly I still no like ! H !

Sincerely yours,

Jamss V. Taurasi,
Cometeer,

137-07 32nd Avenue,
Flushing, New York.

P.S. : On to Denver for the Denventionl

Asimov is on the schedule.

Dear Mr. Tremaine:

I was worried for a while because I
thought that I had missed an issue of Comet,
but I see now that such is not the case.
The March issue arrived just five days ago,
and I can assure you that I lost no time in
purchasing it. Morey’s cover wasn’t quite
up to snuff this time, but I always like
those purples of his. How about more in-
terior work by Morey? Sorry you didn’t have
more pics by Mirando. He’s your best on
interior work right now. Forte was better
this time, but Giunta fell horribly. Worst
I’ve ever seen by him. Glad to see you have
Kyle, although his work for you wasn’t as
good as he can do. Glantz and Taurasi
promise to turn out well.

Now, of course, we come to the stories.
I guess you’ve improved, because I can't
tell which is best. Three seem to share equal
honors. At this point you jump up and
shout vociferously, “You’re crazy! ‘The
Immortal’ had to be the best. It was a classic
(weakly) wasn’t it?” I’m afraid you’re
wrong this time. It wasn’t a classic. “The
Immortal,” “Quietus,” “Into the Darkness”
and perhaps one or two others have been
near-classics, but there is something about

128

COMET

July

them that keeps them from being true
classics. I think that “Quietus” is the near-
est. The other two stories are “The Star of
Dreams,” and “Dark Reality.”

“The Star of Dreams” would very proba-
bly have been poor if it had been written by
anyone but Williamson. He hauled it
through. “Dark Reality” was one of Robert
Moore Williams’ best stories yet. It was
pretty poor in some spots along at the last.
The way he handled the idea was very in-
triguing, however.

Second honors go to “Lie on the Beam.”
Why in the heck did you stick such a swell
yarn ’way back at the last of the issue? The
rest of the stories were just fair. Short
Shorts improved over the last bunch.

Say, maybe my eyes are playing tricks
on me, or did I actually see an announce-
ment that you’re going to have a short by
E. E. Smith? I did? Hooray!! Also very
glad to see that the May issue will have
a story by P. Schuyler Miller. Here’s hop-
ing it’s one of those well written, fascinat-
ing yarns he’s capable of turning out.
Haven’t seen a good one by him in some,
time.

About your request for more readers. I’ll
see what can be done about it, but I don’t
think it will be much as far as my end
of town is concerned. In the first place,
there’s only one store here in Irvington that

handles the Comet, and then it’s only one
copy (which I buy), so that doesn’t help
matters any. The second, and more im-
portant reason, is that ’most everyone
around here has the wrong idea about sci-
ence fiction. Some time ago I was bitten
by the collection bug, and I started laying r
my hands on every science fiction mag I
could. Then a couple of months ago a friend
of mine started rumors that I collected
“Breezy Stories,” if you get what I mean.
Despite my vehement protests, I find that
the rumor is still in vogue. And even those
who knows that they are “Breezy Stories”
think that I must be crazy to read “such
trash.” They actually seem to look on me
with something like pity. Furthermore, they
all seem to have the idea that all science
fiction is hack writing. Try as I may, I can’t
talk them out of those convictions, I have
only known two persons who would admit
that they read such stuff, and they weren’t
regular readers. Perhaps that gives you
some idea of what I’m up against.

Now a few requests. Illustrations by JEron
and, if possible, Dold. Stories by Asimov,
Bester and De Camp. You might also try
Gottesman. You can herewith chalk up a
plea for an enlarged Rocket Mail.

Leonard Marlow,

6809 Beechwood Ave.,
Indianapolis, Ind.

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