THE SPACE BEYOND -- John W. Campbell, Jr. 

Edited by Roger ElwoodIntroduction by Isaac AsimovAfterword by George Zebrowski 

BIG, BIG, BIGby Isaac Asimov 

The thing about John Campbell is that he liked things big. He liked big menwith big ideas working out big applications of their big theories. And heliked it fast. His big men built big weapons within days; weapons that were,
moreover, without se"ous shortcomings, or at least, with no shortcomings thatcould not be corrected as follows: "Hmm, something's wrong-oh, I see-ofcourse." Then, in two hours, something would be jerry-built to fix the jerrybuilt 
device. 

-The big applications were, usually, in the form of big weapons to fight bigwars on tremendous scales. Part of it was, of course, Campbell's consciousattempt to imitate and surpass Edward E. ("Doc") Smith. The world-shaking,
escalating conflicts in Campbell's stories, as in The Space Beyond in thiscollection, is a reflection of the escalating conflict on the printed pagebetween John and Doc. 
A great deal of Campbell's science is sheer gobble-dygook that you must nottake seriously. You have to read it as a foreign language that the charactersunderstand and for which the action and the astronomical background serve as atranslation. 
In some places, Campbell is deliberately and bullheaded-ly wrong and one cannever be sure whether he actually believes the nonsense, or whether he isdoing it just to irritate and provoke his readers into thinking hard.
In the December 1934 Astounding Stories, John Campbell, writing under thepseudonym, Karl van Campen, published "The Irrelevant," hi which the heroeswere rescued from a deadly interplanetary dilemma by workingout a method for creating energy out of nothing. In this way, they defied thelaw of conservation of energy which, it can be argued, is the most fundamentallaw of the universe. 
Campbell did this by arguing that the quantity of energy produced by a changein velocity was different according to the frame of reference you chose forit, and that by switching from one frame to another you could create moreenergy than you consumed.
This is dead wrong. I won't argue the reasons here because I don't want tostart a controversy. The argument that began with "The Irrelevant" continuedin the letter columns of Astounding for an incredible length of time, withCampbell (always writing letters under the name of Karl van Campen)
maintaining his views against all attacks-as in later years, he wouldmaintain, with equal unswerving vigor, all attacks against his equallyindefensible views in favor of dianoetics the Hieronymus machine, the Deandrive, and so on. He might stop arguing points and allow them to drop intooblivion, but he would never openly admit he was wrong.
"The Irrelevant" was the only story that John ever published under the vanCampen pseudonym, but Marooned was a sort of never-published (till now) sequelunder the same pseudonym, and it made use, in the end, of the same fallacy ofa broken law of conservation of energy. I don't even feel guilty about givingaway the climax in that story because I don't want anyone to be fooled by it.
It doesn't work. You have been warnedl 
Yet, on the other hand, John's incredibly vivid imagination would sometimesstrike gold and would inspire other writers into striking gold also. The greatwriters of the Golden Age in Astounding were more Campbell than themselves. I 

admit, freely and frequently, that this was so in my case. Other writers areperhaps more reluctant to do so.
Campbell's hand is, I believe, quite obvious in the early work of the greatestof all writers of the Golden Age, Robert A. Heinlein. All, included hi thisvolume, became "Sixth Column" by Heinlein, published under the pseudonym ofAnson MacDonald, hi the January, February, and March 1941 issues ofAstounding.
The example of Campbell's golden prescience that struck me most forcibly inthe stories of this collection occurs in The Space Beyond. There, Campbellmentions that lithium bombarded with protons gives off alpha particles andthat beryllium bombarded with alpha particles gives off protons and that thetwo mixed together can keep each other going in a "self-maintaining atomicexplosion."
Actually, this is not so. It takes a high-energy proton to initiate thelithium reaction and beryllium releases low-energy protons; at any rate,
protons with too low an energy to break down the lithium. And the same is truein reverse for the alpha particles.
Nevertheless, the suggestion is remarkable. It was made in the mid-thirtiesand surely not many people were then thinking of the possibility of a nuclearchain reaction, which is what Campbell was suggesting. Eventually, not manyyears after The Space Beyond was written, a practical nuclear chain reactionwas discovered, that of uranium fission. It was practical precisely because itworked under the impetus of tow-energy neutrons.
Campbell's brightness in seeing the importance of the nuclear chain reactionmay well explain the most remarkable of his predictive visions. During WorldWar II, he kept insisting that nuclear power would be developed before thewar's end. Once he heard of the discovery of uranium fission, hisunderstanding of nuclear chain reactions made the atomic bomb seem to him anatural consequence. This was also true for the physicist, Leo Szilard, butfor practically no one else.
Campbell went on to inspire a series of stories by other authors on thesubject of power through uranium fission, the most notable being "BlowupsHappen" by Robert A. Heinlein, "Nerves" by Lester del Rey, and "Deadline" byCleve Cartmill. (These all appeared in Astounding, in the September 1940,
September 1942, and March 1944 issues respectively.)
Campbell was eventually investigated by a suspicious American government forknowing too much, but it was easy for him to demonstrate that he didn't knowtoo much -it was the world that knew too little. 
With characteristic cosmic-optimism, Campbell carried nuclear power forward toits extremes without ever considering its danger. To control nuclear powermeant, toMm in All, the ability to cure disease miraculously; although, alas, thereality has shown us that radiation is the most deadly potential producer ofdisease the world has ever known. 
In fact, there is a peculiar blind spot in prediction that affects us all,
even Campbell. One sees the extrapolations of the present in a straight-lineway. One misses the surprises.
In All, Campbell lists the few chemical specifics humanity had developed bythe early 1930s and moves directly forward to nuclear panaceas-without everforeseeing the antibiotics. And yet, I distinctly remember sitting with him inhis office once, before antibiotics had been discovered, and listening to himtell me that since almost all pathogenic bacteria were destroyed in the soil,
there must be substances in soil bacteria that would destroy harmful germs andcure disease. 
In a way, Campbell's vision of nuclear power was self-defeating. Lured by hissuccess there, he went on to attempt to lead the way into a morass of semi-
mystical pathways, through psi and related subjects, from which he never 


entirely emerged.
Campbell's love of bigness showed itself at its most glamorous and remarkablein his tendency to describe astronomical bodies of the largest variety indramatic but utterly realistic prose. It is here, for instance, that he shinesin The Space Beyond and in Marooned.
But there, Campbell was, at times, betrayed. In the forty years since thesestories were written, astronomy has made strides (thanks to radio telescopesand planetary probes) that not even Campbell could have foreseen, and theresult has been to dwarf even the most liberal imaginations of earliergenerations.
Campbell describes the super-giant stars vividly and beautifully in The SpaceBeyond and, indeed, they steal the show in that novelette. Making themCepheids adds to the supernal glory (even though Campbell has the notion, itseems, that the more massive a Cepheid the shorter its period, when it is thereverse that is true).
However, no such super-star could exist by modern notions-or, indeed, by theastronomical notions of the time at which the story was written. In the 1920s,
Arthur 

S. Eddington advanced the mass-luminosity law which made it quite dear thatstars very much more massive than our Sun could not exist. The radiationpressure from within would cause them to explode at once. In the case of astar as large as those Campbell describes, the result would be an immediatesupernova.
Furthermore, even if a star as massive as Campbell's super-giants could beimagined to hang together, thb rate of consumption of hydrogen fuel that wouldbe required to keep it glowing at its incredible level would probably drag itthrough its entire stay in the main sequence for a hundred thousand years. Itwould only be during that stay that planets could form and evolve in a fashionthat would produce life" as we know it and if they had formed when the staritself had (at the appropriately colossal distance), there would simply havebeen no time for the planet to evolve any life at aM, to say nothing ofadvanced intelligences.
Imagine what Campbell could have done had he been able to write the story ageneration later. In place of such super-giant stars, even groups of them, hecould have had a quasar-an entire galactic center of millions of starsinteracting in some fashion to form something as far beyond a star as a staris beyond a planet.
Or he could have imagined his stars collapsing (as they would surely havedone) into black holes. Given an area in space where there were black holes bythe dozens, whatever problems would have arisen, as sure as Campbell wasCampbell, they would have been solved.
Or perhaps, he would have had his environment filled with a white hole-thatarea in space where the matter endlessly pushing into a black hole somewhereelse is emerging hi great gouts of radiating energy. Perhaps a quasar is awhite hole and he could have combined concepts and driven through space andtime by using the cosmic ferry of a black hole.
And if, since these stories were written, our knowledge of the Universe hasincreased a thousandfold, our knowledge of our own Solar system has beenrefined ten-thousandfold. We have mapped, in detail, the hidden side of theMoon, and men have stood upon our satellite's surface. Unmanned probes havelanded on Mars and Venus,
and the surfaces of Mars and Mercury have been mapped in detail, as well asthose of the tiny Martian satellites, Phobos and Deimos. Jupiter has been seenat short distances, and a probe is gliding its way to Saturn even as I write.
How does Marooned seem in the light of all this?
We-must begin by forgetting about "synthium" that beautiful example of onemainstay of early science fiction-the wonder-metal. Element 101 has indeed 

been discovered since Campbell wrote Marooned but it is named mendelevium andit is unstable, as are all elements beyond atomic number 83. Even if it werestable, we know what its properties would be like, and they would be nothinglike those of synthium. In fact, the properties of no conceivable metal in thereal world would be like those of synthium.
Next, there is another old standby-the difficulty of getting past the asteriodbelt. I used that one myself in my very first published story "Marooned OffVesta." The asteroid belt, however, is a paper tiger. The material in it isstrewn so widely over so vast a volume that any spaceship going through it isnot at all likely to see anything of visible size. The Jupiter-probes, Pioneer10 and Pioneer 11, went through without trouble and detected less dust thanhad been expected.
Still a third commonplace of science fiction was its tendency toward water-
oxygen chauvinism. Almost every world encountered in science fiction storieshad its water ocean and its oxygen atmosphere.
Campbell needed an atmosphere for Ganymede, so he gave it one, but I think heknew better. Any gases in the vicinity of that satellite exist only in traces.
However, Campbell was probably correct in placing quantities of ice on itssurface. The low density of Ganymede and of its sister-world Callisto make thepresence of such materials very likely. Campbell makes the ices those of waterand carbon dioxide. It is likely, however, that frozen •ammonia is thererather than frozen carbon dioxide. 
And what about Jupiter? Campbell suggests that this could only be exploredwith something like synthium since without it, ships could not pass theasteroid belt and could not even penetrate to the depths of Earth's own ocean.
Not so, for within a quarter-century after thestory had been written, not only had the asteroid belt been shorn of itsterrors, but human beings had made it down to the deepest abyss of the oceanin bathyscaphes-and without synthium.
But Jupiter itself is a harder nut, and Campbell portrays its giantintractable nature gloriously well. He is wrong in details, inevitably. Hedescribes its atmosphere as mostly nitrogen and water with helium and "somehydrogen." Later on, he describes the hydrogen content as "a minute trace" andplaces a rather larger quantity of free oxygen there.
Undoubtedly, there is water in the Jovian atmosphere; it has been detected. Sohas helium been detected, but not nitrogen, and certainly not oxygen. Ammoniaand methane, which Campfoell doesn't mention, are present, but the majorcomponent is hydrogen. In fact, all of Jupiter is at least 90 percenthydrogen, mostly in the liquid form.
Campbell correctly assumes there is a greenhouse effect in Jupiter'satmosphere; that solar radiation is trapped and that the temperature is higherthan it might otherwise be. But he has his heroes in the arctic zone where hedescribes it as fiercely cold.
Thanks to Jupiter-probe data, gathered in 1974, however, we believe that thetemperature of Jupiter rises steadily as one penetrates the atmosphere. Sixhundred miles below the cloud layer, the temperature is already 3600 C. Itseems quite likely that by the time the ship had penetrated to a depth atwhich the atmosphere had become dense enough to resist further penetration,
the problem would be heat and not cold.
But what's the difference? Whenever a story is placed at the edge of scienceas it is known at the time, and whenever the author allows his imagination tosteer him forward as. best it can, making intelligent or dramaticextrapolations-the advance of real science is bound to outmode him in spots.
This must be accepted, and to be wise after the event, as I have been here, orto shine in 'hindsight, as I do, is of no significance.
The question is this: Were Campbell's extrapolations, whether right or wrong,
nevertheless intelligent and dramatic? And the answer is: A thousand times, 


yes!
Campbell might be outwritten by many others, in and out of science fiction, in
terms of characterization, plot, and dialog, but no one ever outdid him in
visualizing the grandeur of the Universe. 


MAROONED 


In August 2133, Robert Randall discovered synthium. He announced simply that
he had created element 101, which had, according to his modest report,
"unusually interesting properties." Since civilization has been based on
metals for the past seven thousand years, and syn-thium's "unusually
interesting properties" included such things as its unheard of (and, because
they had no machines at the time capable of determining it) undeter-minedly
great tensile strength, and its crystalline, transparent allotropic form with
a strength only slightly less, RandaU was most unnecessarily modest in his
claims. 
That was several years after the last expedition to Jupiter had been destroyed
by the customary meteor, and the last of Stephenson's three ships was
tastefully draped over an asteroid. Naturally there were half a dozen
expeditions trying to get the Interplanetary Committee's consent to a new
expedition. Bar Corliss had been trying patiently for four and a half years.
Jinimie Mattorn had been trying to get permission for-four of their "Explorer"
type ships. They'd been turned down regularly and with punctuality by the
Committee, because parium was the latest word in strong materials at the time-
something like two and a quarter million pounds to the square inch. Good, but
not good enough to stop a really determined meteor, of course-and most of
those found out Jupiter's way were very determined.
Then too, parium fuel tanks had a nasty habit of "failing" when one of the
overanxious explorers loaded a twenty-ton tank with thirty^seven tons.
All in all, Jupiter kept pretty much to himself. Only one ship got past the
asteroid belt-they couldn't dodge out of the plane of the ecliptic in those
days, because that meant taking more fuel for the dodging. Erickson did it He
fell back into the Minor Orbits some six years later, and the bodies of the
crew were retrieved by the tow-cruiser "Maximum," which pleased the widows to
some extent. 
But Randall's mild "unusual properties" hid a world
of high-explosive punch. Since all of the explorer's gang was looking for the
slightest thing in that line, undoubtedly they all read the line. Somewhere or
other, though, Bar Corliss had met Randall. He read the thing, and he suddenly
got a mental picture of Randall: a little sandy-haired man with pale-blue eyes
and a pale-sandy mustache, rather moth-eaten in appearance, slightly stained
by weather and his favorite pipe, wearing clothes apparently made by the
American Packaging Bag company, fitted by the oldest of tailors, Guess and
Gosh, and dyed by Laboratory Fumes. And he remembered him as the discoverer of
triconite-familiarly known as "tricky-nite" and described by him as a "rather
powerful explosive."
So Corliss wandered down to Pittsburgh and American Metals. Randall had a
piece of the stuff, paper thin and impossibly strong. Corliss looked at it,
and grunted. It was the early product, not the refined stuff they turn out
today, and it looked like a poorly tanned pig's hide with the measles. Randall
went into one of his quiet raptures about it, and tried to demonstrate its
strength. He was rather handicapped, because he'd already broken most of the
testing machines trying it out, and they hadn't built a new one yet. But
Corliss wasn't slow in getting the possibilities. Corliss had more money than 



he could spend then anyway, so he found out what American Metal's totalpossible production of synthium would be, and ordered it for the next sixmonths. 
Jimmie Mattorn got there two days later, and Nord-deutscher Rakete, two and ahalf later-they couldn't get in touch with their American representative. SoCorliss wasn't without competition on the thing. Norddeutscher, finding theycouldn't get more than a scrap of synthium from American Metals, bought Germanrights to the stuff, and wanted to start making it, and get a rocket underway.
Corliss was already moving.
That was probably why the things happened as they did. When Corliss built thatship, he hadn't the faintest idea of the strength he put in it, because hedidn't have the ghost of an idea of the strength of synthium. Besides, he hadcarefully drawn plans for a parium ship-four of them actually-and so he justmade them out of synthium instead. He did make a test tank, and broke down hispumps trying to break the tank. That was all he caredabout though, so he let it go. He was in too much of a faurry.
He'd probably have forgotten something in the rush if be hadn't planned on hisparium ships for so long. If he'd known how long he'd have for planningafterwards, he'd probably have spent less before. He certainly wouldn't •havebacked out. 
You can weld synthium-they could then. But you can't cut it with any saw, ortool. So the "Mercury" was slapped together in a remarkable hurry. Thesynthium plates had to be cast and heat-treated because Corliss wouldn't waitwhile rolls and machines were built of it to bend and work it. So he allowed a 
little extra size over his original parium blueprints-he found out two yearslater that cast and heat-treated synthium was stronger than rolled-and plowedahead. 
The Germans were at his heels all the way. But his crew-with plenty of moneyand no budget-got four ships together in slightly less time than the Germancrew did. They loaded them up so fast that they had to get some of theirsupplies at the terrific rates prevailing on old Luna.
But the Committee didn't know that; they saw four new ships, of a very strongmetal, with very strong fuel tanks of unusual capacity, and a remarkablydifferent course laid out that would take men around the asteroid belt- and 
the plans were stamped.
Automatically, they turned down the Norddeutscher people when they applied"until the success or failure of the present expedition has been determined."
The Norddeutscher people had a long wait. And then, of course, when Corliss'fate was settled they couldn't get approval of their ships, or, for thatmatter, any lupiter-bound ships. Corliss settled that for once and for allwith the result of his expedition. They couldn't have gotten men anyway,
probably, for none had the desire to have their ship christened "Mahomet'sCoffin" for so excellent a reason. 
Corliss got off Earth in May 2134. The Corliss Jupiter Expedition wasunderway. A fleet of four tiny ships, each of five-thousand-ton mass, eachlooking, with their raw, unpainted synthium, like a farmer-boy's unsuccessfuleffort toward a home-grown and tanned football, mottled with green and yellowand pink.
They were remarkable looking things, stubby, thick-bellied, and quite hideous,
with their weirdly-shaped wing-attachments sticking out forlornly at a brokenangle.
But they lifted off at ten A.M., May 17, 2134.
Bar Corliss looked at Brad Warren, second in command, with a sour, exaggeratedgrimace. "Great gang of planners we are," he commented.
Brad Warren grinned back at him. "Forget something, Bar?"
"Only a few minor things-like soap, and coffee extract and antiseptics. 


Nothing really important of course-" Bar chuckled. "Wouldn't the Norddeutschercrowd like to know that!" 
Brad gestured out the port toward the blinding light and the- sharp shadows ofLuna. Half a mile distant loomed the dome of Lunar Metals and Mines No. 3. 
"When do we break loose?" 
"Don't say the words," moaned Corliss. "Break loose, I mean. That's what theclerk in the L.M. and M. keeps saying. And, dear God, has he been breaking meloose. I've got to have the stuff. It's my own fault we haven't got it-and ishe 'breaking me loose' from plenty of cash. Only 22.50 a pound for coffeeextract. Only a dollar a cake for five-cent laundry soap. And as for the waterwe've got to have for fuel-!" Bar shook his head and looked piously upward.
"May God bless him-nobody else ever will."
Brad grinned without sympathy. "You knew it was coming on that score; how elsecould you get away from old Earth? Even when the famous 'Irrelevant' disprovedthe law of conservation of energy in interplanetary work, she didn't disprovethe fact that you needed a lot of kick to dimb away from Earth. We've stillgot to climb out most of the way from Earth, so far as gravity goes."
"Uhmmm-but considering they generate power here directly from sunlight in theDavison photocells, get their water by cooking out the water ofcrystallization of the deeper rocks, and have plenty, you'd think they couldsell it for less than thirty-two cents a gallon.
"What's the latest figures on water at Phobos? Interplanetary Minerals sentanything yet?"
"Uhm," said Brad. "It's down. It seems they found itwasn't selling well. Three and a half a gallon on Mars, and seventeen and aquarter on Phobos."
"That's not so stiff. It'll change, though, by the time we get there. And weneed tens of thousands of gallons of it!"
"Well, you still won't be broke," grinned Brad, "and you know damn well thekick you get out of this is worth it. Anyway-we lift off here any time you saynow. We're loaded with everything, I guess."
"Make it two hours then. That is-two hours and whatever more is needed for 
aligning of orbits and so forth. How long did you say we'd have to wait onPhobos?" 
"RandaU was very timely in his invention. Jupiter and Mars will be right, inabout three months. If we take off as you say, we ought to wait about threemonths, three days and four hours."
"It could be worse," sighed Bar.
Two hours, forty-seven minutes and thirty-three seconds later, the "Mercury"
and her escorting squadron of three ships got underway. Pale-blue flamesflared for a few seconds as they trembled, soundless in the vacuum of Moon'ssurface; then they rose in slow sweeps, rocketing upward, and away. They werevisible to the men watching in the protecting glass and steel of the L.M. and

M. company. But finally, they were lost in the haze of stars that obscuredalmost all the heavens, flaring brightly despite the glaring yellow sun.
The steady drone of the great rocket tubes of infusible tungovan grumbled andechoed and murmured to itself in the metal shells of the ships. The rocketswere mar-velously well-designed. There was little wasted energy here, andtherefore, little noise. Noise is the audible warning of waste energy. Theycould not afford wastage of the precious burden of fuel, so there was almostno noise, only the smooth, carefully engineered flow of gases rushing throughground, honed and polished rocket tubes, designed as nearly as possible forabsolute stream flow. 
To all new spacers, rocket tubes are flimsy-looking things. The metal is lessthan an eighth of an inch thick, flimsy, tinny in appearance. It would seemthat those incredibly powerful and light engines, rocket engines, wouldcertainly burst anything so slight. That again illustrates the refinements of 

rocket engineering. It is a well-knownfact that the greater the velocity of a fluid stream, the less the side-
pressure. Those tubes were designed for the greatest possible velocity,
naturally, and since that meant almost no side-pressure, tons of metal couldbe shaved from the rocket tubes. Only the great pressure blocks seemed, andwere, capable of resisting strain bracing the egg-shaped combustion chambers.
Hour after hour the tubes moaned and droned. They were running almost whitehot, but they were polished more carefully than the finest telescope mirrors,
and they were in vacuum jackets equally polished, so that almost no heatescaped from them-for heat, where it isn't wanted, is not only a nuisance, buta warning of inefficiency.
Presently, the song of the fuel pumps started. They had been feeding the tubeson the original pressure hi the tanks at first, but now this was falling. Purehydrogen and oxygen were 'being taken from the tanks at seven tons, pressure,
and stepped up to the necessary eight for efficient running in the tubes. Itwas a gas-but under that pressure, denser than water.
That might have warned them, had they stopped to think then. But it was ahastily conceived and carried out thing, throughout. They'd raced against timeall the way. When, after seven days they landed on Mars North City field withwings spread and the parachute air-brake spread to stop them, the ships neededrepair and final adjustment, so much so that the three-month wait on Mars wasno ordeal of monotony. There were plenty of trained mechanicians at Mars NorthCity to help them, and still it was more of an ordeal of labor. And stillthere wasn't any time for recalculation that might have stopped the expeditionthen and there. 
They loaded up with water-fuel-that is, hydrogen and oxygen gases, at MarsNorth City where the gases were cheap, and pulled out to Phobos running heavy.
They replaced the burned fuel there, and at last the "Mercury" and hercompanions pulled out on the real trip.
So far they had gone. This trip out to Mars and her moons was old, charted andlaid out by a pair of generations and more of space travel. Over a hundred andfifty years of exploration, over seventy years of commercial exploitation ofthe Minor Planets, and still no human being had passed beyond the magic ringof the Planetoids. 
You have seen a scale map of our system. You know the dimensions. Forty,
seventy, one hundred and one hundred-forty millions of miles are the orbits ofthe Minor Planets. Then-the Great Gulf. It's five hundred million to Jupiter,
nine hundred million to Saturn, a billion and three quarters to Uranus. Whenthe Lord made this system, he used two scales. Maybe he started out with one,
and didn't like the looks of the dinky little system he got -planets withdiameters measured in thousands of miles, orbits with diameters measured inmillions. Maybe he threw that scale away, and decided to start all over withsomething worth while. The dust specks he /had, he just forgot, and workedwith a scale reading hi billions instead of millions for the orbits, and heused tens of thousands of miles for planet diameters.
At any rate, there are two systems really, the Inner System, and the OuterSystem, and they're as different as two entirely strange systems might be.
Four, seven, ten and fourteen tens of millions for the Inner System. Four,
eight, seventeen, twenty-eight hundreds of millions for the Outer System.
The "Mercury" was trying to be the Messenger of the Gods, from the Lesser Godsto Mighty love. And she was the first ship that really stood a chance ofcrossing that gulf.
That's quite a hill, there between the Inner and Outer systems. Nearly fourhundred million miles-and every blasted mile of it uphill-with old Soldragging, dragging, dragging on the other end. Four hundred million miles ofuphill climb had stopped exploration for a hundred and fifty years and more.
The "Mercury" lifted off Phobos, with her train of three service ships, 


distinctly heavy. She staggered as she pulled loose of Mar's gravity. Then sheshifted into high for the climb. Hour after hour the tubes moaned. Then dayafter day they coasted, slowing their pace steadily as Sol pulled with hisinfinitely untiring grip to stop them. Then for more hours, the tubes dronedand hummed, and then they began to spit and bark unevenly, and the shipslurched and staggered like mad motes in a beam of light, skittering anddancing lest some unheeding, trundling rock, weighing perhaps a thousandquadrillion tons, brush them along with it.
And all day long and all night long, though the onlynight here was the nose of the ugly foot-ball thing they called a ship, therewas a steady rain of terrific, sharp pings as tiny, invisibly small planetoidscrashed against the synthium wall. They were going at almost the same speed-asspace speeds go-so the incredible, never-tested strength of synthium turnedthose shocks. They were going at almost the same speed-there wasn't much moredifference in their speed than the speed the mightiest shells of Man's armoryattained, about a mile and a half a second. But they were made of only plain,
high-grade nickel-steel armor-plating, the natural alloy of meteors, and theships were made of synthium.
So somehow, after three horrible days in there, the men took off theirspace^armor suits again, and gobbled a little food (they couldn't eat withthose suits on, of course) and then flopped down to rest.
And through the ships the steady, peaceful thrum and drone of the smoothlyworking tubes made sweet music to them. The soft regular chuck-shug-pssiii ofthe air circulators and the fuel pumps sounded steady and sweet.
For the "Mercury" was through the Magic Ring, and cruised at last hi thatterra incognita, the no-man's-land beyond the Inner System.
When sleep had restored them, their watches were sharp, sharper than everbefore. For they began to sense the difference. This space was different-itwas the Great Space, the space where things the size of Mars were satellites,
and gravitative control-fields of planets reached out thirty million miles. Itwas the Space of the Giants.
And day by day, the Sun. dwindled, grew tinier. And day by day they saw thepinpoint of Jupiter sweeping into position. Jupiter was huge-but this was theGreat Space. It was still a pinpoint to their eyes.
They let a bit of hydrogen into the vacuum surrounding the rocket tubes now,
so the shields weren't such good insulators, and they put a special soft blackpaint on the outside sheath, so radiation was better, and the ships began towarm up a bit.
And the sun dwindled four hundreds of millions of miles behind, and Jupiterbecame a respectable disc, an unchanging disc.
They shut off their rocket tubes then, because most of the fuel was gone. Infact, they had enough left to permit a landing on one of Jupiter's littlesatellites, and, by putting 
all the fuel in one ship, the smallest, enough to fall back to Earthsafely. But the ships began to get cold. Out there, a planet like Earth wouldhave a temperature in the neighborhood of two-hundred and thirty degrees belowzero. Those ships were well insulated-but they had to burn a good bit of fuelto permit life in them, even so.
Ill 
"Yes, I agree that Ganymede has an atmosphere," Bar argued tensely, "and thatit may be thick enough to permit us to halt almost entirely by atmosphericfriction instead of by rocket power-highly important saving of fuel of course.
But-Ganymede's only six hundred and sixty thousand from the surface of theblasted planet, and with the gravitative field Jup's got, that's no distance.
If we go in so far before we stop, we might not be able to get back at all, ifwe can't find water there." 
"But, Bar, we can save enough fuel by air-braking to a stop to permit us to 


pull out from that close approach with our little ship, if necessary."
"Uhmmmmm-maybe. I suppose we'd better. I know there's no real chance ofcollecting water on that chunk of rock called Number Nine, fifteen millionmiles out from Jupiter though it is." Then in sudden decisiveness, after amoment of thought, he said, "Shift'er over."
Brad turned to his calculated data, and presently the rocket tubes on one sidemoaned loudly, a driving acceleration came again as the weight-warning bellechoed dully through the ship. Bar Corliss was calling off figures into themicrophone, sending instructions to the three other ships, now within tenthousand miles of the "Mercury."
The Mercury turned, and the great disc of Jupiter shifted till it was morenearly straight ahead once more; almost directly before them, the tiny disc ofGanymede, three thousand two hundred miles in diameter, loomed. It was ringedwith a fat, bright ring, the halo of an atmosphere.
"That atmosphere must be pure hydrogen," said Corliss thoughtfully. "It's coldas the hinges of hades out there."
"Hydrogen, hell. That planet's too light to hold pure hydrogen with the tugand cross tug of old Jupiter down there. It's more likely something heavy anduseless like nitrogen."
"We'll know quick enough. We ought to get there in eighteen hours the wayJup's pulling us now."
The rockets were silent, yet the ships were moving fasterand faster. Mighty Jupiter was dragging at them. Slowly their course bent, andGanymede shifted across the windows till it was directly under the nose of theship. It was enlarging swiftly now-more and more swiftly. Slowly, slowlyJupiter's pull dragged the ship over till Ganymede passed the center spot ofthe windows, and hung off to the other side. The ship seemed destined to passbetween Ganymede and Jupiter. Then, the throw hesitated, as Ganymede began toloom; a great round moon, dimly silvered, it hung for a moment as it grewswiftly, and abruptly the ship was being pulled to the satellite. Ganymede'sgravity was greater than Jupiter's at last!
The thin bright ring of atmosphere expanded, the satellite grew till it seemedevident the ship would touch the atmospheric rim, and plow on.
"Wings," called Corliss at last. Motors hummed into action, and a slow gratingsqueal of gears and racks sounded in the ship. The rocket trembled to the pushof the motors. It was rotating slowly as the powerful collapsible wings thrustout. 
"Put her on high-lift angles, and throw out the airbrakes," suggested Brad. "Ithink we're a bit high. We'll need a lot of resistance in the first passage tocut our speed to an orbital velocity."
For an instant the rockets flared again, pushing the ships back into a pathcloser to the satellite. Then, soon, there came a thin high scream, the firstsound to penetrate the walls of the ship from the outside since the asteroidshad been passed, a scream so thin and cold and shrill the sleeping men wokeand joined the active watch. There was a new acceleration now, an accelerationdue not to the rockets, but to the great metal wings, spread and screaming inthe thin air outside, an acceleration actually that thrust them to the sideaway from the planet, for the wings, cutting the thin, thin air at more thanthree miles a second, were helping to hold the ship down to the planet wherethere was air to stop them, while behind, the great air-brake was tugging,
tugging to stop them.
They couldn't hold the planet the first circle, and swung up, away again,
falling out of the atmosphere as their grip on the thinning air weakened,
weakened, and finally broke.
But they'd broken their hyperbolic orbit to an extended ellipse, and turnedthe ship so their momentum fought not only Ganymede's strain, but mightyJupiter's as well. They were back in Ganymede's atmosphere hi two days, 


screaming through the thin fringes again, deeper this time, till the strain onthe wings became almost unbearable, and their angle of incidence was decreasedto nothing, and the air-brake cable screamed in thin-noted protest. Then,
their parabola rounding again, they started up-out toward space.
"Cut the wings in again," called Bar. The screaming of the air changed oncemore, and "weight" returned to them as the wings began the attempt to turn theship to the planet. Still the tremendous throw of their orbital speed washurling them up-up"
If we don't hold it this time," said Brad, "we'll have to stop on rockets.
The orbit's so broken now we'd fall right on into Jupiter. If we stop onrockets, we'll have to find water to get back home."
"Do you hear that creaking?" asked Bar softly. "We had to use steel gears andracks, you know. We couldn't cut synthium gearing. If we add another degree tothe angle of those wings they'll break those racks off."
The ships reeled slowly, they seemed to be turning, the "Mercury" echoed to astill thinner howl of air. Corliss advanced the angle of the wings a bit more,
let a bit more of the air-brake come into play. There was a terrificresistance back there-and a limit to what strain the ship could endure.
Suddenly Brad was making observations again. Swiftly he ran the figures into acalculator. "Bar-Bar," he called, "she's turning in now."
They couldn't fly an hour later, at less than 2,000 miles an hour, at theirhigh level, so they descended with the air-brake pulled in again. Gradually,
the rockets glided around the little world, around again, and slowly theysettled to the northern pole, landing finally at almost dead-rest on therocket blasts. 
The cold started to creep in then. The rockets were off. Ganymede they'd seenas a white planet, covered with barren, cold black rocks and shadows ofdeepest black, for the air was cold, colder than anything earth knew, andthere was a thin atmosphere but not enough for realdiffusion. And there were fields of unbroken whiteness, with a strange bluetint in them. 
It was the air, what had once been, perhaps, a dense atmosphere long sincefrozen. When they had settled down on that field of frozen cold, the ship hadhissed, and vapor rose in spurting streams. The ship chilled swiftly. Beforeit had been heated by the air friction. Now they began to know cold-real cold.
In an hour they were sleeping, all save a few on watch. Two hours later theywaked to the roar of the rockets as one of the companion ships landed nearby.
Then, one after the other, the two others landed. The Corliss Expedition wasencamped. Three of those ships were loaded almost solely with photocellequipment. Only the "Mercury" was really an expedition ship. Work was to beginnow. 
It was strange, the people who had applied for membership back on Earth, andthe qualifications they listed. A professional "strong-man," because he couldstand the heavy weight on Jupiter; another man, "because he loved adventure,"
and a professional guide in Africa and South America, "because he understoodwild country."
Tad Martin was one chosen, a little man with a heavy body, and fingers as longand slim and sensitive as a surgeon's, a ready grin and slightly-faded thatchof thin hair. Tad Martin was chosen because he had a sound constitution, anextremely cheerful personality; he was a born optimist, and he handled amonkey wrench and a pair of pliers with the genius Fritz Kreisler once usedwith a bow and a wooden box known as a violin. 
Tad Martin was a super-mechanic. His type is known as a mechanician, not amechanic, and calls itself "tinkerer."
Karl Thrumann went because he was a born optimist, and a chemist. He couldplay half a dozen different instruments, was a fairly good actor, and anexcellent raconteur. 


That's the type it takes in an expedition bound to be away from all humanityfor at least two years. Every one was an optimist. They had to be. But-
expeditions aren't adventure. They represent an unexampled amount ofextraordinarily hard, dreary work with the wrong tools in the wrong placesunder unfavorable conditions. Expeditions 
are largely made up of fine chemists peeling potatoes and expertphysicists washing clothes, of trained mechanicians fixing the plumbing, whichnever could be made right anyway, and, most of all, sitting and waiting.
Sitting and waiting to do something, anything at all.
It wasn't hard to find something to do at first. There were the great cellspacked hi the "Corliss I," "II," "III" and the "Mercury" to be set up. The sunwas weak here, and it was inconceivably cold, far far colder than night on theMoon, or even on Phobos or Deimos-. Not because the sun was so much weaker,
though that of course counted, but because there was not merely a lack of heatcoming in, but an actual withdrawal of heat by the cold substances, the frozengases, the almost-frozen atmosphere. Cold? No human had ever before known thelike. Why, on Luna, elsewhere hi empty, shadowed space they used rubber suits.
Here, a bit of rubber exposed to that air was as hard and brittle as so muchglass in twenty seconds. They used storage batteries to heat the suits on oldLuna. Storage batteries!
Men had to go out the first day of landing. They divided the time into "days"
and "weeks." Weeks was a sensible division, a natural one, because Ganymedere* volveJh^around Jupiter in almost exactly a week-seven days, three hoursand forty-two point two minutes to be exact. They set one of the chronometersto mark that week into sevenths, and worked on that basis. They had three anda half "days" of sunlight, and three and a half of darkness, except that,
having landed on the Jupiter face of the satellite, their days were broken bythe great shadow of the Titan of the System.
But explorers had to go out, and they went out hi the special suits providedfor them. They were made of woven asbestos, because that was both an insulatoragainst heat loss, and flexible. They were padded with powdered asbestosfibers, and covered finally by an inner lining of airtight, finest rubber,
impregnated in tough canvas. But between the layers of asbestos padding wereheated coils, not powered by any mere storage battery, but by the main powerlines of the ship, run by the powerful, light steam engines on board her.
Those engines were designed. The flames of hydrogen and oxygen gases, takenfrom the fuel tanks, ran the steam engines, by boiling water. They were onehundred 
percent efficient, because the energy that wasn't used in generating electricpower couldn't escape save as heat that warmed the vessels. The condenserswere nothing but radiators.
So there was plenty of electric power generated while the ships rested on thatcold, cold world.
They went out first to set up the sun-power cells. They were wonderfully lightthings-they weighed scarcely an ounce apiece because they were made of thattransparent form of synthium, the transparent allotropic form. Like alltransparent solids, synthium-beta, as it was known, was an insulator toelectric current. And they were wonderfully rugged and strong, despite theten-thousandth of an inch thickness of their walls. 
Rack after rack of them appeared, set in chronometer-driven frames mat keptthem always pointed toward the sun. The sun was weak here, horribly weak, yetstill it had power, and they had a great, great deal of area exposed. "CorlissI," "II" and "III" had been loaded almost exclusively with them. Those threeships were never intended to go back to Earth, nor to leave this system ofJupiter's.
It took a week to set them up. In the meantime, the chemist and geologicparties had been at work. They found some gypsum here, but didn't need its 


water of crystallization. They found water, ice. Ganymede was very light to
have much water, yet it had nearly as much as Mars had, for it was so very,
very cold here the water never got a chance to escape. And it was overlaid
almost everywhere by great masses of carbon dioxide.
Corliss stared when he saw their find. A great, rugged mountain of glistening,
beautiful blue and faintly green, transparent, beautifully clear solid. "Is
that-solid carbon dioxide?" he gasped into the transmitter.
"It sure is," laughed Karl Thrumann. "It's clear, because it's lain there for
half a billion years, just slowly packing, and, under the direct sun, melting
ever so little till it packed solid. There's a white snow on top, where the
pressure couldn't solidify it, crystallize it thoroughly into a whole block.
We're looking at a side where something broke it off.
"The lower vein there is hydrogen oxide. I think that's a better name for it
than water, considering."
"It is," agreed Oorliss. "I've seen glaciers-but they didn't look like that."
"No-that's because they weren't really cold. They melted at the base, where
all the millions of tons of weight rested on them. Ice will melt at a fairly
low temperature if you press it hard, remember. That's how a glacier flows.
The bottom melts under the pressure- heat runs out as liquid water, escapes
the pressure, and instantly re-freezes, because without the pressure it's
solid at that temperature. Here, the temperature is so low even the pressure
won't do it." 
"Uhmm-suppose we have glaciers of CO2 here?"
"No, not carbon dioxide. Water, remember, is a wonderful substance. Unique in
a thousand ways. Dissolves more different things than almost any other single
solvent, absorbs more heat in melting and boiling than almost anything else,
holds more heat per pound-degree of mass and temperature than any other thing
save hydrogen. And-it contracts on changing from ice to liquid water, and then
further contracts as the temperature rises to four degrees centigrade. Unique,
really. And because it expands on solidifying, pressure liquifies it because
it occupies less room then. That's not true of CO2. Therefore you can't get
moving glaciers."
"Ufammm-but it's cold enough for them. How much more cable have we, Ben?"
Back in the ship, Ben Riley, the electrical engineer-elec-trician-mechanicianradio-
expert-physicist-electronics engineer, answered over the telephone sets,
"About five hundred feet, Bar. Then unless you want to run without beaters,
you'd better stop."
"May the good Lord preserve us from any such situation. We'll stop. I'm half-
frozen with the heaters. Cant you send any more juice?"
"No-not without danger of burning them out altogether. It's your own cock-eyed
calculations that said you'd lose only five horsepower of heat out there."
"All rightl" laughed Corliss. "I admit it. How many are we drawing?"
"Ten right now, if you want to know. What are you doing? Rolling in the snow?
I can't figure where it's all going myself."
"I can't either," said Thrumann sourly. "You'd never guess it from here.
"But that*s all right. There's plenty of water here, so we can set up a quarry
and get our fuel. How much power coming in from the cells?"
"Five thousand horse-and we need one and a half to warm these blamed ships. We
can break down some water for you though. They've got the cells set up in
Two." 
"Check. We'll bring in a load now. I brought some cotton along."
"Cotton?" asked Corliss, mildly surprised. "What for?"
Thrumann chuckled. "I didn't trust your explosives in this temperature any too
much. Wait and see." 
Thrumann had an electric drill with him, and Tad Martin had some other
apparatus, as well as the sledge they'd hauled over. In five minutes, the
electric drill was humming almost inaudibly in the thin air, and cutting 



swiftly into the brittle ice. In five more, a series of ten holes had beendrilled, slanting into the clear "rock" of this world. Carefully Thrumannpacked plain cotton batting into them with a little rod. Then Martin producedhis flask. "Oh," said Corliss grinning. "We're well below the criticaltemperature here, aren't we?"
"Brrr-" said Thrumann. "I'm not, but I'm damn near it It certainly isoutside." From the flask he poured a stream of clear blue liquid into theholes, generously. Then he inserted caps in each, and the party backed off.
The clear liquid oxygen they had poured hi was thoroughly soaked up in thecotton in ten seconds. In thirty the thing was quite ready. In forty-five,
Thrumann sent the current through the caps and wires-and a thousand tons ofthe rock-hard ice shattered off. There was an explosive born of cold and assafe in this temperature as in the coal mines of Earth where it had originatedtwo centuries before. 
The sledge was loaded with a will-and consequent warming work-and hauled to"Corliss II." The lumps of ice were hurled into the lock, and the door closedonce more. The men went back for another load of ice. They passed thelaboratory ship-"Corliss I." The research laboratories had been set up in thisship, now that the cells had been placed outside. Corliss hesitated as hepassed, and asked Ben to connect him with Porter, hi thelab. 
"Hello, Bar," came Porter's voice finally. "What is it?"
"Cot the air analyzed yet?"
"On, yes. Some time ago, we finally got the last constituents. 
Nothing new. No helium to speak of, but it was all rare gas. Mostlyargon, neon and Xenon. There's one tenth of one percent oxygen, and adetectable trace of water vapor even at this temperature. The rest, asThrumann told you, is nitrogen, carbon dioxide, a fraction of one percentchlorine, and lots of rare gases. Everything else seems combined withsomething to make a solid.
"That chlorine had us going for a while; still I guess it's as logical as thetrace of oxygen. There's no life here of course-probably never was, and whenyou consider how active oxygen is, it's no wonder so little of it is free, andprobably the combination of the oxygen meant some chlorine couldn't find apartner."
"You're wrong in saying it combined to a solid," said Corliss. "I saw a nicelittle river back a way. Know what it was? Just a nice, cool swimming pool ofXenon, so Thrumann says."
Porter whistled softly. "Nice planet. No wonder we found so much Xenon in theair." 
The work was started then. They quarried for their water, and, of course, fortheir air. But they were mighty glad to have that work. To Bar Corliss itmeant that the millions he had sunk in this expedition were not lost. For thewhole success of the thing depended on finding a source of water-hydrogen andoxygen for fuel-on this satellite, or on Callisto. Hurling the rockets acrossspace had required all but the last dregs of fuel. No ship could be designedwhich would have been otherwise. The sheer work of lifting the fuel across thefour hundred million miles of space against the sun's pull prevented that.
They had to find water-or return at once, immediately, before those last dregsof fuel were used in heating. Not even two months could have been spentinvestigating after all those millions of miles of travel and those millionsof dollars spent.
That was most of the expedition, that. That was the adventure of exploring theplanets, digging and working and sweating even in that cold, to dig out thewater they must have, and the slow, slow waiting while the electrolysers tookthe electric power obtained from the sun and converted the water to hydrogenand oxygen fuel. That and cleaning, polishing, selecting, weighing, repairing, 


cooking. Cooking, and living hi the air that wasalready heavy with the odors of meals a month past, for the rectifiers wouldnot remove those last faint traces which the unhappy sensitivity of the humannose detected. 

"It would be an immense advantage-" sighed Bar. He looked across at "Two."
There were two feet of "snow" on it now, and the light thai shone on it wasweak and dun and red, the light of enormous, magnificent Jupiter, mighty inthe sky, almost full. For six months they had waited here while the fuel tanksof the ships filled slowly -so slowly. They were nearly full now. The men forthe last dash had been selected, the trip planned to almost the last detail-asthough the years on Earth had not been calculation time enough for thisparticular feature-but now Brad proposed to change it.
"It can be done. Refueling in space has never been done-but I think it can bedone if we do as I suggest. To do it would mean the 'Mercury' could land onJupiter with tanks completely full, not nearly full. The original plan toestablish a fuel depot on satellite Five, tiny though it is, and close toJupiter, still means some fuel would be needed in escaping its pull. We havefuel enough on hand now, and it would save twelve hours wear on your tubes,
and on the tubes of Two' and Three' to do it. Also, it would save the work ofgathering that much fuel again."
Bar stood looking out of the port. They had had a "cold snap" two weeksbefore. It had snowed Xenon, a wind had sprung up in the thin air to howl withhorrific threats about the ships and their apparatus. The cell frames had beenwell anchored, and resisted till the blizzard had covered them over, andbanked snow two feet deep over them, and made drifts ten feet deep on thewindward side of the ships. It was a strange scene now; it had an air ofpermanence, of stability.
Finally Corliss spoke. "I don't like the idea of using those magnets. We don'tthink they'll disturb any instruments. But we don't know. Still-I suppose wemay as well."
The men cheered. "Attaboy, Bar. We start tomorrow then?" asked Brad.
"Uhm-I guess so."
There was no sleeping that "night." They were preparing. Goodbyes. So-longs.
And hungrily gazing at the ship that was to make the crossing. There werethirty-two men hi the expedition. And there were just five who were on the"Mercury" when she took off the next day, and shook off her burden of snow, tosail out again intospace. Five men.
No more, because every man breathed precious air, and ate heavy food; and onJupiter that would represent another five hundred pounds of force to beovercome in climbing up. They had to calculate close on this trip. Then: fuelwould just about make it. And even so, the other ships, "Two" and "Three,"
would have to be sacrificed to pull them free. Satellite Five revolved at only112,000 miles from Jupiter's center, and only 70,000 from his surface. OnFive, "Corliss II" and "III" were to wait, with fuel for the "Mercury" as sheclimbed up from Jupiter's cloud-wrapped atmosphere. And they would never leaveFive. 
No less, because it took two men to operate the ship, and they needed-a spare.
Dr. Louis Lombard was their physician, and spare. He was a Doctor of Medicineby vocation, but an expert geologist and paleontologist by avocation, andcamp-chief and mechanic by necessity. Rather an unusually useful man? Everyman in that ultra-select group had to be, had to be in deadly earnest. He wassmall, too. He weighed only 135 pounds, all bone and muscle, because weightwas important-and incidentally, appetite was, too. They'd have to learn to getover wanting food when their stomachs were empty, because they would always benearly empty. Concentrated, ashless food had to be used, and it wasn't either 


tastyor filling.
Ben Riley was going along, because he was another handy man, an electricalengineer, and radio engineer among other things, with an avocation as anartist and photographer. These five had to be a dozen things in one. And heweighed 137 pounds.
Karl Thrumann was going. He was the chemist-among other things, and TadMartin, artist of the monkey wrenchand lathe. 
Only Bar Corliss didn't belong, really. Not because he wasn't versatile. Hewas the mathematician, the physicist, the rocket engineer. But he was big, andpowerful. Heweighed 197 pounds-all muscle and bone. He tried to make it 195, and couldn't.
They were the selected five. Brad didn't go, because he was second in command,
the most thankless position of all. He had to remain in charge of the group onGanymede, so he couldn't leave. The others didn't quite equal these five.
For all the good it did them, Corliss might as well have taken the whole crew.
They didn't stand a bit better chance of returning because they took onlyfive, and shaved the weight by taking no razors, since shaving equipment meantweight, but they didn't know it then.
So the "Mercury" took off from Ganymede with five aboard. She plowed her wayup through space, and toward Jupiter, behind her trailing her faithful escortdiminished by one, "One" remaining on the satellite. They went on, the blueflames of her rockets trailing out, till the ship was well away from Ganymede,
and falling freely to Jupiter. Then the rockets of the "Mercury" stopped, andas she fell, the other two ships maneuvered and twisted to approach thefalling ship. Presently a black, snaky cable reached out with a great roundlump on the end of it. The two ships were moving slowly relative to eachother, and presently the round lump began to accelerate of itself toward the"Mercury." It struck with a thump and a jar that the men aboard the ship feltto their bones, and clung.
The magnet was on. Slowly, those aboard the "Two" reeled hi on the brakedwinch, braking their relative speed. Twice the magnet pulled loose, to jumpback as the strain was released on the cable. It took an hour of maneuveringbefore the feed pipe could be sent across. Then the "Three" made fast by thesame laborious process. Two hours later, the "Mercury," her fuel tanks full,
was falling all alone through space. Far behind her, two dots of blue flamemarked the "Two" and the "Three" returning to Ganymede. The Great Adventurehad really begun-the final dash for which they had spent five years inpreparation.
Alone, a dust mote in infinity, the mottled football of synthium dropped. BarCorliss was about to learn something of the strength of the wonderful stuffBob Randall had invented. 
It didn't take very long. They reached Jupiter's outerfringes of atmosphere in only eleven hours, on a long, long slant. They wereforty-five degrees removed from the Red Spot, and forty-five degrees south ofthe north pole. Before they slowed to a stop, relative to Jupiter, they wouldbe ninety degrees removed from the danger that might lurk in the Red Spot.
They were more interested in learning something of Jupiter and returning withit than in learning all-and not returning.
The shriek of air sounded again in the spread vanes on the wings, high andshrill and thin. The "Mercury" was going more swiftly now than it had beenwhen it touched Ganymede's atmosphere. But there was unlimited room tomaneuver hi this atmosphere. There was no fear of darting out of it again.
Five thousand miles they shrilled through that air, their speed slowly dying,
the friction wanning the ship. They weren't falling any more, no longer a freefall, and they didn't have orbital speed any more, so the wings began to 


support them against Jupiter's pull.
Corliss looked at Lombard, standing beside him, looking anxiously over thepilot's shoulders, through the ports. There was a vast darkness, and below, avast sheet of sheening clouds, scudding, racing. There was no horizon. It waslevel, just a distant point so far no eyes could see it. Jupiter was too huge.
"Doc," said Corliss softly, "do you feel the way I do?" "I don't know, Bar. Idon't know how you feel, but I feel awfully tired."
"I think Jupiter's taking hold of us, Doc." Bar looked solemnly at theaccelerometer. It stood at one point two. Only twenty percent greater thanEarth's pull-and they were feeling it. "Six months on that pebble out theredidn't prepare us for this, exactly, did it" "Not exactly."
"She's not obeying the controls too well, Bar," said Tad Martin, piloting now,
as the most expert of them. "I think we're getting in to wind."
There was a different note in the squeal of the air now, a deeper note, athroaty cry, and a pulsing howl was coming in, a gustiness to replace thesteady-high-noted fluting of the air as they split through it at twenty-seventhousand miles an hour. Their speed had dropped to about six thousand miles anhour now, and it was falling rapidly, more rapidly than the airplaningrocketship.
There were pushes now, little jabs and jerks. They were getting out of theclear, straight streaming of the uppermost air levels into something slightlyturbulent. Only thirty miles below them now lay the cloud level.
At that particular moment, the "Mercury" could have pulled out. Fifteenminutes later, it was tossing, jumping, leaping wildly, horribly in ascreaming tornado.
"I can't do a thing," snapped Martin, struggling with the controls. "Theydon't affect her-she's too heavy for them, and the wind's too much." "Can theystand the strain?" asked Corliss anxiously. "They're synthium. They won'tbreak, but-" As if in answer to his words came the harsh grind of the controlracks, racks of molded parium, not a tenth as strong as the synthium wings. Itwas a harsh, grating squeal of tortured metal.
Corliss dragged himself back. It was labor, for the terrific accelerations ofthe wind's force, doubling and tripling Earth's gravity, made him nearhelpless. Finally his voice called out. "The main rack's sprung half an inch.
If it gives another half it'll strip the teeth on the left pinion, and breakthe shaft on the right pinion."
The "Mercury" was heavy, very heavy, and the winds were terrific. The ship wasstill traveling close to five hundred miles into the atmosphere sincedetecting the first faint screams of air. It approximated stratosphericdensity, and the wings gripped well and solidly in this air.
Almost abruptly they descended from what we know as the "supersphere" ofcomparatively calm air into the stratosphere of Jupiter. Jupiter'sstratosphere isn't like ours. There are clouds in it for one thing. And it haswinds. The "Mercury" was now hi forty-five degrees north, and so unfortunateas to be right near one of the junctures between neighboring "belts."
Martin had a chance to look for a second. Below, off to the left, he saw theclouds tumbling, tossing, rolling by him at terrific speed, nearly sevenhundred kilometers per second. On the other side, off to the right tnd below,
he saw them racing back in the opposite direction at nearly two hundred. Andright hi between was a vortex effect.
Martin's face turned white as he suddenly jammed borne the firing lever. Therockets thundered deafeningdefiance; for an instant the "Mercury" righted herself, and steadied, thenstarted slowly to climb upward.
From somewhere, Jupiter thrust up a giant hand. The flea that had been buzzingaround him apparently planned to leave. The mighty hand smacked the flea onthe back; there was a horrible rending shriek of torn metal, the grinding 


bumping thump of broken beams thrashing about Martin turned owlishly to lookout of the ports. A great broad flat thing went skating down the wind, turningover and over. Presently another one joined it. Simultaneously the rocketsstopped operating as the fuel pumps gave up trying to operate in the wildlypitching accelerations aboard the ship.
Ten seconds later the men were relieved of the weight that had been crushingthem down, and some fifteen later the great broad flat things were flappingdismally upward past the ship. They were dropping much more rapidly than thewings.
"Happy landings," said Corliss grimly. "I wonder if synthium bounces?"
"We won't know, I'm afraid," sighed Martin. "I'd like to leave this place but-
well." 
Abruptly they had fallen through the area of terrific winds. The clouds thatstill wrapped them seemed less turbulent, save where their rapidly mountingspeed tossed the vessel. The ship seemed calm and almost motionless; only analmost-earth-normal gravity affected them. "We're approaching stability," saidCorliss. There was a limit to how fast the football-shaped ship would fall-
though Corliss knew it was a very high limit, for the ship was streamlined.
"Is the air-brake out?" 
Martin snorted. "The cable snapped like a thread when the wings went. Therudder's off too. I don't know how much the airspeedometer means, but it sayswe're making about two thousand an hour. Still climbing, I see." There washeavy silence for some seconds, age-long seconds. Then a soft laugh fromMartin broke it. "We're thirty thousand feet below sea-level according to thebarometer." He reached over and closed the synthium valve connecting it tooutside pressure. They were fortunate it was welded synthium, really. It wouldhave been so easy to make those tubes of brass, or steel.
They began to feel again the sudden heavy weight ofJupiter. The ship had reached its maximum speed, and was going down now at aconstant velocity. "Stability," said Corliss. "Does the radio work?"
"No," replied Riley. "It quit shortly after the storm began. I guess we passedthe reflective layer. The waves bounce back, and we can't reach out, nor theyin." 
"Too bad-we could have told them not to send the rescue ship in six months.
They'll wait six months 'now."
"Hasn't most of it gone already?" asked Thrumann, slightly green. "It seemsthat way."
"The air must be-we've hit!" gasped Corliss. Then he realized he was wrong.
There was a steady, terrific bombardment, a shattering, bone-jarring series ofcolossal smashes. "Hail!" he gurgled ten seconds later. "My God- everything'son a giant scale here!"
"They sound like asteroids, they may puncture us-"
"Let's hope not, and thank God for transparent synthium ports!"
As suddenly as it had started, the hail stopped. And the clouds vanished. Theywere out of the clouds. And outside was only a tremendous, driving sheet ofrain. It washed back across the ship with a driving, thudding, thundering washof water. For an instant, they thought they had struck, by chance, in a greatocean. 
"We're slowing still. I wonder-will we strike so terribly hard?" Corlisslabored nearer the instrument panel under more than three Earth-gravities,
crawling on hands and knees.
Martin looked at the airspeedometer. It showed now, only two hundred and fiftymiles per hour-for what that might mean.
"I wonder how far we've fallen now, and how deep the air is?" he asked.
"Only God knows how far we've fallen now, or how deep the atmosphere actuallyis." Corliss sighed. "We must be near bottom, though. Well, boys, it was agrand fall, while it lasted." 


"It lasts too long," moaned Thrumann. "I-I can't bear the suspense-the waitingfor the inevitable." 
"It won't last much longer," said Martin bleakly. "We've slowed to oneseventy-
nine now."
A strange look came over Corliss's face. He looked out. The rain seemed tohave stopped, momentarily; they were no longer rushing through it. There wassomethingelse out there, though. Suddenly the ship jarred slightly, and a great,
sprawled thing hung limp and brown across the ports-obscuring the view.
Corliss looked at it thoughtfully for the instant before it was ripped away bythe air streaming past.
There was a new sound, growing slowly. The howl of torn air was growing deeperin tone now, heavy and thick, almost a groan. And-intermingled with it a slow,
heavy creak and groan, a straining settling, a slow, jarring vibration throughall the ship. The fabric of the ship was creaking with the colossal strainupon it. Corliss was first to recognize it.
"Martin-Martin-" he said softly. "Open the barometer valve-just a trifle-let alittle air in." Silently, Martin did it. The needle crept over on the gage-
over and over and over. It struck the stop pin at five times atmosphericpressure. Some fifteen seconds later there was a dull explosion; the barometershattered, and a roaring, terrific thunder of incoming gas sounded from thesyn-thium valve. Martin closed it as the ship's atmosphere became permeatedwith a thick, heavy smell of musty plants, and cold dankness.
"What's the air-speed, Martin? Have you noticed? I did, just now. It's almostzero-thirty-five according to that instrument. We've almost-God!" They saw ittoo then. They had been watching and listening to Corliss, but now they sawthe horizon-reaching water-surface!
It seemed ages the ship fell-fell-fell toward it. Then -a bone-cracking jar asthey struck if. It seemed to splash about the ship in thin, airy froth; thenthey were plowing slowly through it. "We'll float," groaned Corliss. "My arm-
but our density's only .94, thanks to synthium."
Martin suddenly yelled; he yelled in horror, amazement, sudden fear of theimpossible and unknown. They had penetrated the water and were on the underside. Below them was air, just clean air, except-perhaps fifteen miles down-
they saw rocks, great boulders, stones, and pebbles, a little higher there wasdust. And the boulders, the rocks, and the pebbles were floating in the air.
Corliss spoke. His voice was very calm and disassociated. "We've stoppedfalling, haven't we, Martin? Yes? I thought so. We'll rise now, presently. Yousee-this is Mahomet's Coffin. The ground won't take us, and we can't reach thesky, so we will float, float just as those boulders and the water do-in theair. 
"You see-we were too hurried. We didn't make our investigations properly,
because we knew that Norddeu-tscher would be on our heels in six months; theInterplanetary Commission knew synthium ships could cross the Asteroid Belt.
"So we didn't make the observations we should have. If we had, we'd havelearned quickly enough from the elasticity and the gravitational vectors whatthe atmosphere was like. How deep it was,
"We've come down nearly eight hundred and fifty miles. I wonder how far theatmosphere does extend? It can't go very much further, or it would becometerribly dense. See-in some ten miles more it is dense enough to float rocks.
"The upper part must be less dense than Earth's. You know even under Earth'slight gravity, the air pressure doubles in three and a half miles. And at thesurface of Earth, the atmosphere is I/800th as dense as water. You have todouble it only a few times-let's see-it mounts so rapidly2;
4;8;16;32;64;128;256;512; and then 1024. That's ten doublings. If Earth'satmosphere were just thirty-five miles deeper-it would be denser than water. 


If it were fifty-five miles deep, it would float anything known-platinum,
iridium, mercury.
"You see we didn't consider that. The atmosphere here-ah, that's the hydrosphere again. We'll rise through it slowly this time.
We'll float above it somewhere-a few hundred feet. The atmosphere right hereis as dense as water. Water-good lord-it must be warm here!"
Martin stared blankly at the instruments for several seconds, then shookhimself like a dog emerging from a swim. "It's-it's three degrees above zero,
centigrade."
"Yes-it would be. The air blanket. What is the composition of this air, Iwonder. We can't really test it, you see, because the test bottles wouldn'tstand it. And- try the rockets, Martin, ever so gently."
"My arm hurts. Look at it, will you, Lombard?"
Martin touched the rocket feed control. There was a soft thud, then a verymuffled, heavy, laborious whoosh. The ship stumbled slightly, and moved undera very, very faint acceleration. They were out of the hydrosphere now, andagain in the air above. Martin looked at his gauges.
"Impossible," he sighed. "They won't work at all."
"Oooh-I was afraid they wouldn't. You have only eight tons pressure in thefuel tanks, the atmospheric pressure must be close to that. You can't get anyrocket kick that way-and we aren't equipped with propellers. Propellers wouldwork fine in this stuff." He jerked slightly as Lombard felt his shouldergently.
"It's dislocated," said the doctor. "I'll have to splint it and wrap it a bit.
I wonder what effect this gravity will have on it."
"I don't know. We're oscillating now, aren't we, Martin?"
"Yes-going down again, slowly now."
"We'll reach rest rather quickly-and rise and fall with the barometricpressure. But I think we're-parked."
"Can't we get out?" asked Thrumann softly.
"Well-the rockets don't work, and the wings are gone, and we haven't apropeller."
"Can't we-can't we make one?" 
"Difficult, Karl. I really don't know what kind of a diving suit we'd use.
They never made a suit-or a submarine for that matter-that could get down tothe bottom of the Six Mile Deep of Japan-and that's no worse than this is. Wehave some idea of the strength of synthium, anyhow. Remarkable stuff. I'llhave to calculate the stress on those beams-" Corliss looked up at the greatcross-girders in the ceiling of the room. They'd been made heavy-intended toresist the shock of meteor and asteroid impacts. They'd groaned under theawful load when the air pressure hit them, but-somehow they'd held.
Probably, had those early explorers had any real idea of the immense strengthof the stuff they worked with, the "Mercury" would never have gotten so far asthe hydrosphere layer. They wouldn't have used such heavy stuff. But therewere two-inch plates of welded synthium as a hull, and immense girders in thatship. The old "Mercury" would look enormously clumsy and heavy to us today,
like the old twenty-by-twenty solid oak beams they used to use in the oldsettler's homes for reef-trees when America was settled. Vast, unnecessarystrength.
Well, it served them well. The "Mercury" hung, still a mottled, bloatedfootball of metal, stuck on dead center in Jupiter's impossibly denseatmosphere. Even the rocketscouldn't build up much more pressure than that atmosphere had. There simplywasn't any discharge velocity -the gases drifted out slowly from the center ofburning- and the ship stuck where she was.
An hour later, Corliss was in bed, sleeping under a mild opiate, his armbandaged and- reset. Martin was looking at his controls, only half 


intelligently. He was trying to accept that they couldn't move.
He knew they couldn't. He'd always known that someday he'd die, too. But dyingis an act always performed by someone else; no conscious person ever performedthe act-so it remains the unexpected, a rather mythical thing you believe in;
you agree it will happen-but not now. And since all time is only a succession,
of nows, Man never really believes in Death.
Martin had always come back, he'd never been stuck, hopelessly, utterly,
eternally stuck. So he was trying to realize simultaneously the twounrealizables-personal catastrophe and personal death. Because Death was athand now, actually this particular now. There was a limit to the food. Therewas a limit to the air. But there wasn't any .limit to time. Time would justgo on, in its usual way. Only he wouldn't be part of it He'd be gone. He'd begone because he couldn't go.
Martin was too much of a mechanist to hope to move. He knew there wasn't ahope of working on the outside of the ship, of getting out for even aninstant. And of course they couldn't do a thing from inside.
Ben Riley had given up that angle. He was fussing with the radio apparatus. Hewas timing echoes now. The echoes were sharp, and definite. The reflectinglayer was turning back everything he sent. He couldn't get a note through thatlayer. And there was a terrific, washing static, like ocean breakers snarlingon a rocky coast. He tried timing the cycles of the interference, began toplow it carefully, found its wavelength of maximum intensity. Riley hadsettled to more or less routine work. 
Thrumann was in the laboratory. The reagents were limited, and he didn't haveenough of any of them. Reagents were heavy. But the gyroscopes were workingnow, holding the ship in position. They were too light and small to resist theturning, bouncing winds up above, but they held the "Mercury" nicely now, andThrumann began setting up his laboratory. Presently he began looking 
at the sample bottles. Quietly he put one with a trip-seal in the specialtest-lock. He opened the outer valve and watched through the clear synthiumport as the outside air came in. There was a barometer connected with thelock, and suddenly it exploded. Thick, dank, foul-smelling air rushed into theroom as Thrumann shut off the intake valve.- The trip valve was closed on histest bottle however. Then-suddenly it exploded too.
Thrumann went to work. Under the heavy gravity he laboriously removed thewrecked barometer and put a heavy brass cap over the tube. He fished out thewrecked test bottle, and put in another, empty one. Carefully he ran thepressure up inside the little lock, till he felt he had enough. Then hestarted the pump that would force the excess air back into the outsideatmosphere, and permit him to let in the ship's air, without contaminating itfurther. For a few moments the pump chugged heavily- then it stopped at thelower end of a stroke. It couldn't handle the difference in pressure now.
Thrumann valved the air into the ship. But he got his test sample, and beganchecks on it. 
Monotony set in that day. Within three hours of their final coming to rest,
they had seen all there was to see from the ports. Below, the vast sheet offloating water, extending infinitely into the distance. Above, the murky,
clouded air, and finally the clouds. A very long twilight came, and the darkgrey clouds turned darker, till they were only a luminous belt in the utter,
unbelievable black of Jupiter's night. The light of nine moons and a billionstars was falling on them-and stopping there.
At about the same tune, the cold set in. It was just a very little abovefreezing outside, and slowly the cold crept through the hull of the ship, andinto the insulated rooms. It was a persistent cold, a dankness rather thananything else, because there was an enormously dense atmosphere outside todrink out the heat, and the metal insisted on getting down to that temperatureand staying there. Naturally, a spaceship uses vacuum heat insulation because 


it is obviously the lightest. The "Mercury" did. But while she could maintainthat vacuum nicely between her hulls on Earth, no matter how perfectly metalis joined, even if it is synthium, it leaks a little. The vacuum, originallyobtained by exhaustion into space through the usual bilge-valves of aspaceship, was breaking 
down. Air was leaking in. The vacuum gage mounted on the instrument boardwas slowly falling toward zero. And when the insulation went, the walls grewcold, and colder. Presently the inner hull began to show beads of moisture,
and the heating of the ship had to be increased.
The chill leaked in. The ah- temperature showed 94° and the men put on heavysweaters, because the cold metal walls soaked up the radiated heat from theirbodies and didn't return it. There was no way to heat those wallssatisfactorily, and the hot air cooled on them, and ran down in puddles ofcold air on the floor, so their feet felt frozen.
They started electric fans to stir it up.
Corliss woke after twenty-four hours of sleep, and looked about him. Therewere heavy blankets over him, and the room was cold, for they had shut off theheat in his cabin bunk. He joined them presently in the motors room. They werewatching an exhaust pump, designed to clear the inter-hull insulation whenneeded, and mainly to clear the locks. It had a seventy horsepower motor todrive it, and three cylinders, one of steel, one of parium and one of moldedsynthium. It was laboring terrifically, thudding horribly with every stroke,
and the heavy steel of the first stage cylinder was bending visibly outwardagainst the pressure.
It worked for some five minutes as he watched silently, unnoticed. Then therewas a rending crack, and the crankshaft of the pump broke off. The synthiumpiston slammed down against the lower head of the cylinder, and started allthe studs. Air whistled through the gasket. But the synthium valves and pipelines held when they closed off the pump.
"Have we any spare synthium plates?" asked Corliss softly. They turned to lookat him. 
"Oh-hello, Bar. How's the arm?" asked Riley. "We have plenty of synthiumstock, I guess, but we haven't any bigger motors so it wouldn't do much goodto make it. I suppose you were thinking of a synthium pump?"
"Yes. We'll have to make it. A little one, so that motor can handle it.
Because if the vacuum has been broken in the inter-hull, the pressure therewill build up till it teaks into the inner hull here. And we can't live underany such pressure. We've got to make an exhaust pumpthat will keep the pressure here down. It's cold as blazes here. The heaterson?' 
"Uhmm-full. The steam engine won't handle any more. We could rig burners, ofcourse-but the fuel won't last indefinitely. I wonder if it wouldn't be betterto be cold, and have the fuel last as long as we do?"
"Why?" asked Martin glumly. "I'd rather be warm for a while, anyway, insteadof half-frozen all the time." 
Riley gestured out of the port. It was raining now. At least, what passed forraining. There was evidently a slight current in the dense air, too, for thewater surface below was passing under them. They could see that in the lightfrom the ports, for it was night, and utterly black outside. Great roundedglobules of water drifted slowly, slowly downward past the windows. "We needelectricity for things other than warmth. Hot coffee tastes damn good."
"We should have used asbestos insulation, or something like that," mutteredMartin. 
"It wouldn't have done any good. That air's too dense. If we'd used cork, thestuff would have been pounded flat under that pressure, and the air hi betweenthe asbestos fibers would have carried heat almost as well as so much cold 
water." 


"Could we pump that inter-hull vacuum back with a stronger pump, instead ofusing it inside here?" askedCorliss. 
"I doubt it," replied Riley. "The leakage is too fast. If we pump the inside,
we have two slow-leaking dams between us and the outside pressure. If we pumpthe inter^hull, there will be faster leakage, though it would of course keepthe pressure down in here just as effectively. It'll be a hell of a job makinga pump work on that pressure. I'll use a cam instead of a crankshaft, and makeit a radial pump. I'll have to start right away, if we don't want to getsqueezed first. The pressure here's up a pound and a half."
"Yes, but some of that I'm afraid I let in," admitted Thrumann. "I got asample of the air out there though. It has nearly one percent oxygen. And ahundredth of one percent carbon dioxide. There must be lots of plants here.
The rest of the air is water, mostly."
"Huh-the rest of the air is water," quoted Martin. "Is that how you say it inGerman?" 
"No, stupid. The rest of the air-pressure is due towater vapor, largely, and most of the water vapor seems actually to be liquidwater droplets. There's lots of nitrogen and helium and some hydrogen and lotsof rare gases. But most of it is nitrogen and water."
"One percent oxygen-that'll do us a hell of a lot of good," grunted Martin. "Alouse might live on it."
"A louse does. I tried it, only it was a fly rather than a louse, and so doesa mouse-for a while. There is one hundred and twenty pounds pressure of oxygenhi this air-forty times Earth's oxygen pressure. I think I can get it out. Bysolubilities. If I can just get pumps that will handle it." He looked atRiley, and the engineer groaned.
"How?" he asked. "We have only one seventy horse motor, and the next is thethirty horse on the hydrogen fuel pump. Then there's a twenty on the oxygenfuel pump, and a pair of twenties on the fuel-tank charging motors. And themain power plant won't handle any more than 175 horsepower."
"Have you got plenty of synthium stock?" asked the chemist.
"No. I haven't got such a heck of a lot. Remember we had to shave weight."
"Could you tear out some partitions?"
"Not a chance. Those partitions are probably bearing a few thousand tons ofload right now-helping to hold out the walls of the ship. I wouldn't touchthem. I might consider the inner lock door, if it was absolutely necessary.
The lock doors aren't leaking, by the way. There's a rubber gasket aroundthem, you know, then a machined steel seat. Well, under the pressure, therubber got hard, and the steel flowed, so that it is the gasket now, confinedbetween rubber on one side, and the synthium plates on the others. That's thetightest joint in the ship."
"I thought we might make a water pump that would kick the water out into thelittle chemistry test-lock, throw it up hi a stream, then let it come inagain, and work a water-motor on the in trip that would help push the pumpthat boosted it out. To overcome losses in that system we wouldn't need morethan a few horsepower."
"Lord-" said Corliss, and fell silent, thinking swiftly. Finally he spokeagain. "Thrumann, do you remember how heat-operated refrigerators work? Thekind that freeze by heat? They circulate a liquid in a balanced-
pressure system, with vapor-pressure on one side, and absolute pressure on theother side of a pool of liquid ammonia, or rather, a U-tube of ammonia, inliquid form. I wonder if you could use a similiar system with water? Somehowhave an absolute pressure of oxygen and nitrogen on the outside balanced by apure nitrogen pressure on the inside, and circulate it, taking out the oxygenon the inside. What we need is some kind of a valve that would let oxygenthrough, but not nitrogen." 


"Ahbh-I see what you mean-yes, and then we would need less than half ahorsepower to keep the liquid moving, and agitate it thoroughly on both sides!
I think it could be done-I must see-not a valve-a metal plate, permeable tooxygen, and impermeable, or almost so, to nitrogen. I must work-"
So Thrumann had his work. Riley had his, and Martin had to help him. AndCorliss had only the responsibility of the expedition, and a dislocated arm.
Martin and Riley had no cinch, the task of making a pump that would handle apressure of over six tons. It had to be synthium, and they couldn't machinethe stuff, so they had to cast it. They had available a flame that would meltit, but they didn't have casting beds, nor the materials to make them. So theydid the next best thing, they cut them out of blocks with their flames, andsmoothed them with delicate welding, and final polish on a synthium disc,
roughened and abrasive, driven by an electric motor.
It took them two weeks, and then the air pressure was up to two atmospheres,
and the air was rank and musty and foul, and the men couldn't eat because theywere sickened by it. Finally, though, they had a two-stage radial pump ofsynthium, and they welded the tubes on to the broken tubes leading from theold exhaust pump, for these were synthium, fortunately, and they started thecontraption. It wasn't quite true, and the bearings squeaked, no matter howmuch oil they put on them, but it ran. They didn't know how much it would havepounded on a normal load, with a synthium-on-synthium bearing, but it thuddedterrifically on this load-but it worked. In twelve hours the pressure insidewas down again, and Thrumann, with his deodorizers and perfumes had the airsmelling breathable again. They had to run the pump a good deal, and theycouldn't sleep while it ran, and it was cold all the tune, which made sleepuncomfortable anyway, till Riley rigged some electric blankets out of a cut-upspace suit. Then they could sleep, but when they were awake, their fingers andtheir feet were frozen, and it was hard to work.
Then Thrumann announced he had found that a silver alloy would pass oxygen,
and not nitrogen, but it had two difficulties. They didn't have a pound ofsilver on the ship, and even if they had, silver could never have withstoodthe pressure, save if they used a series of at least ten silver-walledchambers. That would have needed at least half a ton of the metal. Thrumann 
had known silver "blisters" were formed by the solvent action of melted silveron oxygen, and had worked in part from the idea of that selective action.
The air kept getting bad, and the cold drained them, for only near the heaterswas it at all warm, so most of the time they had to sit near the heaters, andthink. Only Thrumann had anything to do now, and his task seemed hopeless.
When the pump worked, they couldn't stay in the same room, and that was theonly room that was comfortable, so they froze most of the time, with themotors room door closed to stop some of the noise, the clanking and poundingand thudding.
They were beginning to get used to that horrible, monotonous life at the endof a month. Then, apparently, Jupiter entered another season. The weatherchanged. It had been rainy most of the time, and now it rained all the time.
Day and night great round gloves of shining water drifted slowly, slowly pastthe window, and they sat and watched them drifting by in the light from theports. They glowed and sparkled like gigantic jewels at night, and by day theywere lusterless, dim miniatures of the leaden black sky above and the leadenblack water below, and the leaden, limitless view beyond. For two weeks thatcontinued, for fourteen endless periods of twenty-four hours. Then a changecame. The air grew rough. The sea below began to heave gently first; then theyrealized the ship was beginning to move. It heaved gently up, then fell gentlydown. Like a giant breathing. The balls of rain, big as basketballs, heaved upand down too. The motion grew worse as the "season" advanced. In another monththey were continuously seasick from the queer, choppy motion. The ship heavedand pitched and rolled. Then-slowly it eased off. The motion grew less, as 


the men slowly regained some 
strength.
They began to be active enough to be moody and quicktempered. They wereoptimists, chosen for even tempers, smooth dispositions and perfect agreementof temperaments. But they began to snarl at each other. Thrumann cursed Rileyfor not building the pumps he needed, or even trying to. Riley cursed Thrumannas a fool for thinking of an idea so insanely impossible, for his false-hopesilver plate.
And Thrumann-found the answer. He finally found a way of imparting silver'sselective absorption to a synthium allotrope, the clear, transparent type.
Instantly, tempers changed. A new hope had come. They could, perhaps, get airindefinitely, it was something to do at least, and the remaining pitchingmotion was dying. They guessed, wrongly as they learned, that the "season" hadchanged. There never had been a season. They'd drifted over the equator.
But they set to work with a will, while Thrumann made more of his plates,
bigger ones, more of them. Finally, better ones, and then started all overagain. With 120 pounds of oxygen pressure on one side, he could get seven anda quarter pounds of oxygen pressure on the inside, and a flow of half a pintper square inch at three pounds oxygen pressure. Nitrogen pressure didn'taffect it 
in the least. 
The laboratory test-lock was opened from the inside, the inner doordismantled, and.the apparatus set up hi the lock. Then the synthium retorts inthe lab were connected to the apparatus in the lock, and a new door fitted hithe inner lock-seats. And the apparatus was ready to function just three weeksafter the start of the work. There were two washing retorts, where outsideJovian air entered, was washed, and the pure gases dissolved in the water; thewater was agitated so that it passed under a partition that dipped into it,
and into a second chamber, where the dissolved gases came out, as theapparatus was slowly brought up to working pressure. Nitrogen and oxygen andcarbon dioxide. Presently the pressure on both sides was equalized, andoutside pressure was the norm. The apparatus held. And-a soft, gentle breezeof pure, cold, odorless oxygen gasswept into the room. There were twenty of the rectifier plates, evolving gasso swiftly a steady breeze of the intensely invigorating gas passed in.
They ran the oxygen concentration up in celebration, delighted that there wasno odor leaking through the plates and the water solution system. A reservewater system was available for use while the main one was cleaned.
And Thrumann grew inspired by his success. He tried using both systems atonce. Rapidly the oxygen concentration built up to a dangerously high point,
and an over-exhilaration was produced among them. The seven and a half poundlimit was reached, for the oxygen supply from the fuel tanks was cut off, andthe process stopped. Thrumann set up new apparatus, and collected oxygen fromhis second apparatus. Three days later he pointed with swelling pride as thepumps forced new oxygen supplies into the fuel tanks. Oxygen stolen from theatmosphere of Jupiter!
Martin deflated him. "We can't burn oxygen though. It's no good withouthydrogen."
Thrumann glowered at him, and swore he'd produce that too! "We shall escape!
We shall get so much fuel we can escape anyway. There is hydrogen hi thisatmosphere-a minute trace, as in all atmospheres, but some. We shall isolateit till we can go!"
"I'm afraid we can't, Karl, even then. The rockets just won't work well, andunless you could isolate your fuels faster than the rockets burn it-"
It was manifestly impossible, so Thrumann returned disconsolate to 'hislaboratory. He had hoped for an hour they might break free.
Thrumann was asleep when the last disappointment came. Riley was on the 


useless watch, and stared somewhat as he noticed the rain start-and it was notrain. Then he thought it was hail, and for some minutes it was. He looked atthe thermometer outside, and read with surprise that the temperature hadfallen to five degrees blow zero, centigrade. In amazement he looked out- andhi utter astonishment he rose from his seat and glared through the port. Very,
very slowly, skating back and forth like a bit of dropped paper, a great,
white hexagonal thing dropped gently past the window. It was night, and itshone like a marvelous jewel in the lightof the window. It was two feet across, a thing of wonderful fairy-land beauty.
A snowflake, six-sided, wonderful crystal of water. Another dropped intosight, and another. It was snowing heavily in half an hour, and Riley calledthe others. Flakes as big as dinner plates, all magnificent, perfect hexagonsdropped past, all different, all alike. There were always hexagons, but somewere like fish-bone patterns, like the vertabrae of a herring, and some weresolid pale plates, and some were two crystals united.
It was snowing on Jupiter. And it was colder, noticeably colder.
Day came later, and it was the brightest day they had known, for the air wasfull of whiteness. And not until then did they notice the air was growingstale and thick in the room. They had been fascinated by this miracle ofbeauty.
Thrumann guessed the cause instantly. The water in his apparatus was frozen,
solid, and the little agitator motor was humming and smoking hot. He shut itoff, and looked blankly while the others gathered. "Can't you just set yourplates directly in the wall of the ship- wouldn't they pass the oxygendirectly that way?" askedCorliss. 
"I tried them that way. They will-till they get clogged with organic products.
The water was the best. I can still work that, and I will, for a while. Wemust heat the water and melt it. Then we can add calcium chloride. That will 
be all right, because synthium is very inert. But I am afraid. We will see,
however. But first-the 
flames." 
They worked on it, and forgot the miracle of the snow-flakes. The flamesroared, and slowly the stubborn apparatus heated, and the water thawed. Theyhad shut off the pipes leading in, and presently the pressure was released onboth sides, and the tanks opened. The whole supply of calcium chloride wasadded to them, when they had been flushed and cleaned, and the stench killed.
"The chloride will kill the plant-life forms that have infested the water, andit will be even cleaner now- I hope," said Thrumann.
All day they worked, and the next they finished it,
and the apparatus was ready for working again. They opened the valves, andafter a single heavy clank, the pressure came up to normal. Presently cleanoxygen was pouring into the room from both machines. Thrumann worked them atfull power, anxiously it seemed, and kept the pump working on the one machinethat was charging oxygen into the fuel tanks; so much so that the output felloff, as all the oxygen was drained to the other apparatus, Where the pressureon the room side of the plate was less than a tenth of an ounce.
Twenty-two hours later, the snowstorm was still going on, and the biting coldhad grown more intense, more unendurable. And twenty-two hours later theapparatus stopped again. The tanks were not frozen this time, the inlet pipeswere. Moisture had collected in them, and blocked the flow of gases. Theyprobably had been frozen before, but when the full difference of pressurebetween Jupiter's atmosphere, and that of the ship rested on it, the ice brokedown, naturally. Now there was only the difference of oxygen pressure on them.
They thawed them out this time by sending an electric current through them.
But it was getting colder. Thrumann started pumping on both tanks, so that hegot the maximum rate of flow, for he knew that soon this would be impossible. 


It was getting colder.
The snowflakes got smaller, smaller and smaller till they were no larger thanflakes on Earth or Mars. But still they drifted in majestic slowness past thewindow. The beads of moisture on the walls of the ship froze that day. Thewalls were below freezing. And the men were colder. The heaters were workingat full capacity, but Corliss ordered them turned off, and the men put on theelectrically heated suits. They could not move about so much now, but it waswarm, and they needed less heating power. They had to put heating coils in thewater tank. 
What happened next came so slowly, they did not realize it at first. Thesnowflakes were melting slightly on the ship, because it was heated somewhat.
They melted and froze, and more came and froze on. It built up a layer overthe ports so smooth and transparent that, where nothing but a uniformwhiteness was to be seen, they did not notice it at first. Air and all aboutwas white suddenly-and the ship was ice. The oxygenapparatus was plugged up, and no amount of thawing the tubes would clear them.
The ice was outside. 
That was how they found the ice. Day after day passed, and the ice remained. Aweek went by, and the uniform whiteness was all there was outside. Two weekswent by-a month.
Corliss guessed it finally, and ordered a slight trial of the rockets undervery low power. There was a sudden explosion, the roar of a ruptured rockettube. "Turn it off, Martin. It's no good. We're stuck more than ever. Iwonder-how thick is it?" He looked out of the port.
"How thick is What?" asked Riley blankly.
"The ice, Ben, the ice. We're the center of a block of ice, and we probablyalways will be. I think I know what happened. You know we figured that Jupiterwas above freezing because the blanket of atmosphere was so deep that thesun's heat and light that got in "as short-wavelength light never got outbecause it was turned into long-wave heat, and stopped, held prisoner onJupiter. That keeps the equator and temperate zones warm. We're in the arcticzone. The temperature's forty-two below, centigrade. We were carried here bythe air drift probably. And the snow settled and froze on us, and more frozeon us, and more, till so thick a shell was formed we sank, due to increase indensity. We probably sank till now we're resting on the great polar icesheet.
We thought it was just that the snowing kept up. It may have, at that.
Probably it stops sometimes. But we're stopped always, because we're stuck onthe polar ice sheet, and can't drift away to warmer climates where the rainwould melt this ice off. Oh, probably there is some motion of the ice, but toolittle to do us any good. Maybe in a million years it will reach the tropicsagain.
"That does not matter. We are here-'forever. The rockets can't melt us out,
because they are plugged, and will simply explode, and unless we had an enginemore than one hundred percent efficient we can't melt the mass of ice aroundus with our limited supply of fuel."
"Always-here! No more air-" Martin said it very softly, and sighed. "Thatengine would have to be more than ten thousand percent efficient, I guess, toget us loose now."
"No-just 101% would be enough-because we wouldget back what we started with every time. But there ain't no such animal,"
said Corliss. And stopped. Because he'd suddenly remembered there was one-arocket ship I Then he shrugged his shoulders, and sighed, for this rocket shipwould never again be even one percent efficient.
"But the air-lines are plugged. We'll never get any more air," protestedMartin. 
"Martin, there is not one single thing we can do about it. They're plugged.
What of it? What good did they ever do? You knew that eventually we'd run out 


of food, and there always was more air than food."
"It's cold," said Riley. "We'll need a lot of fuel for warmth-if we never getback where it's warm." 
"We won't," sighed Corliss. "You can depend on that." There was a resignedhopelessness in his lean, seamed face. "But we've been here a good while now.
Can you tell whether or not you can send a radio message?"
"Yes, I can tell-and we can. I've been fussing with the set for days. Therebeing nothing else to do."
Nothing else to do. That was the situation of the Corliss Jupiter Expedition.
Days followed days, and merged into months. Thrumann puttered and read andsulked and tried to think of chemical schemes. He converted all the excess 
paper and cloth into sugar, and ran out of reagents. The men wouldn't touchhis results, but he ate it, and seemed to wax fat and happy, or at least fat.
They grew strong. The eternal crushing weight seemed to affect them less asthey grew accustomed to it. And the ship was stable now, very stable. It wasanchored by unknown millions of tons of ice. The ship had merely served as anucleus for a gigantic hailstone, and now, here on the floating ice mass inthe air, it grew heavier. Day and night grew to have less and lessdifferentiation. The layers of ice, translucent though they were, finallyblocked all light, and the ship lay in a mass of dark, light-less ice, withonly the glow of her lights showing what lay beyond. The temperature nevervaried; it hung at forty-two degrees below zero week after week, for theynever moved, and Jupiter's air is too massive to change rapidly in temperatureas Earth's does. 
Riley watched the calendar, and played with the radio, and Corliss watched thecalendar, and worried. The six months was rapidly dwindling to a matter ofdays. Therewas nothing they could do about it. The "relief" ship would come. That wasinevitable. But they might be able to stop it before it got so far down intothe atmosphere that retreat was impossible.
And, deep in Corliss's mind, a single thought began to rankle, the thoughtthat went with those words he had spoken hastily when he first realized theywere forever imprisoned in the icy floating continent of Jupiter.
Corliss was sleeping; he woke with difficulty to the shaking of Riley's handon his shoulder. "Bar-Bar- wake up. Brad's calling."
Corliss sat up with a start. "Brad? Brad's on Gamy-mede!"
"He's not any more. He's on Jupiter," said Riley grimly. Corliss was up in asecond. In another he was in the radio room. The speaker was rattling to ahuman voice for the first time in all the months they had been here. There wasthe background wash of static;-but there was a human voice.
"Riley-Riley-hey, what's up?"
"O.K., Brad-I went to get Bar. He's here. Now listen. Have you stopped?"
"No, I haven't. I'm going to bring you out somehow. You may have had toughluck but-" 
"Brad," said Corliss slowly and calmly, "if you haven't reached the region ofstorms, turn on all your power, and get out. You haven't a chance, and we knowit better than you do. If you have passed the first layers of the storms, foldyour wings at once, and let it fall freely til you pass them. You'll hit thethick air, and slow enough to partly open the wings again. Ours ripped off.
But go back. The air is denser than water. We've floated in it for months."
The speaker rattled softly as Brad's voice came through. "God," he said aloud,
then, "they've gone mad," softly, as though he had turned away from themicrophone to speak.
Bar laughed softly. "It won't do any good, I see. You won't believe me. Butfold your wings, and you will be that much better off. When you get down, letus know. And watch out for the hydrosphere. It isn't very thick, but it maystrain your plates to the breaking point. Close off all barometers, too. 


They'll explode."
The voice of Brad suddenly became jumpy. They had reached the level of thestorms. An order rang out sharply: "Level off, if you can, and shut off thegyroscopes before they break a mounting. Are you using full lift on thewings?" A moment pause. Then: "Good-then take a straight dive. This storm areaisn't very deep evidently. And you might cut the wing-lift down, for now."'
"Why not do as I say, and fold them, Brad? I'm not nuts, even if I do sayfunny things. The air is denser than water. The rocks float in it down alittle lower. We're frozen in- a hailstone now, and can't break loose. But ifyou aren't going to use the wings, why not fold them?" Corliss .spokeironically. There was no answer. Finally he spoke again. "All right, go ahead.
But close off the barometers when they start exploding. Synthium's the onlystuff that can stand the pressure."
"That pitching's pretty severe-God-that pinion gear is strained. Pull in thewings!"
"They won't move now, sir," a faint voice replied. "The rack's-" The voice wasdrowned in a rending, crashing thunder.
Silence returned in a few seconds. "The wings go off?" asked Corliss sweetly.
"Ours did too. Right about where you are. Will you order the barometers closedoff now? And don't try to fire your rockets when you get any lower because theair's too dense. It will burst the tubes, and if you melt a hole in thesynthium rocket-housing, you'll die in a thousandth of a second, and we wouldlike someone to talk to." 
"Close all barometer valves," conceded Brad's voice at last. "Where are you,
Bar? I thought you must be mad." "We're frozen in a hailstone about a milethick, I guess. We're on the south polar ice cap. Where are you?"
"Forty-five degrees north. It doesn't matter because we're falling freely, andwe'll smash when we hit." 
"No you won't. The air's too thick. If you just had your wings, you could stoplike landing in a featherbed. You'll float as it is. Take my advice and dropsome kind of an anchor in the hydrosphere. What ship are you in?" " 'Two,'"
replied the radio voice. "But we haven't any anchor."
"Heave out that magnet if you've still got it. It might do some good, though Idoubt it. But stay north. The equator is a region of storms-bounces andheaves. It will 
make you sick. If you get in the snow regions, use the rockets to push out.
But you won't hit. You'll float in the air."
Two hours later the "Corliss II" was bobbing slowly in Jupiter's atmosphere,
in just about the position the "Mercury" had occupied. And there she stuck.
"Isn't there anything we can do, Bar?" asked Brad, from the "Corliss II."
"Well, maybe you can, but we spent six months and didn't get far. Our food, bythe way, will give out in about a month. Not that it will make muchdifference." 
"But there must be some way out?"
"Straight up," said Corliss ironically. "But don't use your rockets. They'llburst, as ours did. Thrumann has a system for getting the oxygen out of theair if you're interested. Personally, I don't think its worth while. I've gotsomething rankling in my head, and I'm going to start working on it to passthe time. It's impossible of course, so it's just the sort of thing to get usout of this impossible situation on this impossible planet. It's so impossibleI'm going to work on it. Goodbye. Talk to Riley for a while. Personally, I'mrather disgusted with you for being a rather complete nitwit, and fordisobeying the orders I gave you. You knew we must be wrecked; you might atleast have waited till we gave you the details. Then, if you didn't believeus, you could come on in, with some reason."
Corliss turned disgustedly from the microphone and looked slowly at the menaround him. "Don't get all hot and pepped up about what I said. It's 


impossible to begin with; it's impossible to do any work here because wehaven't anything to work with, and I think it would still be impossible to getout if I made what I want to." 
Corliss retreated to the motors room, and locked the door. Then he sat downand started calculating, and playing with a pencil and paper, and drawingdiagrams. Gradually, as hours went by, the diagrams started to becomemodifications of one general pattern. Ten hours later there was one, finelyfinished little diagram, with pages of notes explaining each little arrowedand numbered part. Corliss had seen daylight-and was beginning to dissolve theword impossible out of his vocabulary.
He ate finally, having locked everybody else out of the motors room, and wentto sleep. When he got up, he ate

V.J 
again, and returned to the motors room. The men in the radio-corner werecarrying on a lengthy talk with the "Corliss II," giving advice. Aboard the"Two" they were building a pump now to force the leakage out again. Riley andMartin were trying to explain just how it was made, but they couldn't givediagrams, and they couldn't point with their fingers, and they had to developa whole new nomenclature. There was too strong a tendency to use the words"this," "that," and "gadget." They were well occupied all the morning.
And Corliss worked in the motor room, looking up data and working thecalculators. About four hours after he went hi, he stuck his head out of thedoor, and spoke for the first time that "day." There was a broad grin on hisface. 
"Riley-come here will you? I think-well, come here anyway." Riley came. Andthe door was locked again. Martin looked after them sourly, then spoke intothe microphone.
"Bar's hauled Riley in with him now. (He had a grin on his blasted face, buthe won't share whatever it is with us. Maybe he's inventing more ways to usethat pet 'impossible' of his."
He wasn't though. He and Riley were discussing actively, swiftly, their wordsclicking out like the clash of rapiers. And two hours later, a group ofapparatus was being set up, the machines were turning out new pieces, and theroom was being warmed so that they could work without clumsy heated suits.
The super-efficient engine wasn't really complex. It was simply the sciencethat led to it, that had stopped all men who went before. Man had alreadydefied the law of conservation of energy in one way, on a grand scale whichwas still a small scale. They had learned to defy it on a small scale whichwas actually a grand scale!
Whoever had first discovered the principle that made rocket ships possible hadoverlooked the fact that they were irrelevant, relative to nothing in theuniverse. Since the work they did was the product of the distance traveledtimes the force applied, a formula known to physics for a thousand years,
nearly, it worked out in the rocket peculiarly. The first second it mighttravel 1,000 feet, and use t force of 1,000 tons. That would be a millionfoot-tons of work. But later, when it reached a speed of 10,000 feeta second, it would do ten million foot-tons of work, and yet burn the samequantity of fuel. This led sooner or later, by the steady building up of thismathematics, to a condition where the ship was getting more work out of thefuel than was originally in it.
It had originally been shown to the physicists of Earth in this form: A shipmoving one mile a second relative to Earth is, at the same time, moving tenmiles a second relative to Mars. It accelerates at a velocity of one mile asecond, and so moves two miles a second relative to Earth, and eleven miles asecond relative to Mars. How much work has it done? They knew how to calculatekinetic energy: K E = Ą2 MV2. But if they calculated the work with respect toEarth, it was three units, while calculated with respect to Mars, the. ship 

had done twenty-one units of work!
In hopeless mathematical confusion, they were forced to admit that the rocketcannot be justly related to anything, until it actually comes in contact withit. Then, and then only, can it be calculated on.
So rockets had sailed through space, super-efficient engines landing with moreenergy than they began with.
And Corliss, remembering that rankling statement of his that they needed anengine more than 100% efficient -had built one! The first Corliss EnergyGenerator. In principal it replaced Earth with one electrode, where power wasfed in the rocket ship by a charged atom that dissipated its charge inpropelling itself, and Mars with a.second electrode that absorbed the kineticenergy of the moving atom to electric power.
The first engine wasn't completed till nearly nightfall of the third Jovianday, twenty-four hours after they started. They had swallowed a few tabletsand cubes of the compressed food, and worked steadily.
They opened the locked door finally, and called the others in. Corliss waslaughing, almost insanely. Riley was standing with blurry eyes looking at itand shaking his head. Neither one would talk sensibly. The others came in andstared and wondered what the thing was all about, and looked at the roaringthree-inch arc that thundered and thudded and threw out heat that warmed the 
whole room. Corliss actually told more in his laughter than Riley in his dumbincomprehension of his own handiwork.
"It's super-efficient-super-efficient!" Corliss chortled. 
"The dry-cell there is running it-a thousand amperes at twenty thousand voltsfrom a six-volt dry cell! The current goes in, and it is multiplied, becausethe thing's more than 100% efficient; then it is sent in again, and throughagain, and each time, because this model is 198% efficient, it gets nearlytwice as powerful-and finally it's that!"
Lombard gave Corliss some amytaline to make him sleep, and Riley got somemore, and the others sat and stared at the instrument, afraid to shut it off,
and afraid to let it run, for fear it would burn itself out, so it ran on, andthundered and roared, and they sat and gaped at it. Presently they took offtheir heated suits because it was getting too warm! And the beads of ice onthe walls had accumulated till they became a layer of clear slippery ice ahalf inch thick, and a wet, dank layer on the floor, began to melt and rundown. And the flame roared on and on. 
They called the "Corliss Two," and told them about the flame, and worried, andran around helplessly because they were afraid the power would be used up! Theinexhaustible, everlasting, infinite power of the first Corliss EnergyGenerator! 
Corliss Woke finally, to a ship that was stifling hot, and stank with thesharp, biting tang of ozone. He woke, forgetful of what had happened theprevious "day," and heard the roar of the arc, and almost ran to the motorsroom. The arc roared on, the terminals glowing almost white hot, a fearfulheat flooding out, for the tungovan terminals were radiating at a temperatureclose to that of the sun's surface. 
"Thank God-Bar!" said Martin. "Can you shut it off?"
"Certainly," said Bar, remembering suddenly. And he opened the circuit to thelittle dry cell. Instantly the arc stopped, and their ears, deafened by hoursof the noise, rang in the silence that followed. "The battery ran it," heexplained. Then, slowly, as the enormous thought of it came home to him. "Thebattery-ran that! How long?"
"Thirteen and a half hours, Bar," said Lombard softly. "The ice outside theship is melted for two feet around."
"We'll melt it!" Corliss almost shouted. "We'll melt it for a thousand feet 
around-we'll drill our way out of here!"
"Can we, Bar," begged Martin, "can we? We can't work outside. Even with power, 


we can't work outside." 
"We will, now. Somehow we will," said Corliss. "But first we've got to make abigger generator. By Great Jupiter, it is a generator-the first, for itgenerates energy!"
Martin and Riley and Corliss started making it, and they started telling themen in "Corliss Two" how to make one, and in five more days, they had itfinished. They ripped out the old steam "generating" plant, and cut it up tomake the-new power plant. Then they connected it, one great lead to the sternrocket tube, and one great lead to the nose of the ship. One million amperesthey pounded through it, till the leads turned dull red, and the skin of theship grew warm to the touch.
And the power came from a storage battery! They charged the battery from thepower lines, and Corliss roared in laughter as he saw the impossible beingdone! They charged a storage battery from the power it generated, and heatedthe whole ship so hot, the water outside melted the ice. And they ran the pumpas fast as they could, with two motors, and pumped out the biter-hull. Theylightened the ship by that much, and slowly it floated up, up, up through theice and water. 
In two days it worked its way through the ice ball that held it, and roseslowly, grandly, nearly two hundred feet till it struck a balance again. Theywere free! Free-and with power unlimited, and infinite.
"We'll work the rockets-gently, very gently-oh so inefficiently-and we won'tgive one single little hoot in all Hades how inefficient they may be! Andwe'll reach 
the Two'! 
"And in the meantime, damned if I can't work out some way to use the powerwe've got now." Corliss laughed in vast triumph as he looked at the littletwelve-volt storage battery that was emergency power for the radio set-turningout a power that fused a great block of ice, and raised the ship-running ahundred and fifty horsepower of motors as a minor job.
Oxygen was pouring in again from Thrumann's apparatus. Corliss walked slowlythrough the ship, looking vaguely about him, seeking, seeking, seeking ... aninspiration. Riley watched him steadily, saying nothing. Corliss looked, andfinally spoke, half to himself. "We could get out-we could make a diving bell-
or rather 
sphere-like the famous bathyspheres before they used parium submarines.
Synthium-we've got enough now, since we cut up the power plant. But how-how towork. A propeller would do fine down in this air-but we haven't any wings, andwe'd get into thinner air pretty quickly. But-how to work out of the thing-itwill require mechanism-outside mechanism controlled from within-somehow.
"But-what to use-what to use- Are we no better off now?" Corliss stood lookingat the greater generator they had made, working only lightly now, dischargingto some extent at high voltage. A switch stood open, and the knife-blades werebrushed with little blue fuzz, luminous blue like iron filings hanging stifflyonto a magnet. And then Bar Corliss saw the whole, complete answer, andlaughed softly. It was so beautifully simple, effective-and inefficient. Buthe didn't mind that. 
He just went on laughing when Riley asked for the secret, and showed him whathe needed for the diving sphere. Riley and Martin started making it, and themen hi the "Corliss Two" announced then- generator was working, and started ona diving sphere too.
That took nearly two weeks, with all the magnets and motors and little gearsand grips and welding arc apparatus. And Corliss made experiments inThrumann's laboratory air-lock. The big lock was full of diving sphere. Rileywasn't too sure they could open that lock, with the steel gasket that had runlike warm tar. 
They sent the diving sphere out alone, first. It was more mobile than the ship 


itself! It had the little Corliss Generator and a dry cell for a power plant,
and four motors and propellers for mobility, and it was made of solidsynthium. They could open the lock-and the diving sphere resisted the pressuresafely.
So they were ready for the things Riley had been cutting out of synthium atCorliss' directions, little Venturi tubes a foot long and three inches inmaximum diameter, •vith electrical connections. He was making hundreds ofthem, making them till the synthium stock was gone, and then he cut up thefurniture-made of synthium because synthium was stronger per pound thananything else ever began to be-and when that was gone, he cut up an emptywater tank, and used that. Finally he had to stop. But he had a lot of thelittle things made. Corliss wasworking still on Thrumann's lock-to the German's disappointment, because allhis oxygen apparatus had been torn out.
Martin and Riley had the job, and they hated it. In that bubble of metal,
steadied somewhat by a motor used as a gyroscope, driven by four littlepropellers, they had to maneuver around, and with a queer thing Corliss calleda "mechanical hand," place the Venturi tubes as Corliss had directed, weldthem onto the synthium wall with a sudden spot of energy (they had let theentire pressure of the outside atmosphere into the inter-hull again, so thatthe outer wall was bearing little strain) and place them correctly. Then-theleads, power leads of copper wire supported in synthium beta insulators,
welded finally through the synthium-beta port in Thrumann's air-lock, into theship itself. Then-they were done.
That was all. 
It was rather difficult, the last few days. Because there wasn't any food atall left now, not even one of the cubes of concentrated nourishment.
It took them a month to do the final modifications, because the thing wasincredibly difficult, working in a bubble of metal that turned and spun andjiggled un-predictably, no matter how they anchored it magnetically. Magnetson the end of mechanically jointed arms held the things they wanted to weld,
and the electrodes always bobbed the other way, and when they were in theright position, the Venturi had twisted in the wrong orientation. By the timethey had two of them in place, they had to go back to the ship, and have theirleaky bubble re-exhausted, as the pressure crept up.
It was misery those last days, slowly starring.
They did it though, and the "Mercury" was ready. The ship turned around at

11:30 P.M., 221 days after she first touched Jupiter's atmosphere-under herown power now. At nearly thirty miles an hour she started on her long treknorth. Two days later, the "Corliss Two" started south to meet her, also underher own power, and moving nicely. And behind each ship they'd spun longstreamers of electric fire. They glowed beautifully. The "Two" reached theEquator first, and had the pleasure of plowing through the "heaves andbounces." It was not so bad though, because it made good time, and had somecontrol. 
They joined in about ten days, because they rose soon, out of the exceedinglydense lower atmosphere to a greater height where the air was not so dense.
They had no wings to add drag, so they made good time-180 miles an hour upthere. 
That was speed. On Earth, they'd have circled the planet in less than seventyhours at their combined speed of 360 miles an hour-yet they spent 240 hours enroute -and those hi the "Mercury" were very near dead when the two shipsjoined, and food could be obtained. Then Lombard and Corner from the "Two"
worked together, and in three days, the men were well again.
And then-in all the little Venturi tubes, the electric flares started again-
the little brush discharges that Corliss had visualized as he watched thebrush discharges from the knife switch-that day long called, at times, the 

"electric breeze," never before used. But now the electric breeze startedagain, grew in power as the inexhaustible energy of the Corliss EnergyGenerator flowed stronger, and the two ships swung slowly upward, then fasterand faster as they left the thicker air, faster and faster . . .
The region of storms had little terror for them now- they had control. Theypounded up, at rising speed, for the electric breeze, a drive less than onepercent efficient; but what matter, it was capable of thousands of miles anhour. 
It was as good as a rocket, really, while a trace of atmosphere removed, foras they reached the last thin traces of Jupiter's atmosphere, the electricbreeze became a terrific electric tornado from the electro-static dischargepoints, the ionized molecules flying out at thousands of miles a second.
The "Two" reached Satellite Five in ten hours. The "Mercury," with one bursttube, took twelve.
But they worried little about that. They made it, and Ganymede too.
Corliss looked out of the ports. Jupiter hung gigantic, steamy above them.
Outside, terrific cold prevailed. Jupiter hung giant-and still mysterious.
"I'm going to go back there," said Corliss, "and it won't be the last thing Ido. I can move there now, and by Great Jupiter, I will! I'm going back toEarth now- for a good ship.
"But that's all right, Jupe," he laughed, "the score's even! You knocked meabout a bit-but you taught me.
"Brad-this expedition cost me thirty-seven million, five hundred and forty-twothousand, and several hundred. Brad-what do you think an energy generator'sworth to the world?" 

ALL 

John Reid rose slowly as the radio clicked into silence under Grant's fingers.
The nine other men at the table moved restlessly. John Reid the youngersnubbed out a cigarette with a grinding, heavy persistence, slow andinexorable. 
' "It is done," said old John Reid slowly. "America, last to fall, is fallento Asia." He shook his massive white head slowly. "And by Fate's unkindestmockery, we reach our goal, reach it at the end of a course as difficult andas long as the course Asia's Nijihua led her men to reach their .goal-theAsian World, simultaneous in birth with America's death.
"Our goal is reached, Scientists. Before you the atom burns to silver light,
silver energy, so safely, so control-lably, so irresistibly when we choose.
The world needs it, needs it infinitely for peace as America needed it forwar. 
"Now-shall we sell it to Nijihua-and the world? Give it to the world-andNijihua?"
Young John Reid rose slowly. His face was keen and his eyes intense; there wasin his slowness of movement not the slowness of defeat and age and despair.
His was of absolute determination, and known power. Blue eyes, young andstrong, starred in the silver star-flecked light of the golden lamp, lookeddown the table to blue eyes under silver hair, thin and silky. "No," he said,
soft and cold, "we will not sell, we will not give. At the crook of ourfinger, at the whisper of a word Nijihua would heap honor, power, on the onewho mentioned the secret of the Atom to him. But Asians will come. They willfind us here, even here. But it will be months, three months, six; for thisResearch Department 7-A was chosen by the American Government not unwisely,
not without secrecy. We will have time before they find this lone, lost 


canyon. And when they come this will not be American Research Department 7-A.
It will be something very, very different. And that we must work out. For wehave tools, we have machines, and we have that Lamp of the Atoms, which is nota lamp alone. Inadequate they are to strike directat Nijihua and the Asian World we know, and useless when the spirit ofAmerica's unity is crushed.
"One thing we have done, we have lighted the lamp. Two things we must do;
rebuild America into a unit, and strike at Nijihua. Now for this we have atool, and the lamp we have lighted lights unguessed caverns of knowledge.
Three days it has burned for us, and in that time we have seen lead melt togold, raw rock to flaming radium, seen tearing bolts that shattered rock andmetal. But does any man know this infinitely important thing; Why, three daysago, when Warren Lewellyn first lit that lamp, seven of us died in suddensilent rigidity while we eleven, who stood beside and among them, are herethis hour? 
"I know, radiations, radiations we have stopped by brute shielding, and bruteignorance. But we did not die, and they did. We know nothing of the thing wehave found. But-I have thoughts on that.
"We will do much invention in these three months, and some will be artisticand some will be fantastic, some will be-the exploration of the caverns thelight of the lamp reveals.
"We must have men, men of our own race to back us and aid us and hold what weconquer for them. And we must have something that will withstand the might ofNijihua's armies, and nothing will do that. Therefore we must deflect theirfury until the time comes that we are ready.
"Now we would build a firm-knit political union of our people, and Nijihuawould build a firm-knit union of all peoples for the benefit of his own. To dothis, Nijihua has taken a leaf from the ancient books, and from Rome he haslearned and from Persia, from Macedonia and Egypt who ruled world-girdlingempires. All these have taught him many things, and the first of these isthis: it is not swords which hold or overthrow empires, nor mighty leadersalone, but emotions and mobs and mass. It is the race, not the man. A well-fedand sheltered slave is a safer companion than the freest of starving wretches.
The freedom man wants, is freedom to work and eat and live and think as hewills. To rule an empire then, each man must have his way in those things thatmatter no whit to the empire, and matter so much to the man. You have read thepromises of the Emperor. What does he say?"
"To each man a home, a wife, a living, and peace to enjoy these things. Toeach man the right to learn, to think, to live, to worship as he will, so onlyhe does not disturb the peace of the Emperor," old John Reid quoted slowly.
"To worship as we please! That, and that alone I shall demand!"
The nine men looked from father to son in puzzlement John Reid the youngerpointed to the star-flecked silver lance of light that leapt in frozen gracefrom the golden lamp, and slowly their eyes deepened, and their faces set in agrim, sure knowledge.
"We want no converts of an alien race," said David Muir slowly. "How, John, dowe turn them away?"
"If my guess be more than guess, though he come in skin-dyed white as ours,
with hair like golden grain and eyes blue as liquid air, set straight and trueacross his face, though we make him gladly welcome, still no convert shallslip through to spy and warn and reveal!" said John Reid. "We have a thousandthousand inventions yet to make, and a hundred days to make them."
"Whom do we worship?" asked big, slow Tornsen.
"And that is not the least of our inventions," answered John Reid. "Let it be-
All, Lord of Things that Are and Are to Be!"
"We build, then, the shrine of All, in whom everything that is, is." Old JohnReid nodded slowly. "And All is manifest in the Flame. Yes. We must invent the 


Service of All. Which will be the Service of America. 
"The Temple will be built."
"But not too swiftly, not too swiftly," said young Reid softly, leaningforward. "We must study All. All has many faces, and His star-flecked flame isbut one. By the lightest touch we show another phase of All-Lord ofDestruction!" His long, slim fingers touched the base of the lamp, and in theinstant the lancing flame darkened, shown iridescent, and was abruptly twin-
forked, snake-tongued, crimson as new-let blood, so the dimmed cavern waswashed with red that dripped from every rock and puddled on the great table,
and the gold of the lamp itself was dark and red with it. The cavern was aplace of terror, scarlet and black, for what would not reflect that angryterror-stirring red, must needs be black, for there was no other light savethat to reflect. And every shining surface threwback the snake-tongued flame that moved and waved so slow, so slow, so sinuousthere, to some strange breeze unfelt by man, feeling never the stirring of theak in the great chamber.
"And," said Reid as the lithe, white fingers moved again, "All-Lord ofWisdom!" 
And his color was blue, blue as the purest sapphire, cold and clear andgemlike, a tetrahedral flame, perfect as a mathematician's formula, straight-
ruled as a clear, clear crystal of light. And the cavern walls were cold andblue as vast antarctic ice-caves, and black as spatial night, and everypolished thing gave back the tetrahedral flame of blue, the flame of All, Lordof Wisdom. 

Major Nashiki halted-in surprise mat did not show on his hard-lined, immobileface. "Halt!" he snapped softly. Then he advanced over the low ridge of rockbefore 'him, scoured, beaten sandstone, red as the dust of Mars. A great gashin the hide of Earth fell away below him, red as the stone he trod, blue asdistant hills, yellow as sea-sand and riotous with cloud and sun and shadow.
Three quarters of a mile it dropped to some forgotten riverbed, deserted aeonssince when a mighty slide had dammed the stream that carved that gash. But thebottom ringed by Titan columns of jutting rock-isolated island-pillars half amile tall-was sand as smooth-and-white as silver-dust. 
And that had not halted him. Country such as this, hi miniature, he and hisscouting party had traversed for three long weeks. But he halted, for on thefarther wall, half a mile to his left, was a great patch of the rock wall thatwas not rock, but threw back the long rays of the sun in blinding light, whiteas salt. And in it were glints of purest raying color, blue, green, pearl andsomber scarlet. 
"Captain Tiashi, bring the American scout."
A trimly uniformed captain, a weary, dirty American in tattered rags, lightchains on his arms, came forward.
"Tucker, what is that?" demanded the major.
Tucker looked silently for a long time. He answered slowly at length. "It'snew to me." He folded his long legs, and settled down wearily. The smallmajor, glared at him.
"Dog, what is it?" His hand struck out like a flash of light; the echo of theslap died out in infinite space.
The American looked at him through narrowed eyes, his face unmoving. "If I didknow, I might and I might not tell you. As it happens I don't, and I can't. Ifyou want real bad to know, I'll show you how to get down there. But you'llhave to take these gee-gaws off, because you get down there with yourfingernails, and you pull your ears in so you don't blow off. Or you usewings." 


"Captain, remove those irons. We will go down. Captain 
Tiashi, you will make camp here, and remain with your men. Shurimi,
Hitsali, Kushkiani; you will come."
Five men started down. The American went first, long arms, long legs reachingfor known holds, the little brown Orientals silently stretching themselvesimpossibly to reach holds easy for the lank American. Tucker led them a merrychase. 
Far below, they struck an angling shelf that led down and down, then a shortclimb down bare, crumbling rock. Then a great slide, a terraced pillar. Theywalked the fine, white sand of the floor. Tucker looked about slowly, andmoved on. 
They were three miles from the dazzling whiteness of the strange wall; the sunwas setting now, and in this deep canyon the dusk was coming. But there waslight across there, silvery light that streamed through door and great carvedwindows. Tucker slogged wearily along. Behind, the others marched, theslipping sand making their instinctively assumed rhythm uneven.
A half mile from the great doors, the major halted. The intense sheen of thewhite wall had abated, and he saw now it was a perfect square of white. Thesquare was edged with five-foot bands of crystal, crystal above that shonelike a mighty sapphire, five hundred feet long, five feet wide; at the right,
green as new-grown leaves. Light in it was swiftly growing, softly lambentlygleaming. At the left, a vast, luminous and softly pulsing light like an acreof pearls. But across all the bottom was red, not ruby, but deeper, sullencrimson. 
Nashiki pushed on. The light died in the canyon, and by hand torches theyplodded on across the silver sands, while dim stars showed the mighty, blackwalls, and ahead the great crystals pulsed, and the whole vast face of thewall was faintly luminous, as though bright light shone within. The greatdoors stood open, and silvery light cascaded down the majestic steps.
Boldly Nashiki started up the great stairway, and it rang to his tread likemighty bells, deep and slumberous. Half up their fifty-foot climb he was, heand his little troop, when a figure appeared at the peak.
"Who comes?" The voice of the silhouette was deep as the voice of the stair.
"Major Nashiki of the World Imperial Army, ScoutingDivision. Who are you, and what is this place?" he snapped.
"This is the Temple of All. If you be of Oriental blood, stop at the laststep. It is the way of All, Lord of Life."
"The Temple of All? What sect is this? I do not know it."
"All is Lord of Life, and his phases are Dis, Lord of Death; and Mens, Lord ofWisdom; Tal, Lord of 'Peace; and Shan, Lord of Fulfillment. And his phasesmake All, Lord of Life."
Steadily Nashiki mounted the Singing Stair, and as he mounted, his troopbehind him, the song became a welling melody. "It is new to me. This propertylies in the Province of Colorado, and is unregistered. Why has it not beenlisted as the Emperor commands?"
"All, Lord of Life, alone commands. Nashiki, you have reached the top. Halt,
for the Lord All admits none to his Temple save those of All."
"I shall enter," snapped Nashiki viciously. "The wrath of the Emperor shall beupon you if any interferes with my way." He strode forward.
The man loomed before him, enormous. A cloak of silver lined with a strangecloth of woven metallic threads, blue and red, silver and green, wrapped him.
A strange headdress, set with a one-inch ornament of crystal, diamond-clear,
sapphire, pearl and sullen crimson and green that held a bound silver cloth,
gleamed hi the light of the Temple. In his hand he carried a curious staff,
wrought of silvery metal, three feet long and tapering from one inch upward tothe four-inch cubed crystal at its head set flush with its sides, a strangecrystal that glowed with sparkling light, silvery with star-flecks at the top, 


sullen red and iridescent pearl, green and sapphire on its sides. The manstood massive and unmoving, six feet three in height, as Nashiki halted toinspect him.
"Who are you?" demanded the Oriental.
"Tornsen, Server of All," said the man quietly. "No man shall halt you. Butthere is death in the air of the Temple of All for all save the People ofAll." 
As he spoke, the staff in his hands glowed brighter. The silvery flame leaptin the crystal's crest a foot tall, silvery with bursting stars that floatedand vanished in an instant, and from the glowing side of sullen red a vaguelyseen,
vaguely stirring snake-tongued flame of deep crimson wavered and died as thebrighter silver waned again.
Nashiki laughed softly. "So no man touches me, I have no great fear of Gods,"
he said. He strode forward again.
The giant blocked his way by a slow step. "It is Death," he said. And Nashikilooked through the great doors. Before 'him was a great cubed chamber oflight. Five hundred feet on a side, it was, and the far wall was dark jet,
against which stood a great graven altar, a mighty staff of gold, fifteen feetthick and topped by a Titan's crystal such as the man carried, cubed as his,
colored as his. And from its peak lanced a silver flame, sparkling,
coruscating. The right wall was green as the crystal's light, the left a vastpearl, the roof more luminously blue than a summer sky. And the floor was asea of waving blood.
For a moment the sight had stopped Nashiki. He stepped forward again. "That isgold," he said. "All gold is the property of the Emperor, alloys are to beused for decoration." 
Again the man was in front of him. "That is Death," he answered slowly. "Thatgold is 'the property of theLord of Life." 
Nashiki stepped back, and his movement was swift as the darting tongue of achameleon; his revolver was in his hand. "Stand aside," he said. Tomsen stoodaway, his head bent slightly.
Nashiki stepped forward, across the threshold, to thesea of blood. 
And fell dead. 
He uttered no cry as he fell, nor did he twist; in all the Temple there was nosound nor change, save only that on the floor was a lax, empty sack, discardedby life.
His little troop started forward, rifles suddenly raised, and their voiceswere high and sharp with anger. Tornsen spoke again, his staff upraised.
"Hold! I did not touch him. Dis, Lord of Death has destroyed him. I will bringhim to you, for it is death for you to cross the threshold."
A man was thrust forward suddenly, a disheveled, ragged man, weary andemaciated. Three rifles pressed his back.
Tucker looked up into the broad calm face of Tornsen. "Is that-true?" he askedslowly. "I can cross."
"So you are American, All welcomes you," said Torn-sen.
Slowly, reluctantly, Tucker crossed the line, his eyesfixed on the great cubed crystal of the altar. He crossed, stepped over thedead Oriental, and walked down the broad floor to the mighty crystal.
Tornsen stepped behind him. At twenty feet from the great crystal Tuckerhalted, and turned to look at the man behind him.
"All-All-" he said, "I never heard-"
"All, Lord of Life, one weary, worn stands' before your altar. All, Lord ofLife, cleanse him with your flame, give him of your life! Tal, Lord of Peace,
one distressed stands before your altar. Bring Life, Lord of Life. Bring 


Peace, oh Tal."
The motionless, silver flame washed higher, till, like a great fountain, itspilled over and fell in soft-glowing stars of light about them. The crystalturned with a vast majesty till the green facet shown toward them. As thesilver died, green washed and spun within the crystal, soft green, restfulemerald that reached out and through and about the two, and returned to thecrystal.
In a moment Tucker turned, very slowly. His face was clear, his eyes brightwith new life, new hope; his weary 'body stood straighter now, stronger. "All-
All-" he said. Slowly he knelt before the softly glowing green of the crystal.
"I have hope again-hope-something I thought gone for all time. Oh, God-let mestay, let me stay-"
The green washed out in a sudden whirling fire that wrapped him, and veryslowly he sank to the floor, arranging himself comfortably.
Tornsen turned to the door. The Orientals stood staring, rifles lowered. Butsuddenly they lifted them. "We are coming, we are coming, for there is nodeath-some weapon-"
"It is Death for you," repeated Tornsen steadily.
"Come here," snapped one, "we will see! You will stand 'beside me, close tome-" 
Together, side by side, they stepped across the line. Soundlessly, the smallerman sank to the floor. 
"It is Dis, Lord of Death," said Tornsen again. "I will bring them to you, andyou must believe, for to not believe is Death. Tell me, then, what man cankill as these men died? Look at their eyes, look at their flesh."
He picked up the limp Nashiki, and bore him across the threshold. The tworemaining Japanese bent over him quickly, with little half-smotheredtwitterings, their watch-
his eyes, the eyes of a long-dead fish; they examined his his eyes, the eyesof a long-dead fish; they examined his flesh, and it was like boiled flesh,
stiff and strangely white. They backed away suddenly, twittering moreintensely. Then abruptly their rifles were flung to their shoulders, centeredon the white-robed man. Behind him, abruptly, the great crystal whirlednoiselessly, instantaneously, and from its sullen red, a monstrous flamelicked like a great rope of congealed, luminous blood, a snake-tongue of deaththat wrapped suddenly about the nearer Japanese, and flamed about Tornsen.
It flicked back, and the second Japanese stood frozen as his companion wiltedslowly. Tornsen, bathed in the heart of the red flame, stood calm, unmoving.
"I thank Thee, Dis," the Server said as he bowed hishead slightly.
He raised his eyes to look at the remaining Japanese. "Go," he said. "Bringyour companions, and take thesebodies." 
"I cannot leave," wailed the Oriental suddenly, "I cannot. I know no trail,
he-the American-led us. It is night, I do not know the way."
Tornsen looked at the broken man. "Where are your companions? I will take youto them." 
"No-no-I will not betray them-"
"We hurt no man. We serve All, Lord of Life. Those who trespass against All,
beware. I would help you."
The Oriental looked up at Tornsen's broad, calm face. "They are at the top ofthat great cliff. There-theirfire-" 
"Oh Tal-bring peace!" Tornsen called softly. The staff in his hand spun, andthe small man screamed as the green face glowed, a lapping green reachedtoward him. He tried to run down the steps, but the great song of the stairechoed hi his ears as lethargy overcame him. He 


slept.
He woke. His captain was shaking him, looking at him with angry eyes.
"Shurimi, answer! How are you back? Where is your officer?"
Shurimi leapt to his feet. Hard red sandstone, age-old, lay beneath his feet,
the great canyon swept out to the left. "Dead-" he gasped. "Dead, in theTemple of All!"
Sunlight, still faintly red with dawn, fell on the camp.
ra 
Three vast feathers falling silent through the blue sky, great wings turningslow through still air, they settled vertically to silver sand between vastupflung walls of rioting color, sullen reds and slate blues, dull golds thatshifted infinitely with shifting, lancing sunlight and cloud. Three greathelicopters, the striking dragon of the Asian World flung bold across theirsides. They touched and halted; slowly a stream of men came out to look acrossthe gorge to the salt-white Temple of All with the bordering blue of Mens, theGreen of Tal, the shifting pearl of Shan, and the sullen scarlet of Dis, Lordof Death. 
The Commanding Officer came out a moment later, and behind him came thirtywomen in shabby clothes, torn and patched, half a dozen ragged children withthem. He spoke swift orders to the men, then presently Lieutenant-GeneralHitsohi started up the mighty silver treads of the Singing Stair, glintinglancing light under the sun. The great treads echoed slumberously to hissteps, a growing carillon as the eight men under Captain Chu Li followed, anda private, one Shurimi. And finally the American women came, and the peal ofthe Stair became a mighty chant that echoed infinitely through the rock-walledgorge.
At the top, Hitsohi halted as before him loomed the majestic figure ofTornsen, Server of All.
The Oriental turned to Shurimi. "This is the man?" he snapped.
"Yes, General."
"You brought about the deaths of Major Nashiki, and three men of the WorldImperial Army?" he demanded, turning again to the giant.
"All, Lord of Life brought their deaths, Warrior. This is the Temple of All,
and 'before the Cubed Crystal of All only ours may stand, for such is the willof All. No man may sway the will of God, Warrior."
"Never yet have I seen a God that killed, save through the hands of men.
Further, there is report that aside from the violation of the RegistrationEdict, you have metallicgold stored here, against the will of the Emperor and the laws of the Empire.
Is this too, true?"
"Such is the base of the Cubed Crystal. All wills it. It will remain," saidTornsen simply. "Now I warn you, as I warned Nashiki, there is death on theScarlet Floor of Dis. You do not believe, but believe me thus, that you,
ignorant, cannot safely venture within the domain of mighty forces unknown toyou, be they such things as man may understand or those things forever beyondman's finite mind, the will of Lord All."
Hitsohi stared cynically. "You are violating the Edicts of the Emperor, andyou and your companions are under arrest for these, things, and for theassassination of Major Nashiki. The mighty forces of the Empire, priest, arewithin the limits of any man's finite mind!"
"We violate no Edicts. This is the Temple of All, and so reads the Edict ofNijihua; that any temple or major religious edifice, not saleable, is not tobe Registered or taxed. This is the Temple of All, eternal, unchanging. Nevercan it be sold. So it is not to be registered.
"And so reads the Edict of Nijihua; that any man or organization may retainand use gold for such purposes as gold alone may serve.
"We violate no Edict." 


"You need gold because no other will serve! That is not true, you will usealloys, alloys which have the brilliance, the color, the incorruptible beautyof gold. No nobler metal is needed for ornament."
"Give me then, some bit of metal, Warrior. I will show wherefore the Temple ofAll uses gold."
"Shurimi, your bayonet. Pass it to him."
Reluctantly the man walked forward and handed the bayonet to the white-robedgiant at arm's length. Tornsen took the metal, wrapped one end in a fold ofhis cloak and held up his cubed-tipped staff.
"All, Lord of Life, let thy flame play upon this metal, test Thou itsbaseness!" 
The silver flame of the staff leapt and died, lanced upward eighteen inchesand burned clear and cold, the dying stars of silver light tinkling very soft,
tiny crystals shattering.
Tornsen drew the metal of the bayonet through the flame, and it washed aboutit, through it. He handed the weapon back to its owner.
"This is the way of All, Lord of Life. Test your blade, Warrior."
Reluctantly Shurimi received it back. In his hands he twisted it. With a notehigh and sharp, the death cry of shining crystals, the metal vanished, gone, apowder settling very slowly from the air.
In the silence the Server spoke. "The Edict says :•'Man may retain and usegold for such purposes as gold alone may serve.'"
Shurimi slowly opened his hands, and a rain of finest dust fell downward,
sparkling silver rain in lancing sun-rays. Hitsohi looked askance at the fear-
struck private, then at the Server.
"Your staff is silver," snapped the Oriental suddenly. "Then gold is" notirreplaceable."
"My staff is of iridium and platinum," Tornsen answered. "Gladly we shallrelinquish our gold if platinum, iridium, osmium or rhodium or other noblemetals be given us. None others long endure the Flame of All, and even swifteris their vanishment beneath the snake-tongued flame of Dis, Lord ofDestruction and Death. 
"We violate no edicts, we obey only the command of Nijihua, the Emperor; thatevery man worship as seems good to him, and fitting."
"You are guilty of the assassination of Major Nashiki," insisted Hitsohi, buthis voice was softer and less harsh. "For this the Temple must beconfiscated." 
"I am not guilty, I warned Nashiki as I warned you that Death lies on thefloor of Dis, and in the flame of All for all save the people of All. I laidno hand on him, but under the threat of his weapon I was ordered to admit him.
He did not know the powers of All, and being ignorant entered, as would thesavage to the mighty power-plant of the civilized engineer, not believing indeath he could not see. I have no guilt."
Hitsohi's gaze was cynical. "So," he smiled, "so will you be forced to admitme. And my troop. But we guard against hidden members of your priesthood.
"Captain Chu Li, place the squad as ordered."
The pattern shifted like running sand. The thirty American women stood dull-
eyed, hopeless in a rough circle about the Oriental troops, a living shield,
shoulder to shoulder, through which no weapon could reach.
Hitsohi looked at the Server, and a tight smile crossed his thin lips.
"Forward," he ordered.
They crossed the slate-white threshold and entered to the sullen crimson floorof Dis, Lord of Death. Three steps the women took before Captain Chu Li, inthe lead of the Orientals, reached the Barrier of the Threshold. He steppedacross, and soundlessly, so soundless they scarcely noticed, he slipped to thefloor and rolled to his back, so his eyes stared up, white and dead, the eyesof a long-dead fish. Two men behind stepped over, and died before the others 


could halt. 
Dull-faced, hopeless beyond caring, the women walked on unharmed, unhalted,
unnoticing.
"It is death," the Server spoke soft in the hush. "There be powers here manmay not understand, the will of AD, Lord of Life. But it is the will of Allthat the woman cross and it is not his will that you should cross."
The women crossed the threshold, stood silent, looking at the crystal withfaces strangely peaceful and calm after the long months of agony, the years ofterror the war had brought.
Tornsen stood beside them. 'Tal, Lord of Peace brings strength again andrefreshment" 
A woman spoke, low and tense. "Can-can this All bring-health to the sick?" Sheheld up her son, a six-year-old with spindly legs, scrawny neck and arms, hishead a boney case far too large for his weakened body. "It- it istuberculosis, brought on by the war-gas."
"All is Lord of Life. Come forward, woman." The silver fountain sparkled,
silent and steady as Tornsen led her around a great crystal to a flight ofgolden stairs that chimed soft and deep to each tread, till they were on alevel with the top of the crystal and it lay a vast sheet of diamond-clearlight below them.
Tornsen took the child in his arms, a frightened child that clung to thestrength of his great arms. "Lie here," said the Server gently, and the boylay amidst the pulsing silver light, breathing in the shining star-bursts.
"All, Lord of Life, one weak and enfrailed by the wastage of disease lies onyour crystal, bathed in your flame. Let Thy great forces play through him, lethealth return!" 
The silver flame rushed up and through him, soundless beauty of light, tillthe boy was hidden in its shining sheath. Then it was gone, and the boy sat upslowly.
"Mother," he said, "Mother, take me down! I'm-I'm hungry-" He began to crysoftly.
The woman looked at Tornsen half afraid, half worshipful, as she took the boyback in her arms. "All brings health, he brings strength and refreshment.
Carron, Lord of Time, who is another phase of All, brings full healing." Thecrystal in his hands spun till the shifting, swelling pearly light of Shan,
Lord of Fulfillment and Happiness faced the mother, reached out to her andbathed her. Suddenly her tired face broke into lines of relief; she laughed.
"He-he's well. He's hungry again!"
The Server smiled. "The child is healed. Come closer, women of All, that theFlame of All may bring you strength."
Slowly the women came forward as the great silvery flame gushed up to fall instar-sprinkled spray over and through them. A new strength came to them,
weariness dropped from them as water from the swimmer's back as he reaches thefarther shore. 
Tornsen went toward the gateway of the Temple, and the Japanese woke to lifefrom their brooding melancholy as Tornsen stood before them, the blue flame ofMens pulsing in his staff.
Hitsohi stared suddenly, and his revolver whipped up. "What weapon is that youbear?" he demanded. "Give me that crystal."
"It is the Crystal of All. To you, it would be the Crystal of Death."
"Give me that crystal," snapped the Japanese. His revolver muzzle trained onTornsen's eyes, steady as the rocks of the canyon.
Tornsen smiled. "Fire, Warrior. No shot can reach the bearer of the Staff ofAll." 
Hitsohi fired. The Server stood unmoved. Again the Japanese fired, and again.
The men behind him muttered and pointed. Hitsohi looked, and saw at Tornsen'sfeet three leaden pellets, rolling slowly, unharmed, undented, moving lightly 


on the salt-white stone. 
"The crystal is Death," said Tornsen quietly. "I tell you this, and becauseyou insist, I will hand it to one of your men, for you must report this thingin truth. Therefore I hand it not to you, but this I tell you; not five fullseconds will he hold it in safety." 

"Shurimi, take the crystal," snapped the officer after an instant's pause.
"He speaks true-it is a God-a God-" wailed the man, turning away, pleading.
Hitsohi's revolver spoke again. Shurimi spun, rolled, and the Singing Stairechoed and spoke softly as his body rolled from tread to tread till the wholegreat stair sang its carillon song of mourning.
"Tashistu, take the crystal," said Hitsohi softly.
The man stepped forward as though to death, and took from Tornsen's hand theflaming crystal. The staff was warm in his hand, and heavy, very heavy. Itseemed to hum softly, a growing, echoing hum that soothed and was music, softand deadening like heavy smoke of the poppy, till his arm grew numb and hislegs, and his eyes were heavy-heavy-heavy-
Tornsen tore the staff from the man's grip as he fell to the threshold. "Itwould be Death, he has not deid, for not two seconds did he hold it, and itmay be that I can revive him."
The Crystal of All in his hands flamed silvery, and its filaments writhed andtwisted to the man. He twitched and writhed with them, and rose suddenlycrying in pain and terror, crying out in his native tongue and rolling on thesalt-white stone. 
"The radiance of All burns those not of our race, and even at best is painful.
But it heals for all that. The pain will go in a day, and the healing willlast," said Tornsen slowly.
"Now go, and may Mens, Lord of Reason, bring you wisdom."
The staff in his hands spun till the cold blue of Mens' tetrahedral flamelooked into Hitsohi's eyes and its radiance bathed him. Very clear seemed allthings to Hitsohi, and he caught a glimpse of an infinite understanding, sothat the Temple was transparent to his mind, and within it mighty beingsmoved, and their bodies were streamers and flames of unguessed force, immenseand irresistible, and the vast Temple was too small for them, looming,
thousand-foot Titans who watched over it and its men. 
And to his understanding, the patterns of the atoms were clear and precise,
and the workings of men, and the meaning of radiation. And he was infinite andall-understanding, watching this scene from afar. And the thoughtsof his men and the calm assurance of this man before him were known. All 
Earth, all Infinity was a well-laid pattern, clear to his mind. And he knewthat All was space itself, in whom all things that are, or are to be, havetheir 'being.
He turned without word or backward glance and marched down the Singing Stairand the men behind followed him slowly, so that the gorge rang to the rhelodvof the Stair. 

Nishaki looked blandly upon Lieutenant General Hit-sohi, and smiled. "Thereport is interesting, General Hit-sohi. But it is quite meaningless. Thedetails you have given me are of no interest, their hypnotic methods do not inthe slightest interest the World Empire. You will answer, please, accuratelyand concisely three questions? Yes?
"The edifice is a major religious building, not to be sold, and hence nottaxable, nor registerable?"
"Yes," said Hitsohi, softly. "That is true." 
"They have gold ornaments, but the nature of their use is such that underSection twelve-B of the Edict of July, the gold is irreplaceable by alloy?" 


"Such would be my report, made, perhaps under hypnosis, as you suggest. Butthe metal was dust, and it floated in the air. The gold was claimed under theEdict's exception; the investigator is satisfied."
"Is the investigator satisfied that the deaths in the building do not make theedifice confiscate under the World Empire's laws?"
Hitsohi stood before the Council, and he was silent, his face motionless asweathered stone. The stone-walled room grew silent, and the men staredsteadily at the testifier. At length he spoke, and his words were audible onlyfor the stillness of the place.
"No hand of man, or weapon of man that is known or conceivable to theinvestigator brought their deaths. They crossed the threshold and-died. Besidethem crossed the Americans, and-lived. And they that died, died without soundor move, and their tissues were as though boiled. The science department hasreported every nerve and cell and tissue coagulated. The investigatorbelieves- no man brought about their deaths. Is the investigator's reportcomplete to the best of his poor ability?"
"The report is complete," said Nishaki pleasantly. "The Council does notaccept nor approve the report. The investigator is dismissed."
Hitsohi bowed stiffly, straightened and walked from 
the room. In his barracks office, he did as the Council expected of a Japaneseofficer under the circumstances, and he died with fear and sorrow in hisheart, for All was very real, and not for him or his race, as he had known andunderstood hi the Flame of Mens, Lord of Wisdom.
V 
Tornsen, the Server, stood upon the great Crystal of All, and the silver Flameof All washed up and through and about him. His voice was deep, and rolledsoftly in the great Temple,
"In the Temple of All, only the sworn servants of All may remain. This, then,
I must bid you. Who will, may enter the Temple. Whom All wills may remain inthe Temple for his prayer. Them, he will welcome to his Temple, and to theirprayers he will listen, though not always will he answer them in full, norever is this to be hoped, for the plans of All and the judgments of All mustremain true to the judgment of His phase, Carron, Lord of Infinite Time. Thegood of the moment, and the good of the man, All will not uphold if it be thesacrifice of the Infinite Time, and the race.
"They who enter the Temple must go forth again. Always there is refreshmentand sanctuary and healing, All will bring you health, Tal, Lord of Peace shallbring you comfort.
"But now you are refreshed. Tal has brought hope again to your eyes andhearts, and All has brought strength to your limbs. Return now. Amos Tuckerwill guide you, and the trails are smooth and the way easy. For this night andthe next and the next, this Crystal of All I give you will glow, but on thefourth night the crystal will be dark, and its flames will die. Leave it then,
for on the sixth night it will shatter and blaze fiercely as Dis the Destroyertakes leave of it. 
"Go now, to your homes. All be with you."
"We-we can return, Server?" a woman's clear, anxious voice echoed in theTemple.
Slowly the great crystal on which the Server stood rotated, the green face ofTal turned past, and the red face of Dis, the pearly light of Shan, till thesapphire light of Mens, Lord of Wisdom faced them.
"The temple of All, and Mens is ever open to you," said Tornsen, and thecrystal glowed till all the temple was cold, and every detail lined with acertainty andclearness unearthy. The assembled company breathed quickly once-and the blueof Mens, Lord of Wisdom and Understanding died.
Slowly, silently they turned and made their way from the Temple, each bearing 


with her a little pack of silvery metal threads, and in each pack were half ahundred tiny rounded nuggets of very heavy, very beautiful metal, for gold wasforbidden the people, though the other 'noble metals were notTucker, lean and rangy, browned in the sun and wind stood alone and last hithe Temple. Alone before the mighty, glowing crystal.
"Tucker," said Tornsen softly, so that the great room whispered in his voice,
"you will lead them?"
"I will lead them, Server."
"You will protect them with your life?"
"I will protect them with my life, Server."
"To you I will give the crystal. Though, if it should that you and the othersmust die, the crystal of All must not fall into the hands of the enemy. Itwould explode with deadly flame. And this more I tell you. If danger threatensyou cannot overcome, hold the crystal so that the eye of Dis faces thisdanger, and call unto Dis that he may protect you, saying only, 'Protect thypeople, Lord Dis!' and Dis shall serve you then five times.
"When the sun sinks, the silver light of All shall rise to guide you and lightyou for two hours yet, and for the dark hours his warmth shall beat forth sothat cold night nor dark shall oppress you. Remember these things then, andthat on the coming of the sixth night, the crystal shall disintegrate. Do youremember this, Amos Tucker?"
"I shall remember, Server. I-I may return? Bring others here? The weak and theailing, the tired-of-life?"
"So they be of All's people, they shall be welcome. You may go your way, AmosTucker." 
From the platform of gold beside the crystal of AD, Tornsen, the Server,
lifted a crystal, cubed, four inches on a side, silver and sapphire, pearl andgreen and sullen scarlet, resting on a graven base of silvery metal. It waslifeless now, but as he held it in the star-fire of All he spoke low wordsover it and the fire of All leapt in a mighty tongue of lancing light, and asit died, the crystal hi his hands glowed with life of its own. Hehanded it down to Tucker and stood silent, watching the man across the sullenscarlet of the Temple floor.
"They have gone, John Reid," he said softly at last. The cubed crystal sank toa faint glow, the shining walls of Temple faded till a vari-colored dusk creptin, and the blue of Mens across the ceiling became a midnight sky, crystalclear. From a scarcely visible doorway in the wall of jet, John Reid the eldercame in a robe of sapphire blue with cloak of azure metal threads, his silverhair hidden under a headdress similar to that which Tornsen, Server of All,
wore save that it too was of blue metal, and the tiny, cubed crystal set in itwas the five-faced cube of All, changed only in that the sapphire tetrahedralflame of Mens, Lord of Wisdom shone directly forward, blue as the steadfasteyes hi the lined old face. Behind came the green-clad figure of Robert Blake,
Tal, Lord of Peace. Tall as Tornsen himself, but leaner, and the face underhis headdress was lined and graven with the thousand marks of Carron, Lord ofTime, cut deep and sharp with a chisel that Tammar, Lady of Mercy, hadtempered and guided. His deep-set eyes were green as the cloak he wore, with aglow of human understanding behind them.
Young John Reid entered, his bronze hair hidden under the sullen color of Dis,
Lord of Destruction, his stern, determined face gave warning of the characterof the man, just to the ultimate but lacking somewhat in understanding ofhuman failure. To him, where success belonged by all law of science andprobability, no excuse of human weakness was sound. A man himself unlimited inendurance and determination willing, ready to drive his iron-muscled, iron-
nerved body beyond human endurance in a cause he found just, he looked inothers for the same, and catalogued it weakness when they failed.
John Reid wore the scarlet of Dis. 


Behind him the others entered in the costumes of Temple Servers, simple robeswith cape and headdress of spun metal. They wore the cubed crystals of All intheir headdress, but their robes were of a simple white cloth.
"There were none satisfactory, Tal?" asked Tornsen,
turning to Robert Blake.
Slowly the psychologist shook his head. "None, there will be others who comewithin the week." 
"I suggested to none of them that they spread word of Temple of All."
"Wherefore the word will spread more swiftly, if that may be. And the lad,
Charles Sherman went away healed, active. The simple cold men have disregardedtoo long to note as a miracle the cure that made three small girls stopcoughing in five minutes time. But tuberculosis they know and dread, theaftereffects of the gas! There are many who suffer that and will seek thistemple with all speed when Charles Sherman returns."
"They will scoff."
"And come that they may see through the trickery, and thus scoff louder. Weneed yet a Tammar, Lady of Mercy and Shan, Lord of Fulfillment Grant Murray ofthe Station is dead, dead in the mob that felled America at last, or Shanwould be with us today.
"But it is not wise to make hasty choice."
"We are fortunate to find four who fitted so well," said old John quietly.
"We are fortunate, we built the Gods." Blake looked toward the old man,
smiling. "We built to fit two patterns, a pattern of men and a pattern offorces, but there are limits to our molding. We will not lack for choice soon,
I swear that." 
"That is the need that created the gods," old John sighed. "Let they who comebe strong, though, if we would do our work well and quickly."
VI 
The sun was warmer when they came, not the strong, but the weak, for thestrong of America were gone, or imprisoned workers rebuilding wreckedfactories and drowned mines. They came down the dry gash of many colors alongthe silver sands as the sun sank and deep shadows crossed the gorge. Beforethem the shining crystal front shone, a mighty beacon, and the Singing Stairwas a silvery cascade that shone in the light from the great doors of theTemple of All. Multicolored shadows lay on the sands, shadows in blue andgreen and pearly light.
Amos Tucker led them, a poor straggling of blasted men and broken women, andweary women with racked children in their arms or crying at their sides.
These, the weak, believed, for it was hope, the only hope there was for them.
The medicine of the World Empire was not for them yet. Their own medical menwere gone, dead at war or concentrated in the hospitals of the workers by theWorld Empire's will and Nijihua's. There was no help for them, save here, andthey did not truly believe it could be even here. But they would try.
The Singing Stair rang again to the tread of Amos Tucker, and the men behindhim, and the women with them. Tornsen stood at the threshold and welcomed themas they entered. The Crystal of Shan, Lord of Hope and Fulfillment faced theentrance as they entered and their hearts lifted to its glow. As they enteredtheir shoulders straightened, and the load of fatigue fell from them. In theempty air in the center of the great Cube Temple sound began to vibrate, soft,
scarce audible minor notes that rose and rose from key to key, became joyfultrumpetings with a vast chorus of half-understood voices shouting their joys.
And where the music sang its crystal notes a light grew and increased as themusic, a light pure green, green as fresh spring forests, and it waxed andwaned slowly in the empty air as the people watched, quiet and untroubled.
From the jet wall, merging through it seemingly, Tal himself came, tall andclad in green, sparkling clear, andhis crystal glowed with his cool green light as he stepped up to the high 


altar, up the golden stair that sang, a great golden xylophone to his treadtill he stood on the crystal in the silver of All, and the silvery lighttinged slightly to the green of Tal, Lord of Peace.
Tornsen, the Server joined him, and as he stepped to the silvery light, thejet wall faded behind the sapphire blue shape of Mens, Lord of Wisdom. Slowlyhe climbed the stair, till he too stood on the Crystal of All. The music ofthe air became crystalline, precise movements of notes that marched andcountermarched in ordered ranks hi the air, precise and perfect as theimmutable laws of Truth. The Temple glowed in the blue light of Mens, and theblue crystal face shot out a tetrahedral crystal of light in salute to itsLord. 
From the top of the crystal, Mens lowered his staff till the tetrahedral flamepointed toward the people on the Temple floor, and the blue light swept overthem. 
And in their minds came the understanding of the infinite Lord of Infinity,
All, Lord of Life. They glimpsed the myriad worlds of infinity, and understoodthem, and they understood hi that instant their own longings, their own needs,
and the infinite justice of All.
And the Flame of Mens died, and they were content in their understanding. TheServer spoke.
"Amos Tucker has led ye here?"
"I led them, Server," the man bowed his head slightly.
"It is a long road for many. Have ye food?"
"We have food, enough for now. But there is no water, nor any we could find.
Server of All, is there water for our many?"
Tornsen raised his staff slowly. "There shall be water. Amos, there are sickand crippled amongst these who have come?"
"Many, Server, and many more who would come, could they make this journey."
"Let those ailing of disease come forward first."
Eagerly a man who stood apart from the others hobbled forward, and the crowdmade way hastily to his approach, his filthy rags flapping about his scarecrowframe. "Is there-is there hope for-even me?"
Tornsen looked down at him slowly, and smiled so his broad face welcomed thehideous outcast. "Not hope, Leper, health. In ten seconds your horror shall bedone with, and in ten days the sound flesh shall grow again. Come up, Leper,
to the Crystal of All."
The man came forward, up the stair, faltering and afraid at the last, tillTornsen reached down and took the hideous, rotting thing that served the manfor hand, and helped him up. All's light flamed silver, and the sparklingstars seemed angry as they beat at the man, and little tinkling vibrations ofsound rang through his body. He sank to his knees, then rose as the Flameretreated. 
"You are healed, Leper," said Tornsen. "Go down now, and join your fellow men.
In a score of days, come once again to the Temple, and if the new flesh hasnot filled hi those scars that make you a monster, All will aid you further.
Go." 
Half uncertain, half doubting, the man went down and as he reached the base ofthe stair, walked away. Tal, Lord of Peace turned his staff upon him and thegreen glow pierced him. Gently he sank to sleep on the crimson Temple floor.
A woman called out, her hands at her breast. "I came to be healed of cancer,
Server-and the pain left me between my crossing of the threshold, and mystanding here. Am I-will I have life?"
"All, Lord of Life, has destroyed your cancer, woman. You can go home to yourfamily now, if you so will, and never will cancer bother you."
So they came, and in the Temple of All were healed of disease, or the Crystalthe Flame of All washed them and they lived again. Three hours they came, tillall the diseased were gone forth again, whole or healing once more, and only 


the crippled remained.
Through the wall of jet they went, one by one, and behind the wall came to achamber walled complete with the silvery crystal of All, and to two clad inthe silvery cloth of All, carrying staffs like that of the Server, save thattheirs were smaller, lighter. As one ailing entered the room, the green of Talbathed him, and he slept deep, deep beyond all pain.
Then very swiftly, without mask or glove, with only clean, shining scalpelsand instruments the two worked, cutting tissue and bone and sinew and rearranging 
it as was right, and from the silvery walls of All came silverylig'-t that tinkled and rustled eerily in the whispering silence of thechamber. Then the staffs in their hands 
glowed with strange lights, violet and amethyst, rose and pale amber thatplayed and interplayed on the tissues. Before their eyes the life-stuff grew,
the stretched bone thrust out swift new cells that knitted and built firm 
incredibly. New flesh grew on severed muscles, white threads of nerves shotout and lengthened under soft-glowing amethst.
Half an hour, and the crippled walked out, straight and strong, rejoicing.
Thin white scars, silvery sands outside they made camp, a full hundred ofthem, then two hundred, and little fires glowed; they spread blankets as thechill night crept through the valley on soft wind-rustled feet.
The Server came down the Stair, his Staff in his hands. Amos Tucker rose athis coming, and stepped forward to meet him. "They have had food, but there isno water?" asked the Server. 
"They have had food, but no water. But they miss it not greatly. For each whocame, ailed and is whole. They will not sleep this night for they must talk."
Tornsen looked about him, at the silver sands, and where a low, roundedshoulder of grey-green sandstone thrust a rugged mass upwards, he looked.
"They shall have water," said Tornsen. He walked to the sandstone and climbedits three-foot dome. Fifty feet across it was, lowly rounded.
"Lord Dis, lend thy strength. Let there be a vessel that thy people maydrink!" The sullen scarlet face of his staff brightened, murmurous lightwashed through it, then leapt out in a fifty-foot snake-tongued flame thathissed like monstrous serpents. The tongue split to many, many that circledand swirled, hissing spitefully, redly brilliant. The rock boiled upward inblue-shining luminescence, pulled softly and licked higher in hot, almostinvisible blue flame. Softly the flames hissed, swirling and licking, and therock glowed brilliant red and violet. Then abruptly the flames died. A softsigh escaped the watching people, for in the sandstone mass was ahemispherical cup, smooth-walled, clean-cut, ten feet deep, ten feet across.
Amos Tucker started forward. 
"Hold," said the Server. "It would leak, thus, and it is not filled." Thensoft words he spoke to the crystal, murmurous words they could not hear. Againthe crystal glowed, but now but a single tongue of flame leapt forth,
needle-fine, a thread of intense, sullen scarlet. And its end crashed againstthe rock with shrieking lightning that swirled and circled in to dance overall the surface of the cup till it glowed white with the heat of thelightning. The flame died, and the white light of the cup died. It was agreenish milky cup of glass now, deep and smooth, very clear and clean.
"The cup is made, Lord Dis. Lord Mens, Lord of Knowledge and Wisdom, fill forus this cup!" The staff in Tornsen's hands seemed to leap of its own volition,
spinning abruptly till the crystal of Mens faced the cup. Cold was his flame,
cold and blue, and the soft radiance that spread from its tetrahedralcrystalline faces crackled in the air suddenly chilled to an arctic cold. Thepeople shivered hi the chill that swept them, shivering in their lightclothing. The air grew blue misty, and the hot glow of the cup faded abruptly.
Very slowly a mathematically precise line extended itself from the apex ofMens' tetrahedron and bent a mathematically exact image to strike the 


geometric center of the cup. It rustled softly as it extended itself throughthe glassy wall, through the hard, age-old sandstone, down and down. Abruptlya new rustling came and the flame of Mens died. A soft, gurgling rustling thatwhistled a note higher and keener, stronger growing constantly-till it jettedclear water up and out, over the cup, till it was filled.
And a little stream led away down the silver sands, to sink presently in itsdry thirstiness.
They camped there that night, and the next morning those who had families,
those who felt their friends must know, went back. But many stayed. The nextday more came, and more. In three days, the men came bearing the tents, andshelters, and behind them old, half-wrecked ammunition service cars, theirtractor treads skimming over the sand. But they were loaded with food andmaterials. Fuel, too. But they threw out the fuel, save the gasoline theycarried, for by the Cup of All stood a Crystal of Dis, Lord of Destruction-andfire. It glowed with sullen scarlet, warm and red at the top, but cool as thedesert night at the sides, and the women cooked their food on that, and warmedthe water and as night came on it glowed very dull over all its sides, so theentire gorge was faintly warmed and comfortable.
And more came in other trucks, and the needy wentaway with metal nuggets that brought them food, and health that brought themstrength to earn. Only once might any man be helped with gifts of wealth byAll, but health was ever ready for him who asked.
They came to ask, and more, till the Gorge of All held a small city, served bythe ancient ammunition service cars. Then Amos Tucker came before the Crystalagain, with seven men of the little community.
"Server, we ask aid of All, gifts of platinum and precious metals."
"Once may men ask that of All, Amos Tucker. You, All has already helped, theseseven who come with you may ask and receive."
"Server of All, we ask it not for ourselves, nor in amount that buys food andshelter till work is found. We ask twenty pounds of metal that roads may bebuilt and trucks purchased that more may know All and reach Him and be healed.
Americans have no wealth left, Server, and can earn it but slowly. The Empirefavors the Emperor's race, and they may earn more swiftly, and have capital.
We have no capital, for it is gone hi the defense of America.
"We would bring more to All, tBose who cannot walk, or ride the rough truckswe have been able to buy and run."
The Server nodded slowly. "For that, All grants capital. It is a loan, andmust be repaid to All's people. As He helps those who have fallen to regaintheir feet, but will not carry strong men in His arms, so All will helpenterprise to its feet, but will not carry it hi His arms. Those who have musthelp those who have not. The loan shall be repaid hi this way; that they whohave not and cannot reach the Temple shall be carried here; they that haveshall give to aid the others. It is understood?"
"Yes, Server. We thank All that this thing can be." Tucker nodded.
From the jet wall came blue-clad Mens, Lord of Wisdom, and in his -old arms aniridescently beautiful bar of metal, small and very heavy. This he gave toAmos Tucker, who saluted him with bowed head and took it.
"The roads shall come, and many who need the help of All," promised Tucker.
"We thank Thee." 
And they left.
It was three months before the first cars rolled hi,
bearing freight of paralyzed and sick; and some that came died, for All had sodecreed in his infinite understanding of what must be. "Change is the order ofAll, for as the pool that has no inlet nor outlet grows to a stinking slime,
so would the race that had neither inlet of birth nor outlet of death. All maynot let all live, for that way lies stagnation and rot. The pool that hasinlet but no outlet grows salt and bitter and becomes sterile so no worthwhile 


thing may grow there.
"There must be birth; Shan, Lord of Fulfillment is a phase of All, Lord ofLife. For these things are the Filler and the Emptier of Life, lest Life growstagnant and bitter.
"Thy Father lives on, Son, hi thee, and shall live on in thy children, as inyou lives the First Father of all life, passed on an undying torch whose fireis elder brother to the mountains which come and pass as must men, yea, noteven the mountains are so eternal as life, nor is their shifting less rapid,
for as surely as Death must empty thy own vessel of life eventually, so surelymust this rocky gorge pass on to form new valleys of green and fertile landthat life may continue its way, a thing more constant than the hills, and moreimmortal. Change is the order of All's universe, for All himself is Lord ofLife and Change."
The City of All grew, and its fame spread among the people of All, so thatmany came and were healed. Five months after his first coming to the Temple ofAll, Amos Tucker entered it in the Service of All, and did not return to thecity, and the people of the city did not see him for three months longer. ThenTucker appeared in the White of All's novitiate, beside some dozen others whohad joined the Temple, some five women and seven men. Tucker's face was morekindly, yet more stern, and in its graven lines was a far deeper understandingand a strong light of resolve hi his eyes.
Amos Tucker had been introduced to the Mysteries of All, and knew All formore, and yet less. And on the pearly throne of Tammar, Lady of Mercy, theresat a woman now, some twenty-seven years of age, yet possessed of that agelessbeauty of face and feature suffering can sometimes bring.
Her hair was glass wool, purely white, but live andsparkling in the golden light of Tammar, Lady of Mercy. Doris Shane had cometo the Temple in one of the first of the motor ambulances, -pain-racked,
tortured through seven long years, paralyzed beyond possibility of hope, sothe doctors found, by a flying needle of metal from a bursting bomb. Sevenyears of agony had turned gold to silver, had lined and softened her face, hadforced upon her and into her soul an understanding and a human philosophy thatmade her-Tammar, Lady of Mercy.
Thus was the Fourth Lord come to All; so they sat when Amos Tucker saw them.
They were five now, the Five Lords, and the Server of All. Old John Reid,
Mens, Lord of Wisdom. Robert Blake, Tal, Lord of Peace. John Reid the younger,
Dis, Lord of Death. Doris Shane, Tammar, Lady of Mercy. And Grant Loman wasShan, Lord of Fulfillment.
They were the Five.
And they were Six, for the Dread Lord, Barmak, the Black Lord of Nothingnesswas there, ever beside the Five, invisible, unmentioned, unknown even save tothe Five Lords and to Tornsen, the Server.
Grant Loman had come an old man, nearing seventy, his sparse hair grey andstiff, his face lined and seamed with a half-century of winters in the highranges, a staunch old man who followed the trail Amos Tucker had carved outfirst seeking this fabled Temple of healing. It promised things he had everhoped one day to see, healing all diseases and banishment of cripplingailments. Half a century he had worked among the lonely people of the highranges, an apprentice doctor learning as they did before medical schools hadbeen invented, from his father before him. Then medical colleges had broughthim some new skills, but there was no science then of drawing back from Deaththose whom no chemical or drug could aid. So he had known better than all theschools and had healed, he and his high ranges and his God, Nature. He'd seenthe souls of men stripped bare by calamity and death, and healed those woundstoo. Half a century he worked with the souls and bodies of his people, andlonged for such things as the Temple of All had shown.
Grant Loman sat on the throne of Shan, and the Lords were Five to the people. 


vn 
Chu Liang nodded slightly to his pilot, and the ship began to settle slowly,
vertically downward. Li Tsang spoke softly as the ship neared the settlementbelow. 'The Americans seem to believe at any rate, Dr. Chu."
"Yes. There is probably some reason. The reports we received are unscientificin the highest degree, but I think I can trace a semblance of a highlyingenious plan. Obviously, any such organization must have political meaning,
since the Asiatic Empire has conquered these people so recently. I thinkperhaps there exists some weapon which is aimed from above. From the conditionof the bodies, I have hypothesized a radio-frequency heat-beam, an explanationof such startling simplicity that, of course, the warriors overlooked itcompletely. Undoubtedly the threshold is so equipped."
"I had thought of such a possibility. It is for this reason you brought thethree condemned deserters?" 
"Yes, and further experimentation. There will be Americans enough here. Wewill go out. Li T'sang, you will bring the recording instruments, I think. PieChan, the direct reading instruments. Captain Shikani, if you will see thatthe prisoners are brought under guard-"
Chu Liang stepped out to the silver sands, and looked across at the greatTemple front. A score of Americans from the city of All were watchingnarrowly, and followed at a little distance as they crossed to the SingingStair. Bright sun dimmed the glory of the Temple somewhat, but the flashinglight on the great stairs was near blinding. Chu Liang looked upward to thegiant form of the Server, wrapped in robe of silver cloth and silver cloak,
his crystal staff gleaming slightly, lambent flame playing about it.
Chu Liang halted at the head of the stair, and looked through the mightydoorway of the Temple.
"All holds no welcome for your race, Scientists," said the Server softly.
"That you know. You cannot analyze All, for reason as basic as that whichprevents experimental measuring of the contraction of matter at extremespeed. All is part of your instruments, as your instruments are part of All.
You cannot measure the contraction, for your measuring stick contracts with itSo it is here. You will find nothing, nothing save Death for such of your menas cross to the crystal floor of Dis, Lord of Death."
Chu Liang looked silently into the Temple, and his breath whistled softly overhis teeth. "Your edifice is truly magnificent, Server, for so I understand youto be. Your lighting effects are exquisite. I am very stupid and lack finerunderstanding; I cannot believe in Gods, for such is the mind of science thatalways it must feel in some way to believe; that is the necessary basework ofscience. If I feel nothing, it proves nothing. If I can feel this God, thenwill I believe wholly. If it so be that it is compatible with the will of yourDeity, I would make certain tests here, for even though the Deity enter intoour instruments' construction, still it may be possible to discover bispresence, as iron compass discovers hidden iron."
"Halt!" snapped the captain's voice. The ringing of the great Stair quietedslowly to a rolling echo as the tread of the little squad ceased. "This is theplace you choose, Dr. Chu Liang?"
"If it may be?" asked the Chinese softly, indicating the spot he preferred hisassistants to set up the instruments. The Server nodded slowly. "All may giveyou some sign of His presence, Scientist; I know little of your instruments.
Upon the Singing Stair, all men are welcome, and to all it is sanctuary. ButAll welcomes none save His own within the Temple."
Chu Liang looked within the temple, and the multicolored dusk of scarlet andblue and pearl and blue was very cool and very restful. The great Crystalflamed softly, and the stars that winked and lived and died hi the Flame ofAll caught his eye, and his mind. From the wall of jet the Five emerged,
slowly, and mounted the golden stair to the face of All's Crystal, to stand 


silent. 
Dr. Chu Liang turned back to his assistants, and spokesoftly to them as their instruments were unpacked andassembled on the salt-white stone at the peak of theSinging Stair.
"There is radio-activity here," said Li Tsang softly.
"That may have something to do with the reported feeling of increased wellbeing. 
It is known that radio^ active waters bring temporary feeling ofhealth, before the blood-building tissues are destroyed."
"All the rock, I know, is radio-active. Sandstones are not normally so. Itsurprises me, yet the radio-activity cannot explain either the deaths of ourArmy Officers, nor the cures of disease. It is a surprising development. Butnot, I think, an answer. Try the radiation bolometer."
The younger man adjusted his instrument carefully, and set a small motorhumming very softly. On a strip of white paper, a thin black line stretchedout, rising and falling and shaping itself as the intensity of the varyingwavelengths radiated varied".
Chu Liang looked at it silently for a moment, till, finally the snaking linedipped, reached zero, and remained. "It is interesting, Li T'sang. Focus theinstrument on the floor nearby, that no light reach it from other sources."
Again'the line traced, remaining on zero for long, then rising suddenly to agreat peak, and falling as sharply. Then again it rose to a waving line at anextreme range.
"The red light is monochromatic," said Li Tsang in some interest. "I wouldexpect more spectral lines. Only in the red and in the ultra-violet are therelines. There is strong ultra-violet, which may explain the healthy tan of theAmericans here. But it neither cures nor kills save in vast concentration,
where normal light would be near as effective, killing by sheer energy alone."
"It interests me, Li T'sang, that I have spent weary hours adjusting apparatusthat I might receive a beam of monochromatic energy. The blue is pure, and thegreen is pure. The Line is confused by the radiation of the white wall and thewhite light of the top crystal." He turned to Tornsen slowly.
"Server, we have heard of this Flame of Dis that is said to bring death. Howmay we see this, then?"
Tornsen's face became stern. "Lord All does not parade his might in vaindisplay. If you would see the Flame of Dis, attack the works of All, and itshall play, and play unhindered, unstayed, thru any screen or instrument youmay turn upon it."
The Chinese consulted quietly, and looked upon therecords of their instruments. The captain joined them, and Chu Liang spoke tohim. "There is no ray or radiation of death here. Let the prisoners earn theirfreedom as was ordained, and let two children of the Americans be brought,
that they may be carried, as was ordained."
The captain moved. A score of Americans stood on the Singing Stair, quiet andwatchful, a half-dozen children watched, intent-eyed.
The captain's orders were spoken hi Japanese, and his men turned instantly toobey. The Americans roared in anger and stepped forward menacingly as thetroops seized two small children. The Server called out once, a strong, sharpsyllable of command, and they halted, Oriental and American alike.
"To the people of All, I promise that the children will not be harmed or evenfrightened, for see, they shall be at peace." As he spoke, Tal, Lord of Peace,
raised his staff on the distant Crystal of All, and green radiance shone overthe group, so that a feeling of lethargy stilled them, while suddenly thechildren slept hi the arms of the troops. Chu Liang's voice was soft andintense as his assistants worked swiftly to mark the recording instruments.
The Server spoke again. 'To the people of the World Empire, I promise alsothat the children will not be harmed, for the Lord of Life guards his own, 


whether he appear in his phase of Dis, Lord of Death, or Tal, Lord of Peace.
But no act of yours shall harm the children."
The Chinese bowed slightly. "So let it be. Two men shall carry them. That isall." 
The prisoners took the children in their arms, two sleeping children, and heldthem above their heads. At a snapped order they stepped forward. Tornsenstepped forward to meet them, staff upraised. "It is Death," he said softly.
"All permits no enemy to cross to the Crystal Floor of Dis."
The Chinese said, "Unfortunately, it is death for them outside, a death theyunderstand very well, and do not desire. They will enter, for they arecondemned, and inside lies their only hope of life."
Tornsen looked at the two silently. "Carry the children, then, less high, forthe fall might injure them."
Chu Liang felt in his heart a sudden triumph, as heknew his guess was true. "They carry them high or die!" 
"'Let the two put down the children, for there is Sanctuary upon the SingingStair for all men," cried Tammar, Lady of Mercy. "They shall be free upon theStair, and none there shall hurt them."
The strong, deep voice of old Mens, Lord of Wisdom spoke. "Such is the law,
for those who seek sanctuary for justice. These two have sought justice, andjustice finds them condemned. They be not seekers of justice, but refugeesfrom it. The Sanctuary of the Stairs is not for them, Lady Tammar."
Tammar bowed her head. "Aye, Lord of Wisdom."
"Step forward, and if you would live, carry the children high, for the weaponthat kills is above!" cried Chu Liang. And the two stepped forward as theServer stepped to meet them. They stepped across the threshold, so that thesullen scarlet of Dis lay beneath their feet-and died. From their lax hands,
softened suddenly by Dis, Lord of Death, the Server caught the children in hisgreat hands, and lowered them to the floor.
"Lady Tammar, bring awakening," called the Server, and the golden staff,
tipped with amber light that was the staff of Tammar, Lady of Mercy dipped, alancing flame of golden light touched the children. They rose, and hurried,
frightened, away and down the Stair to their homes.
"There is death in the Temple for all save All's people."
Chu Liang bowed his head slightly. "Yes," he said softly. "We go now. Give usthose we cannot reach, if such be the will of your Deity."
Two Americans stepped forward into the Temple at the Server's gesture, and thetroops of the World Empire carried the lax bodies down the Stair in thethrumming silence. Chu Liang and his assistants packed the instruments intotheir cases and marked them carefully.
"It is quite useless," said Chu Liang quietly as the great stair sang itstriumph in their ears and through the gorge. "I do not in any way understand,
but this I know; there is a god there, and a much greater god then ours. Wehave a god. It is Science. Theirs is a greater god."
Li T'sang looked at him thoughtfully. "A greater Science you mean, Dr. Chu?"
"I did not say," Chu Liang replied softly. "We will examine the bodies of themen at once, upon reaching the plane. Li T'sang will perform microscopicsectioning work on the tissue of the muscles, skin, hair and such cells ashave the lowest forms of life. I will examine and test the muscles for 
galvanic effects. There remains physical examination of the bodies, which PieChan will perform."
"Will you not examine the recording instruments?" asked Li T'sang in somedisappointment.
Old Chu Liang shook his head. "Science is our god, Li Tsang, and gods haveinfinity to work. Their work must not, then, be hurried and spoiled by theirhurry. Our recorded films must be developed under optimum conditions, which wedo not obtain on our laboratory plane, complete as its facilities are. The 


body of the smaller one, you may take to your laboratory, Li T'sang."
"Yes, Master." The younger man signaled to the two warriors who carried thebody and followed them to his laboratory. Presently he brought Chu Liangcertain muscles, very white-seeming, cold and yet with the appearance offreshly boiled tissues, completely coagulated. He returned silently.
Chu Liang entered his laboratory some time later, as the helicopter rodesmoothly east to the American Department Capital at Chicago. Li Tsang lookedup at the elder man and shook his head blankly. "It is very peculiar, Master.
There is no living cell in all the body, neither skin, nor muscle, nor evenlowest hair cell. And that is perhaps understandable. But in all the bodythere is no living thing! The bacteria of mouth and nose and intestine aredead, the bacteria of skin and feet are dead. Only a few very small colonieson the surface of the body live, implanted perhaps by the hands of those whocarried the body here. But I think that as it lay on the temple floor it wasmore sterile than any surgical instrument."
Chu Liang looked silently through the microscope at the slides his assistanthad prepared. "Not even in the tartar from the teeth is there any livingthing. Man needs certain bacteria for healthy existence. You know this betterthan I, Li T'sang. Tell me then, were all living organisms save those humanorganisms that make up and defend the body, the corpuscles of blood andtissue,
the cells of nerve and muscle and brain, were all save those destroyed, couldman long survive?"
Li T'sang looked thoughtfully at the microscope for many seconds then hisvoice came hesitant and thoughtful. "If in all the world this were done, mancould not live, for there are many non-human organisms needed, the many life-
forms in the intestine that break down the foodstuff we eat but cannot digest,
to a form we can digest. There are very many others. But if only theindividual man were so completely sterilized, he would quickly regain hisnatural balance thru inevitable inges-tion of these bacteria, as must the newborn 
infant. Man enters this world near sterile, yet within hours the baby hasgathered those necessary, bacterial colonies. Probably no man would even knowthat this, sterilization of his body had taken place, were it possible. But itis not, for any chemical strong enough to destroy the bacteria would destroyman as well, unless a degree of specificity almost never attained werepossible for an almost infinite horde of invaders, while leaving the bodyuntouched. We have but three species of this type, one furnished -by nature'saccident, quinine, which is hundreds of times . more poisonous to the malarialparasite than to human tissue, one by the blind experimenting of man,
salvarsan, hundreds of times more poisonous to the syphillis organism than toman, and one developed by years of laborious analysis of the human antibodies,
kappasol which is vastly poisonous to typhoid fever, but harmless to man. Andthese are one third the gift of nature, one third imitation of nature, and onethird blind and infinitely laborious research. Now in the centuries ofchemical medicine, if but three have been found, how then, could man find thespecifics for thousands, and compound them in half a decade?"
"But there exist, then, chemicals which have the property of destroying onlynon-human life-forms?" 
"No, only those three, an exception as unimportant as oxygen of atomic weight

17. Oxygen atoms have a weight of sixteen, save for one in millions."
"But the principle is vastly important. What man has done once, man may do notonly again, but many times. Even, perhaps, improve to such an extent thatspecifics that differentiate between native Americans and Asians might befound. Is it not so?" 
"In a thousand centuries, yes. But even if analysis of all the anti-bodieswere achieved, which is not the work of a man, but a thing to be done in anhistorical era, and the vaster task of synthesis as well, there is no anti

body which destroys Orientals but not Westerners, And even if this be so, noanti-body produces the effects we have witnessed. It may poison, it maydissolve, but it does not fry. The explanation of the Temple is' not there,
Chu Liang, I fear."
"There is a greater god than ours, Li T'sang, and the day will come when ourgod can understand the God All. Our report to the Science Committee will be asunsatisfactory as the report of General Hitsobi's to the Rebellious ActivitiesControl Commission." 
"But of what importance is this temple to the government of the World State?
To science its meaning may be profound, since we have no understanding ofobservable results, but of what importance is it to the State, this hiddentemple in the wildest mountains of the American Province? There are hiddentemples in the high passes of the Himalayas, the temples of the Tibetans, wedo not investigate."
"There are hidden temples on all the Earth the Empire rules, but they are oldbeyond memory of man. This is not old. These other temples do not regularlymake cures of hopeless paralysis by operations incredible and impossible, withhealing hi a day that cannot take place in a year. These temples do notregularly cure cancer in the last, hopeless stage, nor tuberculosis of lungand bone. 
"That is something of it. But this is more important. Few temples of the worldforbid entrance to Asiatics. This temple not only refuses, but bringsmysterious death. This you do not know, nor do the people of that temple city.
Kimishti, one of the Empire's best men, has circulated freely throughOccidental countries as an operative of the Asian State through all the yearsof the war. He has behind him respected standing of home and family, allstanding. By operations, by hard work, he had become Occidental, bis skin pinkas an Englishman's, his eyes blue, his hair blonde and curled. He entered theTemple, suffering as he showed, from scarlet fever, feeling safe iri theirwelcome. He was accepted and brought upto the place by one of their ambulances. He died as he was carried across thethreshold by a temple novitiate.
"I had thought he was recognized secretly perhaps, and executed. I know thatthe god All knew his difference and exacted toll of Death. The members of theTemple prayed over him, and read over him the Service of Dis and Shan, theirburial service, and he was buried as an Occidental dead of heart disease, theafter-effect of scarlet fever. The Server there knew him for Oriental though,
since his tissues were-coagulated.
"And that is something more of it. It is a temple of death, with a god ofpower who acts. A god who does things so indisputably has never been since theworld began, and was not expected when the Edict of Free Worship was givenforth by Emperor Nijihua.
"But there is yet more in this: Nijihua seeks to make a true universal state,
wherein all men recognize a common destiny and a common center of interest andleadership,.the World State, in which each sees his only nationality.
Nationalism of the most intense he desires, patriotism of the highest-buttoward the World State. It is not oppression which will bring this, for thatbrings only revolt. Only common leadership, respected and honored, can unitemen. Whether Oriental or Occidental, the leadership of the World State must bethe leadership, the only common reality which men can form themselves about.
"Half he has succeeded. All Orientals today recognize him, and manyOccidentals. And-in all the world today, there lives not one Occidentalcapable of political leadership. Every man with such abilities was killed inthe general uprising of the mobs that brought the wars to an end, or he hasdied of cholera. The only leaders Nijihua has allowed are the leaders of theWorld Empire, since men generally must have leaders to be happy- the onlyleaders there are are the World Empire. 


"The Temple of All has arisen. To it Occidentals turn for health and advice,
comfort in life and death. It becomes more and more a center of man's manyinterests, and a center of Occidental interest, perforce not common to bothOriental and Occidental. It makes them separate peoples, divided by All, a Godof power who acts positively for the benefit of his people, who favors them.
Inevitably then there is crystalization of the loose, leaderless 
mass of Occidentals about this new god, and his priests. Yet, they do notrealize that they are being led, being separated from the World Empire, a raceand a class apart. But they are! They are soaking in the pleasant idea thatthey are superior, god-chosen.
"Nijihua must act. He has acted. The Empire needs money. In a day and a daynow, the World Empire issues a new Edict, the Edict of New Worshipers. It is atax of one thousand dollars on each new worshiper to a religious faith-andmust be paid in metal!"
Li Tsang nodded slowly. "The Temple of All will gain no new worshipers. NoAmerican can gain metal. In America alone has this new religion gained power,
thus none of the rest of the Empire will greatly revolt, since growingfamilies can, I imagine, enter their children to their church untaxed."
"That is right. The Temple of All will be deserted in a week."
vra 
The Lords sat on their high thrones, the sapphire of Mens in the center, thegolden of Tammar on his right, and Shan on his left, the rich deep scarlet ofDis beyond pearly Shan; beyond Tammar the cool, freshening green of Tal, Lordof Peace. And unseen, below and in front of their semi-circle, visible only tothe eyes of the Lords and the Server, sat Dread Barmak, the Black Lord on hislightless, rayless throne of black deeper than the night of Space itself.
For this was the inner Chamber of the Lords. Mens spoke, his voice deep andlow in the multi-colored dusk of the Chamber. "This Edict is a weapon at thethroat of All. For the people of All are oppressed and poor. All is possessedof vast treasures, and it comes to me that it were better that All disdain thecollections of the tax, and give of his treasures to meet this imposition."
"Aye," said the Lords softly. "The treasures of All are infinite as is AHhimself. Let this be the rule." 
Shan, Lord of Fulfullment spoke. "This is the rule then, but let it be thusapplied; the people of All who have wealth and ability to pay, shall pay, lestthe infinitude of All's treasures be measured and beget covetousness in theheart of Nijihua.
"Now further, it seems the Emperor, wishing a healthy subject people, hasdecreed that only those who attend more than five times in the course of theyear are true members of any temple. But he who speaks with the Server of atemple is not a member thereby unless he attend that temple. Thus we shallapply it; that there shall be Servers who go forth, and the members of thetemple shall be selected by the Lord that they be good, else they pay the taxof their own ability. Thus shall the doors be open to all, and yet be closedto those of the people of All whom we don't find worthy."
Tornsen spoke, and his voice rumbled in the small, cubed, crystal chamber ofthe Lord. "The Edict harms All little thus, and All pays the tax from theinfinite resources of the earth. The impost collector comes on themorrow, and the Lords shall assemble then on the crystal, and the Server andthe Novitiate shall bear to him the impost for the eighty and nine members whohave joined the Temple."
The next day brought the plane of the World Empire, glowing golden, withscarlet dragons in the sun, as it lighted on the silver sands, and theCollector of Imposts mounted the Singing Stair before a squad of armed men.
"Halt there, man of the World Empire, for the Temple of All is closed to you.
The tax shall be brought out."
"What is the roll of your temple?" snapped the Oriental. 


"The roll is one hundred and three, and of these are the Five Lords and theServer, and certain others who have been here long. But there be eighty-andnine 
for whom the tax is to be paid. There be many who have not joined, andcannot. But for the eighty-and-nine, tax shall be paid."
The Oriental looked at the man a bit surprised. "It must be paid in metal," hesaid warningly. "No goods save precious metals."
"And the metals shall be rhodium and palladium, which are in the EmpireCatalog of precious metals."
"Bring them forth, then," said the Collector, and on the salt-white stone hisservant set up the small case which opened out to a work bench and a pair ofscales. The Server brought to him the first ingot, two inches square and afoot long. The man looked at it, weighed it in his hand, for its mass wasgreat, and spread upon the stair-top a sheet of fine-woven silk, then with asmall saw he cut it through in six places and gathered the dust. The dust hedropped into a small tray and two pinches he tested with his reagents. Thenwith a tiny spectroscope of high power he examined the lines of the metal.
Softly he drew in his breath.
"Your metal is pure, pure within the limits of the spectroscope, which is verypure indeed. While the metals are exceeding difficult to separate, the weightis such that four such bars exactly meet the tax."
Silently three of the Novitiate came forward bearing in their hands bars ofmetal of absolute purity and great weight. The tax impost collector gave tothe Server a small sheet of paper bearing the crest of Nijihua and the quickbrush-strokes of his signature.
"The impost is ~ met, and so must be met with eachnew member of the Temple, Server. This you will remember under the penaltiesof Nijihua's Empire." "Aye," said the Server, "we understand." And theCollector left to go to another Temple, for such was his duty and not theunderstanding of the tensions that built about those four bars of utterly pureprecious metal so readily supplied. Chu Liang understood, for to him came themetal for analysis, and he analyzed the ingots to one sole element each, andhe fused the two elements together, nor all his science could draw the rhodiumfrom the palladium with utter purity. For the metals were exceedinglyintractable. And he frowned somewhat, for rhodium, in which the greater partof the payment was made was not as useful to Turn as was palladium, platinumIX 
His silver robes shimmered in the siin and wind like the ruffled surface of a 
clear lake under slanting evening sun, his turban-like headdress gleaming. Inhis hands he carried a Staff of All, silvery and intricately chased, mountedby the softly-glowing cubed crystal, greater mate to the crystal of hisheaddress. 
The ambulance driver looked at him in some doubt and awe. "Then the Servants 
of All are going to leave the Valley?"
"Certain of them, the Teachers, that the people of the cities, unable to reachAll, may be able to have his help. There will always be the Five Lords and theServer to aid All's people at the Temple. But the impost makes it needful thatcertain ones of us go out."
"Amos Tucker, where will you go?"
"Amos Tucker no more; a Teacher of All. I go by foot that more may know, firstto the city whence you came, then on to the coast, probably to San Francisco.
It is not determined by the Lords, since each is sent on his mission. Butdelay no longer, Driver, since those who ride behind go in need of help. Stay,
I will bring a moment's peace to them; then you must go your way, and I mine.
Farewell, in the grace of All."
The Teacher stopped a moment more to step inside the low ambulance body andlet the green crystal of Tal shed its rays on the sick. Their harsh breathingrelaxed and the soft moan of one died way in deep sleep. Then he stepped out 


and the vehicle moved on. 
As it disappeared from sight, the Teacher raised his staff to his lips andspoke softly. "Sick come, seeking aid, Server."
The Crystal whispered reply. "We are ready for All. You are well."
"Yes, scarcely a day's journey out. I will reach the city by evening,
however." 
"Good. All aid you." The Crystal's slight hum died, and the Teacher strode oneasily with the long lope of a trained desert man. The endless sand over whichthe road 
ran glared in the sun, and presently the Teacher rested for a moment. Thestaff in his hand sent out a licking tongue of ruby flame and a patch of sandtwo feet across fused in blinding heat, sinking to a slight depression. TheTeacher scooped a bit of sand into it, and the flame of All licked at it withshrieking, crashing star-dust. The depression boiled with white vapor-fumes,
hissing and bubbling. For some seconds it continued, then burst into sharpblue flames, while the flame of All changed strangely violet. Instantly therolling vapor vanished and the flames licked slowly and seemed to struggleagainst an opposing force. Presently they died and a moment later the Teacherknelt beside his cup and drank his fill of cold, clear and somewhat tastelesswater. Then with a rested body he started on his way.
Toward evening the natural desolation gave way to man-made desolation, tornand racked, the deep craters hi the sand stained with red of iron and black ofsmoke, green virulent stains of exploded XR-78 gas-shells. More cars passedhim now, and curious hybrids; an automobile chassis stripped to four wheelsand a frame with weather-stained broken planks as a body, drawn by a decrepithorse, or a slow-moving ox. Tires too old and weak for automobiles shod them,
tires in the last stages of decay, as with all the country. Broken buildingsappeared and here and there a light, tinnily shiny, factory-made dwelling.
The Ranchers were filtering back, such as lived, or their women and children.
Chinese and Japanese lived here now, they lived in the broken houses andfarmed a few acres in their immemorial way. To them, no vision of theinfinitude of rolling land brought relief from pressure, still they farmed tothe fence-posts, and planted beans to climb the posts themselves. There wasvast plenty, to them, and in their old way they ate the plenty, making noreserve against the time it might vanish. The men worked, and the women pulledthe crude plows while the children set out seed. Other gangs of men worked atclearing the irrigation ditches for the water that would come when theengineers finished the restoration of war-blasted dams.
The Orientals paid no attention to the curiously garbed stranger, theAmericans little. They looked, and then looked back to the work that engagedthem, wearily.
America had no reserves, and they must compete with the Oriental mode of life.
They used better tools, better methods. But the Oriental called the American'sdirest poverty vast prosperity.
The Teacher went on, into the city where more people looked at him. AnOriental policeman pacing his beat eyed him narrowly, and passed on; a fewAmericans turned to stare, and an expression of interest and suddenremembrance stirred in their eyes. Finally one stopped, turned and came tohim. 
"Server-" he cried. 
"No, not the Server, John Graham. I am a Teacher of All. You are well?"
"Well and able, Teacher. The tuberculosis is gone from my lungs and my bones.
I have been better and stronger than ever in my life before I stood in All'sTemple. But -I did not know the servants of All left his Valley."
"Never have they, before. But the impost makes this necessary to the best goodof All, so the Teachers go forth. I am the first. Many more will follow meacross this road, till the robes of All become a familiar sight in the city 


here." 
"It is near evening, Teacher. Can you-have you made arrangement for the night?
Can you stay with me- and my wife?"
"My only arrangement was that I find some man who knew All and might take mein. Gladly then, I accept your offer."
"Come then," said the man eagerly, "It is but a block or two-I was justleaving my store for the evening-"
The man's wife greeted the Teacher timidly, uncertainly. "We have little fortonight-even among the merchants it is hard to get enough, but what we have weare glad indeed to share, for all we have we owe to John's health, which Allgave him. I-I-I scarcely know how to address you-Your-But come in, come in andrest at any rate, for I am tired myself, and you who have been walking in theheat all day."
The Teacher smiled, and with his smile the pearly light of Shan waxed in hiscrystal, and the green of Tal. The women stood surprised for a second, then astiffness went from her body, and a brighter light came to her eyes. "Oh-oh-"
she cried. 'There was truth in what John 
said. I could not believe, myself, despite John's health. I feel-feel asthough I'd slept for hours!"
"The Peace of Tal and the Fulfillment of Shan be on your house, John Graham.
The Powers of All and the Phases of All are not easily credible, I know, Mrs.
Graham. But they are more real than even John Graham who lived through thembelieves. 
"But let us go in. I am not weary, for All goes with me." He smiled, raisinghis Staff slightly. "But I am a Teacher of All. Address me only as Teacher1."
"I did not know, Teacher. Will you be with us long?"
"Not long, for I must go on."
And in the morning, when they woke, he was gone, and in his place they found alittle cube of silvery metal, very heavy and very beautifully iridescent inthe morning sun. And amazingly heavy, more than twice as heavy as lead.
John Graham took it that morning to the little office of the Real Estateagent, John Mackenburg, who spent half his time interviewing those who wouldmake the trip to All's Temple, and to him he gave the cube of metal,
explaining how he came by it.
The Teacher stayed that night, and another and another at the homes of peoplewho had heard of All or had reason to bless All's Temple; and the fourthevening he came to San Francisco. It was not so badly ruined La appearance,
rising now as an Oriental city from the ashes of the blasted city they hadcaptured in the early years of the war. The busy city paid no attention to theTeacher as he wandered about, but evening found him staying in the home of aman who marveled still that he walked on two legs of flesh and bone where butone had been left him when he left the hospital of the American Army MedicalCorps.
The next day he went down to the Empire building in the heart of new SanFrancisco and attended an auction that was going on, the selling of certainlands in the neighborhood of Golden Gate Park. And some of his friends wenttoo, and purchased plots of land.
In two weeks the land was as level as it had been before the great shells ofthe Empire Fleet had reduced it to churned rubble. Five men seeded it andplanted it, and a sixth walked about in curious robes bearing a curious staffof crystal. In two weeks, foliage more green, moreluxurious than San Francisco had ever seen grew there, and curious peoplestopped to look at it. And more curious Orientals examined the grass and thesoil, and did not understand.
A building appeared, of white marble and red granite and curious blue,
intensely blue stone that came from hitherto unknown quarries along with anintensely green stone. A great crated mass, five feet on an edge. Men came 


too, and set the stone and the crystal mass on a golden column that had come,
and other thin crystal plates and curious lighting devices.
In six months, the House of All was built, and shone white and sapphire andemerald on the broad sweep of landscaped lawn. At first a few curious onescame. Then the sick, and then more ailing in streams, till every Westerner inSan Francisco had visited it, and come out well and strong, and the Orientalscomplained slightly. But the Orientals who were in power took no notice of it,
being too intelligent to be deluded by faith healers, and since their peoplewere not a race used to complaining, but oppressed for countless generationsby a dull drudgery, they merely looked on with envious dull eyes as theOccidental crippled limped in, and returned whole, and the pallid, feverishwere carried in to walk out, eyes shining.
But the rulers were intelligent and paid little attention to faith healers,
being far too busy attempting to establish a very new political control over avast area. 
And their work was not to complain and object to a religion that obeyed theEdicts of the Emperor in every way, and turned in nearly two hundred and fortythousand dollars of precious metal in the course of six months from the Houseof All in San Francisco. And those originally interested lost interest as timepassed, and nothing new or startling developed, save amazingly good revenues.
Another House of All rose under the direction of the First Teacher in Denver,
and another in Seattle. And hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid, whiletens of thousands of sick were healed. The stores of precious metals inNijihua's treasury were augmented by the receipts from nearly seven hundredmembers of the House of All, in that year.
X 
The Server stood before the Lords, and the First Teacher stood beside him.
"Lords, you have heard the tale. Eleven Houses have been established in thesetwo years, and the First Teacher has worked fairly and well, these two years.
Now he grows weary of this work, and would, if it meets the approval of theFive Lords, rest in the House of All in Chicago as the Server of All."
Mens, Lord of Wisdom spoke from his great, crystal throne. "The First Teacherhas done well, and no one of his sending has been excluded from the Works ofAll, whereby is shown his wisdom of human understanding. The Lord of Wisdom ispleased."
Tammar, Lady of Mercy spoke. "Many he has helped, and through his spreading ofAll's houses, many have learned of All's works. Tammar, Lady of Mercy ispleased."
Shan, Lord of Fulfillment spoke: "In no way has he failed in his words givenus, the Lords of All. The Lord of Fulfillment is content."
So they spoke, and agreeing, Amos Tucker, the First Teacher, was made Serverof All in Chicago, the American Capital of the World Empire.
Lord Mens spoke again. "Your work, Server, must not cease, for you mustinstruct many and introduce them to the Mysteries of All. You have showncomplete competence in the handling of these things which a Server of All mustunderstand. But every man of our race whom you believe competent must be senthere for final education in All's Mysteries. We have but two Houses east ofthe Mississippi, and you, who have done so much of this work must aid othersin the work, not by your presence but by your constant advice. The Crystal ofthe Server reaches to every Crystal of All, and speaks with it at will. Thisremember, and aid in every way, as we know you will. Your work has beenexceedingly good."
The Second Server bowed to the Lords. "I cannot understand fully thesemysteries, as I know better even thanyou. But to the utmost of my abilities I will apply the knowledge andunderstanding of the human mysteries, to the betterment of All.
"I go now to Chicago, but I will pause at Denver, where the Seventh Teacher is 


setting out soon for Boston that a new House of All may be built. He haspurchased, through his agents, Corey Hill, which overlooks all Boston. I findhis plans good."
The Lords nodded agreement. "I know the city," spoke Tammar, Lady of Mercy.
"It is an excellent position."
The First Server stepped forward again. "Now there comes to me that a morepressing business yet demands attention. For a year and a year we have escapedgreat notice from the Empire, the work of consolidation being very great forthem, and their need of revenue being very pressing."
"They sought to destroy us with their tax," said Lord Mens softly, "which wasnot the way of wisdom, with All of infinite resource, and they have soldthemselves for a bribe instead. They fear to harm us now, who have in twoyears brought them eight and one third millions of dollars in precious metal,
metals very rare and difficult to collect. This year we build our membershipby eleven thousand men and women. They will not quickly destroy the bringer ofso much revenue, nor the source of so much excellent health and good-natureamong the people of the country they own.
"But therefore I say this: The work of consolidation nears its end, and theneed of our revenue becomes less pressing as normal industry swells, and itsrevenues swell, and some measure of prosperity returns. This third year,
therefore, let us expand to the limit Lord All may permit us.
'The Council of Lords is ended?" 
"Aye," said the Lords.
And now Amos Tucker raised his new Staff of the Server, and held it before hiseyes, by chance, and he started back, his face frozen in sudden surprise.
There was a Sixth Lord! The Black Lord, Dread Barmak, a silhouette of utterjet that seemed to stare straight to his heart, and dip slowly his massivehead in greeting to the new Server of All.
Frozen fingers gripped the heart of the Second Server as he turned stiffly tothe First Server. Tornsen smiled 
gravely, and for an instant Tucker caught a fleeting twinkle in the kindly oldeyes of Shan, Lord of Fulfillment ere he filed away with the others to hischamber. 
"Come," said Tornsen, "there are further things that the Server of All shouldunderstand." 
"Aye-Aye, indeed," sighed Amos Tucker unsteadily.
XI 
Chu Liang sat with unmoving face as the Shaman of the Western District boredin upon the curiously garbed witness in the Testifier's Stand. There had beenlittle result of the Shaman's persistent questionings.
The Shaman's voice was growing sharper. "How old, though, is this sect,
Server?" 
"A religion, Shaman, is ageless. A deity is everlasting, without knowablebeginning, without knowable end. These exist in the mist of creation and themist of the ultimate dissolution." 
"The religion is not older than men, for without man there is no religion.
This is not as old as man, and therefore I ask its earliest inception,
Server." 
"The earliest inception began about three thousand years ago in Greece. Itdeveloped very slowly, till this day came when the better understanding ofAll, and his message to men, the great need of his race all combined to makehis understanding of man and man's understanding of him better."
"The active spread of the religion is but three years old though, AmosTucker?" 
"I have no name, save that of Server, Shaman. It has become my title and myname. The great growth of All's Initiate has taken place in these three yearsof stress, but his understanding has increased greatly and steadily over the 


period of a hundred years, since the year 1890 of the old calender."
"Eleven thousand, nine hundred and eighty-seven members have joined the churchduring this year, and paid the initiate tax of one thousand dollars. It issaid this tax is paid in large part by the Temple, yet no known source ofrevenue is hi evidence. How then, has this revenue been gathered, this sum ofover eleven millions of dollars, and the greater sums spent in theconstruction of the Temples, thirty-seven this year, and investment not lessthan seventy millions of dollars I am told."
"The resources of All are infinite. I am of the Server 
class, and such is not within my province. I cannot answer you that, Shaman."
"Who then is responsible for this thing?" "That is the province of Mens, Lordof Wisdom." "He is forbidden by the religion's laws to leave the valley?"
"Yes. He does not leave the Temple." The Shaman's face was not so smoothlyimpassive as it had been. "We have heard the testimony of Chu Liang upon thedestruction of life within the temple, and upon the complete sterilization ofthe bodies." 
The Second Server interrupted smoothly and gravely. "The works of Dis, Lord ofDeath are not understood by men. As the people of All are welcomed within theTemple, unfortunately the other peoples are not. That is the will of All,
which I serve, but do not influence."
"The Hindus have entered, an Oriental people, dark of skin," said the Shamansoftly.
"The understanding of All's will is not to men." "You understand sufficientlyto make efficient use of the Crystal of Life, and the Staff which you bearwith you so constantly."
"That is an achievement attained after three thousand years of study andthought and deepest sincerity of purpose. The day may come when the entirewill of All is understood. To us, these things are greatly valued, and not tobe cast aside, for in them, in the crystals, resides something of the livingAll, The Infinite, perceptible in his living flame."
And as he spoke, the silver Flame of All lanced upward, the dying starscoruscating and vanishing.
"You and your people have been consistent in your refusal to part with thissymbol of All."
"Only once, under the order of an officer of the Empire has any man of Allparted with his staff. The report has been read in this room that Allwhispered in the crystal, and the man dropped dying saved only by thebeneficial effects of All's crystal in the hands of its owner, Tornsen theServer. All is not a destroyer needlessly, and the people of All attempt toprevent such suffering as the release of the Staff brings. Such is the will ofAll." 
The Shaman tried for long hours, and at the close of the long day's sessiondismissed the Server, who had appeared voluntarily, and exasperatedly watchedhim leave 
the room, to be joined by a dozen Novitiates of the House of All. A dozenothers appeared around him, calling softly. Gently his voice floated back,
clear and sharp. "It is not wise that the Flame be used here, since there arethose other than All's who would suffer by it. The House of All is open to allmen of his race, and the Teachers of All will come at any man's call if needbe." And the Shaman spoke softly to his colleagues. "I am informed that theCouncil of American Military Affairs wishes us to cease inquiry at this time,"
he said. 
Chu Liang went quietly from the room to the building at the other end of theEmpire Park, and into the small room where two dozen men sat quietly supping.
Dark fell presently and they sat talking softly of many things. And a man camein quietly, his face very white and his eyes seeming glazed and unseeing. Hewas guided by the hands of two who stood on either side of him, uniformed 


guards, and he was not alone in his paleness. The two at his side saluted, buthe in the center stared only ahead, dull-eyed.
"Yokishi, you report?" asked Commander Torisuti.
"Yokishi, yes. Yes, I report Commander. The thing was done, and I am done."
"You apprehended the Teacher who went out?"
"Yes, yes, we apprehended the Teacher. From the Singing Stair of the House ofAll he went down, to the call of the one who demanded aid, as was ordained,
and Lieutenant Tsi Chian accompanied me to the mean dark streets of theAmerican Section. The darkness closed in as we closed in, as noiseless as we.
The lights of the street grew further apart, and the houses more cramped anddecayed, and the Teacher continued but about him shone light, for the Staff hecarried glowed with silver light and green, and sapphire blue and pearl, andwas very beauti-full to look on, but tore at the nerves and deadened them.
Lieutenant Tsi Chian went forward as was agreed, and with the silent pistolfired at him, but as was known the Teacher was not stayed nor hurt nor evenaware of the firing. So then did I advance with the apparatus Chu Liang haddesigned for me, and did as he had directed in the starting of it, and as hedirected I tried its power on a dog that appeared slinking through the alleys,
and he died as was told to me, lying down without a sound.
"I advanced upon the Teacher, and trained the projector upon him, and thetubes glowed properly, and themeters were correctly set upon the base of the weapon. Then I depressed thecontact, and the Teacher before me did not stumble or halt, nor even seemaware, for behind him, directly between him and the weapon I bore, appeared asoft glow of violet that seemed a wavering disc of light, and slightlybrighter the Flame of All glowed on his staff. The sparks were sharp and hotin my hands, so I was forced to drop the thing."
"The clatter warned him, for he turned slowly, and we stood revealed hi thesilver light. Lieutenant Tsi Chian made to dart away as did I, hoping toescape recognition in the foul clothes we wore, but from the staff he carriedgreen light reached out, and we were overcome by a lethargy and a paralysissuch as made us slump to the ground while he came back to us. He smiled as hesaw the weapon I had carried, and from his staff a snake-tongue of scarletlanced to touch the thing Chu Liang had fashioned. It touched it, and it wasgone, only an instantaneous glow of intense violet light lingered for a momentto mark its passage, and a shallow depression in the hardpacked earth of theroadway."
" 'All protects his people, Warrior' he said quietly, looking upon us. 'It wasnot the will of All that your weapon should injure me, so it did not. Go now,
back to Commander Torisuti who awaits you in the room of Decisions in the Hallof War.' 
"He pointed his staff upon us, and the pearly light touched us, so we rose anddarted into the shadows. He walked on." 
"That is your report?" asked the Commander silkily. "No, that is not myreport, Commander, for we knew then that his diligence would be at low ebb,
having overcome one attack, and would not be strong to aid him. We followedhim then to the house of the ailing one, and the Teacher was inside for halfan hour. Then we knew, as he came out, his Staff must be at low ebb also, andno protection against material things since he must move through the narrowdoorway of the squalid place.
"His silver light came before him, bright upon the darkness of the place. Ashe followed through, Lieutenant Tsi Chian stood upon the right, and I upon theleft, and Tsi Chian had a section of heavy metal he had found, and I a brokenbeam, hoping that great mass might accomplish on his weakened screen what nobullet might.
"Tsi Chian struck, and his metal bar shot lightnings, so that he was hurled toone side, writhing. My wooden beam was slowed, as though striking water a foot 


from his head, and ran aside, but so great was its mass that it moved still,
and struck him upon the shoulder.
"He fell to his knees, dropping the Staff of All, but it dropped not swiftly,
but slowly to the ground as though feather-light. I leapt upon the Teacher ashe kneeled, half stunned while Tsi Chian leapt upon the Staff. Tsi Chiangrasped it, and I rose to follow as he went swiftly down the roadway to aplace of safety, for there are many Americans in the Section. I was closebehind him when he stumbled to the ground, turned over-and slept with thestaff beside him. 
"I grasped it and ran on, but a numbness came into my arms as I ran, a greatnumbness so that presently I felt my feet as those of another, and it seemed Iran on for, many hours while a single house dropped back. And for many morehours till, weary, I stumbled as Tsi Chian had, and lay with the numbingcreeping from my arm to my heart and my eyes. The silver light grew dimmer tomy eyes, then vanished, and suddenly a searing, unbearable pain shot throughmy arm, so my eyes opened again. All the Staff glowed violet, and the Crystalwas shattered. 
"Lightning gushed from the end of the staff, so that the ground fused, and theair rocked at the roarings of them. The crystal was gone, and as I watched,
helpless to move, the Staff glowed more intensely violet, then blue flamesrushed up from it and the heat seared me and my hand. But the hand felt nopain now, nor did my side presently, and the lack of pain was spreading, whilethe blue flames rushed higher-and then were gone. Commander, it had vanishedutterly, so that no scrap of metal or ash rested in my hand."
"That is your report?" asked the Commander again.
"That is my report, Commander, save that presently the Teacher came again, andstood over me. He spoke again and said: 'Your hands, and the release of theSpirit of All within the Staff, which is the Spirit of the Lord of Life,
brought a false life to you. You are dead, Warrior. Now I will give you thepeace of Tal, that you may endure to reach your commander. But it is not thewill of All that you, who have attacked a Teacher of All,
shall live, nor can any of us of All bring life to you, into whom the Fire ofAll has penetrated.'
"And as he spoke, the fire was eating at me, so that my body burned, and allof me from my skin to my innermost part flamed with the agony of it, like theDeath of a Thousand Cuts, so that I groaned. From the crystal of hisheaddress, a pencil of green light reached down, and touched my head so thatthe fire died there, and in a moment I felt no fire, or any other thing in allmy body. " 'Now the fire is not dead, but your senses are dead,' he saidsoftly, 'nor will they ever return. Your eyes see, and your ears hear, butneither touch, nor taste, nor smell is with you. For an hour and at mostanother hour, the Fire of All will leak from you, then when it is gone youwill be dead indeed. Now for those who speak with you, know this; when theFire of All is gone from you, and you die, there yet remains an hour while theFire of All is within the atoms of your body. Then this fire too returns toAll, who is the essence of the Infinity, so that it be best your body be farfrom men. Go now, to your commander.'
"And now he turned on me a ray of red, such as that that had licked at theweapon of Chu Liang. The ground beneath me hissed to it, and shrieked; itdissolved so that I felt myself sinking, and the snake-tongued flame wrappedabout me and clung like the cocoon of the silkmaker. Then blue fire lickedfrom my body, and fought with it, and presently I felt strength come to meagain, save in the arm and the side where the staff had lain and touched. Thenblue flame and red, snaked-tongued ray died together, and I stood up and cameswiftly away. I ran, and was tireless. A fence was before me, and I graspedits top with the hand which would act to my will, and lightly flew over it tothe strain of my muscles, while the planking dented between my fingers. 


"Now look, and say you whether I am as before." The young Oriental grasped theoaken door-frame, and between his fingers it splintered as though in the gripof a vise. Suddenly they knew he was shining over all his body, withiridescent whirling rainbows, luminous oil on water.
"The strength is going from me, and I know that All, Lord of Life, is leavingme. Oh, All, Mighty Lord-I believe-I understand-let me-take me-"
And the men of the Council started abruptly to theirfeet as his body stiffened suddenly, with a curious crys-talinity as the lightburst out in eye-searing brilliance, and--died. A voice spoke, slumberous anddeep, in the language he had used, as perfect in enunciation, in phrasing, inaccent as his own, but it spoke, not from his lips, but from all his body.
"There is no place for you, nor your people with All and the people of All."
The man beside him recoiled suddenly, and body swayed slightly, slipped andshattered to a thousand pieces that cried out in brittle anguish.
Chu Liang bowed his head. "It is an infinitely greater god than ours. Lest weregret a decision, let his body and all parts of it to the tiniest scrap, befound and carried out to the center of the great court, and a guard beestablished for two hours at range of two hundred yards."
"You advise this, Chu Liang? Then, guard, let that be an order, and see thatit is obeyed." The two saluted, and went away hurriedly. They were not amongthose who came to pick up the scattered fragments.
Torisuti turned again to Chu Liang. "What was your weapon?"
"An efficient and effective short-wave radio projector of unequaled power. Itwas very deadly. It was the best our science could offer."
"Their God seems peculiarly real. I-I cannot understand such a god."
Chu Liang smiled slowly. "The unwritten definition of a god includes thephrase, in every mind, that a god is one who promises, but never acts, and ifhe acts is not a God. There is no room in our civilization for a being abovethe known laws of cause and effect. We are unfortunate to meet one. 
Particularly one selectively opposed to our race, and one selectively helpfulto theirs." 
"Has your science nothing to offer which is selectively opposed to theirrace?" snapped Commander Torisuti.
Chu Liang shook his head slowly, then paused suddenly, as a thought came tohis mind. "There may be, on second thought. But be it remembered that ourscience is in no way to be compared with the powers that their God hasdisplayed."
"What then? The radio-weapon, perhaps. I do not understand that, but perhapsyou may make it tune in on them, which is a thought my mind may grasp."
"No, the radio weapon is merely heat, excessive heat. That miniature set theman who has just been carried was a power unequaled in any hand-portable setin our science or, I would have said, in any science. For it gen atom and fourhydrogens that act hi many ways as killed nearly seven hundred horsepower,
truly a vast amount to train upon an animal body, a disruptive power. Yet weknow now that this must certainly have doubled, since the weapon burned out,
and in all probability, trebled. Hence we say that the Staff of Life born bythe Teachers is capable of generating two thousand horsepower, for the one whoreported stated that the Flame of All increased but slightly."
"No meaning. The staff was damaged, and disintegrated within the hour. Tellme, too, how this may be?"
"I can suggest, but no more, and this is what my mind makes credible: that thestaff is made, not of pure metal, but of an alloy, and the alloy is not one Ican duplicate. There is a compound, ammonium, consisting of one nitrogen atomand four hydrogens that act in many way as a metal, silvery in color and verylight. Now it may be formed in mercury to make an amalgam, which is very soft,
but solid and, at low temperatures, somewhat stable. This staff then, may havebeen an alloy of platinum and ammonium, intended that we may not have the 


thing to analyze and investigate. Now when certain conditions were fulfilled,
or certain tune elapsed, or a hidden stud of the carving was not depressed,
the stuff became unstable, and the ammonium freed itself as gas. The gas ofammonium in the presence of finely divided platinum burns with a blue light inair to a gas. If this be true, then the platinum would be dust finer than themotes in sunlight beams, and would cause the burning, while the metal wouldglow with red heat, and the blue names with the red glow would be violetlight.
"Thus it would be if it were science. But, Commander, we deal with a god, whois beyond laws as we know them, and may have destroyed the platinum. This, Isuggest, for neither ammonium nor platinum, nor the gases released turn men tocrystal that shatters, nor make the hands of men to crush solid, oaken beams."
He nodded slowly to the crushed doorframe.
"Enough of that. It is, evidently, beyond your science,, and I am beginning tofear that this thing is in truth agod, which is not good for the cause of the World Empire. Tell me though, whatis that thing you mentioned, which attacks the Westerners, but not us?"
"I hesitate for two reasons; it attacks not the whites alone, but both, races,
though to a far greater degree the whites. However, many of our people willdie. The other, that it will divide the whites from the Empire forever, if wepoint out that there is a god which protects and favors the Asiatic races."
"What is this thing?" demanded the Commander.
"Cholera. Asiatic Cholera. The white races are twenty times more susceptible,
and if an epidemic of mild cholera be spread, nine tenths of the whites shalldie, and one hundredth of our people."
"And those of ours who do die, I believe, will be the weakest of the race,"
said the Commander softly.
"Yes," said Chu Liang.
xn 
The Four Servers stood before the thrones of the Five in the Temple of All,
their faces grave and careworn. The First Server spoke. "The Lords know wellthe thousands who have besieged this Temple and been healed, till their fivevisits of the year are gone. And still they are sick, nor have they thethousand dollars to pay the Initiate Impost. So many as we will, we can heal,
and so many as the Teachers can reach can be healed, so that cholera does nottake them. But this brings trouble: that the healing by the Flame of All isnot permanent, but merely a destruction of the disease as it exists, leavingthe man open again to its dread attack.
"And the Empire is spreading and allowing the spread of the disease, whiletheir people laugh at it, for having lived with it a thousand generations. Wehave not Teachers to reach every home in the time needed; we must accept asmembers the seventy-three thousand that are on our lists, and are capable ofbeing made Teachers and of proven worth."
Lord Mens spoke. "This we could do, for the Impost could be met from theinfinite resources of All, yet this would mean a payment of seventy-threemillions of dollars, many tons of metal, and the Empire would notice quickly.
There are now in this country, some thirty-five million people of All, and dueto the tenets of the Empire, there are neither feeble-minded nor insane norrecurrently criminal among them, though many are stupid drawers of waters andhewers of wood. Yet we must save them. So the Impost shall be met, and theTeachers shall join. But let them not all be Teachers, but only Members, whoseStaffs are of the Sixth Order, capable of healing, but not of generation ofAll's powers, their powers dying with the day. Thus faulty members shall notlay open the mysteries of All to the Empire.
"And in this emergency the Flame of All shall burn at the Eighth Magnitude inall the Houses of All, day and night both. Now be it known also, to theServers, that the Staffs of the Lords can bring life to the dead, and 


under the Staffs of the Lords, Lord Dis relinquishes his claim, if the body ofthe dead one be in condition to be again life's vessel, and not a thing ofhorror. So too, shall the Staff of the First Server be, and as soon as may be,
the Staffs of the Four Servers, though the staffs of the Servers, save theFirst Server, are of a degree lower than the Staffs of the Masters.
"Now I, Lord of Wisdom, do find it time fittirig, that the Servers and theFirst Teachers of the Houses know the full might of Dis, Lord of Death. Takethou, Dis, Lord of Death, these Servers, to the Crystal of All and teach themfull the Services of Dis." 
"Aye," said the Lords.
Lord Dis rose in a burning cloak of scarlet, and his staff flamed and lickedwith angry snake-tongues of fire; tiny crystalline trumpetings resounded fromits lighten-ings as he led the way to the great Crystal of All. For the firsttime, the doors of the Temple swung shut, while the Lords themselves stoodwithout, bringing health to the hundreds who climbed the mighty Singing Stair.
Its song was a song of dread to the City of All now, for it rang day and nightto the tread of hundreds afflicted with the cholera. 
Lord Dis stood on the high altar of the Crystal of All, and to the FourServers repeated the full service of Dis. The great crystal shimmered, and theblue of Mens and the Green of Tal faded as his voice rolled on, then the pearlof Shan, and even the silver starburst of All grew dim, and the sullen scarletof Dis spread all the great crystal while trumpeting lightnings licked anddanced about the altar and the crystal and the man. The scarlet floor wove anddanced to foot-long streamers that writhed and muttered in angry murmur, andthe long Service of Dis reached near its end.
And Lord Dis stopped. "Thus is the Service of Dis," he said, and his voicerolled in the Temple, powerful and deep. "But that is not the ending. Nowthese are the words of the ending, and they must be learned. I continue notthe Service of Dis now, for the powers of Dis in his full might are- notlightly to be summoned. Remember this, and remember too, that only in theultimate extreme are the full words of the Service of Dis to ring in thechamber of the Crystal. Remember this, for their power is mighty beyond anypowers of Earth, forAll, in his phase of Dis, strikes then with all his might, and it is not giventhat men should behold this thing lightly, nor much. And these are the finalwords, for the Service is broken now, and the Mighty Lord has retreated forthe time." 
As he had spoken the flames of Dis had died lower, • and the floor of Dis wasquiescent, flaming softly, and^the silver and blue and green and pearl werereturned to the crystal, tinged still with the angry scarlet of Dis.
Lord Dis spoke again. "The enemy attack, Lord Dis, and the walls resound totheir march. Lord Dis, mightiest of the Lords, give answer now, to theirthreats, thrust forth thy banners, and thy flames of Death, snake-tongued topierce our enemies, in the name of All, Lord of Life, strike, Lord Dis!"
The Service was broken, and not full in its power, but as his voice roaredstill in the stone-walled Temple, the light vanished, swallowed in rollingthunders of blackness, till only scarlet gloom remained, pierced and shatteredwith Titan lashes of scarlet fire, cold, the awful cold of the Dread BlackLord, Barmak, the Unseen, the Unmentioned, swept through the Temple, and theair was night, stabbed through by sunset rays of scarlet Dis, whirling,
shrieking, trumpeting mad crystalline destruction.
And they died. White-faced the Servers stood; silence came at length, and LordDis spoke again from the altar. "Now these are the powers of Dis," he saidvery softly, so his voice was barely audible, and the silver of All crept in,
and the blue and green and pearl. "The Lord Dis protects his own, but when themight of Dis is so great, the lives of even his people are as ants in the pathof a warring God. Know this, then; within the Temple, when the full might of 


Dis is loose, let no man attempt to stand, save he be clothed in the scarletrobe of Dis, and wear the scarlet crystal of Dis. His staff must glow with theanger of Dis. Beyond the Temple walls, men of Western blood may stand, but ifthere be admixture of Oriental, his death is not less certain than the deathof Oriental on that floor now. 
"But this you must remember; let not these forces loose till there hoversdanger above, men without, and enemies on every side, and that enemy attacks.
For when the might of Dis is loose, nor All himself, nor Tal, the Lord ofPeace may stay that anger. Only Tammar, Lady ofMercy, has power then, and her power extends not infinitely. . ,
"Now remember these things, and let the Teachers of each House of All and Disknow them well." 
"Aye, Lord," said the Servers faintly.
xra 
"Your metal is pure, pure indeed, too pure. Server, we, the examiners of theWorld Empire, demand knowledge of this thing, and further, we demandadmittance to this Temple in safety and peace!"
"That cannot be," the Server spoke sternly. "Lord All denies you admittance,
and men cannot sway the will of All. The metal is good, so be it good, whereis your complaint?"
"Then, Server, listen well. Emperor Nijihua himself takes notice of yourTemple, having come to America this day, and this is his Edict; that anytemple growing in membership more than ten thousand men in the last year shallpay an Impost of one million dollars for each member!"
The Server stood white-faced, his face stern as the mighty mountain ridgesringing the Temple. Finally Torn-sen spoke again. His voice was soft and verylow. "Return to your royal master and tell him then, this. That at each Houseof All, there must be a vehicle within twelve hours capable of bearing twentytons of metal, and at this house a greater vehicle. Go."
The Oriental went, dazed and knowing not what to say, for in all the world,
there was not eighty-four billions of dollars in hard metal.
The vehicles appeared as was ordained, and there were fourteen great freightplanes in the City of All in the Valley of All.
Nijihua had not been troubled for he slept, it being night now, and only thecollection service had been impressed. Uncomprehending men going in answer toan order. The Valley flamed with dull and ominous scarlet, hot with the warmthof the great fire-shot crystal of Dis, by the Cup of All.
The Collector came to the Singing Stair and mounted it, behind him the squadof laborers. The Temple flamed with the light of All, mighty and bright, alance-flame that reached full hundred feet, steady and motionless withbursting stars of light, shattering crystals of lightthat gave forth a low, ominous rumble of grinding sound. The floor of Diswavered with a thousand thousand snake-tongued flames of angry scarlet.
The Collector halted, for on the great crystal floor were stacked ingots ofmetal. They were foot-thick bars, square of" end and six feet long, and theylay rank on rank, three hundred feet they stretched, side by side, six feetlong, and they towered twenty feet into the air, a mighty wall of preciousmetal such as man never conceived, all down one side of the great Temple. Anddown all the other wall of the Temple they stacked, save only at the far end,
where men came now guiding other mighty bars, men in long lines, one behindanother, and more behind, while another file returned empty-handed. One manmoved those bars, those four-tone bars, and in his hand glowed the Flame ofAll, and the mighty ingots rested on it and floated, glowing faint withcrimson light. The Collector stopped, dumb-struck at the threshold. Andshrieked, leaping back as the great Cubed Crystal spun savagely and the snake-
tongued flame of Dis crashed a bolt of scarlet, licking lightning, to shatterin roaring crystalline wrath at the Barrier of the Threshold. 


"Stop there!" ordered the Server. The Five Lords emerged through the jet wall,
and their crystals flamed angrily, the Staff of Lord Dis crackling andshouting crystalline wrath, his robes and cloak shimmering under their angrylicking.
"No further, Oriental," Tornsen rumbled. "It is Death, for the Lord Dis isangry this night. The ingots will be brought to you, and these ingots standthat you may see the infinite resources of All, Lord of Life. Beneath thisfloor lie the vaults of All, and they stretch a thousand and a thousand feetinto the Earth, and a thousand and a thousand feet on every side. Now theseare the metals of All, the Creator, and more he creates at will as he createdthose few scraps the world has know. These be osmium, osmium all. And in thevaults lie indium and platinum, palladium and rhodium in vaster amounts, andthere are all the metals of earth in what quantity we would.
"Now look you, the Flame of All is the essence of the Lord of Life, theCreator, and it is greater than any manifestation of his works, such asmatter, or gravity,
which it dissipates so that one man carries in his hands the great ingot. Oneof these ingots you may test."
The Server moved, and his Staff pointed toward the great wall of ingots, theFlame of All shot out, lancing, and a pencil line of intense violet pierced itthrough, leading it so it touched an ingot and the ingot burst into crimson,
lifted and floated down the Flame. Tornsen turned his Staff, and the mightyingot followed till it crossed the Barrier and hung above the salt-white stoneoutside. With a booming clang it dropped.
'Test that, Collector," snapped the Server.
The Collector moved swiftly and his tiny saw gnawed at the mighty thing, and ascrap came free. Swiftly with spectroscope and reagent he tested it. "It ispurest osmium," he said at length. "Weigh it I cannot, for its mass is farbeyond my scales."
"Then watch, Collector," snapped the Server. The crimson crystal of Dis glowedon his staff, and the forked tongue was keen as a knife's edge. It traced aline, and the ingot shrieked in tortured anguish, and-and became two, four,
eight, sixteen pieces.
The Collector stared dumbly, and started forward. "Stop," said the Server.
"What metal would your royal master have?"
"Gold-" said the Collector. "Gold-he has much platinum but men like betteryellow gold."
"Stand back, Oriental, for All speaks his will, and he is Lord of All Thingsas well as Men." 
The Flame of All lashed out from his crystal in mighty clashing discord, andstruck the ingot and retired. The Collector looked at it dully, for it wasyellow, yellow as butter of cows in lush pasture. And as he cut at it, itgummed his saw, so soft it was. .With his knife he pared a great strip off.
Two ingots he loaded in the planes, and went away- the planes staggering withthe concentrated load of mighty blocks of yellow buttery metal. The Serverstood at the peak of the Singing Stair, and stared after them, while in theValley, the Crystal of Dis pulsed mad scarlet flames that chimed and chatteredand crashed angrily, and the clouding sky reflected their angry glory.
In two-score cities that night, two-score collectors looked upon vasttreasures, while the Emperor slept.
He woke in the morning, and the clamour of his officers 
brought him out The city, his city, roared and murmured with strange,
riotous sounds, shrieks and howls and crying mobs of men. Careworn andbrightened were his officers as he emerged.
"Lord Nijihua-Your Highness-The Temple of All-"
"What," snapped the Emperor in clipped syllables. "General Torisuti, report."
"Lord Nijihua the Temple of All replied that they would meet the impost-" 


Nijihua started. "Would meet it! Impossible! For in the world, save in mytreasury, such treasure does not exist."
Torisuti giggled softly. "Your Highness, they met it. They paid it with ingotsof gold, platinum and palladium and rhodium, and the ingots were six feet byone foot by one foot, solid metal and pure. The Collectors returned with eyesdazed and blank, and they told of walls of metal in each Temple that stretchedencj to end and made of tens of thousands of such ingots! That-"
"There is not such metal on earth," Nijihua snapped. "They were plated basemetals. What is the howling of this mob that disturbed my sleep?"
"It is the army and lie citizens and the peasants, Highness. There may nothave been such metal, but- look." Nijihua stared through the window of thecorridor. The American Provincial Treasury building stood beyond, and itgleamed and glowed in the sun, like yellow butter, and its roof was fallen in,
its mighty pillars slumped under their own weight. A half melted buildingof butter. 
A score of men were fighting and howling and shrieking as they struggled tobear away a statue, curiously lifelike statue of metal, scarcely twenty incheshigh, made of yellow, yellow metal. But its concentrated mass was immense, andthey fought savagely over it. A soldier came and his rifle blazed. They fell,
or ran, and another shot the soldier down to draw away the statuette. And overall, the mad melody of the treasure-mad city howled.
"That thing was a treasury guard last night," said Commander Torisuti. "TheBuilding is gold, purest gold, and they howl and fight to hack it away withknives and axes. And the soldiers fight with them for it. The War Departmentbuildings are of iridium, pure and strong, too hard to cut, so they howl aboutit and cannot cut it away. The streets are bordered by curbstones of gold,
and the bridges are sinking under their golden weight. The forts outside thecity are lead, and the war-planes slump in ruin of leaden softness. The greatcoast defense guns at San Francisco and the bridges of New York run in liquidstreams of mercury. The battleships anchored in the harbor burned last nightwith mighty tongues of violet flame and exploded in flaming ruin, and theirsolid metal ran liquid, hissing, burning on the water. All America is a madjoke on an insane, prankster god!
"And at dawn, when people woke to see the golden splendors a mighty voiceroared over all the city, and commanded them to fight and slay and squabblefor useless gold, for there were infinite resources in the treasuries of All.
Over all the Province the cities are golden and platinum, and the weapons areleaden and mercury. Great forts slump like yellow, melted butter under theirown weight."
The howling savagery of the city welled hi at the windows, and shrieked abouttheir ears. "Commanders, gather your forces. The Temples of All must bedestroyed instantly. Are there any great guns and planes, remaining?"
"A score in the city, of planes, a half dozen mobile guns, with these we canattack-" 
"Go, destroy the Temples, and every Teacher and Server in them." Nijihua satin the windows of his palace, and stared at the city. Fire smoke climbedleaden into the sky, while the howls of the hunting packs drifted across thecity. The city was no city, for a city is the center of an organized society,
and Nijihua's heart was cold as he understood suddenly the powers of this madgod. His city was mad-mad as a lunatic howling his fury to the full moon.
Half a thousand men swept about the corner, a dozen trucks in their midst,
armed soldiers. They opened fire as they reached the Great Court, and beforethey neared the Treasury Building, their numbers halved and none lived beforethem. They swept on howling, to the Treasury. A dozen power-saws squealed, andgunned down in the soft, clinging stuff. A hundred men loaded blocks andmasses of yellow metal in the trucks. Then suddenly one collapsed under thevast load, and they distributed the loading better. But they could not stop. A 


wild mob of citizens, ten thousand strong, swept in from all sides with ax andsaw and knife and pistol. There were gasshells there, and the soldiers died beneath hacking knife and ax. The peasantcitizens swarmed over the trucks and loaded them further. They crunched andfell under the spilled yellow stuff.
Nijihua rose. An ordered roaring was coming from one end of the city.
Presently he saw far down the Avenue of Nijihua the march of the organizedtroops coming, and because they were ordered strength, the 'peasant citizenswere fighting them, fighting for the golden pavements and the golden houseswith their golden people. But the troops wore masks and they were bathed inparalyzing-gas that stopped the citizens.
At the Palace, Nijihua joined them and went to the airfield. Planes drooped,
lead color, like tired things on the field with broken wings, snapped staywires, crushed landing gear and fallen engines. A score of saved planes turnedover steadily with dull booming of death. Bombs lay in nestled racks beneaththem. Mobile gas units were lined up. A strong guard surrounded the field.
And to the field came a Teacher, in silver cloak and gleaming headdress. Theguards surrounded him in an instant, and brought him before the Emperor,
smiling faintly.
"Well, man of All, what have you to say to your Emperor?"
The Teacher smiled slowly. His voice was easy and deep as he answered: "Youare not my Emperor, Nijihua, for I obey but one ruler, All, Lord of Life. Nowlook you; All Lord of Life takes back this country for his people. It werebest your men leave. You are greedy for the treasures of All, so in fullestmeasure he has given of them, to surfeiting and beyond, so that your peoplekill themselves for them and your army is disrupted by them."
"And," said Nijihua softly, "he has made them quite, quite worthless throughtheir plenty. Aye, your God is a wise God, but I should like to know how thistrick is done." 
"It is done by All Things. It is not within the understanding of man. Nowthese things are done, and that is enough. Let your people withdraw, for thisis the land of the people of All."
"In a day and a day," said Nijihua quietly, "there will be neither All norpeople of All. So much I promise forthe things you and your priests have done. Is that well within theunderstanding of man, such a man as you?" asked Nijihua.
"It is not to be. Lord Dis, Lord of Death, stands ready to defend his people,
Nijihua. I will go now, and when you would speak again with All's men, seekthe Temple of All in the Valley of All. The Five Lords await you. I go."
He turned to walk away. "No," snapped Nijihua. "You stay. Take him, guard!"
The guards reached forward- and stopped. For the man was gone. In an instanthe vanished from their sight, leaping upward slightly, and though they ringedtheir hands and closed in where he had been, he was gone. A voice spoke fromthe air and Nijihua stood calm.
"The Lord All protects his people, which is to be remembered, and engraved inthe scroll of your memory, Nijihua."
Nijihua turned to Commander Torisuti. "You will see that the planes take offat once." 

"The planes come overhead, Server," said the Novice, returning from thethreshold. His face was tense, .and white with fright.
The Server nodded, grave of face and scarcely less firm within his heart. Hestood in scarlet robes of Dis, and his crystal flamed with the red of Dis, asdid the crystals of the Teachers within the Temple.
"Now go, John Kempson, and wait without, and see to that none attempts entryof the gates. For I summon Lord Dis in all his might"
The Novice closed the great gates behind him, looking back at the Server, who 


stood now on the golden altar of All and spoke in slow, rolling syllables. Theair of the Temple was darkening, and red licked the flames of Dis about theServer's body.
John Kempson stood with seven of the Novitiate on the Singing Stair of theTemple facing the crowd of white-faced Americans below. "The Server summonsLord Dis," he cried out, "wait ye hear in safety. Lord All has maddened theOrientals with his gold and precious metals as he warned you, he has destroyedthe fleet of the Emperor as was told you. Now the last weapons and thesoldiers shall be destroyed, as was promised."
Behind him, the Temple glowed scarlet on all its faces, and the sapphire andemerald and pearl were gone. Only flaming angry scarlet remained and spread.
Strange cold, like polar wastes, washed down from the Temple, and the sky grewdark, clouding swiftly. The clouds glared sullen in the light of the Temple,
as it grew, and grew. The howling of the mob stilled over all the city, andthe cold grew greater. Swiftly the black rolled up the sky, swifter andswifter, till all light was blotted out in rolling ink. Wave on wave of jetwas rolling from the Temple, and it drank the light from all the city. TheCrystals in the hands of the Novitiate were dulled and dim, and only theintense scarlet of the Temple pierced the jet that settled as Dis and DreadBarmak, Lord of Nothingness gained sway. The jet waves pushed out and thesnake-
tongues of Dis rolled and curled about the Temple. The great piling of theclouds above pressed lower and the cold of the Black Lord washed out indeadening waves that paralyzed heart and mind.
Abruptly, within, the last words of the Service of the Summoning of Dis weredone. Thunderous trumpet-ings of angry sound washed in from all Infinity-and amighty Being snapped into existence.
Dis, Lord Dis towered above them, scarlet in his cloak, a mighty Titan God,
looming a thousand feet, dwarfing the great towers of the Empire's buildings,
the vast cloak flapping in heart-chilling breezes of another world. In hishands flamed a mighty staff of red metal, tipped by a snake-tongued crystalthat washed and sprayed the frightful flame of Dis. They roared through theheavens, sunset rays of Death. Ten thousand feet crashed out to the mightybombers of the Emperor. The ships vanished in unbearable wash of scarlet flamepiercing even the utter jet of Barmak's veil that held the city.
That day, Dis stalked a thousand feet high, his mighty flames roared down andthe buildings of the Empire flared and vanished and boiled hot in the blackand cold. The bombers vanished from the air and Nijihua's weapons crumbled onthe ground; and thousand-foot Dis roared out his warning, "All, Lord of Life,
defends his own, and I am Dis, Lord of Death, defender of All. Ye die, thisday, invaders, and the country returns to the people of All, for All in hismight, is angry. Now this is thy death!"
Mighty Dis thrust out the blazing crystal, and the flames from it rained downin hissing streams that rent the air, the rocks, the very waters. And assuddenly ceased. Stopped by a great glow of amber light.
Tammar, Lady of Mercy, stood before him, thousand foot high as he, in robes ofgold, and about her wavered golden light that drove back the jet and scarletof Dis and Barmak, Lord of Nothingness, who took much to him that day. Tammarspoke, and her voice rolled softly over the city. "Stop, Lord Dis. They shallgo, for such is the will of All, but they need not go to the Black Lord. It bebetter and wiser and more just if they go to their own place, and their owngods. Cease thy wrath, and come again to the place of the Lords."
The jet and scarlet broke, and Mens, Lord of Wisdom,
came blue as sapphire. "Aye, Lord Dis. It is wisdom. I cannot halt ye, I haveno power to stay ye, nor has any, save the Golden Lady. Come then, for it iswise as well as merciful." 
Lord Dis' angry face calmed slowly. "Aye, I will go. And they will go. For if 


I be summoned by my people once again, I whip this land with the Flames of Distill no thing lives save the people of All, and by my side shall walk theBlack Lord, fully visible! By Mighty All I swear that, not shall Lady Tammarnor Lord Mens again stay our. hands."
Thousand-foot Dis vanished, and the jet clouds that were with him vanished,
rolling up before wave on wave of blissful heat, warmth God-sent. The jetvanished with the scarlet tongues of Dis. The sun broke through, so peoplewere half blinded. And the city moaned, over all its streets and parks itmoaned; then slowly the howl grew, and the shrieks of men that sought toescape on foot, in cars, in planes, in every way. For they dreaded death lessthan Thousand-foot Dis, of the scarlet lightnings, and the Unseen One of theblack and cold. 
XV 
The great, golden plane of Nijihua settled to the landing sands at the City ofAll, among the mighty cliffs of the valley. The Temple glowed with thesapphire of Mens and the emerald of Tal, the pearl of Shan and, faintly thescarlet of Dis. 
Nijihua dismounted from his plane, and a score of Teachers of All, in theirrobes of silver, bearing the crystal staffs, came down the Singing Stair thatboomed softly in the great gorge, to their tread. Nijihua stood on the sandsby the plane, only seven elderly men beside him, his Council. The firstTeacher of the Temple advanced toward him, and spoke softly. "Nijihua, youseek audience of the Five Lords?" 
"Yes, Teacher of All. I must make some peace for my people in this continent.
They destroy themselves in their mad rush for safety, and my army is moredisorganized than the people squabbling over useless metal, so it isimpossible for me to save them and their goods."
"The Lords shall meet, and shall judge you, Nijihua. Come thou, then, to theTemple of All."
Nijihua and his seven councilors followed, eight elderly men, upright andstraight in their robes of state, come to enact what peace they might. Theymounted the Singing Stair, and halted at the peak on the salt-white stone ofthe threshold. Before them gleamed the mighty Crystal of All, such as they hadnever seen. And on its top stood the Five Lords before their Five thrones. Theglory of the Temple impressed itself upon the Oriental, its beauty ofsimplicity and lighting. Gradually something of its peace seeped into him.
The Server stood before him, huge and straight. "You have come to audiencewith the Five Lords, Nijihua, and Tammar, Lady of Mercy has made promise foryou."
Tammar spoke, and her golden voice rolled softly through the Temple. "It isdeath to Oriental who crosses the Barrier, but that these men may be trulyand.justly judged, it is best they be near to us. Wherefore, I dopromise them safety within the Temple for this time. Follow, Nijihua, inthe golden light."
A star burst golden in the air of the room, a pinpoint of exploding light thatexpanded suddenly as it fell to a thirty-foot globe of golden radiance,
settling light as a great bubble to the crimson floor, and halfway through it,
till it was a hemispherical dome of golden radiance. Within its circle, thefloor of Dis was dark black 'crystal, at the edge it shot tiny blue lightningsand over all the surface of the globe, blue lightnings played with a hissingcrackle almost noiseless. 
Nijihua and his Council were within it and they crossed the barrier, andwalked a floor no Oriental foot had trod, till they stood near the greatCrystal. The Five Lords seated themselves as the Server stood before the eightmen. 
"Now this is the peace with your people," said Mens, Lord of Wisdom. "Thatthey leave this country with such things as they brought, and no more of 


goods, save only that they may take whatever quantities of gold and platinumand other precious metals as may delight them or be useful to them.
"But every man of your people shall leave, save those who have been in thiscountry more than fifteen years. That is the peace with your people. All, Lordof Life needs no guarantee of non-aggression, no indemnity of materials forhis resources are infinite, and no indemnity of goods, since it were betterthe people of All earn. The lives you have taken cannot be returned. That isthe peace of All, Lord of Life, with your people.
"But All, Lord of Life, has further justice with you, Nijihua. Say first,
Emperor and Council, are these terms with the people acceptable?"
Nijihua sighed softly. "Yes, Lord, these terms are acceptable, but what isthis demand of Justice upon me?"
Dis, Lord of Death rose in his scarlet robes, and Nijihua shrank back. "LordDis!" he said softly.
"Lord Dis," answered the towering figure in scarlet. "I make this demand ofjustice. Without you and yout council your people were good and earnestworkers. With you, they became a deadly unnatural menace, a flowing ooze thatcrushed the nations of the Earth. Your life is forfeit for the many it hascost through heedless ambition."
The crystal staff in his hands dipped, and from it, snake-tongued flame lasheddownward at the recoiling Emperor-and shattered on the golden globe about him.
Angry-browed Lord Dis turned to Tammar, Golden Lady of Mercy. "Tammar, yebuilded better than I knew in this golden bubble. Shatter it, for his life isforfeit!" 
Lady Tammar spoke then. "Nay, for as Mens has said, no taking of lives canreturn lives. It is not his life that brings trouble to the world, but hisambition. Now I say with you, that this menace to peace and happiness shallbe, and must be, removed. But this I say; that it need not be his life. Let itbe his ambition." 
Shan, Lord Shan of the pearly robes turned to the Golden Lady grave-faced andsorrowful. "That too is a stricture great in its weight. Let the man choosewhich he would have, for it may be that he would choose the death Lord Disadvises." 
"Aye," said the Lords.
"Then choose, Nijihua," said Shan, softly. "And re-, member in your choosingthat these are the choices, and there is no alternate. You die withoutknowing, on the floor of Dis, or you be robbed of emotion, of ambition, lostto you then is both hate and love, both ambition and despair, and intellectalone remains unimpaired and undirected by any ambition, any desire, anyemotion whatsoever. And these are for these and your Council to decide."
"Lady Tammar promised safety," called out one of the Councilors.
"Safety to cross the barrier and win fair judgment," the Golden Lady repliedgravely. "This you have. Choose."
Nijihua giggled softly. "Naturally if this thing you promise be done, I wouldchoose-intellectual freedom." 
"So be it," sighed the Lords.
And from the air above the Crystal, from the Silver Flame of All itself, ablackness condensed. A Sixth appeared, the Sixth Lord, the Invisible Lord,
Barmak, Lord of Nothingness. His throne was black, blacker than jet, for noray, no sparkling returned from it, no faintest glint of light. It was theblackness of Barmak. Lord of Blackness and Lack, the Unmentioned Lord ofDespair. He was robed in blackness, not black. He wasblackness, having no face nor visible feature, only black form that was allessence of nothingness and annihilation. But from the blackness, a voicespoke, and from the utter night of this throne, Dread Barmak rose, toweringtall, a hole of utter dark in the silver of All's flame, unillumined by eventhis flame. 


"So be it!" His voice was a~ great rumble that echoed mournful through theTemple suddenly chilled 'by his presence. His staff of blackness tippeddownward, and from it lanced a bar of solid blackness that touched and curledabout the man, lancing through and swallowing the golden flame of the Lady ofMercy.
Shrill rang Nijihua's scream. "Ai-ai-ai-the cold- ai-" And the Emperor of theWorld lay stretched on the blackened crystal floor.
And the flame of All was whole; Dread Barmak, power of Nothingness was gone.
Lord Mens rose again. His blue staff gleamed, and its tetrahedral flamereached out a glow that penetrated and mingled with Lady Tammar's globe. AndNijihua stirred, and rose.
Nijihua spoke again, and his voice was clear and precise, utterly exact, asperfect as a perfect machine. "Very well. The thing is done then."
"Aye, it is done, Nijihua. Now say, Councilors, what choose ye?" demanded theServer. "Life-life-" 
"So be it," the Lords echoed soft. And the heart of All's bright flame froze,
and congealed in the cold and dark of Dread Barmak, the utter absence noddedits awful head and spoke. "So be it," and the cold dead ray of the BlackLord's staff lanced out, and the councilors fell crying with cold, and roseagain as the Black Lord vanished and Mens' blue flame touched them.
"You will hold to the covenant of your word, Nijihua?" Lord Men's voice waslow and grave.
"I will hold to the covenant of my word, and the people iball move out soswiftly as may be; what more, what other, can man do, before the powers of theliving, eternal Gods? I dreamt I fought men, and the Gods walked and lived andacted. I am done. My kind is done. We go."
"This I say to you now, under seal of secrecy you cannot break, by intent orother," said Lord Mens, rising from his sapphire throne, "for I tell you underthe Flame of Mens, and the channels of the brain that make this understandingexpressible are forever closed. So always you will know, and understand, butnever will you speak of it, nor write of it nor ever act by reason of it.
"Chu Liang who stands here now as your Councilor of Science said once that theGod he fought was a greater god than his, his God of Science. That is true.
The science of a knowledge of atoms and radiation undreamed before itsdiscovery. Here in this vault we released the flame of matter, the flame ofAll Things, as America died.
"We learned its secrets, and one of its secrets is this: that radiation can bespecific, even as chemicals can be. Close you came in your guess of specificchemicals and anti-bodies, but it was specific radiation. And under thecrudest of these, Chu Liang, the plane-polarized light of the Moon, the madgrow madder. You tested, Chu Liang, and you found only ultra-violet in theFlames of the Lords, and never did you guess of their infinite variation ofwave form and polarizations of unguessed types. For these no instrument youknew could detect, so safe you called them-and died. A thousand-thousand weknow, for where drug must follow drug in difficult laborious synthesis, withthe Flame of All Things, combination followed combination of polarization,
hyperbolic and parabolic, and strange wave form as swift as control may beturned. 
"Not unique are these specific radiations we use, for there are men who sendpowerfully, the powerful personality, the natural healer who by his steadygaze alone draws up the fires of life to fight again. In man these radiationsform every nerve ending, and they bring unease or death to every other animalor living thing. So it is the dog looks not long in the eye of man, for man'sradiation is powerful, and nerve-racking to all other creatures.
"Infinite power of them have we here, so that, specific to Western man, itsterilizes them of every living thing, and leaves only the man alive, upliftedby friendly, sympathetic vibrations. There be rays that speed tissue 


growth, and rays that stimulate heart and glands. These bring peace or sleep,
joy or sorrow or death as we may choose.
"Such are the Flames of the Lords. And the Flame of the Black Lord bringsdeath to the nerves that stimulate the glands, and death to all feeling ofemotion! 
"So, Nijihua, is All more and yet less than he seemed?"
"More," said Nijihua, "for his power is real and infinite, the power of allthings.
"And-Less," said Nijihua, "for he obeys the Laws of Cause and Effect. Yettherein is his greatness, for all becomes dependable and understandable asScience, where he is whimsy and intractable as a self-will being."
"Dis-Lord Dis-the thousand foot-" said Chu Liang softly.
"By projection, projection of such forces as heard your innermost councils,
they threw the image of Lord Dis of the Temple and Lady Tammar thousand-footover Chicago. Remember, then, this too; in all the world there fa no hidingfrom the sight of the Lords.
"So, gO>, Nijihua, and remember your covenant to keep it. For All is God, andmore than God!" Lord Mens' Flame died and Nijihua shuddered slightly. Hismouth opened, and sounds came forth, but no speech.
"You cannot speak of the knowledge, Nijihua, for the time of its revealing isnot yet. Go, and remember in thy soul!"
Nijihua turned, and the Golden Bubble of Tammar followed him to the Barrier ofthe Threshold and burst in golden crystals that clamored soft in theirextinction. The Singing Stair sang to his tread, and he went steadily, withoutemotion of despair, or regret, to turn the great organizing abilities of hisperfect, unemotional intellect to the mighty task of evacuating America, theLand of All and the people of All.
For locked in his mind was the understanding that All was a god for all LordMens might say, and a mightier God than the man Nijihua who had entered thatTemple had ever guessed.
Beside him walked his Councilors, seven elderly men, locked in silence ofintellectual despair of questions that to them must ever be unanswered,
unexpressed-microcosms of knowledge, forever incommunicable. 

THE SPACE BEYOND 

James Atkill stirred softly on the metal plates of the floor, and floated upsome feet into the air. His face showed pale violet in color, his lipsbrilliant violet. His woven rubber jacket, which had once fitted him like ablue skin, was orange. His trousers were a nauseous green, his jet black hairan extremely deep green; his eyes alone remained black.
They opened now, and consciousness began to struggle up behind them. Theyopened wide with a jerk and his body whirled wildly in the air. A groan ofpain escaped him, and a look of dawning, amazed understanding came over hisweirdly colored face.
This feeling of falling meant he was weightless in the space ship they hadstolen from Nestor's men. Weightlessness here simply meant they were notaccelerating. With a rush the situation returned to him. The fight over NewYork City, the destruction of Nestor's four ships there, the sudden burst ofviolet flame from the last that had spelled doom to New York by atomic burningif it were not destroyed-his ship had caught the flaming wreckage, and carriedit on a plane of pure force out to sea. The Release Flame, the flame that toldof the utter destruction of matter to pure energy, had begun to eat at thatplane, which no matter could penetrate, like a corrosive acid. Again he heard 


the cries of his criminal crew as their own -Release Flame flared up, thendied down under the lead even the energy of matter could not support-when itwas controlled. 
Then-something had happened, an awful wrench that tore each separate atom andelectron of his body in a different direction, utter blankness-now awakening.
Instantly the quick mind missed the soft purr of the swirling iron atomsfeeding into the release flame as they swept up in a miniature silverywhirlwind from the iron block. The Eternal Flame was out. 
"That's one way to put it out anyway," he muttered. He struggled vainly for aminute to turn about in the air. He was facing the great control room window,
and 
the roof. Weightless, with nothing to grip, he could not move.
Suddenly his eyes fixed sharply on the view from the window. The keen eyesnarrowed abruptly, a low whistle sounded.
"Hello-now what does that mean!" He brushed his hand across his eyes, thenstared at it astonished. Violet! His hand was pale violet.
"Good God! By the crawling worms of Luna! Where are we!" Abruptly he stoppedmoving his arms and legs aimlessly, and applied his knowledge of physics. In amoment, by intelligent manipulation of his arms he was facing the floor of thecontrol room. A monstrosity that experience could never have named for him laythere, half under a seat. It was shaped like a man, but there was somethinghorribly wrong with it. It might have been a man a long time ago, but fromappearances it had been dead in the sun for a long time. Atkill shuddered andcalled. 
"Tex-Texas, you long-eared jack-rabbit, come out of it." The long, narrowthing on the floor proved to be alive. It moved. In a moment it sat up, lookedup, and its mouth fell open to reveal a set of broad pale, robins-egg blueteeth with dark blue trim in a deep violet-cavity.
"My God, Tex, close that chasm. I'll forget you're human if I look at thoseteeth long. You look a lot like I did. Snap out of it and pull me down."
Texas hooked a large foot under the seat, reached up a long arm, and draggedAtkill down. 
'Tex, I'm going to be busy. Do you burn?"
"Huh? Do I burn? Yuh got me wrong, hombre, I ain't no match."
"Does your skin hurt, is it sunburned?"
"Oh-it does. Say, that's right funny. I never felt this way since I was a twoyear-
old."
"Urn. I thought so. Tex, there are seven others aboard here. They'll wakesoon. They were all nearer the flame than we were, but they'll be waking.
They've got guns, Tex, and they may try to use them if they're scared whenthey wake. Collect them, will you?"
Atkill turned to the window, and stared out for a long time, his trained mindtaking in data and converting it to conclusions on which to base action.
The window opened onto a region of space such as he had never imagined.
It was scattered with stars as thickly as the Milky Way. But they weren't thestars of the Milky Way. They were stars so bright Sirius would have been dulland dim by comparison! They shone with a solid brilliance that was brighterthan the full moon, a brilliant plate of blue-white, white, green and orangesuns. The stars here were so obviously suns it was hard to look at them. Andyet there were some that outshone all others. A half dozen perhaps, brighterthan any star Atkill had ever imagined. And one lone star that shone as atiny, blue-violet disc, an unwinking eye of impossible brilliance.
Atkill gasped. "Spectral class O or'I'm a mackerel! Must be less than a lightyear distant. There are a dozen others must be Class B or O. Every doggonedone of them a class C supergiant! Sweet orbits, what a collection! Thosedarned things are so bright I bet I'm just not seeing a couple thousand littlecandles like our sun! That big one must be half a million times as bright as 


old Sol. And surface temperature around 30,000 degrees.
"A globular cluster-must be! Right in the middle of a globular cluster. Andwhat a gang of big boys!" He stared silently for a few seconds. "We'returning," he muttered. "What's on the other end?"
The ship was indeed slowly turning about. The swelling of the midsection hidwhat might be behind them now, but in a few minutes it would be visible.
No wonder he had not missed the lights-with that vast congregation of giantstars flooding all this space with light. A globular cluster-perhaps20,000,000 stars grouped in so dense a swarm, they averaged less than a lightyear apart!
A voice sounded behind him-a cry of horror.
"Jesus Christ-Holy Mary-what is it-what is it! He's dead! Take it away-it'sdead!" There was terror in the scream. 
Suddenly it mounted to an ear-piercing shriek. "He's dead-he can't move-hecan't move when he's dead- Mother of God-stop him-he's dead." The shriek endedwith a dull thonk and a sigh.
"It's all right, guy. You look the same, so don't get hot about it," saidTex's calm voice. "Take care of that 
guy over there. Hold his eyes shut till he's awake enough to get it all. Tellhim first-everybody looks this way. That fire done it when it did a fade-out."
Presently more voices joined in, gasps of astonishment, and terror, thencurses. Men began to filter up from the back. Joe Keller, the leader of hisgangster-friends, showed up presently. He looked at Atkill out of the cornerof his eyes and shuddered. He probably was the equivalent of very pale. Helooked down at his bright blue-green shoe, and looked hastily away.
"Where'n 'ell are we, Atty?" he asked in a shaken voice.
Atkill grinned. "You may be right about that. It may be hell, but my answer iswhere Warren went, I guess. 'Member we caught a message from him just beforewe blew up? He was back again-said he'd been in 'another space'. That's wherewe are." 
"Yeah, maybe-but fer the love of gawd, what's wrong with everything-this placeain't right-the whole damn thing ain't right-I ain't right. Why's your facepurple?"
"Remember the tricks that Release Flame could play, Joe? Well we're in a placewhere similar things are natural, that's all. The flame brought us here-it cantake us back, just as it did Warren, I guess."
"Well fer Gawd's sake hurry. This is awful."
"I've got to start the Release first, Joe. Come on."
Atkill wasn't any too sure he could get back even if he did have the Release.
In fact he knew he couldn't do it right away. He cursed the fact that he hadleft all the calculating machines in the laboratory when he set out to thatbattle. It would take days and days to do calculations those machines did inminutes. And he had no assistant. The gangsters were unintelligent, anduseless. Tetfas, a strange human misfit, would be more help. Tex had justnever been able to settle down to real work- he wanted adventure. Educated as 
he had been, he was a real "maldito hombre." His curse was a need forexcitement and action as strong as a doper's need for his drug.
Now he alone of the gang was calm.
Atkill stopped on his way back to get some instruments out of the cabinet. Helooked at them doubtfully, and went on. In the engine room, among the massedapparatus, he felt more keenly the reality of the situation. The Eternal Flamewas out. The massive iron block,
a raw ingot of pitted rough iron, stood cold and lifeless in the midst of themechanisms. The white globe of flame he had come to associate with it wasmissing. The top was a brilliant concave mirror of unbelievable polish. TheFlame had eaten it smooth. 
He looked at it for a minute while the half-dozen gangsters watched him 


closely. Finally he stepped forward to a cabinet in the side of the engineroom and took out a square metal box. Carefully he lifted the lid. Inside wasa miniature engine room with tiny apparatus set about a tiny block of iron. Inthe top of the block of iron was a concave, incredibly polished mirror-andnothing more! Atkil gasped. "It's out!" Even this was out. He sat down heavilyon a massive metal brace 
"It must have generated the quench field Warren mentioned-it wasn't just anoverload that killed it," he muttered.
"Ey, wat'sa matter?" demanded Joe Keller.
"It's out," said Atkill simply showing him the inside of the box. "It went outwith the big Flame. We haven't any flame left."
"Well, ya knew that didncha?"
Atkill shook his head heavily. "The big one-I knew that was out. But I thoughtthese little ones would be going. They aren't The fire's out, Joe, and wehaven't any matches."
"What do you mean, Atkill? Can't yuh start that-air tiling again?" asked Texsoftly. Again Atkill shook his head. "Yuh started it once, back on Earth?"
"Twice," nodded the physicist. "Once with an eighteen mega-volt, 18 millionvolts that is, discharge between certain apparatus, and once with anotherFlame. With a Flame I could start it now. With an 18 million volt dischargeand a week's work I could start it." 
"Well, why can't yuh do the work, and make the discharge like yuh did before?"
"No room," said Atkill grimly. "Eighteen million volts needs a hell of a lotof elbow room-at least forty feet."
"This-yere ship must be a hundred and fifty."
"Long, yes. But it's got metal walls. It's only thirty feet in diameter. Ican't possibly get more than a thirty-foot gap. I can't get that because mytowers have to be fifteen feet in diameter, which would leave only about sevenfeet between the walls. The men that designed thisdamn ship didn't put in an airlock. We haven't any space suits. If we did havewe couldn't get out of the ship without letting all the air out, and we can'treplace it.
"When the Flame went out the air apparatus stopped working. The air is beingused up now, and not renewed. I can fix that for about two months-I loaded onsupplies for about a month when we took off.
'We're stuck." 
2 
"B-But how'll we git back?" Keller whimpered.
"We don't," said Atkill promptly. "That's an easy question to answer."
"We-we can't never go back?"
"This ship is like a car without an engine. It won't move. Only there's thisdifference. You can't walk home either, and there's nobody to give you a tow.
In words of one syllable: we can not move, we can not get home, we are stuckright here now and so far from home they could not find us if they knew itback home." 
A little man with bright green hair and two orange teeth, dressed in a neat,
well-tailored suit of a nauseous yellow-green, began to shake. His face wentseveral shades lighter in color, till it looked like sheets someone had usedtoo much bluing on. He stopped trembling suddenly and went rigid. His facechanged suddenly to a flushed violet, his reddish eyes narrowed to slits, andseemed to shine with a deadly light. "Killer" Hiney was suddenly stark, ravingmad. He picked up a heavy monkey wrench, dug his toes into a joint between twoheavy braces, and dived at Atkill mouthing something.
Atkill moved so swiftly no one saw just what happened, but Hiney dropped tothe floor dead. Atkill left the room instantly, and went to the control roomagain. He barred the metal door, and sat down to think. He looked up as thelight in the room became suddenly intensely bright. A thin streak of light was 


falling through the corner of one window, and hitting the opposite wall. Thespot glowed with an incredible brilliance, so bright it hurt AtkilPs eyes tolook at it. It was a knife-edge of light that struck it, light of a deep bluethat was almost violet. It was widening very slowly as the ship continued tocreep slowly around.
"The color of radiated light doesn't seem to be changed much here." saidAtkill to himself, looking at the light through narrowed eyes. "That meansthat the weird color tffects are due not to the effect on light of thisdifferent space, but the effect on the coloring arrangements ofdyes and colored substances. Then that is blue-violet light. To produce lightof that color would require a temperature of at least 40,000 degrees. Now whatkind of a star would give that light? That must be so loaded with ultra violetthat it bakes a man to death in minutes. Uh-I feel it already." Atkill moved.
The light-strip was an inch wide, and the cabin flooded with an illuminationpainfully brilliant. Further, the temperature was rising.
"Ah-that's not going to be so nice." The back end of the ship was windowless,
practically, save for a few tiny peepholes for directing the deadly projectorrays. The outside of the ship was polished steel that reflected the light likea mirror. As the ship turned the light came in the window, and instead ofbeing reflected was heating the ship.
Atkill moved swiftly. He gathered every piece of paper, every bit of cloth,
and everything that he could move which might be injured by the light, andmoved them out of the room. A low panicky rumble of voices came from behind.
He carefully closed the door of the control room, and went to his own cabin.
This was equipped with a small porthole. Here he set up a spectroscope fromhis luggage, and examined the light that was pouring in.
Then he starting making examinations and measurements with many other stars,
using little sodium flames for comparison spectra. He had no assistant, and itwas hard work. But eventually he began to get rough results.
He looked at his results in unbelieving silence when he was through, and shookhis head. "Must be wrong. There isn't any such class of star. It's somethingbigger and hotter than O. Mass must be about 400 times that of the sun. That'salmost impossible to believe. It's radiation is, according to this, at leasttwo and a half million times that of the sun. And I'm now some 75,000,000,000miles out-and roasting under the heat Good God what a star!"
He started to check his readings. In an hour he blew up over them. Theradiation was half again greater than before! And had shifted further towardthe violet! 
He threw down his apparatus and went back to the men. There was somethingthey'd be more interested in that he had to tell them now. Something he'ddiscovered shortly before he stopped his observation.
They looked up sullenly at his approach. They'd foundthe bullet hole in Hiney's breast soon after he left. Texas had a gun. Atkillhad one. They had none.
"Come on men, let's eat. We eat cold, but we can eat."
"Aw, t'hell wit it. I ain't hungry. But Tex says youwon' let us have nuh booze and nuh smokes. How cum?" 
"I didn't say that-but Tex is right. I should have. 
You can't have booze, because it will drive you mad. Youcan't smoke because the air is too thick already. I'm 
going to start working on it in a little while. In the 
meantime we can eat. And there won't ever be anysmoking until-or unless-we get out of this. You canchew a crumb of tobacco. That will help."
Curtly he turned to the food locker. Two cans of corned beef, a couple ofbaked beans, a loaf of bread, and chocolate. Water to drink. And no heat.
They ate, most of them, because they were hungry. Atkill ate because he had an 


excellent appetite, and was most anxious to go back to his observations.
But after eating he started work on the air apparatus. The ship had been 
equipped with batteries. Ordinary Teril dry storage batteries. That was 
the work of the Power men, Nestor's men, who had built the ship. They hadnever heard of a power plant without some sort of reserve-they thought thesebatteries would be a reserve power perhaps? For replacing the titanic power ofthe Flame they were nothing, but their thousands of stored kilowatt hourswould give the men air to breathe now. In three hours the physicist had provedhimself chemist enough to rig an electrolyser apparatus that was turning out asteady stream of oxygen, and releasing hydrogen into space. To get rid ofcarbon dioxide he would use a physical method. It would have to accumulatetill the air showed five or six per cent. That would not be fatal, by anymeans. Then a blower would force the air through chilled water. The CO2 wouldbe absorbed. When the nin's heat warmed the water the CO2 would be driven "ff 
again, and could be released into space. He could ?ord no power foreffective, constant-control apparatus. His batteries would last scarcely amonth as it was. They -ad only one chance in a hundred billion at the best-
but there was no reason for reducing that.
"There are," said Atkill when he returned to the power room, afterdemonstrating the oxygen apparatus to thequite un-understanding men, "at least four planets. Two are on this side ofthe sun, and at approximately the same distance from the sun as we are. Oneabout 70,000,-000,000 miles, the other about 80,000,000,000. One of themmight, by one chance in about 100,000,000 be inhabited. By one chance inanother ten million or so, the inhabitant might have a ship capable ofcrossing space. By a perfectly impossible chance they might see us. Then by asimilar chance they might be interested enough to investigate.
"That's our only chance. I'm going back and observe what happens about us." Hestepped out, but stuck his head in a moment later. "Don't look at the sun. Itwill blind you instantly. Don't let the light fall on your flesh, it will cookit in five seconds." 
He went to sleep soon, listening to the loud, tense voices of the men behind.
They were quarreling and cursing. Their nerves were strung to the breakingpoint already. As he drifted off to sleep Atkill realized two things: His owndeath was certain, but he would certainly have a month, and probably as muchas six months for observations; the men with him would not die of starvationeither of food or air. They would all die violently, and they would all dieinsane-with the single possible exception of Texas. These city-bred gangsters,
used to bright lights and moving, living crowds, used to conditions that leftthem full play of their own wishes, and utterly unused to amusing themselvesor each other, would go mad as surely as they must die. Their minds wereunaccustomed alike to loneliness and thought. Thought might have dispelled theloneliness, for him, study would make that six months of life all too short.
Of course, no one would know what he learned, no eye ever see his results, nomeeting vote him acclaim. But he would know. He would solve mysteries no otherman had ever solved. 
When he woke the violent light was shining in once more. It reminded him ofthe investigation he had made the-night?-before. The light of that sun simplywasn't understandable. There were muttering, angry voices, drunken voices backof him now. Atkill's lips curled in disgust as he stuck his head into theroom. Joe Keller and Texas sat playing cards slowly and carefully. Threeof the others were sleeping drunkenly on the floor. The remaining three werequarrelling over a pair of dice.
"Lishen yuh blankety son of a show and show-thas my fi' dollur. Yush a li'r."
Atkill laughed softly. His five dollars. A five cent can of beans would be alot more valuable soon. The physicist called Tex, and told him to go on tosleep. Tex slouched off to his bunk, and lay down with his gun in his holster. 


The westerner had substituted a hip holster for the neat shoulder device hehad been wearing under his coat. He felt more at home with this style. Hishand rested on the butt of the gun lovingly in sleep a moment later.
Atkill had gone back to the little machine room he had set up in the back ofthe ship. Nestor had originally meant this for a bomb-storage room. Atkill hadthrown out the bomb-racks, and arranged the present machine-shop before heleft Earth. There were three tiny slits in the walls here, and through two ofthese light was streaming like a fluid squirting from a nozzle in a physicalstream. Atkill looked at them a moment, smiled, and stepped out to return in afew moments with a can of beans and a pot of water. The pot was tightly closedby a pressure lid for steam cooking, and so held the water in this weightlessspace. The physicist took a knife and ripped off the label from the bean can,
smeared the shiny label with a mixture of graphite and grease, which wasblacker than coal, and hung it in the beam of sunlight. He started to stickhis hand in, but before the fingers had more than entered he snatched themback. Almost instantly he had felt the terrific ultra-violet of this light. Hetook a stick and a fan, and carefully pushed and blew the can into place. Thegrease melted in a few seconds, but stuck in place.
Next he got the water out of the pot. That was difficult, and he got wet doingit, but he succeeded, and blew it into a sphere in the path of light.
He set to work with his machines, and the pressure cooker. He changed the panconsiderably, and added a small air pump to it. He used power in doing it, buthe was willing to now. He knew he could restore it.
By the time the water was near boiling point he captured it in the rebuiltpressure cooker, added some tea leaves and let it brew. The beans were hottoo, after hewiped the grease off. With the aid of the pump he was able to force out histea when he wished. He gave up hope of making observations that day. Insteadhe made an apparatus. It consisted of a heavy fly-wheel (taken from one of thelarger lathes) mounted on a shaft of a small electric motor. It was sosupported that it could be turned in any desired direction.
In two hours he finished it, and moved into the power room with it. The menhad left the room, and six heavy snores and two light ones from the tiers ofbunks explained it.
Atkill set up his crude gyroscope-motor, and began operations. He had to tiethe motor down with pieces of rope. It was slow, laborious work, but at theend of several hours'he knew that the ship would have stopped its rotation,
and would always face the sun with one side and the back.
He left the device hi operation, and returned to the machine-shop.
In the course of the day he finished his very simple device. He had taken themotor from one of the power-presses that he no longer could afford to run,
readjusted it, and connected it with a small four-cylinder air-pump. One ofthe smaller air-tanks was next worked over, and a quantity of heavy coppertubing. It ended up as a four-cylinder steam engine running an electricgenerator. The air-tank boiler was painted black above, and silvered below. Aflat, closely wound spiral of copper tubing three feet across was similarlypainted. The exhaust from the engine was led to a long copper tube simply laiddown the dark side of the engine room, and emptying into a small tank.
The system was simplicity itself. The sun heated the tank and the coiled pipe.
The steam turned the motor as a generator. The current could be led off tocharge the batteries. He had to charge them half at a tune, for the voltagegiven wasn't high esough, of course, to charge the whole bank. But-he had anunending supply of electric power within the limits of his needs for immediatelife. Air at least they could have.
The men had re-awakened, and again were playing cards. They bothered him verylittle, for Texas and Joe Keller kept them away from him. The apparatus wassufficiently powerful to supply the necessary oxygen, and have power to spare. 


But it raised the temperature of the ship a little.
Atkill ate, and went to sleep again.
The next day he began his observations. He continued them the next. The firstday he discovered the secret of the giant sun that seemed to vary in itspower. It did. It was a gigantic Cephid Variable, with a period of little morethan a few hours. 
The days passed swiftly for him. Monotonously for the gangsters. A week wentby. The eternal glaring sun in one spot, the eternal night in others. Theknowledge that they were waiting for certain death, the weird coloring of thethings and the men about them. And above all the monotony. The grinding steadymonotony on men who has never learned to be self-contained.
"Whitey" Moran went mad the fifth day. He shot and killed Tim Farrell, andwounded Joe Keller before Texas shot him through the ear. He had stolen therevolver from Joe with consummate cunning.
Keller became delirious from his wound two days later and his mumblingincoherent talk gave a final push to the tottering reason of "Gink" Castonti.
Castonti succeeded in killing him with a table-knife. Texas prevented hisfurther murdering. There were only four men left now. Within a week, as Atkillhad predicted, they were reduced to two -Atkill and Texas.
Texas helped Atkill when he could. He helped him with the gruesome work ofdisposing of the bodies. There was a refuse lock on the ship. It was meant forgarbage and such waste-and it was six inches in diameter and eighteen incheslong. They had to dispose of the bodies.
The second week Atkill called Texas with a sudden shout that echoed throughthe soundless ship in rattling clamour.
"Texl Come here, Tex!" He had seen something that meant their chances of lifewere multiplied a thousandfold. And more. In the three-inch telescope on boardTexas saw the dim twilight region of a spinning world flashing with sparklinglights like a miniature lightning storm on a miniature world. "Uh-storm ain'tit?" Tex was speaking less and lessnow. He was growing accustomed again to silence. The silence such as he hadknown before in open plains.
"No, Tex, it isn't. Dear lad, think a bit. That world is so far away you can'trealize the distance. What kind of lightning would make that big a full?
That's a battle, a battle so big you couldn't even begin to understand it.
It's the size battle half a dozen of these ships would make if they were realangry-and knew all the things there are to know. Any race that can have abattle that big has space ships! All we have to do is wait."
"Uh. We've, waited a bit now."
"We're coming nearer to them now. And-every day we're becoming more visible.
We have a gigantic tail now. Hydrogen gas I've released in making our oxygenis showing up behind us like a comet's tail. They'll investigate if they'vegot ships, I swear they must have! That battle is too big."
And curiously, from that time AtkilPs observations became fewer and fewer. Hespent all his time in the machine shop now. Making something. Texas watchedquietly, and played cards. It was evidently a release-flame apparatus-but atiny thing. Scarcely larger than a book.
"Be any power in that when you get through?" he asked once.
"Not unless I can get it started somehow after we are picked up. Then aboutthirty thousand horsepower. The Flame could give more. A million or so. Theapparatus wouldn't handle it."
Atkill worked on, refining and adding to the tiny mechanism, calculatingfields and effects and building it into the apparatus. He changed the entireapparatus finally, and made it almost hemispherical, with a depression on theflat side. On one side however seven tiny openings appeared, and one cup-
shaped device the size of a quarter-dollar. Nine thin wires dangled from it toa broad, thick bracelet of silver, set with a score of brilliant-colored bits 


of stone cut with infinite pains on a device he set up himself. The rings andstickpins of the dead gangsters had furnished those stones. His ownmagnificent emerald stickpin had gone into it too. And also several syntheticstones he made by fusing aluminum oxide and adding minute traces of variousmaterials-chromium, nickle, cobalt-
He smiled to him"elf as he worked and hummed a tune softly. Week followed weekas he worked lovingly over his little mechanism. He seemed to expect greatthings of it.

"I admit it," said Randolph Warren, "I admit it unreservedly and withoutcompunction. It is, beyond doubt, the wildest, most hopelessly insane scheme Iever put forth. But, Putt, you've got to admit that one ground for making thetry is valid. Hoping to find Atkill I have to admit is not much of a hope. Buthoping to learn something about that other space that's worth knowing is aworthwhile hope. Particularly as we have learned so much more about ourmachine-and since that speed idea does work."
"That speed thing," groaned Putney, "lord, I wish you hadn't thought of it.
Ran, I thought I was just about as good as you were till you made that thing.
Faster than light. Einstein said it was wrong. Richie added to the statementin 1940. Moorehead proved Richie was right- so you go out and make the trip toSirius and back over the week-end." 
Warren laughed. "Hardly that, Putt, hardly that. We spent one of the mostinstructive months ever spent out there, as you know as well as I. It'sperfectly obvious, though. We don't go faster than light in our own frame ofreference. It's just that we go fast, and then slow up time more or less, withthe result that we seem to go faster than light."
"Seem-blazes, we do! 'If A and B are two Flat-landers'" quoted Putney,"
'living on the surface of a sphere, they will say the sphere is a plane. Ifthe sphere rotates slowly, they move slowly and steadily into the thirddimension, which appears to their consciousness as time. Time passes, theysay. A is at the north pole, and recognizes two dimensions right and left,
back and forth. Lines parallel to the axis of the sphere are time to him. If Bis on the equator, he recognizes two dimensions, right and left, back andforth. Lines at right angles to the axis are Time lines to him. Now A and Bagree that one of their two dimensions is a space dimension, but while A canwalk at right angles to the axis, B can not, and thinks that is time. Bhowever can walk parallelto the axis, which A cannot, for A thinks that is t'me. Then, if A moves, inwhatever direction, save exactly around the sphere toward B, he walks throughtime to a certain extent, so far as B is concerned. This time-motionmultiplies A's proper space motion to B's understanding. The same, in reverse,
applies to B in A's conceptions.
" 'In Four dimensional space we have an example in the enormous velocities ofrecession exhibited bv distant nebulae. Their motions are enormously amplifiedby their time motion. The further around the hyper-sphere of space they are,
the more nearly they come to moving exactly at right angles to our threedimensions, and the more their velocity is amplified.
" This is the basis of my speed-device.' Ran, I have heard that simple lessonso many times I'm sick of it. I know it almost word for word. Word for word-
but not thought for thought. The fourth dimension-time idea remains only time,
and not an idea to me. 
"However, I admit that does give you an enormous advantage in exploring thatother space. You still won't find Atkill though. That space is larger thanours even." 
"You're wrong, Putt." said Warren softly. "I've been holding back something.
Atkill I know was sent through! I know it, I don't merely believe it. I madesome experiments for data, and calculations on the data. 


"Remember that Release Flame, when it went wild, gave off surges of gravity-
fields, and certain other phenomena. I explored the thing before it finallyburned itself out two weeks ago, and learned a number of things about it. Imade experiments on a miniature scale and learned three important things: thereaction of a force-plane on the Flame is to produce a quench-field, and atthe same time to throw any matter within the field into another space; thematter so thrown over is not thrown to the nearest part of the nearest otherspace, as we were by our field that time-but to the nearest, greatest centerof mass in the nearest other space.
"Imagine yourself some super-being with a five dimensional consciousness.
Looking about you would see an enormous number of four-dimensional spaces,
looking like rough, dented globes whirling in space. A dent would be wherethere was little or no matter in the four-dimensional 
sphere. A protuberance would be where there was a particularly largeconcentration of mass. 
"In the space between spaces there is no time, no dimension, no existence.
That's why our Flame can destroy matter-it forces it into that timeless,
dimension-less existence, and yet holds it bound to this space. When we werethrown across we were cut entirely free from this space, even repelled by thefield we had momentarily set up. We fell to that other space.
"Atkill was similarly thrown across. Whereas we were simply thrown to thenearest point of the nearest space, which happened to be almost starless, hehas been thrown to the nearest center of mass. 
"There is one more point. Every one of the Flames he carried was extinguished.
"What do you think he would do?" Putney had a mind that could analyze asituation with uncanny accuracy, weight the factors of character, and give ananswer to the question of how the given man would behave under givenconditions that was apt to be remarkably correct.
He thought silently for nearly ten minutes, puffing slowly at his pipe.
Finally he spoke. "Hmm-nearest center of mass. A single star doesn't mean athing. It would take a galaxy to produce a noticeably center of mass. Thatmeans he's near the center of a galaxy. But he's apt to be near a sun forseveral reasons. Near the center of a galaxy the star-density is higher, andonce somewhere near stopping in that other space, the general region pickedout in other words, a single massive star would attract him. I'll bet he'sfairly near a monster star. In all probability a super-giant. They are apt tooccur near the center of a galaxy. They are massive.
"There's always the possibility that he not only landed near it-but in it.
That we'll-" 
"No," interrupted Warren, "he didn't. The effect of the terrific concentrationof matter in the center of a star, particularly a large one, with itsunbelievable fields of force, make the approach from the fifth dimensionimpossible. He would land near but not in it."
"Then," continued Putney, "he has no power. He was moving slowly-only abouttwenty miles a second-no -he had the additional velocity of the sun's motionat that time. About thirty miles per second. A super-giantwould rake him in in all probability. He has no Flames. His release generatorsare dead and useless. He can't start them because all his flames are out, andhe can't get the necessary eighteen mega-volt shock, for his ship is onlythirty feet in diameter, and has no air lock so that he could work outside.
"He's in an ugly position. Air-hmmm-Nestor, the old fool, put batteries in theships for some unknown reason. We never did. They'd be useless, of course, ifthe Flame couldn't save us. But they may save Atkill. He can use them togenerate oxygen. His water supply ought to last several months, they wereusing it for ballast I remember.
"His food supply I don't know anything about. His men-gangsters-city types-
poor minds-bet they all go mad. They may kill him, but Atkill will expect 


madness and may poison them, or may just shoot them or let them shoot eachother. 
"If he's near enough to that sun to get any power, he'll use solar energy forgenerating electricity, and have air almost indefinitely."
Warren smiled and shook his head in wonder. "I'd be willing to lay money onthat, Putt. We can about know his position then. Now, you see, it isn't by anymeans impossible to find him. I can guide the ship to the same position he isin." 
"As you say, Ran. You know I'll be glad to come along. How about the men?"
"Wild to go. I asked them."
Putney smiled. "They would be. We will need but four. When do we start?"
"In just three days, Putt. Got the business straightened out?"
"No. No one ever will. Not for a century at least. Men don't know how tohandle the power. Fortunate that we gave them only the knowledge of electricpower to use. They've developed even that into weapons of a sort. Sooner orlater some scientist will turn renegade for money and sell his brains andability, and there will be a war with other weapons. Earth will need severalcenturies to learn she musn't play with matches that can set fire to theuniverse. 
"As a business of course-just a money-maker-it doesn't need straightening out.
You could have a firm of 
shyster crooks for lawyers, a bunch of embezzlers for accountants, andracketeers for executives, and the thing would still make money. The income isgoing to be so big this first year that the government will have to cut incometaxes so the revenue won't be unholily great." "I guess you can leave it for awhile, Putt!" laughed Warren.
4 
The Prometheus was a glistening, iridescent hull of pure berylo-tungsten alloyfitted with the most powerful engine ever known to man. The magnificentstreamlined ship rested lightly in her cradle in the hanger built for her innorthern New Jersey hills. She was stocked now for the trip she was to makeinto inconceivable space and inexpressible time. In her power-locker shecarried 140 rough iron ingots, her fuel supply. They were arranged in racksthat would automatically feed them into the power-room and the Eternal Flameas fast as they were consumed. Or as slowly as they were consumed, for thetitanic energy of matter they contained was the energy they released as theyburned. 
In the power-room, set in the exact center of the ship, was a rough iron ingotnow half used. Above it hung a globe of pure white light, like a globe ofluminescent white quartz crystal. It seemed to be resting on a whirling,
iridescent funnel of silvery atoms that spun upward from the iron mass with agentle**sighing. As the iridescent silver whirlwind touched the surface of theRelease Flame tiny glowing sparks picked out the edge, like the display ofpyrophoric iron dropped from a tube. They shone for an instant, thendisappeared.
About the room were arranged solid, chunky-looking pieces of apparatus, squatand powerful things. From the Flame to three of these pieces stretchedglowing, pulsing fingers of light that snickered softly as the air wasalternately blasted out and let in again. Warren was here with Putney, workingsteadily on the controls, adjusting with a minute precision the things thatwould presently throw them through that fifth dimensional timeless infinity.
'To do the job we don't need that eighteen megavolt shock so much as theconcentration of energy it means," Warren was explaining to MacLaurin, theScots mechanic-physicist. He was a capable physicist in his own right, butabove that he had the genius for constructing the apparatus of physics that isfar rarer than the abilityof the physicist. "Remember that in following Atkill, we have to use the same 


method he discovered; unintentionally, it is true, but a method none the less.
In doing that the Flames will be extinguished as certainly as ever the quenchfield could. That would leave us powerless in an unknown space-as he is now.
But while we can't get that enormous concentration of electrical energy insidethe ship, we can store magnetic energy. It will leak, but by storing 100 timesthe needed power, we can be sure of having enough when we get there. Further,
I'm going to attempt to carry that little Flame over there wrapped up in itsown insulating jacket of force that may possibly protect it. If it protects itit may keep it from going through, but I don't think so. I'm just making sure.
"At any rate, any sufficient concentration of available energy will do thetrick. The Flame will start another Flame simply because it has the maximumpossible energy concentration. We'll be ready soon."
Warren checked once more the settings, then went to the control room. The shiprose with the gentleness of a dirigible, backed soundlessly out of the hangar,
pointed her nose straigjjf for the zenith of the night sky, and shot upwardwith an acceleration that carried her howling out of the atmosphere in lessthan a second. Inside, in the acceleration-compensated ship, no slightest sighof this terrific acceleration was noticeable. Only in the power-room where thesighing of the whirling iron atoms rose to a gentle hum, and the sparklinglights became a clear sheet of glowing light, did it show. That, and the dozenbeams of radiance that stabbed to the heart of the Flame from various piecesof apparatus.
Behind the ship trailed a, heavy ingot of iron, riding in a sphere of pureforce similar to the envelope that had protected the weak metal walls of theship as she crashed through the atmosphere that had resisted her passage likea solid body.
A million miles from Earth Warren stopped, and the forces suddenly fell towork on the iron ingot. In a second it was a sphere. A moment later itsuddenly seemed a misty illusion, something twisted about it till the stars ofspace behind shifted and moved about like live things in pain. Then a spark ofdazzling brilliance appeared, grew with incredible swiftness, and turned to aviolet 
Flame that swelled and fattened on the matter of the ingot. In three secondsit was fifty feet across. And simultaneously the ship began to lurch slightlyto waving tugs of attraction as the Flame began to pulse. More and morerapidly it pulsed. It attracted the ship with a force that strained thetitanic energies of the Release Fiame in the power-room. The flame began toedge with, red, and red crept to the heart of it. The whirlwind of iron atomswas a screaming tortured tornado, the sparks of contact were becoming a solidflame. 
Then something wrenched violently about them, the Flame flared up for a singleinstant in blood-red light- and darkness and nothingness descended on them.
Slowly Warren opened his eyes, then clutched wildly about him in the absolutedarkness. He struggled violently for a second, then as full consciousnessreturned he stopped, and listened. He was weightless only because the Flamehad gone out, the artificial gravity was off. The blackness meant that themetal shutters had snapped down as they should have with the failure of theFlame. Someone else suddenly moved, and there was the thump _ of a fisthitting metal, a sharp exclamation of pain, and a curse.
"Don't be petulant, Putt. Only while it was a brilliant idea no doubt to havethose shutters in case we stopped too near a giant star for safety, I mighthave thought of a flashlight."
Putney's chuckle answered him. Then a beam of brilliant white light stabbed upat him. "I did," said Putney quietly. "You are colored like the gayest bird ofthe air. You wave there in the air like the clumsiest walrus of the sea. Your 
teeth are blue, and your lips are violet. You have a most unhealthy color.
Your ears are something to behold with awe and amazement. Your pants are the 


most virulent, shrieking red -that 'twas ever my privilege to view. I'll haveto censor your wardrobe."
Warren grinned. "I see you're in good health and spirits, my friend. Why notturn the light on your own rainment. I know just what your face will looklike. I fain would comment on your dress."
Putney laughed outright this time, and did so. Warren sighed. "You would thinkof that. Black and white. All color and no color. The only things that can'tchange. You think of everything don't you?" Suddenly he burstout laughing. "Putt-I never told you and you never asked-how are we going tofind our way back?"
Putney chuckled. "The Flames on Earth. They'll guide you back quite nicely.
They operate through to this time-lessness."
"Foiled," groaned Warren. "Come on-haul me down and we'll start the Flameagain. This condition of weightlessness is ghastly."
Putney reached up a hand and pulled him down. Together they dived for the rearof the ship. Most of the crew lay hi the bunk-room. Some of the men werestirring now; the light wakened them. As they entered at one end of the bunk-
room, a light shone through from the power room, and in the stillness theyheard a switch click. "Mac thought of the flashlight idea too," smiled Putney.
Mac had a large incandescent bulb burning in the power-room. Before theyreached the door more lights flashed on till the room was quite well lighted.
"The old son of a gun," grinned Warren. "I may be long on the theory of space,
but he's got me beat when it comes to the theories of the behavior of light.
Such things as the fact that it won't penetrate a three-inch metal shutter."
"Wait-" Putney grasped his friend's arm. They stood " motionless, then Putneylet out a gasp. "Whew-feel that heat!" He was right. Warren felt it now-heatbeating in on him from the shutter over the bunk-room window. The greater partof the ship had double walls-three-inch inner coating that was merely a wallfor the rooms. An outer wall of eight-inch berylo-tungsten alloy. The two-inchspace between was a vacuum, so as yet heat had not come through the wall, butthe solid shutter was sending out absorbed heat already. "Ran, do you realizethat we couldn't live hi that heat. If Atkill came that close, they must havepassed out from the heat."
"Uh-mat is wicked. We must be within fifty million miles of the sun. Let'sstart that flame." 
They went rapidly to the engine room. The ingot of iron stood cold andlifeless under the light of the incan-descents. "Looks wrong," smiled Warren.
"Come on, men." In minutes the trained crew of scientist-adventurers hadgathered. No makeshift crew was this. Every man was a genius in his own right:
Carl Korbes, the astro-physicist; MacLaurin, the Scots mechanic-physicist;
Paul Wearing, the chemist; and David Miller, the electronics engineer.
"Magnetic energy's here, Ran." reported Putney.
"Don't need it. The shielded Flame came through all in good order. Hook oncontrol field R-M 583 intensity energy concentration-oh, about 1500 megs permu. Ready? Coming through."
The power room was suddenly filled with a shining sigh, the surface of theiron ingot began to shimmer, glow, and in the air above it a sphere of half-
visible light appeared, strained, and space writhed about it, the corners ofthe room twisted and strained, then with a sudden sigh, the globe of lightsolidified into a glowing field of energy, the familiar crystalized lightglowed and sparkled before them. Instantly the incandescents were drowned outin the flood of light from the glow tubes. Simultaneously the mechanisms aboutthe room began to come to life.
"She moves-all right, Putt. Start setting up that field to reflect energy-hereit is-23IX-45-a-32-Y-" 
In a moment the field of force was set up. Putney pushed the button thatraised the screens from the windows. Absolute darkness beyond-all the energy 


was being turned back. Putney looked at his meters sourly. "That field's agood idea, but not very useful. The energy striking it is about six times asintense as sunlight- and we are using just three thousand times as much powerto maintain that field at the present level."
"Oh well, give it a break. It's doing what we want. You might cut that fielddown gradually so we can see what we can see."
Putney began reducing the intensity of the field, and within a few secondsthey were able to see the star that was shining on them. It was a dim disc ofblue-violet light. Warren turned to Putney with a look of surprise. Putney waslooking at him, and Korbes was looking at both.
"Ouch," said Putney, "it's hot."
"I don't know what spectral class that is!" said the young astro-physicistexcitedly. "That blue-violet color is something I never heard of! That means asurface tem-""^erature of about 40-50 thousands! The radiation would be 
terrific. No wonder the ship was heating! How far are we from it?"
Putney went to the control room, while Warren set a few of the engine-roomcontrols for more efficient operations under the present conditions. When hereached the control room Putney and Korbes were feeding the data of thevarious instruments into the calculatingmachines. 
Presently Putney let out a gasp of amazement. "By the Gods of Space! Thatcan't be! Forty billion miles distant! Forty billion miles! Jumping orbits!
Forty billion miles and that thing's a disc! Not only a disc-but a blue violetdisc six times as hot as our sun! That's a new spectral type for you, Carl.
Spectral Class scXO. If Class c Oo is the hottest thing and the c stands forsuper-giant, tack in that sc to stand for super-super-giant. That thing wouldmake S-Doradus look like a class M in the far red for heat, makes Antares looklike a red dwarf for size-and it would take some million suns to give thatheat! It would take a whole galaxy of suns to radiate like that! Forty billionmiles! How big is the thing, Carl?"
"Seven hundred million miles in diameter, approximately! Has the mass of about1000 suns rolled into one! Good God, that must be the left-over matter of awhole galactic center condensed into a single sun."
"If we take down that reflection field," Warren said softly, "the ultra-violetin that light would cook you to a nicely browned roast in about three seconds.
If we leave it up we can't see the rest of the sky. Let's retreat. I'm goingto use the speed drive device. In a space the size that sun works on, you needit. Do you realize that to be habitable a planet would have to be about eightybillion miles out? That a year of such a planet would be approximately' 1000of our years, despite the enormous gravitative pull of that monster?"
Warren took his place at the controls, and presently the space around themseemed to strain, change, and with a curious suddenness, the disc of themighty sun began shrinking. It shrank visibly till a few moments later, itseemed, they were so far out that Putney said the radiation was bearable.
Again the transient feeling of strain and change, and they were motionlessagain. They had come nearly fifty billion miles, far faster than light, andnow they could lower the protecting field. As Warren threw the release switch,
the men stared in amazement. 
The heavens were like nothing they had dreamt of. A Milky Way of super-giantstars, suns every one of which seemed brighter than Sirius, far brighter.
"Sweet orbits! A globular cluster! What a center of mass that must make. Itmust have fifty million of those giant stars, and I'll bet right now we'relooking at a lot of suns the size of ours and just not seeing them. What amass that system must have-that whole cluster. Look- over there-you can justsee it out of the window. Turn the ship a bit."
The ship rotated slowly, and came to rest in such a position that they couldsee another blue-violet star, a star so bright that they could see it was 


casting shadows hi the brightly lighted control room.
"Whew-another one of the Class sc X-O stars or Fm a sinner. Carl, see if youcan get readings on that with the instruments here."
Korbes got to work, taking readings on the delicate gravitation and spacedistortion instruments that would tell him just what distortion of space thedistant star was producing.
"About three-fourths of a light-year distant." he announced at last. "Dr.
Warren, this trip is going to produce more information that any research everconducted before. I have just noticed something else. Look at the intensity-
curve of the light from that star we're near now."
The two friends looked at it. Putney grunted in surprise, Warren whistledsoftly. "Cephid Variable-arid what a variable. With that luminosity the periodluminosity law would suggest a period of less than three hours.
"Well," he chuckled, "we can be pretty sure there aren't any planets here. Toproduce planets requires that a sun larger than the sun in question passesclose-by. There ain't no such thing as a larger sun."
Korbes suddenly laughed softly. "Too broad a statement that time, Dr. Warren.
I've detected five planets already! The instruments here show at least fivemajor planets, circled by more or fewer satellites. I was-ah, here's anotherone. Big fellow too-about 100,000 miles in diameter. It's about 30,000,000,000miles from us, 80000,000,000 or so from the sun. Uh-nother one. Nearly100,000,000,000 miles from the sun. It ought tobe habitable. Size I can't determine, mass about .94 Earth's. One-two-threefour-
I think there are four large satellites and one or more little fellowstoo small to more than jiggle the instruments at this distance. Dr. Warren,
these field-detector instru-for the love of heaven, what was that!" He staredhard at the instruments. "Whoa-say, come here quick, will you! Something'sthrowing these field-detectors all over the dial!"
Warren and Putney hastened to his side. The needles of the four field-detectordials were jiggling and jumping, moving erratically and powerfully. "Goodlord-from those motions you'd think someone was creating and destroying aplanet the size of Jupiter every few seconds. Fifty-three-eighteen-back tosixty-two-Now what in blazes-" Warren jumped to his own instrument board, andquickly set up a tremendously wide-spread detection field, and connected it tothe four necessary instruments. He waited for a maximum, then pressed a stud.
The meters held rigidly steady as they were clamped in position. Rapidly henoted the readings, set four dials on a small mechanism beside him-and readthe result. "From the dimensions of that field it is some kind of an 
electromagnetic field-the dimensions of both magnetic and electric fieldsoccur, but in a peculiar way. As a magnetic field it has power enough way overhere to effect a sensitive compass.
"I'm going fishing again." Again he released the instruments, waited for aminimum and read. "Just the planet that time. Try again." After some time theydecided that there were, in operation, a titanic magnetic field combined withan equal electric field, the field of the planet itself, and some sort offorce-field that was far weaker, so buried in the mass of the planet,
magnetic, and electric fields as to be unrecognizable.
In about fifteen minutes the whole thing stopped, and peace reigned once more.
"There's somebody there all right." said Warren with decision, "and they're nopikers. I couldn't set up a magnetic field that powerful myself. Personally Ican't see why it doesn't wreck the planet."
Putney had been examining the instruments and data carefully. "I think youmisunderstand the problem. It's not a spherical field. It's a ray-a beam."
Warren stared. "A beam. But, man, you can't beam a field!"
Putney grinned. "But, man, you can't make a field that strong!"
"Let's go look-see," suggested Warren. "Maybe our friends will want to look-
see what we look like turned inside out," suggested Putney. "Whether that's 


beam or field, it's super-potent medicine. What are you thinking of doing toit?" 
"Use field T-549. That'll twist it through ninety degrees and send it back asa lightning bolt. The magnetic part anyway. The electric part will twist intoa gravity field and pull us to the planet, and them to us. We can stay off theplanet all right."
"All right, I would like to see what's happening."
Korbes interrupted them. "Something coming towardus. Strange body-small-density about that of water,
little more. Moving about fifty miles a second. About2000 miles away." A moment later. "Weight only aboutthirty pounds. Funny kind of meteorite. Let's rake it in."
Warren was willing. A density of only one-most 
meteors are either stony or metal, far greater than one.
They raked it in, and when it came, Warren shuddered,
and went pale. Putney looked slightly sick, Korbes ranfor his room, It was a mutilated human trunk. Therewere no arms, no legs, and the head was missing. Butit had on the remains of a suitcoat. The coat was a dirtywhite now, for the glaring ultra-violet of the sun hadbleached it and the exposed flesh was cooked.
"Human-good god-Earthy human. Atkill-Atkill was here. That-it came from thewreck of his ship. Without his force shields a meteor or something must havehit him and wrecked him completely. There's more coming. I'll throw out afield and see what I can gather." It gathered unpleasant things. Thrown outfor nearly a quarter of a millions miles in every direction, and then draggedslowly inwards, it brought a collection of the debris of space. Meteors,
pieces of crushed and broken metal beams, obviously pieces of a ship, and-
three heads, once human, four more trunks, several horribly mutilated legs andarms-
Warren closed them in a small shell of force, madethe shell self-maintaining, then gave it a tremendous pushtoward the giant sun. The bodies of Atkill's crew wouldbe cremated in the most gigantic furnace ever known.
"Well," said Warren sadly, "we found them, anyway.
The first part of our mission is done. Something wrecked their ship with acompleteness almost unbelievable. Those scraps of metal were so broken andtwisted they were almost unrecognizable as beams and plates. They must havehit an asteroid-like body at a speed of over 100 miles per second. It's awonder the men weren't even more completely demolished."
"Uh-it was bad enough. I had no desire to examine them any closer. You saw theshoulder-holster still on that one fellow. Evidently my prophecy of their enddidn't work out right. I didn't take that into account."
"Let's go on toward that planet."
5 
Even while they approached from a distance they had seen the great, glowingred spot. Their instruments soon told them that the rock and soil was red hot.
The size of the spot told them the terrific fury of the battle that must haveproduced it, and they circled downward toward the world with due caution.
Yet, though they rapidly drew nearer, they saw no slightest sign of a city onthe surface. Putney grunted. "Don't like that. That means some forces we haveto contend with. They must have their cities so far under ground that they areprotected by sheer mass of dirt and rock against heat rays. But-even so one ofthem must have been destroyed."
A low soft whine began to mount in the loudspeakers of the Prometheus. She wasentering an atmosphere. Slowly and cautiously she descended. "They must bewatching," said Warren, "so they must be waiting for us with their whole 


armory. I'm putting out all the shields I can think of." Still the ship sankunhindered toward the glowing spot below. No sign of life either on ground orin the air had been observed. Even the instruments showed only a complete lackof activity.
Then the meters jumped off their scales, and simultaneously the Prometheusreeled to a terrific pull, a solid sheet of blue electric flame cascaded fromher to strike at the bank of clouds off to one side like a jagged sword oflight. The clouds split open to reveal a flight of winged ships. A hundredbeams glimmered in the air as they stabbed toward the Prometheus. An instantlater the force-shield rippled with light under titanic concussions.
The winged ships were suddenly spinning wildly, twisting as though out ofcontrol, rolling over on their backs, and yet falling upward toward thePrometheus, added to the attractive force that was drawing the planes upward,
and then put some light into the invisible force plane so it became visible.
The planes struggled in vain. Warren was adding a powerful magnetic field ofhis own, and increasing it. As the enormous field-strength built up,
it acted as a tremendously resistant medium to all moving metal. The planesbegan to behave erratically. The glimmering beams of light began to curve thisway and that as they bent under the magnetic field Warren was producing.
Shells were exploding in midair as they too were stopped and heated by theirresisted passage through the magnetic field. Warren stepped up his attractivefield, and the planes moved more rapidly toward his plane of force. Presentlymost of them had landed. There was no visible propelling mechanism about them,
only the wings for lift, but whatever it was, it didn't function, evidently,
under the conditions Warren had imposed.
"Now we could just crush them with another force plane, but I think they hadreason to attack. Evidently they have just gotten through with one attack ontheir city, and tried to destroy us before we did any damage." Warren begansome difficult manipulations. In a moment a single, small plane came through ahole in the force plane, and rode toward the Prometheus. The other planes hadstopped struggling now, and all had landed on the force-plane. The littleplane was brought nearer, till Warren and Putney looked into its cabin. Twobeings sat in there. They looked quite human. Their eyes alone seemed leasthuman. With disconcerting ease they looked in different directionssimultaneously. The left eyes looked at Warren, while the right eyes weretraveling leisurely up and down Putney.
Almost at once the men appeared excited. One of them reached over and turned asmall knob. A projector on the side of his plane turned, till it pointed downto one of the largest ships landed on the force-plane below. The projectorbegan to wink rapidly and irregularly. "Signaling we aren't the enemy. We mustlook different," suggested Putney.
The second occupant of the ship had turned toward the Terrestrians. He had adevice that looked like a flashlight with a bottle stuck on it by the neck. Itwas short about eighteen inches long, and apparently light, for he handled iteasily. The air was evidently too rare up here for him to open a window, buthe threw the thing somewhere behind him in the craft, and held out his emptyhands. "Pax vobiscum," murmurred Putney. "What shall I 
heave away?"
"One of your shoes? That would be big enough to convince him it was a deadlyweapon. Or if that suggestion doesn't suit, throw away a butcher knife. Anyonewould know a knife was a weapon."
Putney did. Communications had evidently been established with the fleet ofships below, for they were flashing lights madly among themselves now, and thelarge ship was flashing a spotlight on the tiny ship before them with terrificspeed.
Rapidly Warren eased off the attractive field that had held the fleethelpless, as they one by one fluttered a moment in the re-asserted gravity of 


the planet, and righted, he released the magnetic field entirely, and the lastof the gravity field.
The little ship still held in their force-fields, Warren drew flat against thePrometheus, then with a terrific acceleration ship and attached plane dovetoward the planet, passing the planes as though they were motionless. Fivemiles above the planet the ship slowed, at a mile they halted, and Wearingstarted a rapid analysis of the atmosphere.
"Inert gases, including nitrogen, 64%, oxygen 32%, carbon dioxide and watervapor the remainder. Rather dry air. Harmless to life, so far as a mouse and atomato plant are concerned. By the way, I found out why the terrific ultraviolet 
from the sun doesn't destroy everything here. The upper reaches of theatmosphere have a tremendous amount of ozone in them that smashes that ultraviolet 
down to something bearable."
Warren nodded. "Good enough. I rather suspected something of that sort. In sofar as the ozone went, that's understandable surely. The air is dry becausethere are few real seas, only great lakes here and there. Most of this planetis arid. "Go let in your friends, Putt." Putney went back to the lock, openedthe inner chamber, closed the door behind him, and cautiously opened the outerdoor. A breath of their own air swept out, to be replaced in a moment by adry, but invigoratingly cool breeze of this other atmosphere. As he glancedout he saw that the two men in the plane had already opened their door, andwere coming out. They were walking along unconcernedly head down along thewing of the ship, which was equipped with a rail of some sort,
evidently for this purpose. Their feet were bare, and equipped with a broadcalloused palm, a strong, long and supple great toe, and the four lesser toeswere all well developed and highly flexible.
To Putney's amazement one of the men let go with one foot, reached into hispocket with a contortionist motion that seemed easy and perfectly simple, andtook out a heavy clip. In the meantime his hands had been busy unwinding athin, strong line from his waist. The clip was fixed to one end of the linewith the aid of one hand and one foot, while the other foot was engaged inholding him up, and the other hand adjusted the leather belt to which theother end of the line was fastened. Then with a single motion the man restoredhis foot to the rail, leapt, and landed lightly and safely on the threshold ofthe Prometheus' lock. He straightened up, and smiled engagingly.
"Praeul, threuw. liie Kwaer reen!"
The sounds were strange, but pleasant to Putney's ears, completely unlikeEnglish sounds. They could not be expressed as English sounds.
"Decide we didn't need killing?" said Putney, smiling. The second man landedas lightly as the first, and by the same means. Both looked Putney overcarefully, paying particular attention to his feet and eyes. They shook theirheads in wonderment. Then finally the larger of the two large men tooksomething from his pocket. It was a device about the size of a large book.
Pushing a catch on one side the lid flew up, and a three-foot telescopingcolumn of metal stabbed upward. Simultaneously a little light began to glowthrough red to white. When it reached white the man spoke into it briefly. Avoice responded from it in a moment, a voice with a tone of command.
The stranger answered, pushed the telescoping column back down, and caught thelid down once more. Then he smiled and handed it to Putney.
The Terrestrian shook his head and handed it back. From a rack in the lock he 
lifted a set they had made for use with space suits. It was twice the size,
and equipped with a small funnel opening on one side. The Flame that wouldpower it was out now, but Putney started it in a moment from the power-lead inthe wall of the lock. The Flame glowed white and clear, half aninch in diameter in the center of the cabinet, under a heavy glass.
Putney pointed to a grating in one side, spoke into it, while pointing thefunnel in the direction of the large plane that had by now descended to their 


level. At his words a dim haze of light appeared in the funnel, a haze thatvibrated with the tones of his voice. 
He put it back on the rack, pointed to himself and said "Putney." He repeatedit twice, while the two looked on intently.
"Boed Nay," said the one.
"Bood Nee," decided the other.
"Bud," said Putney with a laugh.
"Who?" he asked pointing to them in turn.
"Moerkel," replied the smaller, and "Thaen," replied the other.
Something buzzed softly in Thaen's pocket, and he brought out the receiver. Asthe antenna snapped up, the speaker began droning softly. Three times Putneyheard the name Thaen, twice Moerkel. The two conferred for a moment, then withinimitable grace Moerkel leapt back to his plane. He tried to start it, but itwas still bound to the side of the Prometheus. 
"Let him go, Ran, the High Muckamuck called him," said Putney in aconversational tone. Something hummed softly in the ship, and the flier fellaway to soar up and toward the huge flagship.
"Come," Putney beckoned Thaen on, and through the locked door to the interiorof the ship. As the inner door opened Thaen entered the power room and stoppedin amazement. He was staring with both mobile eyes at the ten-foot Flame, aperfect sphere on which sparkled little winking lights. He listened to thesoft sigh of the swirling, iridescent iron atoms. MacLaurin was looking at himinterestedly.
"A queer body. His toes are long."
"Uses them for fingers. I envy him. He can untie knots with them or run four-
dimensional controls all at the same time. And you don't know the half of it.
He can move his eyes independently like a monkey-only he can see well out ofboth simultaneously."
"Hey, Putt-the ships are moving, they seem to want us to come along," saidWarren's voice from a speaker. One of Thaen's eyes looked up, the other waswanderingaround the room excitedly. MacLaurin started. "Wall eyed! Now he's cross-eyed!
Now he's like no man ever was! I dinna like those eyes."
Suddenly Warrent started the ship forward, and as the load came to the Flameit became a trifle more solid in appearance, the sigh of the glinting ironatoms increased to a low hum. Thaen looked at it with astonishment. The 
brilliant light was cold, cold and steady as though it were in truth a solid.
No motion was apparent here, for there was no apparent acceleration.
Putney led Thaen forward, into the control room.
"If any one should ask, you might say those planes can move!" said Warren asthey entered. "The air-speed must be close to what the meter says, though theair here isn't quite like Earth's, and it says 1000 miles per hour. That'smoving with a capital m for an airplane. And I'd like to know how they drivethem." 
The area of red-hot rock was left far behind already, and barren, arid sand-
hills were scudding backwards as the flight of planes roared along. Presentlythe character of the land changed. Hills began to grow taller, and rocksappeared in the distance, it grew higher, and they saw occasional snow-cappedpeaks, glinting strangely in the light of the tiny, blue disc of the sun100,000,000,000 
miles distant. Here and there they saw other cross-shadows,
shadows cast by that other enormous and enormously brilliant star threequarters of a light year distant. It was plainly and brilliantly visible infull daylight. Several other stars were visible in the brilliant deep-violetsky. One of the four major moons rode high in the sky, another was low on thehorizon, rising.
"They certainly must have a magnificent view here at night-four brilliantmoons, one dim one, and that tremendous star outshining all the other 


brilliant suns. Guess they don't see it often though, if they live underground," commented Warren.
"Ran-look! They didn't always! Look-in that valley ruined city!"
"Lord-you're right! And those aren't crumbling ruins! Look there-see howthey've been fused! They were driven under ground by that other race!"
They swung high over the mountains, and the ruins of the city disappearedbehind. Thaen had been watchingthem intently with one eye, while the other roamed restlessly about the room.
Now, as they passed the mountain range, the character of the country changedentirely. It was brilliantly blue, overlaid with growing plants. Streamsappeared here and there, and wandering erratically back and forth across theirpath was a great river, growing constantly as tributaries joined it. From thefoothills of the mountains they crossed a vast rolling plain that leveledslowly and the river became broader, and meandered in great bends, like agiant Mississippi. Then on the horizon beyond appeared a stretch of water thatgrew as they approached, wider and wider, and always extending beyond thehorizon. 
"That big sea," said Warren briefly. "There's a city under it!" exclaimedPutney. "That's the place for a city! No heat rays would ever reach themthere, no bombs even. Why aren't all the cities under water?"
"Not enough room probably. Also not all their eggs in one basket. This isprobably the capital."
The planes were slowing now, and as they neared a low range of mountains thatran down to the lake, they stopped. They hovered in tight circles above themountains for a few moments, then suddenly one entire hill, nearly a half-
thousand feet in height, and fully 1000 long, slid serenely out into the lake,
seemingly floating on the water. Beneath it was a vast cavern opening. Thegiant ships sank into it three abreast, while the smaller ships sank downwhole fleets side by side.
"Shall we walk into their parlor, asked the fly?" misquoted Warren.
"Um-I think so. If this ship be a fly, it must be a Tartar fly. I suggestseven different ways of escape. One, blow up the whole planet; two, escape bygoing into the other space; three, construct a force shield like a cone andplow out through the rock; four set up the transmutation field and transmuteeverything in the way to hydrogen or oxygen and fly out; five, let loose alittle heat, and melt a way out; six, use the absolute zero field, freeze therock till it's hard and brittle and watch it crumble under its own weight; andseven, use the oscillating field and crumble it to dust. This ship is a bithard to stop or to hold."
Warren was already in the cavern. It led straight down for half a mile, turnedback toward the lake for a mile, then straight down for another mile. At thebottom were titanic lock gates of solid metal at least fifty feet thick set ingreat grooves cut in the living rock. The surface toward the city did not, atpresent, touch the surface of the grooves. Both were lined with thick layersof some dark substance, evidently similar to rubber. A quarter of a milefurther on was a similar titanic set of gates. And with the first gates thelighting began. Heretofore great searchlights on the ships had illuminated thepassages, for scarcely had they passed the mouth of the cavern when themountain began moving back into place.
"There's one sure thing-these fellows have some source of power that beatsanything earth had two years ago. Earth could never have dug this channel,
they could never have moved that mountain around, and they'd have been plumbout of luck if anything like those ships came after them. Wonder what it is?"
"Efficient solar power? That sun would give plenty- even a hundred billionmiles out. Maybe atomic power. We have the energy of matter, which is ofcourse far greater, but even the energy of smashed atoms is enormous."
"Atomic is my bet," said Putney. "Look at those lights." The lights were 


growing more frequent now as mile after mile of the huge tunnel moved back.
Lighted windows appeared in the walls. The lights were globes of pure radiancesuspended in the air of the tunnel. They glowed with a brilliant, harsh bluelight. "White to these men, I suspect. Our lights probably look red to Thaen."
Thaen's left eye swung abruptly, and disconcertingly to Putney as he saidthis. 
"Uh-those eyes," said Warren. "They must be darned handy things but they giveme the creeps. Ever tried playing deck tennis with a cross-eyed man? Looks oneway and sees the other? That's the way those eyes impress me."
Putney chuckled. "They get me a bit too-but I envy him. He'd be a darned badman to fight in a ship of his own size. Be able to look all ways at once. Hisfeet too-how handy they'd be with controls!"
The ships ahead began slowing to an even lower rate, turned an abrupt corner,
and the Terrestrians suddenlycame into a blaze of brilliant. lights. A huge cavern widened out from thetunnel, a gigantic place with a dozen levels of metal floors on which, one byone, the planes began to settle. Thaen touched Warren's shoulder and pointedto the topmost one. "Yuarn," he said.
Warren nodded. "I don't see why this doesn't fall in on them."
"I'm beginning to. Don't go near those columns of light. I think the lightjust marks out the beam of force -yes, look at that magnetometer. A powerfulbeam. Probably they have projectors on the cavern floor, and on the variousfloors, and on the roof, that distribute the pressure. Look-see how that beamthere widens at the middle-I'll be willing to bet anything that's how theydrive their ships. Nasty weapon it would make too, if you didn't have anymagnetic defense field. Just touch one of those beams with a weak field andsee what happens."
Warren set some controls, and pulled a lever back gently. The surroundingcolumns of light swayed gently away from the ship, then gently toward him,
bending at the joints. "Magnetic," he nodded.
Gently he landed his ship on the topmost level, beside the flagship of thefleet he had been following, and simultaneously rose from his seat. "Take overfor a minute. Set up the zero field in a disc about fifty feet in front of us.
I've an idea." He was gone only a minute, to come back with a small butpowerful movie projector, which he set up in the control room window. Putneyturned a little power into the zero field, and added to it till a cloud ofwhite vapor collected before them. Men were coming toward the ship now, butfell back away from the space as the cold, damp fog rolled slowly down fromthe field. Almost at once pictures began to appear on the screen.
It was a field on Earth, with mountains rising behind green against a bluesky. In the center of the field was a huge, shining building. The Prometheus'hangar.
Suddenly field and background sank rapidly away, the horizon retreated mile onmile, till the whole world seemed laid out before them, and the blue skychanged to black. The lights of the cavern dimmed suddenly, and the scene onthe screen became clearer. The bowl of the Earth inverted suddenly to therounded swelling of aplanet. It fell rapidly away, shrinking with amazing speed, and turningslightly reddish as it did so. It became a great round pumpkin floating inspace, and occasional stars swam into view, then the moon, looking like a dullorange. The planet and its satellite swung, and the sun shown blazing on thescreen. It too began to retreat, becoming redder and redder as it shrankswiftly, became finally so red it vanished. Utter blank-ness rilled thescreen. 
Warren worked swiftly. He changed the projector, a pinpoint of violet lightappeared, expanded swiftly, grew greater and greater-it was the sun of thisworld. 


Thaen, beside them, gasped in amazement. The sun shrank again, and finallythis world appeared, its four satellites visible. Then the picture broke off.
The screen of mist began to fade as Putney cut off the power. But before itwas gone, pictures began to appear once more, and Putney, in surprise, cut thepower back. A projector outside was working.

A picture of an arid, dry plain swam into being on the screen of mist. Unlikean earthly moving picture it grew swiftly from a spiral till it rilled theentire screen with a round picture with a peculiar suggestion of depth.
There was nothing but the level plain, and the clear violet sky withoccasional clouds floating high in it. But somewhere a faint, heavy hum beganto come into being; it grew till it was a majestic, full-throated roar echoingthrough all space.
As they watched, a fleet of giant battle planes swam into view from somewherebehind, moving onward and upward at an unbelievable speed. They climbed at anangle of forty-five degrees, yet their wings tilted back no more than thirtydegrees. Some force other than pure air-lift was raising them. So swiftly theymounted that in moments they were out of sight.
Suddenly the ground cracked, broke, and a ring of squat, hemispherical metaldomes pushed their way up through the sand. Several seconds passed, then fromone, then another, broke a great flare of electric-blue fire that reachedfanshaped to the sky, bent, and intermingled in a dome of solid fire aboveall. It fluctuated, wavered, twisted, and then steadied after a moment to asolid, motionless sheet. A constant, steady hum echoed through the greatcavern. 
Something materialized on the screen, a black dot high, high in the violetsky. It grew with accelerating speed, expanding rapidly to a torpedo-shapedbody ten feet long, three in diameter, ending in a finned tail that kept itwhirling with terrific speed, a gyroscopic missile that would maintain itsorientation against any deflecting force.
Half a mile from the ground a stream of fire issued from it, and the giantbomb leapt forward with speed that must have reached miles a second.
At the last instant it swerved violently, landing finally in the exact centerof the dome of blue fire. A singlestupendous flash of light, a titanic explosion sharp as the crack of a rifle,
and it was gone.
It was merely a sighting shot. A hundred black dots appeared magically, and asthey came into being, and grew from somewhere in the far reaches of thatviolet sky, blue-glowing cones of dim radiance reached up to them. Theystaggered, twisted in their paths as the beams touched them. Some jerkedviolently aside. All slowed visibly, and became red, many released theirexplosive energies harmlessly on the air, but a majority rained down on theprotecting dome of fire.
Strangely, none seemed directed at the center of the dome, the force beamsseemed engaged in directing them there. Most fell toward the edge of theprotecting ring.
Other dots were appearing far above now. The planes were descending again, andnow accompanied with long, slim ships, shaped like pencils pointed at eachend. Lashing beams smashed out between them. The faintly glowing force-beamsfrom the ships, long tubes of hazy light, some other beam, twin pipes ofbrilliant light that started from each other, and curved inward to meet attheir object in a constant, terrific display of lightning. A dozen planesattacked each ship, the ships seemed content to sink slowly downward, droppingtheir gigantic bombs, and firing tiny, explosive shells toward the dodgingplanes. *
The planes were not dodging successfully apparently, for a constant andgrowing rain of broken metal began to fall. From each of the hundred pencil



ships a ray reached out presently, something dim and half seen that explodedinto a point of incredible incandescence if it touched a plane.
As at a signal, the giant attacking planes winged over suddenly, pointed theirnoses toward the planet, and descended in a terrific, shrieking power drivethat must have raised their speed to nearly a mile a second. Their wings werefolded into the ships in some manner, till only a knife edge projected fromthe fuselage. The great planes twisted and weaved as they shot downward,
avoiding rays that sliced after them. They turned, leveled off, and streakedacross the plain in a dodging course at a rate that carried them beyond thehorizon in seconds. 
The pencil-ships were not left to come on unhindered, for each great planeship had spewed forth a great fleetof tiny midges that swarmed in darting, flitting motion about the ships,
discharging brief bursts of that twin explosive electric ray. But somehow theray always seemed to explode just short of the ships, leaving them unscathed.
Some signal was given. The hundreds of tiny ships all darted suddenly towardone of the pencil-ships, every ray burst forth simultaneously in a singleblinding sheet of flame-and the pencil-ship was falling, white-hot wreckage.
The midges scattered themselves as though fragments of an exploding bomb.
Vengeful heat-rays lashed across the sky where they had been seconds before.
The score must have been half a hundred-but by far the greater number escaped.
The battle was progressing on a level now, nearly fifty miles above the cityevidently, for some telescopic device had been attached to the camera. Shipsand midges circled steadily for the advantage.
Again the concerted rush-again white-hot wreckage descended streaming from thepencil-ship, and two score more of the midges followed it.
"The ships have some sort of screen-if the planes can get enough power over,
the screen fails-when the ships don't have to use power for their screen, theycan work those heat-rays," said Warren hastily.
"The ships will win-too many."
There was a sudden shift in the position of the pencil-ships. One rose half amile above the rest, while the others set up a barrage of their heat raysabout it, protecting it. The midges seemed suddenly to concentrate onattacking that ship, for fully a third of them rose to it, and poured theirweapons against it-most of them to fall mangled wreckage.
For an instant the ship seemed unguarded. Then, from bow and stern, broke twonew rays. They moved in a curve if the ship spun rapidly, their range was lessthan a quarter of a mile, but they seemed to stretch a web of force betweenthem and around them that swept the midges from the sky like some giganticbroom. Only near the enemy ships were the planes safe, from this weapon, andthere the heat-rays reached them.
The midges folded their wings and, like the giant planes, shot 
planet-ward with terrific speed. Not a full hundred reached the surface. Thepencil-ships descended in massed, close-packedformation, majestically and slowly, toward the glowing dome of fire. At tenmiles the forts went into action. For a single second, every one of the fanbeams snapped out, to snap on as concentrated pipes of radiance smashing theirway to the massed enemy ships. A wave of fire washed over the formation, itflowed like some squirted liquid, striking a solid glass plate. But it waslike an acid, for it began eating holes that showed red against the blueflame, holes that expanded as some half dozen beams concentrated instantly onit-and a ship disappeared in flaming destruction beyond.
But presently this eating of holes stopped, the holes grew fewer, and smaller,
ships avoided them in the meantime, and they hung motionless over the city.
Hours must have passed. The scene was at night, suddenly, and the ships showedbrilliantly outlined by the wash of electric fire, the heavens wereilluminated by the great, bright stars of this world, but they were overcast 


now, clouds were gathering.
The ships were no longer massed, their formation was a circle with a hub andspokes. But only half the ships were so engaged. The rest seemed moving aboutfreely behind this shield. They began to concentrate above the hub, and theships of the hub rose to join them. Blue beams began to reach from one toanother, till all the ships were linked in a single network of power beams.
The center ship hovered over the center of the shield. A mistiness grewsuddenly before it, a spinning misty globe of blue light. It attained size,
then suddenly broke free, and went spinning erratically downward. It ate ahole through the shield. It drank up the blue electric flame on the otherside, and grew fat on it. It jerked its way down and to one side. It actedlike a light ball suspended in a jet of air. Suddenly a particularly violentjerk led it into one of the great beams. Instantly, with the speed of light,
it followed that beam back to its source, puffed softly as it struck the dome-
fort, and bounced aloft. The fort was a heap of powdery ash.
Frantic magnetic beams were jerking at it; they could deflect it when itmoved, but only served to make its erratic motion more so. And another spherewas falling, jerking about like the first.
In minutes the last of the forts were gone. The enemy ships came slowlydownward, cautiously. The spheresteemed repelled by them, and rolled swiftly away, out across the plane, movingerratically as ever, and every touch left a great, powdery scar, but everytouch made diem smaller. 
The ships were pouring their heat beams into the rock. It was day once more,
and a cauldron of molten rock half a mile across bubbled gently. It was nightagain-the cauldron of rock was three miles across. Day found it fully four,
and bubbling gently.
The scene on the screen of mist vanished. It was replaced by a scene in agreat subterranean city. Men, women, and children were hurrying about onmoving ways, suspended on spidery bridges that spanned the great lightedtunnels. Each wall of the tunnel here was a great apartment house, and thegreat tunnels must have been a hundred and fifty feet tall, and fifty wide.
The scene was at a "cube"-the three-dimensional equivalent of a city square,
where four great tunnels intersected. Everyone seemed to be leaving. Thereason was obvious. Above the spider-work bridges, above the .glowing magneticcolumns that supported the rock pres-i"ire above, a slow smoke wasoriginating, and falling 1 downward. The rock became dull red while theywatched. The last hurrying people looked back over their shoulders withfrightened faces.
Suddenly one of the great magnetic columns began to wobble erratically. Ittwisted, the upper section broadened, and seemed to be trying to slide off thelower. It did, its beam a cone that sharply deflected the four surroundingbeams till they too began to wobble. The dull ted rock was brightening. Thebeams were all spreading•ow; the first to fail suddenly went out as an explosion wrecked theprojector. A great crack appeared in the iiock, and with a terrific roar ofsound the whole roof japiit wide. A river of molten rock came pouring through.
(The spider-work bridges and ways vanished in a puff I *f smoke and a briefsparkle of fire. A wall of white-hot [fock moved rapidly toward the screen.
The camera (•wayed, the picture went out of focus, and suddenly a ffluneobscured the screen. 
An instant later the camera was looking down the jtennel from a distantstation. The wave of rock was 
•oving more slowly, cooled by surrounding rock, and fky the greatrefrigerating plants that must have beencooling the city. A huge line of pipe had been hastily laid, and was spoutinga sparkling blue liquid that hissed instantly into invisibility as it struck 


the rock-which cooled it. A dike was being built, a dike of frozen rock.
It was useless. The roof of the tunnel itself began to glow, and the pipeswere turned on it. The Niagara of lava still flowing in from the originalbreak overflowed the dike, and rolled on.
The city was doomed.
The screen went blank in a burst of flame at that moment, and stayed blank.
"Television-to another city," said Putney softly.
"So that's how it happened-that's what that pool of red-hot rock was," saidWarren with a cold, deadly voice.
Thaen touched his arm. He pointed about him to the ship, the controls. Hepointed at the screen.
"Naer liu muool raeneu?" he asked. 
"I can guess what you asked. We will, Thaen," promised Warren soberly.
, 7'Tex-Tex!" Atkill called softly. Texas woke from sleep with a start. Atkillwas bending over his telescope, watching something with an expression ofunholy joy on his face. "Come here, Tex, and look-we have visitors "t last. Iknew they'd come eventually. Three ships!"
Three thin pencil-ships floated in spaee, tiny things glinting in the harshlight of the great sun. Atkill watched them carefully, calculating theircourse accurately. They should reach him in a short three hours at theirpresent velocity. He set to work rapidly.
In an hour he had set the controls in the power-room for starting the Flame,
and had set up the little piece of apparatus he had made in the garbage-lock,
with a long, thin tube of aluminum held in place by strings of insulators. Therod projected some twenty feet from fee side of the ship. Along with thelittle apparatus he had made, there were three powerful magnets he had beenmaking, and a little spark-gap of chorem-nickel blocks between the longaluminum tube and a heavy lead that grounded to the ship. Atkill had plans.
'Tex, sweet lad, we are about to be saved. The mere coming of our friendsgives us once more, power, light and life! I can start the Flame!"
"Uhm-that's right good news. How come? Yuh couldn't before. They may decide towipe us out instead of helping."
Atkill laughed cheerfully. "They've got to help. The sun's been doing thenecessary work for the last three months! All they have to do is come near-andthey will. Remember, Tex, the late unpleasantness we watched from space herethat they were having on that planet? War. They want weapons-science. We'vegot it. We're a strange ship, a ship of neither their world or the enemyworld. We are, apparently, a dead ship. They see in us a possibility of help.
They will investigate."
"Uhm-but how come they'll have to help?"
"For three months that sun has been deluging our ship with ejected electrons.
We've built up a tremendouscharge. We haven't lost a bit of it. Those ships, just come from a planet,
have a much smaller charge. We'll discharge to them, my lad, with a smash ofabout eighteen mega-volts-an extra two million. Really I need only sixteen orso. I said eighteen for safety-and I'll have it. My starting apparatus for theFlame is weak on magnetism and gravitational fields, but the extra electricwill make it up, I suspect."
Atkill was busy with something else now. A robe he had made. It was made ofthe thick, strong silk sheets he had brought with him. They were pure white,
beautifully clear, and the robe was made with a surprising skill. It drapedabout his powerful figure gracefully, caught at arms and shoulder with threeclasps of highly polished stainless steel, set with more of the magnificentgems he had synthesized, and cut.
On one side lay a turban-like head-dress he had made, wound of silk dyed witha slightly fluorescent dye, with the result that in the light of this sun, 


rich as it was in ultra-violet, it shone of its own accord with a rich,
brilliant scarlet. It was a magnificent headpiece.
Finally a sash was added, one of magnificent, deep purple, clasped with ametal device shaped like twin crocodile heads, their eyes four gleaming stonesas deep in color as the sash, touched with a trace of pomegranate.
"I heard some sky-pilot say that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed likethis-here guy. I don't know who this Solomon was right well, but you sure gothim beat," grinned Texas. "That what you been working on so hard?"
Atkill looked at him pityingly. "It's a shame to disturb his mind. Tex, braceyourself. You've got to wear a rig like this too."
"Me? Me wear that? Hombre, you got wrong ideas," affirmed Texas.
"Tex, if you don't wear one of these, we are extremely apt to die promptly andunpleasantly. I'd rather convince the populace that we are strange andwonderful gods than have them believe us strange and delectable foods,
perhaps. You know, they may have a domestic animal that looks something likeus, and is considered a delicacy- like chicken or something. In that case wewould be in an unpleasant situation unless we could change their opinions.
"So stimulate that thing you call your ability to reason, and don thesegarments." Atkill extended a similar turban and robe to Texas, but these weremade of fine linen instead of silk. The turban was not-unpleasant green, andthe sash black as night, held with a stainless steel clasp set with a singleblood-red stone. 
'Take off your shirt, and put "em on. You can keep your pants, and shift thathardware to the shoulder-holster. I've rigged this so you can reach it moreeasily. Put this pouch on over your chest. You can carry matches, tobacco, aflashlight and so forth in that." "Uh-all right if I got tub. But what all'sthe idea?" Atkill smiled and turned back to his telescope while Texas dressed.
The ships were slowing now, approaching cautiously. They were less than fiftymiles away now. Atkill could see them clearly with the naked eye now as dotsof light. He went back to the power-room and started the gyroscope device. Ithad been improved in the months that had passed, and was now a quite efficientmachine for swinging the ship as he wished.
Anxiously he watched the ships approach. Finally a lone, small ship came outof one of the three greater spaceships, and approached slowly. It circled theearth ship at a distance of a few hundred yards, then finally came towardthem. A long metal arm reached out from the ship, and the machine came gentlydirectly toward the out-jutting terminal Atkill had arranged.
"Tex-get set as I showed you at the controls-one, two and five switchesclosed, four and six open, three at the midpoint. When the Flame starts, snapthe dial seven to 458-23. Got it?" "Uh." 
Atkill was working at the single, tiny lock. He closed a switch and themagnets ground slightly in their supports, pressing away from each other.
Swiftly he made several further adjustments, and watched the ship. Absolutespace-an almost perfect insulator. Would the discharge-shock be sudden enoughto give the result he so desperately needed? Or would it be a slow leakingthat would be perfectly useless?
The discharge rods were less than a foot apart. Slowly the pilot of thestranger ship maneuvered them skillfully together. There was a terrific strainout there now-
enough to have started his Flame if he had been in position to use it.
They came within an inch-then suddenly they touched. A blinding, roaring smashof electric energy crashed across the gap between AtkilPs discharge points.
Less than two inches of separation, creating an electric field of terrificintensity. Atkill could feel the charge leak suddenly from his body-and criedout in exultant triumph as the clear white of the Release Flame suddenlysprang into being on his little block of iron. A tiny flame no larger than aflashlight bulb, a dazzling white point of light that pulsed for an instant, 


steadied, and glowed as it would glow for hundreds of millennia if leftundisturbed. 
Atkill yanked open the lock with a single calculated motion, whirled about,
dashed to the engine-room, and snapped five ready leads into place.
"Ready!" Tex applied the switches as he had been directed. A haze of lightaccumulated over the great master Flame, the block of iron was stirring tolife. A rustling of whirling atoms mounted; they became iridescent and whinedsoftly as they reached the glowing haze of light; some began to sparkle.
"Seven to 540-49," ordered Atkill. The haze suddenly intensified, the littleglowing spot of flame in the tiny apparatus dimmed to reddish, and aprotesting whine came from it.
A dull thud that did not originate in the room, but in space, answered; thehaze of light crystallized in an instant of time to a solid glow, and aboutthe ship the lights sprang up. The chuckle of the air apparatus working oncemore suddenly laughed in their ears familiarly. The motor-generator that hadbeen charging the batteries was working madly, pumping air into the boiler.
A broad grin split Texas' face. Atkill straightened instantly, ripped off thefive leads, dropped them into a box, and ran to his room-dove, rather, for theship was still weightless. In an incredibly short time he had fixed his littlerounded mechanism to clamps in the framework of the turban, snapped the lead-
wires into their jacks, concealed the wires in his loose sleeve, and donnedthe jeweled bracelet.
Then he was at the control room window. The other ship had retreated suddenlyto some miles distant, fearful of the sudden reawakening of the ship. Atkillstood at 
the window, his arms raised above his head in a welcoming gesture.
He was a magnificent figure of a man, the white robe, the brilliant turbanglowing softly with scarlet light, his tall, powerful body erect andcommanding. His features were powerful and rugged, his black eyes snappingwith life and energy. Slowly he lowered his arms and -beckoned to the strangeship.
The little machine moved cautiously toward him. Atkill smiled at the creaturehe saw in the little ship, a queer, slim man-like form, with arms four feetlong possessed of two elbow joints. The head was supported on a neck at leasteighteen inches long, supple and graceful as a swan's, and almost as thin. Thehead seemed far too heavy for the slim neck, a head possessed of two eyes,
capable of moving independently, a slim, bony nose, a tiny round mouth whoselips could protrude and retract as much as an inch. The whole face was tiny,
set into the lower part of the skull, rather than forming the front of thehead. The eyes themselves were set into the skull as something entirelyseparate from the face below them. The ears were curiously cup-shaped, andprotruded noticeably from the head on short necks, muscular material thatpermitted them to turn and swing about like those devices used for locatingsounds of planes high in the air. They were wondrously and disconcertinglymobile, as were the eyes.
"Now what in hell is that thing?" demanded the horrified Tex.
"That is our new friend," replied, Atkill calmly. "He saved your life-coursehe didn't mean to, but he did. Now remember what your mother told you, Tex,
never stare at freaks. Be grateful to the little-monstrosity, shall we say? Hedid you a good turn, and I plan to be the high Muckamuck among them presently.
You are about to see the powers of my new head-dress. Never learned what itwas for, did you? Watch!"
Atkill folded his powerful arms across his chest, and scowled. He scowled at achair that was clamped to the floor near him. About his head a misty, bluishlight appeared; it projected forward somewhat-but hung close to his head. Andsuddenly-half the chair puffed away into nothingness! "Now that-thair's aright cute trick," said Texas in ad



miration. "If I didn't know the secret it shore would take me in. Got anymore?" 
Atkill's face relaxed, his arms fell to his sides, and he laughed. "Lots, Tex,
lots. It will work a lot quicker when I want it to. And there are a number ofother things. I have another little thing I'm going to start when I've time.
Now-we follow our friend." 
The ship, motionless, drifting helpless for so long, started slowly, turned,
and began following the slow motion of the little ship. The scout turnedabruptly and started back toward the home ship in haste. Atkill followedslowly, having first applied a number of protective devices. He approached thethree waiting ships, and drifted motionless.
Nothing happened for a number of minutes. Finally Atkill turned his ship andheaded for the second of the two planets he had seen, the home of these ships,
as he knew. He went slowly. The three ships passed him instantly and fell intostep, one before, one behind, and one above him. Together they went alongsmoothly.
Atkill accelerated slowly and steadily, and finally gave Texas charge of theship while he went back to the machine shop. He returned carrying a bulkypistol with a stubby barrel of polished steel, and a heavy chamber mounted ina synthetic rubber grip. He looked at it lovingly and handed it to Texas.
"Throw away that hardware, and carry this. There are two studs on it. The oneon the left side will take the starch out of anything living. The one on theright will take the starch out of anything-but don't use it anywhere nearyourself. The left throws a concentrated pencil of invisible ultra-violetenergy. It .will of course heat, and isn't as easily reflected as infra-red.
The other throws a similar pencil of radiation something like cosmic rays,
only a little longer. It will penetrate anything to a depth of from 100 to1000 feet, depending on the substance, and still be fatal. It will destroy theatoms in its path. And it will let loose so much secondary radiation that itwill kill anything within fifty feet of what it hits. Don't use that unlessyou are more than 200 feet from your target-the ultra-violet is bad enough.
Look." Atkin aimed it at the surviving half of the ruined chair. A blindingspot of incandescence appeared on the metal frame and flashed for an instantbefore it spurted away in vapor.
The pistol was shut off instantly, but a red-hot groove lay along the floor.
"There's an energy center-a Flame-in the chamber here. Feeds on the iron ofthe pistol itself. Good for about 1000 years of continuous operation I 
believe. If they attempt to disarm you-push this red stud in the base ofthe butt. It will fuse the weapon two seconds after you push it, and releasethe energy center. The center will burn for from half an hour to three hoursafterward, but won't do any particular damage if no one tries to tame 
it. If anything but iron is shoved into it, it will simply knock it throughinto another space. If iron is supplied, both iron and Flame will movethrough." "Oh," said Tex, and took the deadly thing unhappily. He was used topowder and lead, not these things. He stowed the heavy revolver he loved in 
his pouch and bolstered the strange pistol.
Hours later, as the planet neared, the formation of ships about them wasjoined by a fleet of twenty or more, evidently called in from space.
The pencil-ships settled rapidly through the atmosphere, toward a small citywith a huge spaceship cradle. The cradle consisted of huge metal beamsprotected by some form of buffers shaped like a semi-cylinder, the two ends ofthe semi-cylinder being closed by huge iron blocks. The whole apparatus wasset on gigantic springs and pneumatic cushions. Atkill mentally noted that theships must have exceedingly poor control on landing.
They did. One after another landed with a terrific jar, all power being cutoff just before they entered the cradle. About half the fleet did not landhowever, but hovered nervously about the Terrestrian ship. The cradle was 


clear, men were waiting down there for them.
Atkill lowered his ship in a swift dive, then turned abruptly and landed likea feather just beside the cradle. Instantly a troop of guards arrangedthemselves about the ship, a small party of higher officers in resplendentclothes marched forward. 
Atkill was busy. He was testing the atmosphere. He had few and poor reagentsfor this purpose, but he finally decided it contained sufficient oxygen, andno other known poisonous substances. Cautiously he opened the door. Air hissedout, for the pressure outside was somefour pounds lower than within. The gravity on this planet was only about threequarters that of earth.
The air was breathable. "Tex-take charge, and keep an eye on me. If anythinggoes wrong, just push that stud I showed you, and you'll be half a millionmiles away before you know it."
Atkill drew himself up, and stepped out lightly. The blazing sun made the airuncomfortably warm; it was a blue disc in a violet sky, but there was littleor no ultraviolet here, for the thick layer of ozone in the upper atmosphereabsorbed nearly all of it.
The guards moved up quickly, stepped up beside him, and two prepared to marchbeside him to the officers. Two more stood on either side of the floor. Atkill 
walked calmly ahead.
"I greet you, High Rulers, but greet me, for I am Atkill!"
The officers looked at him skeptically, their eyes wandering over himdisconcertingly. Their long, flexible necks craned in a way that required allAtkill's control to prevent laughter.
Atkill looked back at the ship suddenly. An officer of some sort was headedfor the still open door.
"Stop!" roared Atkill. His voice was a deep, powerful bass, and the tone ofcommand brought the man to a sliding stop. Atkill walked angrily forward.
"Away!" he ordered, and waved the man away. The officer hesitated. A ring ofguards had hastily drawn up around Atkill. The man seemed to make up his mind,
for he bowed his long neck several times and started firmly forward.
Atkill folded his arms and scowled at the man's back. A glow sprang suddenlyinto being about his head, flashed bright for an instant-and died. The officerslumped slowly and gently to the ground without a sound. There was a suddenmovement among the guards as they sprang toward him calling. Atkill merelyswept his glance around them and they fell like ripe grain, to lie motionlesswhere they had fallen.
Weapons were appearing now in the hands of guards further away, but now theofficer, first affected, moved, rolled over, and jumped suddenly to his feet.
Atkill waved him away with calm assurance and walked back to the assembledgenerals.
He had scarcely moved when a score of men rushed him from behind the curve ofthe ship. Their soft feet were almost soundless on the smooth metal. Atkillturned and scowled again, pointing his left hand at them in anger. Theyhesitated, slowed and vanished! A slight shimmer in the sunlight, a fewsparkling dots of light, and the clink of metal objects that had been' intheir pockets was all that remained.
The physicist turned once more and walked toward the officers. The richlygarbed men were fleeing rapidly toward the nearest ship.
"Halt!" roared Atkill. The men turned, jerking weapons from their pockets, andsimultaneously a dozen crackling explosions sounded. Atkill had stopped withfolded arms. He smiled, and waited. The air before him was suddenly filledwith bright explosive flame, and smoke. It blew away and left him standingwith eyes closed, his brows contracted in concentration.
The officers returned slowly at his gesture now. Frightened and worried. Theycame hesitantly before him. "Down!" snapped Atkill, pointing. They sank on 


their flexible, double-jointed legs, and looked up at him.
"I am Atkill!" he roared at them. 
"Ahut-Kuhl!" they whistled uncertainly.


Warren looked at Thaen skeptically. The other evidently wanted the Terrestrian
to come out. Warren looked at Putney, who finally shook his head.
"No. We stay right here till we can talk with them somehow. I wish to heck we
knew some one of these wonderful systems of telepathy they talk about in
stories. I can understand why the author uses them all right. Here we are in a
situation that evidently requires immediate action. We don't know how to act,
nor what to act against until we can communicate with these people. And in the
meantime the enemy continues to operate unhindered. Till I know what this is
all about, I'm not moving. They may have richly deserved to have that city
wiped out, though somehow, looking at Thaen, I don't believe it. Nevertheless,
I'm staying till we can communicate. That's the trouble with languages. They
have to be learned, and before a complex situation can be understood, they
must be learned rather completely. Months, perhaps, wasted. Nothing else to
do. 
"We'll have to investigate the language here, and find out how it works. If
they go in for innumerable irregularities, passive, vocative and indicative
voices, singular, dual and plural forms, nouns declined in singular dual and
plural through eight or nine cases, we'll learn something else-or they can
learn English. If theirs is easier than ours, all well and good."
Warren shook his head, folded his arms, and sat down firmly. He smiled up at
Thaen. "When we can talk, we move," he said firmly.
Thaen looked at him in a puzzled way, and finally started back to the air-
lock. Warren went with him and helped him open both doors. Thaen stood on the
outer threshold and talked rapidly with some men below for several minutes.
They looked worried and asked many questions. Thaen shrugged his massive
shoulders finally, and looked at Warren questioningly, uncertain.
Warren beckoned him in and pointed down his throat, then looked questioningly
at Thaen and asked, "Eat with
us?" He led the strange man to the tiny dining room. First table was up, and
the leaders were seated now; there was not room for all at once.
Thaen looked dubiously at the food, and sat down gingerly. He relaxed
presently, and tried a bit of the grapefruit cocktail gingerly. Then he tried
a little more. Then he drained his glass with a broad grin. Eish was next, and
it puzzled him evidently. He watched the others manipulate knife and fork,
then tried some of the food himself. This did not seem to please him as much.
Potatoes he was not interested in. Beets seemed to fill a long-felt want in
him. He devoured them endlessly. But the sweet acid pineapple that served as
dessert seemed to throw him into ecstasies. Putney limited the quantity,
however, as it might have disagreed with him violently.
Halfway through the meal a man of this world came up to the air-lock, where
Korbes was standing guard, and started to climb in. Korbes called Thaen, and
Thaen went and spoke to the newcomer. Thaen evidently didn't want him in just
yet. The other went away. About half an hour after the meal he reappeared with
two others. Looking at Warren, Thaen beckoned them in. Warren nodded. One of
the men carried a good-sized pad of thin sheets of some material, and a stylus
of some sort. There was an air about one of the others that somehow suggested
an actor. The serious mien of the third, and a slight baldness at the top of
his head, made Warren burst out laughing. "Putt-come here. Take one look, and
I'll ask you who they are."
Putney looked and smiled. "They understand our difficulties. An actor, and an
artist and a professor, or I'm unwound." He turned to Thaen and nodded
vigorously. Thaen beamed as they set out extra folding chairs in the study or
chart-room, as Warren called it. 



Presently, as the three newcomers were settled, a fourth man came with adevice that was evidently one of the magnetic-ribbon type phonographs with astock of ribbon-records. He set it up at the professor's direction and left.
Thaen settled himself beside it and the lesson began.
In half an hour Putney realized that this language they were being taught wasno new language, and that the method employed in teaching it was veryevidently a carefully prepared method. The records were graduated carefully.
In that half hour they had begun to understand, 
from the artist's rapid sketches, and the actor's cleverimpersonations, the basis of the language. A simple system of twenty phoneticsymbols constituted the written language, and a small dictionary printed on atough, thin metallic foil was given them, three copies in fact. But amazinglyit contained little more than two thousand words. 
The sounds of this language seemed entirely different from those Thaen hadfirst employed, and did not at all fit in with the names of the men. Theirteacher, Haelieu; kept saying the word that meant full or complete in thedictionary, and after an hour Putney grasped the idea.
"Ran-no wonder this is so easy-it's a specially constructed language. It'ssimplified to the uttermost. Take their verb 'ascend.' It isn't that. It'smade like the German verb 'abgehen.' Gehen, to. Ab, up. They have taken a fewdozen root verb ideas like to, be, see, talk, and made compounds with prefixesand such. They don't say descend, ascend, accelerate or decelerate. Theysimply say go down, go up, go faster, go slower and so forth.
"Further, the sounds are simplified for others to learn. They aren't liketheir own sounds. This was meant to be taught to other races."
"They've completely left out all sign of declension, thing, things. Big,
bigger, biggest. That's about the only sign of change in nouns and adjectives.
Not quite like some of Earth's languages, German for instance, with its derdes-
den-dem, die-der-der-die for 'the' and so on for every single adjective inthe language. No gender here, either. And their verbs! Two modals, twoprincipal parts. Then you know the whole story, absolutely no irregularities.
We can learn it in a day."
They did, practically. All that day their tutors worked with them, helpingthem, teaching them. Rapidly they advanced, till they could speak the languagerapidly and readily. They listened to the records, which grew more and morecomplex, progressively. By night they could understand almost any sentence.
The language lacked nothing save beauty. It was terribly monotonous, for one"went up from the chair and went across the room, and went out the door andwent down the stairs, and went through the corridor and went -everything," asWarren complained.
"Hmmni-maybe it does, Ran, but what we're most interested in is in learningtheir situation-and this makes it possible."
But not till the next day. Thaen, the professor, the actor and artistwithdrew, leaving a collection of books for them to study if they wished. Theydid not-they wished sleep.
The day of the planet was some thirty-two hours, and the men were accustomedto about ten hours sleep, so it was nearly twelve hours later when Thaenshowed up again. Haelieu was with him, and a third man, evidently anotherprofessor of some sort.
They began the business with a vengeance. First they wanted some idea of wherethe Terrestrians came from. To their surprise, Putney and Warren found theycould not make them understand the idea of "another space." "World," not"space" the professor kept correcting them. "Yes, we know that, of course, butwhere?" 
Finally Putney gave it up as a bad job, and explained that they had come adistance that was absolutely immeasurable. There was no measure. They couldtravel faster than light, indeed, but this was not how they came. These men 


had no idea whatsoever of space as Terrestrians knew it, a fabric made ofmighty, titanic space-strains, the pulls and counterpulls of incomprehensiblemillions of tons of matter. "Space" to them meant "room" or "emptiness betweenstars and planets." Warren groaned and sent immediately for a scientist ofthis world, their greatest physicist.
The other professor, it appeared, was an historian. "You," explained Warren,
"can no more understand what I must say than can a babe unborn." Thaen seemeda bit annoyed. It appeared that he was a physicist himself.
"While the scientist is coming, tell me your story," suggested Putney.
It was a simple story, in fact, made up of but three great elements, and oneof these overshadowed their lives completely. Their great cities were notbuilt underground to escape the enemies from other worlds.
"They, we could perhaps drive off or settle with in some manner were it notfor the Great Catastrophe to Come," Thaen explained.
"Half a circuit ago (he meant half a year-their year was nearly five hundredearth years) we learned for thefirst time of the Catastrophe. Our sun is a changeable sun. It pulses withfloods of light, and then dies down greatly. You must have seen thatyourselves. But that is nothing. That we have known for all time, ever sinceman first understood the sun did not swing about our tiny world. At the time Ispeak of, once every day the sun flared up, and sank back, and flared up. Aperiod of fifteen hours. Then suddenly it began to change. It has changedswiftly-for a sun. Now its period is but one fifth of that. It is rapidlyshortening. Within a quarter of a circuit, it will flare up once more-in theGreat Catastrophe. What it will do then, we do not accurately know. We havewith our telescopes seen other stars flare up thus. New stars, they arecalled. Then gradually they sink back to nearly normal, to flare up once morein the course of half a circuit or more. We believe that eventually it willreach a stable condition not so bright as at present.
"About a tenth of a circuit after the first understanding of what was to come,
the first of the Bay-Raonii came. It was a little ship. The mere nose of thehuge machine that had started nearly a raeth (about seven months) before. Itwas driven by fire. These Bay-Raonii were welcomed. They had crossed space, athing our people had been striving for since first we saw what was to come.
They too knew of the Great Catastrophe, and were seeking escape. Their planetrevolved far nearer the sun than ours. They had calculated that their ownplanet would be fused at the surface, red hot to a depth of ten miles. Ourswould be red-hot at the surface, but cooling systems could be devised to keepthe cities far below the surface livable. We had guessed that, and our citieswere not being built up any longer, while the brains of our scientiststruggled to find a means of drilling the hard rock swiftly and surely.
"The Bay-Raonii were merely explorers, and emissaries. They worked with ourpeople till this language, Anlo-Raonii was invented. They cannot produce suchsounds as we can, nor can we produce all their sounds. See, this is a pictureof one of the Bay-Raonii."
Warren and Putney stared at the monstrosity depicted. A queer, skinnycreature, with a neck like a giraffe. "So Anlo-Raonii was invented. Theywanted room here. In exchange they offered certain things we had never had.
One was the power of electricity. That was new to us.
Steam was new to us then. We accepted it. Their first ship was followed bymore. Swiftly they improved their machines, till finally they could travelboth ways. Before, a ship could come, but never return. Soon both trips werepossible, if refueling was accomplished here. Their fuel was simply the activegas of air-oxygen, and the liquid fuel they compounded. It was made largelyfrom .water. We never learned how. 
"They built a city. On the surface. It was an Anlonian who first devised thecrumbier, nearly a fifth of a circuit later. Anything within five times my 


length crumbles to dust in its path. It is like our radio sets in many ways,
but the wave goes in one way only. It breaks rock swiftly as a man walks, andpowerful suction machines were used to carry it out, and blow it into the air.
It settled as dust over all the world. In six months it was merely soil,
broken by plants, and used for food by them.
"The first problem was solved. The cities moved underground. Further andfurther, till such cities as Pan-Lor here were built. Then we had no mountainsover our doors, they were not needed.
"The Bay-Raonii rose. They attempted to destroy us. There were nearly amillion of their people here then, and many young had been born, for theybreed like rodents, very swiftly, as many as six young to one couple. On theirown world strict control of this terrific fecundity was applied. Here they hadbred swiftly, and it was our request that this be limited that finally causedthem to start the war. 
"Many, many of our cities were destroyed. We had but ten underground, andthose alone remained, for terrible gases of death rained from their rocketships and destroyed our people. All their cities were underground. We devisedmachines that settled noiselessly on parachutes onto their cities, and atetheir way through the rock to the city below. Hundreds were dropped. If notdestroyed within half an hour, they were beyond approach. Most were destroyed.
But this was war, and more were made. Their cities were riddled by these, tillthey leaked in a thousand places. Then, like rats in a trap (he used adifferent expression), they were caught. We returned their gases. Somesurvived, not many. These were forced to flee in ships, and warned never toreturn. 
"They did not, for nearly ten raenth. Then great battle-
rockets appeared with the heat-ray. They started down our tunnels, and blastedour defenses as they came to them. Gas-dam after gas-dam fell, and they boredon despite our heaviest guns, for the shells were crumbled by terrific powereven as they approached the ships. Some got through, of course, but not enoughto damage the great armor plates on the nose of each ship.
"A chemist, one Rgiolin, saved us that time. Five miles of the roof of ourcavern were blasted down with explosives, and at the head of the fallen part aterrific explosive charge was placed. Three more were buried on the way. TheBay-Raonii ships came on and started to crumble the rock away. The explosivecharges shot them backward like shells from a gun. Most of the ships weredestroyed in those first four attacks on cities. Some persisted with smallships sent on ahead which set off the charges, wrecking themselves in theprocess. The second charge in each city block destroyed the big ships whichattempted to drill on.
"Our air was being derived from the rocks themselves by Rgiolin's process, andthat was what permitted us to do this.
"After their losses, our own ships were able to beat off the rockets.
"All our cities moved underground. Their next attack found us prepared withthe heat ray, which made it impossible for them to attack through the tunnels.
They did not have enough power available to drill the entire distancethemselves at that time. 
"Raethe followed raeth, and they attacked again and again. They must have thisplanet. So must we. That is the situation. During this period they discoveredthe secret of the atom, but we learned it also from a ship of theirs wecaptured with a loss of nearly five thousand men.
"On their next appearance they met a terrific reverse. We were attacked by ahuge fleet of nearly 100 great space-battleships, and nearly 1,000 lessercraft. We had stolen their atomic power-and attached a weapon of our own. See-
this pistol here contains the basic discovery, this the modification. Examinethem, and these diagrams."
Thaen handed the Terrestrians two pistols. They examined them carefully, and 


then Thaen went outside and 
demonstrated the first. It was a strange device, with a barrel like two icecream cones stuck together mouth to mouth, and the two tips cut off leaving anopening of half an inch diameter at each end. One end was the business end.
The other was set into a sphere some four inches in diameter, the wholemounted on a stock that made it balance easily in the hand. It was light, andmanageable. The double-cone was made of a bluish, transluscent material, thewaffling made by bars of silvery metal, buried in the insulating substance.
The sphere was a globe of thicker insulation that gleamed faintly with aninternal light.
Thaen pressed the trigger and a tiny ball of blue light sped out in a straightline toward the opposite wall of the cavern, nearly three hundred feet away.
It struck it with a gentle hiss and the tiny globe expanded to a plane oflashing electric flame five feet across.
"Wicked little thing," said Warren.
"That is the first shot," said Thaen. "There are ten. The fifth and sixth arethe most powerful, the ninth and tenth weakest. The tenth will barely kill aman. The fifth will kill fifty. Then the weapon is deadliest. After the tenththe weapon must be recharged. After the eighth, it should be recharged."
He took the other pistol, and raised it. It was a stock, surmounted by asphere, glowing as the other, but the barrel here was a curious thing, astraight tube of the insulating material, with metal ribs running lengthwise,
but surrounded by toroidal coils set at progressively changing angles. Thebarrel was nearly two feet long. This was a shoulder weapon, and a harness ofstout leather belts bound it to the shoulder, as though a pull rather than akick were expected.
Further, the sphere here was nearly eight inches in diameter, and set low,
below the barrel. Thaen pointed it toward a block of iron that must haveweighed some ten pounds, resting on a bench some other men had set up. Hepressed the release button, and from the inch-wide muzzle a stream of blue-
glowing rings sprang, rushed swiftly to the iron, and bathed it in soft light.
Instantly the iron jumped, Thaen stiffened, and the weight leaped from thetable toward the gun. As it reached the edge it fell, and the gun was draggeddownward with it. It struck the floor, and traveled swiftly toward the weapon.
In 
five seconds it was at Thaen's feet, and he shut off the device. The ringsdied out, the iron slid to a stop.
"A magnetic projector!" gasped Warren. "Jumping Je-hosophat, I thought thatwas impossible, you remember. I begin to commence to start to understand. Arethose boys clever! Get it, Putt?"
Putney shook his head. "Can't say I do."
"What was that first thing?"
"Ball lightning on a small scale," answered Putney at once.
"And that second one?" 
"Thought it was the same with modifications at first- oh-it is! I get it-ringlightning instead of ball, and the rings are spinning about their common axis!
A charge moving in a circle, makes a magnetic field-selenoid effect-with along, long coil."
"How long will that operate?" asked Warren in Anlo-Raonii.
"About ten minutes on maximum load," replied Thaen.
"What if there is no iron?" 
Thaen pointed his device at the wall of stone, and pressed the release. Asheet of blue flame appeared, and spread hi widening ripples, some ten feetacross. The wall began to smoke slightly.
"Pure electricity when the magnetic field isn't needed," said Putney.
"What range?" asked Warren.
"About a. quarter of a mile in air, for this. Nearly twenty miles in space, 


but it isn't very effective against a man more than four miles off. The ringsspread too much.
"The other is effective half a mile hi air, and fully effective up to nearly athousand in space. It re-condenses on striking its objective. The big weaponsare effective nearly 100 miles in space. But the electricity is not veryuseful, unless it can be discharged destructively to some other object."
"How do you store that energy?" asked Warren.
Thaen shrugged. "We do not know. Only we know that under certain conditions,
which we can achieve, metal plates can be put up against each other, andpacked under enormous pressure, and yet they are insulated so that eventhousands of volts will not discharge during weeks of time. A gas is firstforced in under pressure. The metal plates put in position carefully, free ofholes 
and cracks and lumps, and great pressure is applied. After that they will holdseveral horsepower-hours. Great batteries of these drive our ships. Themagnetic beams are used to pull them through space, since planets aremagnetic. In air, tiny points along the edges of the wings throw theelectricity off, and drive the ship forward,, or backward, or hold it in theair." 
"What a gang! They must have some sweet condensers, Putt. Think of gettingcondenser plates so close together-perhaps only one or two molecules apart-andstill have a dielectric strength capable of resisting thousands of volts!
There are things in heaven and earth-! Horatio, and so forth. I never dreamtof a condenser like that-condensers capable of running those huge ships atthousands of miles an hour." He turned to Thaen. "Have the enemy thesestorage-devices?"
"No," smiled Thaen. "They have no spies, so cannot learn how they are made. Totake them apart, at once destroys them, and all trace of their manufacturingprocesses. The gas escapes. They have analyzed it, but find only hydrogen andhelium mixed. That is all we find. A scientist stumbled on the device byaccident. It ruined his experiment, because he put hundreds of horsepower intoa furnace, trying to make the two gases combine between the metal plates, dueto a terrific arc. The power went in. Little heat developed. He thought he wassuccessful, and the gas had absorbed the energy. He was very much afraid tobreak the circuit, for he feared the gas was unstable, and would blow up. Hebroke it from a long distance-and nothing happened. So he went back toinvestigate. Luckily he had used a voltage of but a few hundred, and thedischarge through his body merely curled him up in a corner." Warren grinned.
It probably did, he thought. "And then," Thaen continued, "he published hisdiscovery. We also make bombs of them. You saw in the picture. Chargedcondensers are hurled as shells. When the plates are broken apart, they burstwith stupendous force."
"Oh-they would," said Warren. "You have atomic energy?" asked Putney. "How isit derived?" 
Thaen scowled in disgust. "It is a disappointment. We had known of it for manyraenth. Knew it existed. Vast energy. When we learned the Bay-Raonii had it,
we trembled. 
It is worthless, for it is no better than coal, or oil. It simply burnsatoms, and they give off terrific heat. The apparatus weighs tons. The heat isgenerated inside a great spherical boiler containing mercury which stops therays and the flying particles swiftly, and is boiled. The heat runs turbinesand generates power. The mercury is gradually transformed to heavy, uselessgold, which dissolves in the mercury, and then is gradually built up till thestuff clogs the boilers and apparatus dismally, and must be scraped outlaboriously, for the blasted stuff won't dissolve in acids. Usually themercury is distilled off, and the boiler thrown away. Our mercury supplies arebeing used up all too rapidly. In ten raeth we will be helpless, unless we use 


gigantic boilers and empty zinc. Mercury atoms are heavy, and stop theradiation quickly. Other elements would allow it to pass and injure men. It isbad enough as it is."
Warren smiled in amusement. "Putt-that's rather good. Hear him cuss that gold?
It is useless. Melts easily; soft, heavy, clinging." He turned to Thaen. "Whatdo you use it for, if at all-the gold I mean."
"Oh, it does have one use. Other substances are as good, however. It can bemade into very thin sheets, and is an excellent conductor. For condenserswhere weight does not matter, we use it. Aluminum works better for airplanesand hand-weapons, however, for it is far lighter."
"Thaen, have a great quantity of stuff brought-rock, scrap metal-evendiscarded boilers and old gold-and piled there." He pointed to a spot in thecavern floor. 
Thaen departed instantly. In a few seconds Warren was in the control room. Aset of forces set to work, and in thirty seconds, a hollow ten feet deep andtwenty across appeared in the rocky floor of the cavern. The first load ofscrap appeared within two minutes, on a large truck-plane. Warren lifted itwith forces, closed an opaque wall of force about it, and set certainfieldrcontrols. The Flame behind him whirred gently, and a small hole openedin the bottom of the sphere of force. For an instant a terrible glare beat outthat illuminated the vast cavern with a harsh glare. Then a spurting, tumblingstream of white-glowing vapor shot out to meet a cloudy patch of mist, andfrom the mist a steady, beating rain of shining liquid globules fell tocollect rapidly in a pool in thehollow he had made. Warren set some more controls carefully, and went outside.
A crowd of men had gathered already, more were streaming in swiftly frombarracks about the hangar cavern. Thaen met him as he stepped from the ship.
"But-but, Wah-ran, you are making tons of mercury-that requires far vasterenergy than we have ever possessed. Yet your machine is small. How can you getmore energy than the energy of the atom?"
Warren smiled. "I will tell you later. Now see-that slanting plane of coloredlight? It is like a funnel. Tell that truck-ship to dump his load of scrapthere." 
Thaen snapped something to a man nearby, who ran off toward the circlingtruck-ship, and shouted to the pilot. The pilot looked doubtfully about, thenmaneuvered over cautiously. He dumped his load of scrap metal and rockcautiously. It landed on the plane of force, slipped swiftly toward the sphereof energies, and-through the wall. As it passed, each piece seemed to tear ahole in the wall, and for that instant an intolerable glare of awful violetlight beat out. The pilot threw his hands over his eyes with a cry of pain androcked back and forth. 
"Oh lord!" gasped Warren, "I forgot that!"
But there were no more accidents, and the mercury continued to rain down in asteady stream till the pool was near overflowing, while pipe-lines wererapidly laid to carry it away.
9 
That day Warren and Putney held a conference. Rejoicing men were swiftlydraining away tons of mercury, while the great iron ingot beneath the Flamewas slowly consumed. Warren looked at it a moment, and turned to Putney. "Ithink we can let these people have the Flame, don't you? It will mean life tothem. They seemed honest, and likable."
Putney stood thinking long and silently. Finally he turned to his friend andspoke slowly.
"We give them the Flame. They will at once build a fleet of ships and attackthe first enemy invasion with such effect it will be instantly and totallywiped out. Then scouts will come carefully and investigate. They will next laya trap. How I don't know, but I do know that-say a thousand enemy ships-could 


capture even this if they went about it right.
"They would do that. Then both sides have the Flame -and this whole planetwould probably be wiped out.
"Dozens of the ships would be sent through into that other space one way oranother. I don't want that. I won't risk this ship of course. But they haveatomic energy under control. I know how we can improve that for them in allprobability, and have something nowhere near as deadly as this would be, andstill give them mastery of the situation. Further, many of the weapons thisship carries would be suitable to that use. And I'll give them power for amagnetic beam that could pull that other planet out of position-and atomicenergy that won't be so damned disappointing as Thaen said.
'The great advantage would be that the enemy would never find out how thetrick was done." 
Warren nodded silently. "You are, as usual, right. What's the scheme?"
"Lithium-beryllium alloy. They already have atomic energy under control,
remember?" 
Warren started. "Lord-sweet. But can they handle that?"
"Let's see. Lithium protons-or particles, I've forgotten, 
but it doesn't matter, when bombarded by alpha particles or protons, oneor the other, but the opposite anyway. Alpha particles it is I believe. Itgives off alpha particles when bombarded by protons. Beryllium, when bombardedwith alpha particles, gives off protons. Mix the two, and you have a self-
maintaining atomic explosion. But it's almost purely electrical in nature. Andyou'll have a potential of hundreds of millions of volts; if you want it. Theycan improve that magnetic beam. They can do things with their electricalweapon. They can add to their armament atomic bombs-using the lithium-
beryllium mixture-and some of our things. We can make them an absolute zerofield for instance, which will protect them against those enemy heat rays. Andwe can use this ship at least a few times."
Thaen appeared, with him a number of obviously important dignitaries. Theruling council of Anlo.
They were genuinely wise men. They listened to Warren, and they listened toPutney, and they agreed that this secret of the Flame was too dangerous. Theywould not accept it. But this secret of a greater atomic power? The scientistthe Terrestrians had asked for had arrived. Would the Terrestrians accompanythem to their laboratories and power stations?
Warren and Putney went, while the rest of the crew remained in charge of theship. Down through the mar-velous underground city, along spider-like bridgesbetween the great tunnel walls, along moving walks that followed the maintunnel walls at one or more levels. The business district of shops andoffices, then on out into the residential district. The tunnels were smallerhere at first, with apartments lining the walls, lighted windows in the rockywalls looking cheerfully outward. On out, while their guides explainedeverything to them. These were the homes of the middle-class people, thepeople who worked hi offices and shops, or owned small businesses. Youngpeople, men with perhaps only one or two wives.
Polygamy was the rule here, for good reason. The men were the warriors, andwere killed all too rapidly. For years monogamy had been "maintained." But itwas not, for the women inevitably outnumbered the men, and the race would havedwindled swiftly. Polygamy had come; the fighting men were expected to marry;
it was encouraged. These were the apartments where lower-rank menlived. Then beyond th"t the walk carried them to the low-roofed, broad"suburban" caverns. These were some hundred feet in height, but nearly threehundred and fifty wide. Stone homes, left standing quite separate from thewalls appeared, surrounded by low-cropped lawns and shrubbery growingluxuriously in the artificial sunlight of the grent g'obes. These wereextinguished every evening, turned to a low, soft glow. Children played here, 


climbing through the trees in a way that made the Ter-restrians stare, fortheir long, prehensile toes made them seem like monkeys.
Further still were the great estates, each in its own cavern, cut from theliving rock, with half-lit tunnels that led to swimming pools, or plantedgrottoes.
Thaen led them to his own estate, to show them what was possible, and for thefirst time they realized that Thaen was no ordinary army man. They had pickedthe ship he rode as the most obvious of the smaller machines. It had beenobvious because he, as a scientist, had drawn nearer to investigate. He hadbeen called out to investigate the new weapon the enemy had displayed, he wasthe head of the Scientific Weapons Division of the Anlonian forces.
He had a beautiful house of carefully cut stone, set among trees nearly fiftyfeet tall. The main cavern was wide and large, and instead of the usual globesof light, a wavering curtain of bluish light hung over the entire roof. "It issomething new- -we are just trying it out, and it is not public as yet," heexplained. Dozens of tunnels led to pleasant little grottoes set with trees.
Somewhere near ran an underground river. Thaen had tapped it for his swimmingpool, flowing water, clear and cool on this hot planet.
With wonderful skill these people had learned to advance all the pleasantaspects of subterranean life, and hide the difficulties.
At the house Thaen introduced his five wives, and twelve children-two weresleeping. But he led the Ter-restrians presently to a large tunnel that ranback far beyond the house, nearly half a mile into the native rock. A seriesof laboratories opened from it, but at the last and largest they stopped.
Apparatus banked the walls, a desk set in one corner, and a large bookcase. Inthe center of the room was a small atomic power-plantThaen had been working on this, seeking to improve it. Quickly Warren andPutney examined everything. Finally Warren shook his head.
"They beat me. With all their science, mathematics seems way behind. Look,
they haven't got a calculating machine of any sort. I wonder if they have evendeveloped tensors?"
"What of it? You can laugh at their ignorance now- but they've had atomicenergy for half a century-and you learned the control of space only a yearago."
"What indeed. Let's show them that lithium-aluminum though."
Warren had not come empty-handed. He had with him a small Flame apparatus,
which he set up at once, and called for any matter. Thaen brought him half adozen ingots of gold, nearly two hundred pounds. Warren looked at it, andlaughed. He had to explain his laughter to Thaen, who laughed in turn. A worldwhere gold had been used as money! A world where still, despite the fact thatWarren's transmutation apparatus had made every element equally plentiful,
people still persisted in hoarding all the gold that they could get!
Warren set to work. In a few minutes one of the ingots was a mass of purealuminum. The other was changed to lithium, which promptly covered over with acoat of oxide. The next step was to alloy them. Warren mixed them in about theproportions he thought would work best, then fused them instantly in a largecrucible Thaen had supplied. The next step was harder. He wanted a finepowder. They solved it finally by powdering the metals fairly well, burningthem, and collecting the oxides. The fused, glass-like result, was cooled,
then ground as nothing before ever was, between two force-planes that reducedit to a powder each grain less than one ten millionth of an inch in diameter.
The needed elements were there. The fact that oxygen was in combination madeno difference. 
In the meantime, Thaen and his men had been setting up an atomic apparatusunder Warren's direction in one of the laboratories. It was mounted on blocks 
of insulators ten feet high. Three feet from it was a solid silver shield afoot thick that completely surrounded it. This was suspended by insulators 


from the ceiling. A long, thin silver pipe led from a silver tankwell, andsimilarly insulated 
to the platform of foot-thick gold where the reaction was to takeplace. Here a standard atomic burner of very low power had been =et up.
The silver tank was filled with the aluminum-lithium fuel, the tiny valveadjusted, and a minute stream of power, so fine it flowed like a liquid, fellfreely onto the gold, directly in the path of t^e atomic burner.
Another, exactly similar system of fuel-feed was arranged, and a device addedthat let a stream of fuel into one feed, then cut off the supply when it wasstill nearly a foot short of rearhins the scene of action. At once the otherfeed would start. Alternately, the two streams would supply it, so that if theFlame did try to strike back up the stream, it would not go far, nor -releasemuch energy.
Then they retired to safety. The television apparatus showed the young mancalmly setting about his business. First he made the necessary adjustments onthe regular atomic burner. Then, following instructions, he brought a pair ofheavy carbon blocks within three inches of each other, and retired behind alead screen. He started his atomic burner. A glare of blue ionization lit theroom weirdly. Next he turned a small knob, and the aluminum-lithiumcombination began to feed. For perhaps a second nothing happened. Then withstartling suddenness, an awful flame of ionization sprang up that blinded thetelevision with its intensity; an earth-rocking roar came from the laboratorysuch that the rocks about them trembled. For five full seconds it lasted, anda blast of scorching heat reached down the corridor, then quiet resumed.
"Good God! There isn't any lower power for that thing! What happened?"
demanded Putney.
"Forgot!" Warren was running. He leapt into the room, and behind the leadscreen. He lifted the young assistant, and carried him out. A moment assuredhim the fellow was safe, only unconscious. The Release Flame cooled the roomand the great silver screen in minutes. The silver screen looked tired. Itdrooped like a wilted flower, with down-hanging petals. The atomic burner wasfused, and only a little puddle of glowing atoms revealed that the reactionwas maintaining itself. Warren put that out with a force field generated byhis Flame apparatus.
"The answer is, Thaen, that the ionization made the current better able toleap the foot gap to the silverscreen than the three-inch gap across the carbons. I had forgotten that. Theheat released in the enclosed furnace there, melted the apparatus. I know howto make it now. But the plan must be vastly different."
It was. For one thing, the entire apparatus was set up in a vacuum. Next itwas arranged to work at a potential of nearly twenty-million volts. Thateliminated the effects of the smashing speed of the protons antd alphaparticles thrown off. The voltage stopped them, leaving only the tremendouscharge.
Thaen made the next improvement. The apparatus was reduced to a size that anormal space ship could contain, by use of some of Anlo's wonderful insulatingmaterials. In the end it was scarcely fifteen feet in cubic dimension, andcapable of generating power at a rate truly comparable to the Prometheus'.
Work was started at once on the ships. They were to be powered by thisapparatus, the voltage being reduced to workable levels by means of a systemof Anlonian condensers, charged in series and discharged in parallel.
Curiously, within wide limits, no matter what power was wanted from thegenerator, it had the same cubic dimensions, for here it was the tremendousvoltage that required elbow-room.
The remodeling progressed rapidly-but not rapidly enough. A week later, Bay-
Raonii attacked again.
The Terrestrians were sleeping aboard the Prometheus that night, when the 


powerful, reverberating hum of the alarm signal sounded through the city. Itwas the low steady beat-beat-beat which meant a distant city was beingattacked, not the roar of sound that would mean they were themselves attacked.
Warren leaped to his feet, to meet Putney's startled eyes. They dressedquickly.
"For one thing," Warren said, "we've got to know what it is the enemy have.
I'm calling Thaen."
He picked up a Anlonian radio and snapped out the call for Thaen. Presentlythe rolling bass of Thaen responded. "I come."
Warren set to work. He had the ship in order, ready to lift when Thaenappeared. The Commander-in-Chief, Tepalor, was with him. The main fleet fromthe city had already gone.
"It is Twar Peuowl. You know the way out. The locks are cleared for you," saidThaen. 
"Commander Tepalor, will you order that no Anlonian engage in the battlewithin ten miles of us? We wish to use weapons of much greater power than youhave yet seen. We have never shown you our offensive weapons," said Warren.
His fingers were busy directing the ship. He had established a resilientforce-field about them, and was moving down the great entrance tunnel at aspeed of nearly half a mile a second. As he finished his speech, he slowed,
and shot abruptly upward and out. The stars of this world were beating down inwondrous multitude that lit the ground below them as the mountain slidsilently behind.
Silently Thaen pointed. Tepalor was using his radio. The Prometheus leaptforward under an acceleration of nearly half a mile a second. In five secondsWarren shut down the power, for the world was rocketing by them at an enormousspeed. Five minutes later they passed the fleet that had left before them.
"Are you through?" asked Warren presently. Tepalor nodded, and Warren threwthree switches. Putney was busy setting up fields at his board. Thaen pointedagain, but Warren shook his head, and pointed to the instruments.
"Something is wrong," he said. "This shows a far greater disturbance overthere." The ship had turned suddenly and was fleeing like a frightened thing.
"Stud 15 is the cold, Ran 1 is the pure force shield, 2 the radiation mirror.
I'll analyze, and set up anything you need. Also work rays, of course."
Far ahead a glow appeared, the dawn-horizon. They rocketed across into lightand shot around the world. The enemy came into sight, and they saw somethinghuge and round and black that sat on the ground, a segment of a sphere, ablack greyness with stars of illumination in it.
"An absorption field-energy drain. That city couldn't signal. Meanwhile theyare trying to break them up, most of their ships are under that I'll bet."
Warren grinned, and moved the Prometheus into position. He was small, andclose to the ground, and the enemy far above did not see him. "Putt, will youjust pour a bit of energy into that field, and see if we can't open somethingup. They've probably got their apparatus radiating heat into space. Just pourso blasted much heat 
in there it will blow up, will you. Put two force-planes right in the fielditself, and push 'em together. Use all the power the Flame will carry safely."
Putney smiled, and set up his constants skillfully. He pushed a little button.
Behind him half a dozen relays clicked, and suddenly the Flame was whirring indeep-throated protest. Before them, the black dome, of the energy-absorptionfield suddenly became a shining incandescent surface of light over its entiresurface, and simultaneously the half-dozen ships far above all burst intoinstantaneous incandescence. The dome disappeared and two sheets of wavering,
intolerable radiance fluttered where it had been. 
"Oh, oh, naughty boy got his wrist smacked that time," said Warren cheerfully.
Very hard. The Bay-Raonii were getting along nicely, and everything had beengoing their way. They had put the blanket down while they were still so far 


away the men of the city had not detected them. After that they simply cameover, and sat down on the city. The forts stuck their noses up through thesand, a terrific blast of electric fire stabbed right down through theAnlonian static sheet, and blew them up. That was something newer still.
Further, their usual screens were protecting them against rays of all sortswith the usual effectiveness, simply sending the ray back where it came from.
The Bay-Raonii heat rays had started work early, and were going at ithopefully by the time Warren arrived on the scene.
Then their screen evaporated in a flash of astonishing incandescence, and theplanes out there that had been supporting it simply evaporated so quickly theynever guessed that trouble was coming.
The Bay-Raonii weren't long locating Warren. Three huge ships started for himwith everything they had. They opened with their heat ray, which simplydisappeared silently somewhere in between the two ships (Warren had a coldfield, which was simply an energy absorption field of an improved type),
followed that with a few hundred high explosive shells, which stopped abruptlyhalfway between the two forces, and started back on their course withmathematical exactness, having been bounced from a force-wall like a sheet ofthe finest rubber. 
The Bay-Raonii began to take notice of that impudentlittle ship. Maybe there was a connection between the sudden and completecollapse of the force-wall and the appearance of the newcomer.
At about that moment Warren settled into his chair, snapped over a tumblerwhich locked his controls to hold him in position temporarily, and got towork. First he set up a sphere of pure force about two miles in diameter, thenhe maintained it and simply contracted it. One of the Bay-Raonii shipssuddenly dented in like a broken can, tumbled end over end, and blew up in aterrific explosion. Three others followed it in rapid succession, and then allthe enemy ships turned on Warren with all the unpleasantness they had instock. Half a dozen simply redirected their heat rays; most of them shifted tothe flare of electric flame that had wiped out the forts.
"What is that?" asked Warren as the electric flare turned sharply aside, andbent off a screen Warren had set up.
"Protons," snapped Putney. "Twenty-mega-volt at that!" Warren immediatelyaltered the constants of the force-sphere he had built around the Bay-Raonii,
and it closed in rapidly, almost instantaneously. But nearly two hundredsmaller ships were left! Though fully as many battered, crushed wrecks felldownward when he released it, the others floated quite unharmed!
"Putt-they weren't touched!" gasped Warren. Instantly he set up a plane thatshould have neatly bisected the nearest of the Bay-Raonii. The plane was givena faint blue luminescence, and it was quite visible. It was an absolutely flatdisc half a mile in diameter. It ran exactly on a plane through the long axisof the ship- but it was not where the ship was. There was just a peculiar holein the plane.
"Good lord, what does that mean?" Putney demanded. Warren was busy. He wassetting up a test field, exactly in the center of that ship-or it should havebeen. His test field reported absolutely and completely nothing. Its verynegativeness was a report. It showed that it was beyond time, and space. Ithad, in some mysterious manner, been cast into that fifth dimension,
timelessness. 
"That's that. But that just means our forces don't work. Uh. Say, Putt, do younotice we are getting warm? They've been slinging everything they had at usfor 
the last five minutes, and now that heat is beginning to get through. Build upthat field a little, will you?"
Putney looked at instruments and shook his head. "Can't. To absorb a certainamount of energy, that isn't too great, that field's fine. But under a 


concentrated beam of thousands of horsepower, it just won't carry powerwithout losing its characteristics. Apparatus just won't handle it. Rememberthat is generated by mechanical apparatus, not by the Flame itself. Thoseships are bigger, and carry bigger apparatus. We can't compete there."
"Those screens worry me. I wonder what will go through them? I'm going totry," said Warren.
Now there were five projectors on the nose of the Prometheus for the solepurpose of sending rays. Two were run by the great Flame in the power room.
They were the lesser projectors, for they projected rays controlled byapparatus. But three were run by individual flames. Warren's fingers movedlike lightning, and five terrific blasting streams of energy shot forth, fivedifferent beams. One was a cosmic ray concentrated in a pencil of atom-
smashing power. It struck a giant Bay-Raonii battle-ship, and the vesselscreamed in tortured agony; it shivered over its entire length as the awfulstabbing tongue of cosmic energy washed through it. The atoms smashed intoindividual tortured protons and electrons under flooding billions ofhorsepower that smashed through their force-mirror as though it were notthere. It crumbled to atomic powder, the atoms smashed to individual protonsand electrons, and all reunited in a single intolerable burst of ultra-violetradiation. 
And one beam was a beam of pure radio-frequency energy, not generated byapparatus, but in space itself, by a Flame that hurled nearly half an ounce ofiron into pure energy. That lashed at the screen in a concentrated needle ofsearing power that blasted its way through simply because only 99.98 percentof incident energy was reflected. It struck the ship beyond, and in an instantthere was an incandescent hole drilled through it. The shield fell, and themachine burst into white-hot gas.
The third beam was a strange thing. It was like the evil arm of a great, greenoctopus. It reached out slowly, drifting outward, and touched a ship's screen.
It spread adhesively over the screen like a running glue, and ate through itto the ship behind. The ship glowed softlyin green light, darted away, and escaped the beam; but the clinging radiancehung, and like rotting flesh the green spread and grew brighter, until theship was torn open and fell a green-glowing rotten fruit to the ground tenmiles below. 
And the fourth beam alone did not have effect, for it was a pure heat beamthat struck a ship's screen, and was nearly all reflected; and what leakedthrough the screen was reflected from metal walls.
The fifth beam was a true disintegration ray. It did not glow with the harsh,
solid brilliance of a lash of cosmic force, nor with the sticky green of theother beam, but with a soft green-blue light that passed through the force-
mirror with a slight sputtering and struck the ship. And the instant ittouched, a stupendous explosion echoed that blew that ship, and two shipswithin two hundred yards of it to tiny fragments. The beam had released themolecular bonds that had held the steel of its walls as a solid, and the steelbecame a gas under a pressure equal to its strength, which was sixty tons persquare inch. When nearly a thousand tons of gas under a pressure of that orderis released suddenly, the results are awesome.
Bay-Raonii had had enough. The ships turned and fled into space with allpossible acceleration. And the Prometheus followed easily, without a sign ofstrain. A great spaceship suddenly swerved from its path and crashed in aflash of light against its neighbor, and then suddenly all the ships dartedupward far faster, toward a common point. They reached it with astoundingspeed, for the attractive field Warren was using caused an acceleration nearlyfifty times as great as that of the enemy ships. In less than ten seconds asingle great mass of smashed steel was falling to the planet nearly fortymiles below. 


Thaen was staring with wide eyes throughout. Tepalor sat stunned in his seat.
Slowly he gasped as they descended gently to the city far below. For the firsttime Warren noticed that for miles around the ground was blasted and bare.
Smoking grasses alone remained. Directly below the ground were glowing dullred, little tongues of flame licked up some five miles away.
Tepalor shook himself. "Grr-men of another world, we want no such thing asthis. Urr. That was no battle. That was the loosing of the thunderbolt on thefield of 
grain. Death reaping with his scythe. You fought them, and smashed them, andthe waste energy has set the ground smoking for miles about, the diluted,
reflected rays. That green ray-it ate like a blighting rot. It was unholy.
This thing we cannot have. It is not meant for our people. With such, a worldcould be wiped out and left as nothing, as wholly vanished as the ship thathard, bright blue ray touched. A tongue of flame-and gone completely.
"And that other-a terrific blast, and only dust so fine it was not to be seen,
mere dancing specks in the !:ght of the sun, and glowing motes that weremighty atomic engines. Their shields fought, and crumpled as the strength ofthe ant before the tread of the unheeding man."
"Put very well, Commander of Anlo. That is the true case. As the insect is tothe man, are those ships to us. Our power is as much greater, as the power ofthe man." 
"I would look at this engine that has done this," said Tepalor.
MacLaurin showed him his engine-room. It was clean, ind shining, and noiselesssave for the ceaseless soft whirr of the glinting iridescent whirlwind ofatoms vanishing forever. Tepalor stared for minutes. "This is the "ame blockof fuel that I saw when first you came to this planet?" he asked quietly.
"Aye." said MacLaurin, and nodded. It was scarcely half gone. It seemed tohave been just thus when the ihip landed.
"Did you use all your power?"
"Far from that, Sir. Perhaps one thousandth."
The commander shuddered, looked at the smoking ground and heaped wreckagebelow, and went away. The air pumps chuckled contentedly, and the Flame burnedsoftly, steadily, with a gentle sighing and a myriad whirling glinting sparks.
10 
Back in the city once more, work on the new ships of Anlo was pressed forward.
Meanwhile Warren was holding numerous conferences with the men of theProtective Science department.
Having seen Warren's terrible weapons in action, Thaen thought far less oftheir own weapons now. But he said, with reason, that he wanted none ofWarren's weapons for which Warren could show him no defense.
"For were one of our ships to be captured, and the secrets learned, then thosesame terrible weapons would fight back at us, and there would be no defense."
Warren nodded his understanding. "Quite reasonable, Thaen. Now for the cosmicray I showed you, I can give you no defense that purely atomic engines candevelop. The power of a cosmic ray is so great it penetrates every atom andany screen of force within the strength of atomic engines. For the threeweapons I think you can best use, I will show you defenses. These three are:
the green ray of atomic instability. It is a sort of transmutation ray. Itstarts the process of transmutation, and the thing spreads swiftly. The atomstransmit it one to another, but the widening sphere soon loses power, and in ashort time it stops, for there are always many atoms nearby to drink the powerloosed in the transmutation of others. In iron, nickel and cobalt it is veryslow and dies out almost at once. In heavy atoms it spreads swiftly and ishard to stop. In uranium, it is almost explosively violent and cannot bequenched by any force you have before the fuel is gone. In steel walls, theheavy atoms of tungsten, molybdenum and other metals supply the fuel. In atomslighter than atomic weight 50 it will not maintain itself, for their energy is 


consumed. 
"I will show you a simple screen which merely converts the transmutationprojectiles-
into harmless electric charges. The beam is actually a stream ofpeculiarly warped space fields, or charges. They are, one might say, deceasedelectrons. I will show you a simple force-field \ that converts them toharmless things.
"The radio-energy heat ray you can use, of course, and no reflector of metalwill stop that, for it penetrates the metal. A screen is easily built. Yourpower is greater now than the Bay-Raonii, and you can readily drive theirscreens to pieces with your power.
"Next and last of the three I now have, is the explosion ray. I will show youthe secret of that, and I will show you how to screen. But do not putscreening apparatus in your ships this first time. Not until they haveactually been captured in some way, not until the enemy has samples of yourweapons, are you to screen against them. Else you give him both weapon anddefense simultaneously." Thaen nodded in approval.
"Now one more thing I have to say. You do not yet know how you can protectyour homes against the heat of the exploding sun during the Great Catastrophe.
I will show you. I will give you a means of making the field of absolute zero,
and before I leave, I will give you the Flame to run it."
"No. We do not want the Flame." said Thaen. "It is too powerful."
Warren frowned in thought. "I will give each city a Flame which will supplyall the power needs for fifty millennia of earth time, for one hundred of youryears. These Flames will maintain the Cold Field. They will maintain yoursupply of any element you need. They will protect your entire city with forcefields that nothing on this planet could crush.
"At the end of that time the sun will have settled to stability. You canemerge in safety surely. The Flames will go out, for want of fuel. And I shallarrange it that no man may reach the Flame, nor the mechanism of the Flame,
nor the mechanisms that the Flames support, save with the aid of a secondFlame, until the fuel has gone, and the Flame has died. Will that be good?"
"How is such a thing possible? For one full hundred years! So vast a time?"
"In each city a great tower of solid iron will be built, half a mile inheight. At the peak the Flame shall float, supporting about it on a plane ofForce the apparatus that controls it. As the circuits roll on, the Flame willslowly eat its way downward, till it passes one after another of the marks weshall put on the tower, and atlast reaches the floor of the cavern. When the last iron goes, the dyingenergy of the Flame will destroy the apparatus that has controlled it throughthe ages."
"That is good." Thaen nodded.
In less than three weeks time the fleet of the new An-lonian battle craft were 
ready. One from each of the ten major cities.
Ten huge ships that dwarfed even the greatest of their old machines, and eachenormous in power. Their great new atomic engines gave until now undreamed ofpower. And each was equipped with the deadly beams Warren had made for them,
and with small, rapid-firing guns that hurled shells some three inches indiameter that would, on striking any body, or having travelled a full tenseconds, release a horrific hell of blasting electrical energy, the energy ofblasting atoms, pounds of atoms. One of these shells would blast a hole half amile across in solid 
rock. 
They were prepared now to resist any attack from 
Bay-Raonii.

Atkill turned a withering gaze on Texas in the privacy of their ship. He hadmade it their headquarters, and with reason. The Bay-Raonii had accepted him 


as a superhuman, a being capable of destroying men and materials with a mereglance and a concentration of his will. But Texas was not living up to hispart too well. He lacked the harshness Atkill demanded.
'Tex, will you please, dear lad, remember that you are not their friend. Wearen't friends. We are masters. Don't even pretend to learn their language.
They must learn ours. I have learned theirs, both their own Bay-Raonii, andthat Anlo-Rapnii thing. I understand everything they say-though they don'tknow it-but I never speak to them in anything but English. We won't condescendto speak with them in any language but the language of the gods."
"Uh. Right good idea, but I do like to talk now an then, yuh know," said Texassourly. "Anyway, what's the plan?"
"I told you their situation. They want-have to have- that planet Anlo, but thefools out there are stubborn, and they haven't been able to drive them off.
Just after we came, remember, we got reports of the very complete destructionof one of their fleets by some new weapon the Anlo had discovered. Now I'mgoing to be the Lord High Muckamuck. And to do it, I've got to give themsomeplace to live. So we're taking Anlo. I've got them started on the Flameships now. I'm giving them only some of the weapons, but enough-more thanenough. Meanwhile, I'm working out some stuff for this ship. And they arebuilding me another. It will be nearly one thousand feet long. Fifty skilledworkmen will be employed to install the private weapons. And those men willnever tell what they installed, for-they will vanish."
Tex wrinkled in annoyance. "I don't mind that there heat thing so much, northe knock-out thing. But that thing that makes a man burn like a barrel of gasgetsme, and that thing that makes 'em just go poof and they ain't gets me, itmakes my belly wiggle."
Atkill smiled. "Get over it. We are' gods. The gods do as they will, and arenot disputed. The knock-out is just a paralysis ray-and quite harmless. It isa warning. The thing that makes them burn is a cosmic that turns them intohydrogen and they burn. The other is just a simple transmutation field. Icould make them change to hydrogen with that if I wished, but I usually changethem to oxygen."
Tex looked unhappy. "What th' hell did yuh do to that guy that tried to stabyuh yesterday? Uh-he just turned stiff, and then went all brown, and glowed-
and just blew away like a brown gas, and stank."
"That," said Atkill sharply, "was a warning. That was the tenth assassin I hadafter me that one day, and I was getting peeved. I have a little electrostatic 
balance in the apparatus you know-an idea borrowed from Warren by theway-that tells me when some one comes near. So when that fellow tried creepingup on me, I got peevish, and turned him into bromine."
Atkill suddenly stiffened as a red light began to glow on the panel beforehim. "Damn!" he muttered. He snapped on a screen, that glowed in dark, somberred, and black. Three strange long-necked Bay-Raonii were training some sortof a weapon on the ship. Atkill stepped to the open lock and through it, andlooked toward the men. He could not see them in the dark, but suddenly theybegan to glow in weird, greenish colors. Their startled faces looked upstupidly.
"Your masters are stupid," said Atkill calmly, in perfect Bay-Raonii. "I amAtkill." 
The figures of the men began to glow more vividly. They stiffened suddenlyimmobile. The one on the left began to shake violently; his outline grew hazyand a scream rang out from his open mouth. Presently it stopped, and heslumped suddenly downward; but as he fell, the light that shone from him grewbrilliant, and the clothes he wore, and the flesh of his body, melted likesnow in the path of a heat-ray, and a skeleton fell to the ground surroundedby bits of metal and glass and crystal. 


The one on the right shrieked, trembled, and melted as had the first, till abare skeleton fell to the ground.
"Go, and tell your masters I am Atkill!" roared the Terrestrian. Somethinggripped the remaining Bay-Raonii in a vise of force and hurled him half a mileaway, to land dripping in a small lake.
Atkill returned calmly. "They will never learn," he said shaking his head.
"Sometimes I doubt whether even I can teach them." 
"They don't seem bright," Texas said, and started toward his room.
But Atkill was at the works early the next morning, superintending theconstruction of his giant ship. He did a great deal of the work himself withthe aid of a Flame he had started. At night the Flame was protected by aforce-screen only he, equipped with another Flame, could enter. The great hullwas shaping up quickly; it was a skeleton now, coated in places with heavyarmor of six-inch beryllium plates, hardened with several other elements, alllight in weight. He knew the power and results of the green beam of atomicdecay that he would give his forces to use. The beryllium of which this shipwas made he had transmuted for himself and no other ship would be soconstructed. 
That day saw the hull Finished, and the next the control apparatus was beinginstalled. The second night Atkill and Texas had moved into the new ship, andtheir crew of workers were locked in the ship. Those fifty workers would neverleave. 
A fleet of twenty giant Flame-powered battleships was being constructed by theBay-Raonii, under Atkill's distant supervision. These Bay-Raonii, like theAnloians, had never conceived of space as Terrestrians had learned it. WhileAtkill had learned this quickly enough, he had made not the slightest effortto enlighten them. He had merely shown them how to make the necessary controlsfor their ships. They were being given only the lesser weapons possible to theFlame, and small flame apparatus, for Atkill had no intention of letting themeven approach his ship in power.
In a month the fleet was completed, and Atkill's great cruiser was finished aswell. And the great fleet of ships assembled near Forn-Karno, the capital ofBay-Raonii. The Emperor held court here, and his magnificent entourageappeared outside the palace to greet the ships. They sank gently to the groundin the great PalladaNuriol before the palace. They formed a giant square of ships, about thereviewing stand that had been set up in the exact center of the Nuriol. TheEmperor's party was already assembled there, and as the crews of the shipsstepped smartly to the ground beside their charges, the Emperor raised theancient Ye-Raonii in salute. This was a shaft of pure, crystallized light, awondrous shining thing of golden radiance, capped by an enormous ruby-coloredstone, set in claws of pure iridium. The metal had been scratched withthousands of tiny lines, so that the surface gleamed with shifting, glowingcolors. 
The crews bowed down before the Ye-Raonii, and a great chant went up from thethousands of people congregated about.
Then from far above in space, a thin, ghostly radiance settled down on all thesquare, and the Ye-Raonii flamed suddenly with great shooting flames of goldenlight; it the entourage of Harum Dichir in glowing waves. A cry of entourageof Harum Dichir in glowing waves. A cry of wonder and anger rolled up from theassembled Bay-Raonii.
And out of the sky came AtkilFs great ship. A plane of glowing golden forcepicked up the platform of Harum Dichir, and carried it through the air till ithung above the broad steps of the palace. In the exact center of the PalladaNuriol there was a vacant square nearly two thousand feet across. In the exactcenter of that space, a structure of glowing forces appeared, forces glowingred, and gold and green and blue. A titanic dome a thousand feet high, mounted 


on a great base fifteen hundred feet across shaped as a regular octagon. Asingle great arch one hundred feet in height was left as an opening to thedome fifty feet above the ground as it opened onto the great base.
The sky that had been white with the eternal mists of Bay-Raonii suddenly wasdarkening over; a chill wing sprang into being, and in the space between theinner and outer force-walls of the Dome, a fierce glow was materializing, anda dark grey cloudiness. The wind increased, and roared shrilly about thepalace and the great ships, and across the vast open space of the PalladaNuriol. Rolling thunders and great jagged flashes of lightning tore from cloudto cloud far above, and the hot,
damp air of Bay-Raonii was chill as the damp mist increased. 
A thin shining layer was forming on the surface of the ground under the greatoctagonal base. Swiftly it swirled thicker, as a snow of dark metal fell toit, and welded under unseen forces. More and more rapidly it grew, and theshrill of the winds howled louder. Jagged lightning slashed downward inprotest at the glowing gold of the giant force-dome. Where it touched, thegold of the dome glowed brighter, and the lightning was swallowed unheeded. Asteady black snow of metal fell to the octagon base, and it built up swiftlyto shining metal, silvery and bright. The clouds above were black now,
sweeping in swift circles, a gigantic cyclonic whirlpool of clouds. A greatblack stem was reaching down from the clouds, reaching like the stem of amaelstrom for the very peak of the dome. With a shriek and roar it touched andheld, and as the blackness sucked in, it vanished momentarily in a soft glowthat shifted to black raining metal.
The whirlpool of energies grew, and the metal base was finished while now ashining layer of metal was filling the walls of the dome itself.
Swiftly this filled higher and higher, till the dome was completed, a shinydome of solid, silvery metal resting on a great metal base.
And in an instant the whole great structure blazed white-hot, yet no heatreached out to the watching people. As swiftly as it had heated, it cooledonce more and the metal was firm and smooth and shone with a soft, lustroussurface like velvet metal. 
The colored forces vanished in a twinkling, and other forces set to work,
forces that left shining, brilliant surfaces in their path. Swift forces thatpainted scenes and pictures on the walls with a gigantic brush. And over thearched entrance appeared gigantic, radiant characters, strange to the Bay-
Raonii, that spelled out ATKILL.
And now those who were placed that they might see what went on within theDome, saw a great solid ring of fully shining grey metal materialize on thesmooth metal of the base, a ring a hundred feet in diameter.
And a giant voice rang out that could be heard over all the vast PalladaNuriol. In perfect Bay-Raonii itspoke. "This is the place of Atkill. Those who seek me, shall find mehere." 
The great ship sank slowly, and settled to the metal base beside the dome, anda wall of jet blackness descended over both ship and Dome,
Behind that wall, Atkill and the fifty workers were busy. Great panels ofapparatus were swiftly moved to the floor within the ring of iron Atkill hadlaid down on the surface of the metal base. In half an hour the apparatus wasready and connected. In fifteen, more forces had cut a clean plug of thefifty-foot thick metal out of the base and left a slanting tunnel ten feet indiameter that led down into the solid metal base. More apparatus was installedin the room that was cut out at the end of this sloping tunnel.
And a change was made in the ring of iron. It was lifted and a well sunk thatit would fit in exactly, a well fifty feet deep that led down through theentire thickness of the base. The iron ring was built up until it was a hollowcylinder that slipped snugly and smoothly into this well, leaving some six 


inches projecting above the surface, and fifty feet .below. A piston of forcewould support it and feed it upward as needed.
The apparatus in the center of the ring was covered over by a metal dais thatrose in tiers. On the peak a throne of resilient forces that glowed deepviolet would soon be established. The next step was completing the livingquarters below the surface of the base, deep in the metal. The disposal of thegreat quantities of metal was not difficult; it was simply re-transmuted tooxygen, and escaped.
At last the Flame was established. Over the top of the entire great ring ofiron, the Flame burned, arching in a roof of crystallized light a hundred feetabove the dais. Reaching the control from the hidden branch passage below themetal surface, a slanting passage that, fifteen feet below the surface, cutthrough the iron cylinder that fed the Flame, Atkill came to set up the Forcestructures he wanted. First were the deep violet resilient forces of theThrone. Next was a throne, but was outside the Flame. This was the throne ofHarum Dicher. And then two lesser seats, one blacker than space itself, one ofcontinually pulsing golden light.
Then a wall of force to support the great dome, forthe metal alone could never have borne the strain. And from the peak of thedome a giant beam of deep crimson light stabbed upward. Now it was lost in theblack of the screening field that hid their operations, but soon it would be abeacon visible for a billion miles in space.
From the floor of the dome to the roof, two great columns reached, one anangry crimson, and one of pulsing yellow. One was Death, and one was Life, abeam of stimulating, lifting radiation.
The dome was ready. Seated within that circle of the Flame, no conceivableforce or thing could reach him. No heat and no cold could reach through, nobeam nor ray, and no particle of matter. Atkill was ready, and the screen ofblack dropped away. A slow chant sprang up outside, and Harum Dichir came withhis party up the great broad steps that Atkill had cut in the metal of thebase. 
"This is the place of Judgement and of Life and of Death," Atkill said throughthe great amplifier he had installed, and his Bay-Raonii was perfect. Not fornothing had he studied some fifteen languages on Earth. "Harum Dichir shalljudge ye, with Bartir Kenlar and with Preylu Thilam. And they shall direct yeto Life or to Death, and if their judgment be good, and I concur, so shall yego."
Harum Dichir was lifted suddenly in a mantle of white light that carried himswiftly to the great white throne, and the two other men, the Counselors ofJustice, were whirled each to his throne, Bartir Kenlor, the prosecutor to hisblack throne, and Preylu Thilam to his pulsing bench of gold, whence he wouldargue in defense of the accused.
That day Pryd Wranlor, the Commander of Bay-Ra-onii's forces, was summoned,
and the order for attack on Anlo was given. That night, when Anlo rose in thesky above Forn-Karno, the great fleet set out into space, two thousand greatships powered by the Flame.
And one more ship powered by a greater Flame, and with vastly greater weapons.
Atkill was going to make sure the attack would be a success.

Warren was aroused suddenly by the steady throb of the great alarms soundingthrough the city. Putney was already swinging his feet to the floor as the humof the Anlonian radio told them Thaen was calling.
"Yes?" Warren picked up the set with a single motion as he jumped from hisbunk. 
"They have not reached Anlo yet. Your detector field flung a hundred millionmiles into space detected them; our telescopes spotted them. They are comingslowly. They are like no previous Bay-Raonii ships; they are larger, and we 


can find no evidences of magnetic driving rays."
Warren was in the control room in a moment, setting up fields. In thirtyseconds he located the direction of the ships, and Putney had joined him. Intwenty more his face was pale and Putney was staring at meters. In that timethey had learned one thing that told the whole secret.
"Thaen-Thaen-I gave you plans for the screen mechanism, you made it up and hadit made ready to install?"
"Yes." 
"Order no ship to leave the ground without it!"
Thaen was puzzled but he sent the order at once, then cut back to Warren.
"Why?"
"The Bay-Raonii have the Flame!" Warren shouted. "How they got it I cannotguess-yes-by the Lord, I can! They have small Flames, their Flames are not asgood as ours, but they are terrible none the less. Your ships must use all thepower they dare on their screens, they must above all leave the magnetic beamalone! It will be more dangerous to them than to the Bay-Raonii now. Come, forI am going at once."
Thaen came within five minutes. The Anlonian fleet had not moved but men were 
swarming about the ships, cursing, struggling, working with bulky, powerfulapparatus ready to install and which needed only three connections, but whichwas heavy and required time.
The Prometheus rocketed out the tunnel and into the open air at terrificspeed. The ship shot out into space instantly, straight for the fleet, andwhen speed had been attained, Warren shut off the driving power and coastedoutward. 
From a million miles he explored the fleet. It did not take him long to learnthat two thousand ships were weakly powered, for Flame ships, and that one wasa giant of power. It had not the power of the Prometheus, for Atkill had nothad time to experiment with the Flame, and had not learned the trick ofcontrol that permitted Warren to get nearly fifty times as much power from agiven Flame. But Atkill's ship was larger. Warren began to explore that largership. He had a television screen set up before him, and now there appeared onit pictures as of a glass ship, wherein the walls were bare, dim shadows, savewhere it was focused, and there perfect vision was obtained. Only about theneighborhood of the Flame was the device inoperative. Where, nothing showedbeyond strange, distorted shadows. Atkill was in the control room at the bow.
"He escaped!" gasped Warren.
"I know it. I see where I was wrong-and right," nodded Putney. "The men withhim went mad as I said. I should have had more confidence in my beliefs. Theywere dead. Atkill had to dispose of them. There was no lock on his ship, savethe little garbage lock. The men had to be pushed out through that. The Bay-
Raonii must have given him power to start again. Those fragments of brokenship that fooled US were fragments of Bay-Raonii ships. By some ill-chance wenever got a piece of a Bay-Raonii. Or perhaps all Bay-Raonii dead had beencollected by their own men.
"And he's given the Bay-Raonii the Flame-but a mighty weak one, I wonder why?"
Warren had been watching. Several Bay-Raonii were about, and he had seen theirattitude toward Atkill. "He's set himself up as over-lord. He could, with theFlame. But he's not giving them anything free. And he's making sure they don'tturn on him by only giving them kalf power." Atkill had been manipulatinginstruments with sudden interest. Putney watched his a moment. "He's spottedus. Look-he's shocked. He realizes an Anlonian ship has him spotted-and hasthe Flame." Atkill was makingmore tests. Putney watched his instruments. "Examining the size and power ofour Flame. Doesn't like it does he?" Atkill was pursing his lips thoughtfully.
Suddenly dawning understanding spread over his face, and a wide grin split hisfeatures. His lips moved silently. "By God- Warren," quoted Putney, reading 


his moving lips.
Atkill was suddenly laughing, and turned to a radio set beside him. Warrensnapped a tumbler that put his receiver in operation.
"Warren-Warren-Warren-James Atkill calling Warren-" AtkilTs voice camethrough.
"Looking at you now, Atty," said Warren quietly. Atkill jumped, and lookedaround him annoyed.
"Don't jump, Atty, we won't bite you yet."
"Hmmm-you are watching me, aren't you. Warren, you are a good man. I don't seehow you do it. I haven't spotted anything that will look through metal yet.
Well- let's try this." Atkill's hand reached for a tumbler and through it. Hisimage blurred, dimmed, and was scarcely visible. Warren increased his power atrifle, and the image was clear again. Atkill solemnly winked his left eye.
"The left," said Warren, slightly bored. "We call that field X-394-21. Itwon't stop this, though it will stop most radiation. Atkill, what are youdoing out here now?"
"Going after some stubborn people that won't let these friends of mine land."
"Why-they were once allowed to land and they tried to kill off their hosts.
That's not polite, so the Anlonians haven't asked 'em back. We are here tryingto help the Anlonians."
"Oh, that's too bad, Warren. You know we have two thousand ships-besides this.
You'd better hang off while we settle it, because that,one ship of yours can'tovercome my two thousand, and further, the Anlonians won't stand a chance now.
I see they haven't the Flame. I've detected only one little one on Anlo. Andthe old atomic engines won't stand the chance of a cake of ice in a star'scenter." 
"Call off your dogs, Atkill, and I'll show you how to get home. You'll neverfind out without calculating machines, which I see you haven't got," saidPutney quietly.
"I have a home back on the planet. I've left my friendsback there." 
"Friend, Atty, friend?" asked Putney. "His name, Ibelieve is Texas. You didn't leave the calculating machines there, becauseyou'd want those right under your wings, you know."
Atkill shrugged and grinned. "You're right, little man. That bluff didn'twork. But here's one that isn't bluff. In the next five or ten years I canmake calculating machines, and learn how to get home. In the meantime, I'vegot a darned nice time here, high Muckamuck stuff you know. I've always wantedto be a big frog in a little pond when I found I couldn't be the big frog inthe big pond. I like it here, and when the Bay-Raonii move out here,
everything will be fine."
"They won't," said Warren. "We're going to stop that." Atkill laughed, andshut off his radio. "I don't like that," said Putney.
"Do I?" asked Warren annoyed. He continued to watch Atkill, and signaled Thaento call the Anlonian fleet. The fleet was not entirely ready yet, but somequarter of the ships were ready, and started. Warren told Thaen the best planwould be to have them wait in the atmosphere for the others. The Bay-Raoniiwere coming only slowly now.
In ten minutes the entire fleet reported ready, and were waiting directlybelow the Bay-Raonii fleet.
"Good," said Putney. "Have them maneuver laboriously and act as much aspossible like only slightly modified atomic ships. Atkill knows we haven'tgiven them the Flame. He has evidently warned the Bay-Raonii to watch out,
however." 
The Bay-Raonii entered the atmosphere scarcely five minutes later. Theystarted for the Anlonian fleet, leaving Warren and Putney dangerously alone.
Atkill hung on the outskirts of the battle, and sent his rays down. Warren and 


Putney were kept busy at first stopping those rays.
'Terrestrian or not, he's going home!" snapped Warren finally. The Prometheuswithdrew suddenly the screen h had maintained to stop Atkill's rays, andturned everything it could muster into a driving, searing cosmic ray. Itstruck a screen that flamed into instantaneous fire half a mile in diameter. 
It was radiating so much pure heat that all the screens of the battling shipsbelow flamed in defense. But it stopped the cosmic.
Warren sent a flat wall of force at the ship with avelocity slightly less than that of light. It crashed into a sphere of forcearound Atkill's ship, and exploded into a blast of energy that half-fused therock of the planet below. Momentarily both fleets below were forced to give uptheir battle, while the giants above clashed, for their own defense screenswere required in full to protect against the waste energy of the greaterstruggle.
Warren's fingers were living lightning playing on an organ of cosmic forces.
He tried his beam of radio frequency energy, but it was stopped in a terrificcascade of flying energy; he shifted finally to the simplest means of attack.
He started all three self-powered bow reflectors on the radio-frequency energyand ran them straight up the spectrum. They reached infra-heat and slippedthrough Atkill's interference shield only to be bounced from a screen of purereflection that coated his ship itself. The waste heat that leaked through wasabsorbed by a cold field. The ship and its crew were temporarily blinded withlight. Ultra-violet light was absorbed by the metal a bit better than theinfra-heat, but not too well. Next came X-rays, and they rebounded from thereflection-screen. Gamma-rays followed with the same result.
Warren snapped out a curse. "We've got his beams tied in there while he'sdefending himself, but we can't open his shell."
Atkill opened it long enough to send out a stabbing cosmic that made the Flamein the power room grumble, and exploded the thin traces of the atmosphereabout them into a sea of ions and blue hydrogen flame. Then Atkill tried alittle heat. Their cold field had been out, but it went through that in asputter of blasted energy and struck the reflection screen Putney had beensetting up. Simultaneously, the leaking energy that got through the reflectionheated the metal walls through red heat so rapidly they were yellowish beforePutney set up another cold field in them and chilled them once more.
Atkill went through the same performance on his own account. Warren smiled,
and called to Korbes. "The repeater." A moment later faint shocks shook theship, and simultaneously a seething hell developed around Atkill's ship, ablasting electric fire that reached out mile-long arms of fire. Atkill's raysstopped abruptly. Dimly, through the various layers of fire, they could seethat his outer shield was being rapidly disintegrated. Theforce-wall did not like that blasting electric-field strain that was pullingit to pieces. Warren sent the hottest radio beam he could get down the channelof the terrific stream of atomic bombs the three-inch repeating rifle wassending. The lace-work in the screen became a distinct hole. The energyabsorption screen behind it was sputtering violently, and beyond that white-
hot metal began to drip off.
Atkill started to move. He went hurriedly at his best acceleration, and Warrenfollowed. But even he could easily outdo Atkill's best acceleration, since thePrometheus was equipped with the artificial gravity acceleration, which Atkilldid not know of, they could not use their repeater, since the shells wererapidly outdistanced. Warren set up a force shield in front of Atkill and putin plenty of power. Atkill simply blasted at it with all the energy he had,
and succeeded in breaking through.
But it slowed him down-and a shell caught up with him. The rear of his shipwas not completely protected, since his power was, necessarily, being used inblasting a hole in the force wall before him. A stream of some ten shells. The 


first eight or nine lashed out with their colossal electric and atomic fire,
with the result that a hole was cut through the force-screen protecting theship. The tenth got through successfully, weakened, but still there. It meltedoff about one third of Atkill's ship.
Atkill tried a last weapon. It was a half-ton block of iron mounted with aFlame-AND NO CONTROL! It came hurtling back toward the Prometheus, blazinghigher in a terrible crescendo of escaping energy. Wild, free Flame of utterdestruction of matter, releasing a stupendous flood of cosmic rays.
Atkill's crippled ship could still move. It moved quickly back toward Bay-
Raonii, leaving Warren the pleasant task of taming that half-ton of wildmaterial energy flame.
It was pulsing now, and had built up the fatal acceler-ttion field that warnedWarren it was preparing for an instantaneous complete release. Putney wasestablishing the quench field, which alone could handle it. But now, havingknowledge of the results, he did not attempt to wddenly and completely quenchit. He brought it under control first, letting it radiate at a stupendous ratein the pure heat range. Then he closed down his quench field. The Flame behindthem turned angrily orange and roaredin furious protest. The wild Flame before them turned violet and grew smaller.
As it shrank the ship's Flame grew white and the roaring ceased. In a minuteand a half there was only an incandescent cloud of iron vapor where the wildFlame had been. 
"Hmmm-like the glass lizard. He left a wiggling tail for us to chase while heescaped," said Warren. "We tickled him anyway, and I don't think he knows justwhat those bombs were. He's afraid to use that wild Flame unless he himself is 
in mortal danger. Don't blame him. Bet he thought we couldn't handle iteither." 
"Our fleet-" said Thaen anxiously. "If they are fighting those Flame ships-"
The Prometheus was already streaking back toward Anlo. "I don't know how badthey'll be, Thaen. Those ships weren't powered with Flames as great as mine,
and as the Flame of that other ship. Atkill set the control finer, and theBay-Raonii I'll bet don't know how to handle the thing yet.
"A gun firing powder can send a bullet with greater power than a bow and arrowcan develop. So a Flame ship can send more power than an atomic engine ship.
But-a small gun cannot hit as hard as a giant catapult with huge steelsprings. Those Flame ships have small Flames, and your ships-have giganticatomic flares." 
The fleets were in sight now. The two thousand ships of Bay-Raonii, armed withthe Flame, were rapidly overcoming the atomic powered Anlonian ships.
Then Warren got in the center of things. At Thaen's order every Anlonian shipdived suddenly and simultaneously under their greatest power toward Anlo. Whenall were somewhat below the Bay-Raonii Warren established a disc of pure forcebetween the two. The disc lasted for about ten seconds before the accumulation 
of Bay-Raonii ships blasted holes in it. In the meantime over one hundredgiant space-cruisers became crumpled metal cans. The Bay-Raonii, seeing theycould overcome at least one weapon of the Prometheus, started toward it Warrenreleased a flock of his terrible explosive shells. Nearly a hundred of themstruck targets. Perhaps two score succeeded in blasting down the defensivescreens by sheer concentration of explosively released energy. There is morepower in a quart of gasoline than in astick of dynamite-but the dynamite will do a lot more damage.
In the meantime Warren was trying out his five dif-> ferent projector rays.
The cosmic blasted holes in five ships that go in line with it. The green rayof atomic rot ate through a screen, but Warren saw instantly that the screenwas designed for it, and had simply fallen before superior power. The radioray, and the steel explosion ray acted exactly the same. All successful-butall battled by the correct screen. 


, This took scarcely five seconds, and in that time the Anlonian ships wereback. They fought easily on an equal if not superior footing with the Flame-
powered ships of the Bay-Raonii. But the Bay-Raonii ships had cosmics, forwhich the Anlonian ships had no defense save speed, and the thick press ofother ships. In return the Anlonian atomic bombs were deadly to the Bay-
Raonii. With Warren's help it would have been a fairly easy victory. But theBay-Raonii evidently got a signal from Atkill out in space. At least twohundred giant Bay-Raonii turned their enormously powerful heat rays on Warren.
Not the radio-heat which he could have fought with his screen, and no doubtconquered, but the plain infra-heat ray. The reflective force-field turnedabout 99.9 percent. The cold field would absorb an enormous amount of energy.
But when three hundred huge Flame-powered ships strike at once, even thoughthey be weakly powered for a Flame-ship, no force-mirror will suffice. Warrenhad to retreat hurriedly, with red-hot walls. The flow of energy was so greathe was not able to destroy sufficient enemy ships to relieve himself beforehis own metal walls would melt away.
He retired, to come back a moment later. Instantly three or four hundred moreships attacked him again. He retreated more hastily this time.
"That," said Putney, "is that! They've got to keep an eye on us, but they cankeep us away while they do things to the Anlonian fleet. Further, our wallsdon't like that. But-we can do something." Putney was setting up a field.
Presently he had it determined properly, and Warren smiled.
"What is that, Warren?" asked Thaen.
"It is a field which will disturb any Flame near it, acting as a dampingcontrol, cutting down their power. Ithas a greater effect than our own power would permit, since we are fightingtheir Flames in a highly efficient manner, while their Flames must fight backin an inefficient way. Let's try it. We can operate from some distance, andwhile it will cut down the Flames of the Bay-Raonii, it won't touch theAnlonian atomics." 
Warren nodded. Behind them suddenly the great Flame growled and a shrill whineof torn atoms whirled into it. The Flame went from pure white to deep orange;
it expanded nearly two feet, and a curious distortion of space about thembecame evident, as even space itself strained under the terrible, lashingforce of the giant generator.
The effect on the Bay-Raonii a hundred miles below was' evident. Their screenswhich had been colorless under the power of the Anlonian ships were suddenlyorange, their beams which had been stabbing out at the atomic-powered shipswere snapped off instantly, and all their power converted for use on the nowstraining screens. And-immediately the Anlonian fleet poured all their energyinto smashing the under-powered screens. That put a further strain on thehalf-smothered Flames. The Flame of the Prometheus shuddered unevenly,
groaning and wrenching at space.
"Mon-ye've burned two tons o' iron!" roared the Scot in the power room. "Yecan see the block move!" 
A steady orange glare was beating out of the power-room to the control room.
The Anlonian fleet was aiding the weakening process now-for half a dozen shipshad failed and fallen as flaming wreckage. Their Flames snuffed out in amoment, and relieved the strain on the Prometheus by so much.
Down below in a thousand Bay-Raonii ships the frightened, uncomprehending mensaw their two-foot Flames shrinking steadily, and turning from white toviolet, and watched their power failing rapidly. They had almost no beams outnow, and still their screens were turning to flaming, inefficientinterference; holes were appearing, and waste heat leaking through. Their coldfields that had been protecting them were horribly inefficient anyway, andnow, under-powered, were not absorbing energy as they should. All the shipswere heating. 


In desperation the Bay-Raonii flag-ship sent the signal to retreat. They couldat least outrun these Anlonian ships which had so suddenly acquired deadlypower.
They fled, gaining speed only slowly however, for the Anlonian fleet pursuedthem while pouring in their deadly rays, forcing the Bay-Raonii to maintaintheir own, power-drinking screens.
For two seconds Putney released the straining damping field, and threw thePrometheus' entire power into creating two sheets of force, and pushing themagainst each other in the center of the fleeing Bay-Raonii fleet1. Quintillions 
of kilowatts of energy flamed into instantaneous heat radiation. Thesurface of the planet 150 miles below flared red-hot to the horizon-and nearlya third of the Bay-Raonii ships turned white-hot and flowed together in moltenglobules. The Anlonian fleet, some five miles behind, had put up screens atThaen's order, and yet two of them had flared dull red. Almost instantlyWarren cut off his flaring force-walls and restored the damping field. TheBay-Raonii were taking no more chances. They dropped half their fields,
released the energy-wasting cold field, and fled under all the accelerationthey could stand. They were out of accurate or effective beam range in tenseconds, fleeing wildly.
13 
"We won, Thaen, but it was a costly victory, and a near defeat. You must havethe Flame now." 
Thaen nodded grimly. "We must, Warren. Who was the other Earth-man?"
"Atkill. A scientist of Earth who once before attempted to steal my inventionfrom me, failed, and finally proved himself a man, even though not quite amoral man. He saved his country, and sacrificed himself. He was in a battle,
and was thrown through to your world-your system, by the Flame of one of theships he fought."
"Then he knows all the weapons you know, and will equip the Bay-Raoniiaccordingly?"
"Not everything we know." Putney shook his head. "And he has no calculatingmachines to help him. But therein lies our greatest advantage, Ran. We've gotto get something absolutely new, even to us."
"So's he," Warren replied.
"Well-let's get to work. I have an idea for getting real power. Our greatesttrouble is that we can't run that Flame as fast as it wants to go. We have tokeep it half smothered. Isn't there some way we can let it run completely wildfor as long as we want it to, and still direct the energies it releases?
Perhaps the best way to stop it after it has run wild a while would be tooverload it and quench it in the X-49 field then."
Warren grunted. "I can picture you. You can't control the energy it releases.
How would you send it anywhere -you couldn't direct it."
"We'd not make the ship like this one-I'm thinking of a new ship, Ran. We'dhave a couple dozen major flames. One for a driving engine, like our presentFlame. That would also take care of the maintenance operations such as theordinary force-field lock in the atoms of the walls that make them meteorproof, the air and light, that type of work, and our accelerationcompensation. It would be a normal flame like our present one. The one semi-
controlled flame to act as our screening. It would be easy to get it to throwa perfectly spherical field ofany of the types we know. Then-one or two dozen projector flames. We couldhave semi-controlled flames mounted for projectors. Normally they'd be justordinary fully controlled flames, but when we wanted we could release themfrom control completely, yet keep them from running completely wild andconsuming the ship by using power from our third main flame to direct their,
operations. So load them that they wouldn't have power to completely escapecontrol-along development 586 that would be. That would give us at least 


10,000 times our present maximum. They'd be a little slow starting, naturally,
but once started they'd burn iron like a fire burns magnesium tape. And .Godhelp what got in the way." "Ummm-we'll have to do some calculation." They did.
Within a day they saw it was possible, and the forces of Anlo were turned tobuilding the monster ship they would need. It was to be nearly two thousandfeet long, so big and so lightly built that speed might be made, that wouldmake it incapable of supporting itself entirely; permanent Flames were 
built into its very structure, Flames that created a force-field withinthe metal of the walls and beams and made them stronger than any metal couldever have been. Without them, the great structure could not have borne its ownenormous weight on a planet. With them, nothing less than a planet falling onit could crush it. 
Week after week the Terrestrians worked. And the Anlonian workmen built not 
only this giant ship, but hundred of replicas of the Prometheus, save for thespeed device, which would have enabled them to exceed the speed of light, forthat Thaen's men could not understand, and could not reproduce even with themodel before them. It was beyond the power of their minds to comprehend.
In building the great new ship, Warren and Putney and the Terrestrian crew hadto install the necessary apparatus for this work. But most of the apparatuswas built, installed, and set up by the Anlonians. One other thing Thaenrefused to handle, and that was the wonderfully delicate apparatus that wouldcontrol the half-mad Flames of the projector.
Week followed week, and no sign came from the Bay-Raonii. When Warreninstalled the tremendously more powerful penetrating television apparatus, hefound that 
while he could reach to the surface of Thinal-Ren itself, the white-hot massof boiling matter that circled the great sun at a distance of barely half abillion miles, and could look across 180,000,000,000 miles of space to Quaren-
Ren, the third planet in, the nearest planet, Bay-Raonii always shied awayfrom his apparatus in some way. Atkill had learned how to deflect the device.
Korbes brought them news one day. He had been working with the astronomers ofAnlo, and had learned that they were convinced that Paarool, the giant classscA-4, the huge star that glowed like a second sun to this world only three-
quarters of a light year away, was circled by planets. He had set up someapparatus from the Prometheus far from any of the cities, and had beenprojecting outward for days a gigantic detector field. The dimensions of thefield and its characteristics had finally been measured with the minutestcare, when it covered an area whose diameter was nearly a light-month. Thensmaller fields were set up, and their dimensions carefully determined, andredetermined when all the effects of the planets of the system were known, andthe irregularities caused by the works of the Bay-Raonii and the Anlonians inparticular were accounted for. The result was that they knew now that at leastfive major planets revolved about Paarool, and further, that one was inhabitedby a highly advanced race, for their instruments had shown powerful force-
field effects that could not be natural. The sun itself, of course, causedsome effects, but these could be determined fairly easily by using a farsmaller field, one not sensitive to the minute disturbances of the artificialforce-fields. 
"That's not all," Korbes had finished. "They also show that-somebody orsomething is coming! Artificial force-fields of varying strength, and of thosepeculiar dimensions typical of Flames, are being set up somewhere betweenPaarool and us, and they are coming toward us at a tremendous speed, near thatof light!"
Thaen looked unhappy. "Let us hope they are friendly," he said at last.
"We'll know in about one raeth," said Korbes. "They are not far off now."
After a pause he added, "There must be nearly 1000 ships-and they are hugeships to affect the field from that distance!" 


Thaen looked at his friends in despair. "No friend 
comes to greet us with a thousand gigantic ships such as these must be."
Putney looked mystified, and he seemed to be thinking intently. "That race haslived in this space, and near this star for thousands of generations. Theyhave built up a science that discovered the Flame. They know all about thevariable status of this star, must have investigated it as intensely as you,
probably more intensely. They have the power of the Flame to aid them inunderstanding the workings of the forces within the star, and you have not hadit. Their detector fields told them long ago that your planets were here,
probably that your people were here, for your atomic engines produce fields offorce measure-able from that distance if a spaceship observatory is used asthe base for a detector screen fifty billion miles across. They must know thatwe are here with Flames by now-no, wait, the strains travel only with thespeed of light.
"Knowing this is a variable star, and knowing what it consists of, they knowit will explode. They are not coming to conquer your planets. They would notwant to. Why they are coming I do not know. It may well be they are coming tomake sure you don't try to conquer theirs."
"Whatever may be their purpose, Putney, they are just one more factor throwninto our already overcrowded battle front," groaned Thaen. "New science- newweapons-"
"Sorry, Thaen-we have more to give you too. I think I know all the weaponsAtkill can have, but he may develop more. I made a fairly thorough examinationof his ship, but the worst of it is that the power-room, where the apparatuswould be, was absolutely unreach-able. The Flame acted as a deflecting force."
"And we have some more weapons for you. I'm going to give you everything theold Prometheus had. Some of the things we have now you couldn't run. Not powerenough."
Thaen smiled slightly. "At any rate the Bay-Raonii will get an unpleasantsurprise!"
As a matter of fact, the Bay-Raonii had gotten an unpleasant and angeringsurprise last time. They had been driven off with terrific losses. Theirtremendously powerful ships, more powerful than anything the^ hadever dreamt of had been unable to defeat the suddenly reinforced Anlonianfleet. Further, Atkill, the Atkill, had told them that Anlo had no Flamefleet-but they had certainly shown power enough for it and the terrible bombsthey had had-
Atkill saw, even as he fled back to Bay-Raonii that he would have to actinstantly and with decision. The Bay-Raonii were not going to respect theirsuper-human for long if he came back with a badly crippled ship, and theirfleet came in badly beaten. He watched anxiously as he fled, and saw thatWarren and Putney had decidedly done things to the Flame power of his ship.
But at that moment he was more interested in analyzing the multitude of forcesat work. He retired hastily about ten million miles, stopped, set up adetector screen, and began analysis work while his crew busied themselvesfixing up the leaking ship. Unfortunately, he learned only two things. One wasthe dimensions and nature of the damping field Warren was using. That was soterrifically powerful that even at a distance of ten million miles it wasnoticably affecting his own Flames. Further he learned the peculiar twist-
field Warren had developed which turned any field through ninety degrees ofspace-time, and changed its entire nature. The result was evident, but nofurther results were. Warren's two fields simply smashed out every other typeof field around, save for the momentary burst of terrific electric fields withhints of a magnetic nature. His instruments wouldn't stand the strain of adetector field more than three centimeters in diameter, so his energy pickupwas small, so small he could not analyze accurately.
"Hmmm-the boy is, as I have said, clever. Arty, my lad, calculators are in 


order. Evidently those are atomic bombs of some sort. They give off tremendousenergy too -and they don't stop easily. They went through that energyabsorption field of mine and just wiped it out till it wasn't. Now what mightthey be? I don't know- but I can guess."
Atkill stopped where he was, and started to work. With his little turban-
wrapped Flame he transmuted some scrap metal to aluminum and lithium, andejected about a pound of the mixture. Then with his Flame in the ship, hestarted the reaction. As he expected, he got a terrific burst of free flamingatomic energy.
"That," he said to himself, "would certainly do the trick-and several more forthat matter. 
"Now I wonder-could something else of an opposite nature be made?"
It took him nearly all the rest of the trip back to Bay-Raonii to work out thesystem of manufacture for his new idea, but eventually he got about half apound of something that was absolutely black, the blackness of utternonreflection-an4 weirdly, everything within two feet of it was darkened, andthings beyond it were distorted in their outlines.
He threw it out into space, and pushed a small tumbler. It was floating abouta mile away, visible only as blackness against the disc of Bay-Raonii. Theywere but half a million miles from the planet now. As he pushed the tumbler aray of stupendous energy lashed out at the sheet of blackness. The blackirregular sheet suddenly spun crazily away, and end over. Atkill caught itbetween some force planes, and held it. Nearly ten billion horsepower lashedat it, driving stupendous energy into it. Nothing whatsoever seemed to happen.
For minutes he continued to burn it with his ray of concentrated destructionand nothing happened. He shifted to a cosmic. Nothing happened. He starteddown through the scale, and ended with long hertzian waves. Nothing whatsoeverseemed to have happened.
He threw one of his new lithium-aluminum bombs at it, and set that off. Therewas a slight glow of dull red light. And the sheet of blackness was stillthere! 
Atkill smiled like a contented cat and turned the most powerful ray of pureinfra-heat he could get into it. He continued that for nearly five minutes,
and at last a very faint glow began to appear. Instantly Atkill shut off hisray and turned visible light of a much lower intensity into it. It remainedabsolutely black. Minute after minute passed, then quite abruptly it turnedgrey. Atkill snapped off his ray. With astonishing rapidity the blacknessfaded through grey to a bright metallic glint, remained bright all over withshifting, whirling colors for an instant-then blasted suddenly with astupendous violet flare of light that rocked the half-wrecked spaceship, andflared at the screens with a terrific shock. The screens were out, and theFlame in the ship shuddered once with a terrific thump.
Atkill looked startled for a moment, then his face settled to a look ofthought. "That is not so good. As protective layer it would be fine-till itsoaked up all it would hold. Well-"
The returning fleet was met sadly. Atkill was already back in the Dome. TheEmperor, and various commanders of ships came to him there, angrily demandingexplanations.
"Among the Gods," said Atkill slowly, "there are great Gods and lesser Gods,
but for that they are yet gods, and greater than Man. I am great in my ownworld. I am so far greater than you that you do not understand the mechanism Imake for you. But in my own world there was one who was as great as I. Wequarreled. Through his vast powers he threw me and my friend from that worldbeyond what you know as the end of nothing, to this place. He thought he. haddestroyed me forever, but I saved myself to this extent: he hoped I should bedestroyed as the iron that feeds the Eternal Flame. I was not. By forces hedid not then know, I was able to escape to this space. For a year he believed 


he had destroyed me forever. In that time I have gathered strength to returnand defeat him. Now he has followed me here. He has helped the Anlonians.
"You saw his ship attack me. He again tried to crush me, destroy me. This timeI was stronger than before, though still he was somewhat the greater, forthough he destroyed part of my ship, he did not harm me seriously, and he didnot force me into that otherness. And I have learned another of his secrets. 
Bring me a small Eternal Flame."
A man hastened out, to retufrr in a few minutes with a small Flame mounted ona little block of iron protruding from a single gigantic crystal of ruby thatAtkill had made for the Emperor.
Atkill looked at it and nodded. "That is good. Put it on the stand." He turnedto the assembled Bay-Raonii leaders. They were less angry now, somewhat morethoroughly awed. A battle of the Gods! Their God and the God of the Anlonians!
"I have learned to quench the Eternal Flame-see!" Atkill stood upright, hiseyes staring at the little pinpoint of white flame over the gigantic ruby. Anaura of faint violet light built up about his head as his brows drewtogether, and his chest heaved. His breath came harshly (to cover the slightsound of the straining Flame within his turban) and his cheeks paled. The auraof violet light intensified; it seemed to lengthen from him toward the littleFlame, and grew reddish, while suddenly the tiny Flame was mounting throughwhite to blue-white, to blue-violet-violet-and with a sudden sobbing wrench ofspace, it was gone!
The Bay-Raonii stood suddenly upright as the blue glow appeared about AtkilFshead, then disappeared as he slumped suddenly in his seat.
"It is done. I can make apparatus which will do much the same thing. That iswhy the power of your ships failed you.
"I said the Anlonians had no Flames, but you, fools, say they must have. Theirpower was terrific? It was. Too great for atomic engines to produce, forapparatus to handle? Such as you know, yes. This War-Ran, the Great One whoopposes me always, did not give them the Flame because he knew something elsethat approached it in power.
"He felt the Anlos not fit for it. He gave them a greater atomic power thanever you dreamt of. You have not the metal whose number on the atomic table isthree have you? Neither has Anlo. But War-Ran could make it-as I can-and hedid, and with it he made a new atomic engine that gives terrific electricpower instead of more heat.
"Those terrible bombs-bombs so powerful they succeeded in penetrating to me,
are made of this new atomic power, which I will give you.
"But I will give you something else he has never thought of. It is a substancethrough which no ray can go, no energy can penetrate. It will soak up energyas a sponge soaks water.
"Each ship shall be coated with it, and no ray, even such rays as the EternalFlame generates, can penetrate.
"But this I must tell you: it will not stop the damping energy which chills tolifelessness the Eternal Flame. It will not stop magnetic energy, and it willnot stop electric energy. But it will soak them up if they appear as heat"You can coat your ships with this. See!"
And he demonstrated to them the terrific absorbing qualities of his newblackness. 
And while all Anlo strained to build giant Flame ships, Bay-Raonii builtsimilar great Flame ships, freed now, however, of the restrictions Atkill hadimposed on their Flames, and-their outer walls were solid sheets of theutterly black energy sponge. They would need no screens to protect againstmost of the rays!
That meant that while they could drive rays at the Anlonian ships, they neednot worry about their own defense-for their ships were invulnerable!
The sponge material was made of iron-but iron that had been treated in a 


peculiar type of Flame. The Flame released the energy of the iron not as in anordinary Flame, but it worked on all the iron. When the iron had been abouttwo thirds destroyed, the Flame was quenched. The remaining iron was alsothere-but yet not all there. It was a skeleton of iron atoms from which mostof the energy had been extracted. Any entering energy was simply soaked up torestore the iron to true iron once more-and the instant the entire atom was 
complete, the artificially strained and tortured iron atom released all itsterrific energy. As Atkill had seen. To protect against this happening theships were being coated with two-inch shells of this weird material. None ofit became saturated until all was, so they had hundreds of tons in all to beconverted before any would fail. In the meantime they were free to use alltheir power for deadly rays, while the Anlonian ships divided theirs, andfinally would be forced to use all theirs in defending themselves. Then -
Atkill expected that a steady rain of his huge lithium-aluminum bombs wouldbreak the walls of force protecting the Anlo ships!
"Only if their power is vastly greater than ours, need ye fear, for otherwisein the end we will prevail. Under no circumstances can you lose greatly, onlyanother retreat may be necessary.
"And with the vastly more powerful Flame your ships are now equipped with, youwill easily overcome any atomic ships that may attack. As soon as your newfleet is ready, we must attack," Atkill had said.
He left them to the work of reconstructing their ships, and his, while hecalculated. He had glimpsed something else-and finally he saw the derivationin the equationshis crude machines had given him that he must follow. It took a week of almostcontinuous work to derive the equation, and hours to convert it to terms hisapparatus could handle. In the end he used the little flame hi his turban-andsuddenly he was wrapped in a dense 'cloud of utter blackness that extendedaround him in a sphere. And when Texas turned one of the great projectors ofhis ship on him, even then he was protected, for the terrible ray seemed tobore harmlessly into the blackness and vanish. It was a strange field thatconcentrated all energy entering it on the spot at its center where rested ahalf-pound block of the partly disintegrated iron, and all energy was absorbedharmlessly by it.
In his ship the half-pound block was replaced by a huge ingot that had weighednearly fifty tons. Nothing he felt, would ever reach him now.
14 
Warren looked down on the new ship that Thaen had had constructed for him. Ithad been built in a special pocket of the great entrance tunnel, for it wastoo large for any hangar in the city.
"It is finished-all we can do," said Thaen. "I have been working on it too,
with my men. We have everything installed. And-several new pieces ofapparatus. We have borrowed something from your strange ball-lightning device,
Thaen, and we have something now that will be very unpleasant. We areprepared. I am going to test it today."
"I will accompany you, as you asked," said Thaen. Together the two men enteredthe huge ship. The control room was in the exact center of the ship. There wasa huge cubical space here, and at the center of the cube floated the controlcompartment. It was supported on solid planes and bars of force, and half adozen great snaky cables led from it to the apparatus ranged around thegigantic power room.
No single Flame dominated this room. There were four Flames. One burnedquietly now above them on a gigantic ingot weighing close to a hundred tons.
Automatic forces would keep a steady supply of those gigantic blocks ofenergy, while others would feed fifty-ton ingots to the three smaller Flameson the floor of the room below them. 
The control room was equipped only with television devices. No direct sight to 


the outside was possible-but if one set of apparatus was burned out there werea dozen more to take up the load.
Putney was in the control room now, the Scottish engineer with him.
"Okay, Mac-Ran's here. Go on below and watch over your pets-they are a bitless tame now, you know." "Aye. That they are." "Ready, Putt?" asked Warren.
"All set-all the Flames started. Everything set for operation. Going to Il-
Anlo?" 
"That's-yes, that's moon five, isn't it? That's what I was thinking."
"Good enough. Take over."
Warren seated himself at the vastly greater control board, and Putney seatedhimself beside his friend, Warren glanced over the instruments swiftly andgingerly applied the power. The walls outside moved slowly across thetelevision screen. There were seven screens so arranged that Warren could seewhat was happening exactly as though he were actually looking through glasswindows. "She's sensitive," he said. The ship suddenly shot forward, turnedabruptly, and rose rocket-like through the open tube to free air outside.
The sun was shining with blighting blue light; it was at a maximum and atnoon, but it sank swiftly as Warren headed his gigantic ship out to Il-Anlo.
Presently the little moon appeared before them, suddenly expanded swiftly, anda soft hum came from below. As quickly it whirled to a side port, then wassuddenly shrinking in the rear-vision screen. It was a point of light inseconds as one of the great Flames roared angry protest to the terrificacceleration. They were accelerating under about fifty thousand earthgravities-yet no one could feel it here in the force-shielded control room.
Abruptly the moon stopped shrinking, whirled crazily, and was before them, andexpanding. In fifteen seconds they were cruising gently over the surface ofthe tiny planet-scarcely 100 miles in diameter.
"Going up the scale on projector 27," said Warren. He started in long radio,
and the rock below was suddenly a boiling inferno. The incandescence spread toa white-hot pool ten miles across hi five seconds, and Warren snapped off theprojector.
"That," he said softly, "was one tenth power. I'm trying the full power ofprojector one on Cosmic. One is our biggest gun." His flying fingers set upthree protective screens, lest rebound rays damage them.
Then he threw a tumbler, and simultaneously pushed a little slide to theextreme end position. He just barely reached the end before he snapped itback. The television screen had flared violet and winked out hi blackness. The 
side screens showed a terrific glare and a rushing cloud of bright violet gas.
Warren retreated half a million miles and set up a new television sender bytouching a stud.
A globe of blue-violet gas was expanding swiftly in all directions, some twohundred miles in diameter now. It was the remains of the moon. Thaen gasped,
Warren whistled softly, and Putney nodded gently. He looked at a dial beforehim. "Five pounds of iron, Warren. I expected that. Fix it up again."
Warren grinned, and set his new machine to work. Humming whines came from theFlames beneath and around them as a great wall of force condensed around themoon-nearly three hundred miles in diameter now. It was cooling swiftly bothby reason of its enormous radiation and because of its expansion. Warrencooled it even more swiftly creating a cold field that sucked out the energyof the five pounds of iron he had thrown into it. In ten minutes the moon wasa perfect sphere of mathematical regularity, and at a temperature of absolutezero. Thirty pounds of iron had been consumed.
"Let's make it look like a normal moon," said Warren. A slowly reaching fingerof green touched it, and a bright green light flared from it, and spread likea foul disease across the surface. It lasted perhaps three minutes, and agreat cavity of dust was there. The "Anlo" as the ship had been named, rockedto a sudden explosion as a single hundred-pound atomic bomb smashed toward the 


moon. A titanic flare raised half the surface to a red temperature.
"That's the old ones-try the new ones." Twelve hours later the Anlo settledback in the berth under perfect, gentle control, and with shining eyes Thaenstepped from her to report to the council-
The council also had something to report. A scout ship Anlo had sent out-thefirst they had ever been able to send out-had vanished suddenly that day in asingle sudden sparkling of light as reported by the television screen. And ithad been a Flame ship!
"That means an invasion is on its way," said Putney slowly. "I suggest weprepare. Evidently both sides have been preparing to fight with the utmostspeed. Bay-Raonii had to rebuild her fleet, but had hundreds of new craft totrain her new men. We had to build new ships, and train men. Apparently wehave been successful at least in equaling their speed."
"They were powerful last time, thanks to the AtkilLWhat if they now have even more?" asked Paernol, the Coordinator of Anlo.
"What indeed?" Putney shrugged. "There is nothing to be done now. I do notthink they have, for we have calculating machines, which are, Paernol, avaster weapon than any ray or any Flame, for from them came the Flame and allrays. And Atkill has none."
But Atkill did have some, crude to be sure, but sufficient for his purpose.
They had shown him one last trick-Far in the night of space, the probingtelevision of the Anlo found the Bay-Raonii fleet. It d'd not take long tofind that every ship was powered with the greitest possible Flame, and thatthey were all equipned with some field of force that stopped the televisiondead at their jet-black outer coating. But it was evident that they too wererelying on indirect television viewing now, for no windows or ports of anynature broke the smooth, black walls, save for tiny lens-holes.
AtkilFs greater ship was equipped with ports and windows, as well astelevision lenses, and there were black metal shutters hung before them. Hiswalls too were impervious to the probing beam.
Putney looked worried. "I don't like that, Ran. There isn't the effect of thedeflecting field there. It looks more as though that wall were opaque to thisbeam, and yet we know that no matter can be opaque to it!" "I want to go outthere and make some tests." The Anlo was already out of the atmosphere now, onits way toward the fleet. The Anlonian ships were waiting back in theatmosphere, where defensive screens were more effective. Warren was forced toparallel the Biy-Raonii and Atkill's ship at a distance of ten million miles.
Nearer he did not dare to go, lest Atkill throw out detector-deflectors andprevent his study.
Something seemed to be preventing it anyway. Time and again Putney built up aminute, delicate field and maneuvered it toward one of the Bay-Raonii, andtime after time it entered the wall unharmed, but the instant he tried tochange the field in any way to get useful readings, the entire field collapsedinstantly and completely. More and more worried, he turned to Warren. Warrenwas grinning, watching with entranced interest.
"The old son of a gun! That boy is good. He's gotsomething I never thought of-and will it raise hob for Thaen's boys! Don't yousee what that is? It's a sort of half-destroyed matter that can re-absorb allthe energy it's lost. Remember that for the last weeks Bay-Raonii has beendeluging Anlo with tremendous rays, rays that were absolutely useless andperfectly ineffectual-representing thousands of tons of iron, and we wonderedwhy they were using them, and not making tight, mildly annoying rays thatwould have required defense? They've been throwing off energy and that was howthey got rid of it. That half-destroyed iron will drink energy like spaceitself, till it's all rebuilt. Then of course-of-mmmmmm-I'll be, it blows upall the energy!"
Warren turned sudenly to his notebook, and began reading rapidly and 


carefully. Finally he reached out a hand blindly to a stud, and threw it over.
"Thaen-Thaen- Thaen-" 
"Thaen speaking,"
"All the ships have those big accumulator stacks they used with atomic enginesstill in place, haven't they?"
"Yes-I believe so. It wasn't considered necessary to remove them."
"Listen carefully, and take this data down. Field 589-634. X-754, Y-34-92-1,
Z-583-21, T-4 to T-27. Have every ship set that up in spherical shell aboutthem, by means of the C5 auxiliary Flame. With the C6 auxiliary set up field935-B8. You know that one. Place tap apparatus from the atomic generators inposition to collect and feed power to the accumulator banks. That field willprotect you against any radiated energy attack so long as the accumulatorswill take it, and that would be about fifteen seconds if no load is put onthem. On the other hand, if you load them with the various electrical devicesyou have for everything you can, you'll find the first field will absorb anyradiated energy attacking, and will release it inside the ship-directly in theFlame that makes it-as an oscillating electric field. The second field willconvert it to magnetic to rectify it, and give it off as direct current your-
Good Lord! Putt-listen-how about using only that first field, and tapping itwith the magnetic semi-inverter field, and then re-inverting that! You'd getyour oscillating electric field split into two halves, then back again, andwould arrive just half-phase off-and at the same center! Result: two brightlights make a great darkness! 
Within wide limits, it would require very little power, because the ray-
energy would kill itself!
"Thaen-get that? Set up that first field in your A-2 Flame. Your A-l you needfor driving and acceleration compensation. Your A-2 can handle that collectorfield. That keeps both your main Flames busy. Then you have six class BFlames. You had best use B-l for the field I'm giving you now-"
Rapidly the men of Thaen's fleet were setting up the field Warren called for.
One of the greatest advantages of the Flame ships was that the Flame requiredonly control apparatus of one sort to perform any desired function in therealm of space-fields. It was the knowledge of these space fields, and whatcontrol would produce them, that hid the complete knowledge of the Flame.
Warren was himself setting up such a control field, but he was using two classscA flames, two of those half-tamed Flames, and felt no ray could penetrate.
"Ran-AtkilPs been listening to you," said Putney presently.
"Uh-hu-expected that. That's not helping him any, just telling him we have ameans of defeating any ray he sends before it starts, and that we have his ownabsorbing material beaten for protective power. Ours won't get soaked andexplode."
"But you gave him hints, even if he doesn't know your control code."
Warren shrugged. "Had to tell Thaen."
The Bay-Raonii fleet had turned slightly, and was heading for Warren. Heestimated a fleet of no less than three thousand huge ships nearly onethousand feet long! The Flame had certainly been at work in constructing thosemonsters. Detector fields could pick up little sign of activity outside thewalls of absorbing material, but from the windows of AtkilFs ship more signswere detectable. At-kilFs machine at least carried ten full-powered Flames.
"Thank you, but I do not mind running just now," said Warren firmly, puttingthe Anlo into reverse, so that she moved away from the Bay-Raonii andmaintained their separation. The Bay-Raonii came on steadily. "We may have tenthousand times the power we had," said Warren, "but that doesn't say we canfight a couple hundred of those babies."
The radio buzzed sharply, and automatically switcheditself on. "Warren-Warren-we are coming out into space since our screeningneed no longer worry us. These weapons are too great to use near a planet in 


safety."
The Anlonian fleet was shooting swiftly out toward the Bay-Raonii-and using aterrific acceleration. They would arrive in a matter of minutes. The Bay-
Raonii were shifting about wildly into battle order, and several scoresuddenly leapt forward under what must have been a crushing acceleration tocome to grips with the Anlo. Atkill was not among them. He refrainedtemporarily! Warren retreated easily in his acceleration-compensated ship, andin doing so laid a few hundred hundred-pound atomic bombs equipped with asimple rocket drive that would drive them toward any force screen in theneighborhood. As a second line of unpleasantness he dropped several hundredfifty-pound material energy Flame bombs that would automatically escapecontrol and become centers of unbearable attraction at the moment a force 
screen touched them. 
The Bay-Raonii ran into the first line of defense, and an intolerable sheet ofatomic flame suddenly sprang up as the protective force-screens met them athead-long speed. The bombs, their concentrated energy suddenly released, atehuge holes in the screens; the great ships plowed into them-and the bombs wentout like snuffed candles, leaving only a faint murkly glow on the wall of theships.
"Jumping orbits-what stuff that energy sponges it! It soaked up those atomicbombs like thirsty sand drinking water! Let's see what happens when-ah!" Thefirst of the Flame bombs had felt the touch of a force-plane, and went off.
Instantly the entire Bay-Raonii fleet heeled sharply, the Anlo even stoppedabruptly and reversed its motion. No tangible acceleration was produced, foreverything was affected similarly, men and machines alike. For perhaps a tenthof a second the acceleration endured, before a ship hit the bomb. The bombwent out as quickly and as quietly as the atomic bomb; only a dull blue glowflowed over the wall of the ship that struck it. Instantly it seemed half adozen more bombs started action. 
Some half dozen ships were wrecked slightly by their mutual collisions, thenno more bombs went off. "Quench field killed 'em," said Putney. "He's learnedthat." 
Warren shifted in his seat. "A bit of action, brothers."
The Anlo darted toward the leading Bay-Raonii under her full acceleration, andwas among them in an instant. The force"plane that had attempted to stop herhad flared in one instantaneous coruscating flame of light, and vanished asthe half wild Flame in the Anlo gave a single heavy thump that shook space,
then quieted.
Warren started with ten cosmic rays concentrated on one small spot of oneship. All the near hundred Bay-Raonii had instantly poured their entire powerinto him, with the result that their rays died abruptly some two hundred feetfrom the walls of his ship, and the screen Flame whined slightly. The energyof the rays was fighting itself now.
The ten cosmic projectors each consumed about thirty pounds of iron a second,
a total of three hundred pounds of metal. Now there was one effect Atkill hadforgotten in,his calculation of the resistance of his absorbing material, forsuch rays as Warren was using were not beyond the power of a big ship usingnormal controlled Flames. And this was the fact that cosmic rays have mass,
real mass, and when three hundred pounds of cosmic rays, traveling at 186,000miles a second strike any wall-though that wall may be able to drink up theenergy-it must take care of the momentum! No material could withstand the blowof those rays, rays like solid streams of liquid. The projectors on the Anlowere anchored by force planes and bars. The walls of the Bay-Raonii werepunctured as though by a white-hot needle. A hole appeared as though by magic,
and a terrific flood of cosmic rays entered the ship, battered for an instantof time at the opposite wall, and went out-leaving a white-hot wreck wrappedin a shell of utterly black, utterly absorbing half destroyed matter. 


Warren smiled firmly, and turned his terrible pencil of rays on another Bay-
Raonii. The second ship crumpled like the first. Two more followed it-and thenAtkill appeared, while the Bay-Raonii retreated hastily.
Warren turned his terrific knife on Atkill's ship. Nothing happened, save thatthe rays disappeared somewhere between the two ships, and the attacked shiplumbered away gently. She was feeling that terrific push, but standing up toit. 
"He doesn't depend on his walls," said Warren.
Atkill tried a few Cosmics on Warren. He sent over 
fifteen pencil-rays, which were promptly absorbed and defeated by their ownpowers. He tried half a dozen material energy bombs. Warren smiled dreamily asthe first struck, and ate at a force screen.
He pushed a stud and something like a deformed sphere grew suddenly on theside of the Anlo. It moved outward with deceptive appearance of slowness, andas it moved two long, pale-blue arms reached out and enveloped the nearestfour or five Flame bombs-and the bombs were gone, and the strange deep-bluething moved on-toward Atkill. It reached out for his ship; it felt the screenthat had drunk in the energy of the cosmic rays; and ultra thin streamerreached out, seeming to seep through the screen while a pale violet lightemanated from it constantly.
Atkill had sat frozen in amazement. With a cry he gave an order, and aninstant later a thudding echoed through the ship. A stream of black lumpsstruck into that weird blue thing, and they drank in its blue life-and itdied. Half a dozen more were starting, and a terrific solid bar from alltwenty of the Anlo's projectors. It was a solid bar of ultra-violet heatenergy. It faded out abruptly ten feet from the wall of Atkill's ship, butthere was a hazy mist of light for ten feet about it that outlined the thinfilm of the screen. 
Almost simultaneously from Atkill's ship there came a crushing force-wall thatclosed suddenly on the Anlo. It crushed down, and smashed through the Anlo'sgreat force-screen as though it were a tissue paper wrapping. It crashed intothe actual wall of the ship itself, and the two hundred and eighty-fiveseparate Flames that locked the atoms of the metal wall immovably suddenlyshrilled menacingly, and turned a deep red. An awful wall of pure energy wasflaming outward where the two forces conflicted.
Automatically and instantly the protecting, energy-absorbing field had rushedin to drink out the waste energy and to cool the metal. In the infinitesimalfraction of an instant before it acted, the metal walls became invisible, savefor a very dull violet glow. There was an inner wall of metal, and this toobecame white-hot, although the cold field was maintained in it. The third andinnermost wall of metal was smoking; the men felt a sudden beating wave ofheat. And Warren acted. He sent out a field of 
force that would break down the control of any force-wall, cut it off. It wasa circular disc a mile across, and instantly it was a mass of flame, as theawful vice of force released its hold on the Anlo, and she quieted once moreas screaming Flames died down. His fingers like the pistons of some marvelousengine, Warren set up the outer force-screen, and put one of the scA classflames behind it. Then he released his failing control damping field, andAtkill's force instantly attempted to return. It failed this time. Warren'sface was pale as he adjusted a tiny dial off to one side. As a projector up onthe front of the ship strained at its mooring forces, a driving beam shot outthat devoured the ironjhat fed into it at a rate nearly a hundred times asgreat as before. It was increasing. Warren cut back the dial to zero. The beamfluctuated slightly, and increased once more.
The Flame that ran it was completely wild! In an instant Warren had cut offits fuels supply, and at the present rate the 100-pound bar of iron it fed onwas exhausted in a fifth of a second. 


"His power increased till it easily equaled ours!" said Putney.
"We're feeding him!" gasped Warren. "The sweetest little thing yet. I make himstop his own rays-and he turns mine around and sends 'em back with hiscompliments! Let's try forces-"
The projectors snapped off. The load on Warren's force screen fell topractically nothing, scarcely more than a few thousand tons to the squareinch. Warren ran the force screen back by sending out one of his own. Hestarted closing his in. At ten feet from Atkill's ship the screen stoppeddead, and Warren failed to push it nearer. But Atkill suddenly blossomed forthwith a projected magnetic oscillation that passed Warren's screen because itwas not radiation. It heated the walls with tremendous speed, and Warrenpulled his force shell off with burned fingers.
"That's a better screen than we've got!" said Warren. "I'll have to-"
A great green snake, some two feet- in diameter, and a thousand feet longissued from the Anlo like smoke coming out of a hole. It writhed gently, andundulated a moment before it began to break up in a thousand little sections,
each about ten feet long, and a few inches thick.
Each was headed by a speck of white light, and each began to glow faintly.
They all started rapidly toward Atkill's ship. They fluoresced slightly whenthey struck Atkill's screen, and stiffened into rigidity-but they wentthrough. Like a flock of pigeons alighting, they nestled on Atkill's ship-andsank into the metal. Instantly the deadly green atomic rot set in where theywere, and spread.
Another snake had issued from the Anlo. Atkill was busy trying to stop theatomic rot the first had started, by adjusting his screen to work in thewalls. The atomic rot screen was a sphere, and the ship was not. He could notreach all parts at once. The second crop of the green terrors was on its way,
and Atkill wisely started out to stop that. His screen failed to work on theseed of the rot. They glided unharmed through that screen too. He sent out hisblack shells-and the snaky filaments glided through them-and the shells glowedgreen! Atkill looked unhappy. He was unhappy, for if these shells could notstop it-
Half a dozen of the green monsters swam out. A deep violet globe appearedshortly after the last of these, and it started toward Atkill's ship with abusiness-like efficiency. It hit the energy absorption screen, bounced, hitagain, and broke into millions of minute specks of violet light that filteredthrough the screen unharmed-and joined once more on the other side! It settledon the wall of the rotting ship, and-the Flame broke out! It was actually theheavy metal behind the half-disintegrated shell that was going, and it was thedamping effect of the black shell that made it possible for him to quench theFlame. Dozens of the violet globes leaked through, and frantically Atkill setup his quench field and maintained it. The atomic rot he could not control,
till his ship became a sphere, so he had set up his field, and pressed itrapidly outward, till it just included the outerwalls at the greatest diameterof his ship.
The ship was rapidly crumbling away, leaving only a useless dust held in placeby force-planes. Grimly Atkill reminded himself that the force-walls were thereal walls of the ship. Though the metal vanished, the strength the walls wasthere. 
The violet globes stopped appearing, and fearfully Atkill groaned. "That shipisn't natural-those things aren't weapons-they're diseases. What more has hegot?"
The new thing was small; it looked like a small cup, some three inches across,
a hollow hemisphere. It was almost invisible, individually, but after thefirst one floated out, thousands sailed forth. All were rotating rapidly sothat alternately their closed and opened sides faced the ship. They reachedthe screen like a swarm of buck-shot spreading, and they touched the 


screen, Atkill sighed. They vanished. Then he groaned. They were takingbites out of the screen, and vanishing, while- a peculiar shimmer appearedthat the cups seemed to enter easily, and safely. The screen itself wasscarcely two feet in actual depth, and it was mere seconds before the cups hadcarved a hole through it, leaving a channel of curiously shimmering light.
Atkill drove a tremendous cosmic down that path, followed it with a completegamut of frequencies, tried an atomic bomb, and watched the cups eat the bombbefore it went off. He could destroy the cups momentarily by his beams, butinvariably, the instant the beam was off, they all appeared-each with a cupfulof cosmic rays!
Atkill turned his ship and ran for home. A whole flock of those deadly cups,
all that had been near him, clung about him, and thousands more were trailingafter him at their best speed, each faithfully rotating. Those behindpresently wandered erratically and fell away. Those actually within thescreen, several hundred of them, began to eat at the walls of the ship. Theyswallowed the black half-disintegrated matter and disappeared as rapidly asthey had eaten the screen. They ate out the force wall behind the materialwall, and-he could not replace the force at that point.
Warren was smiling tensely. "I should have started with that. How's the fleetgetting on?"
"About even. They have slightly better ships. And they've been using theindividual fields of the atomic rot successfully. But the Bay-Jlaonii are morenumerous. They've all been handicapped by having to look out for your beams."
Warren placed the Anlo suddenly in the midst of a group of Bay-Raonii, whilethe far more mobile Anlonians retired. Instantly, from five great ports, agreat stream of the green atomic rot fields shot out, the great snakey fieldsbreaking down into smaller force-fields quickly, fields like the ball-
lightning of the Anlonian weapons, which-carriedtheir power locked within them, not loose as in a beam, with the result that ascreen would not stop them.
The concentrated energy of the Flame fields, the violet spheres that reachedout and set the Eternal Flame to any iron spouted forth, then the "cups"hemispheres 
of concentrated space strain where the strain was so great thatwhen any additional strain, such as the space-strains of matter, or of apowerful shield, came within their compass, they were precipitated halfthrough to that fifth-dimensionless timelessness. But only half. The otherhalf clung stubbornly to this space with exactly the energy of the space-fieldthe cup enclosed.
Warren dropped a tremendous group of these strange bombs, and of the pale-blueglowing field of force that, when it touched matter, transmuted it instantlyto hydrogen.
Entirely released of control now, they repelled each other, each its kind,
violently, particularly the cups; but each was attracted violently by matter-
and the forces opposing, each sought a ship, and to avoid its kind.
Occasionally two would meet, two different types. A soundless explosion, or asudden flickering, and they were gone.
Ship after ship of the Bay-Raonii was suddenly burdened with these flying,
searching, indestructible things, and disappeared in tattered, torn metal.
Only the Flame itself could consume them all. Only Warren and the An-lonianscould control them at all, and then only by making such a concentration ofthem as to send them away by mutual repulsion.
The Bay-Raonii were beaten not by beams and screens, but by devouring,
individual space fields, each a separate, individual enemy, which, multipliedby the tens of millions, ate their fleet. 

AFTERWORD -- by George Zebrowski 


When he became editor of ASTOUNDING in 1937, John W. Campbell, Jr. already hadbehind him a career as one of the best writers of the large-scale, super-
science adventure story. His new position at Street & Smith Publicationscurtailed the further publication of new stories, as these could not bepermitted to appear in competing science fiction magazines. SF in hardcoverwas very rare in those days, and paperbacks as we know them did not exist.
Later, in the 1940s and 50s, Campbell's work was gathered into hardcovereditions by Fantasy Press, Shasta Publishers, and FPCI.
The Space Beyond was written for Amazing Stories (the title page of themanuscript proclaims this); Marooned was written under the pseudonym of Karlvan Kampen, which Campbell had used in Astounding before he took over from F.
Orlin Tremaine. The story might have been intended for Astounding or acompetitor, but the ploy was never carried out. All was signed Don A. Stuart,
who had been published to great acclaim in the November 1934 Astounding, andwho continued to appear for a time after Campbell became editor, until thepublishers put a stop to it. The background of All was later given to Robert

A. Heinlein, who wrote a much longer novel based on it (Sixth Column,
currently known as The Day After Tomorrow, Signet). These three short novelsare the only original stories by Campbell to appear since his last story inthe 1950s. They reveal a young, enthusiastic author in his mid to latetwenties, in whom we can discern a serious stylist, as well as the unabashedstoryteller 
striving to go one better than his universe-spanning contemporary,
Edward E. Smith. 
There is much of the 1930s in these stories, as con-••cerns science, politicsand social attitudes; they also reveal the unpretentious patterns of the pulpgenre tradition. But these forms were fun and permitted the exercise of muchoriginality, as Isaac Asimov's vast autobiographical anthology, Before theGolden Age, Doubleday, 1974 (the golden age being the first decade ofCampbelTs editorship of Astounding), reveals so well.
The pattern to be noticed in Marooned and The Space Beyond is one in which theprotagonists find themselves in a difficult situation and have to inventhardware, processes, theories, to get themselves out of danger and back home.
The pattern is capable of surprising refinement, as Frederick Pohl's recentnovella, "The Gold At the Star-bow's End", brilliantly demonstrates. Theformula differs from SF written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuryin that the characters do things in a systematic way to solve their problems.
In Campbell's early story, "Piracy Preferred", a lone-wolf mad scientist type,
Wade, is captured and "professionalized" by becoming a part of a scientific-
engineering research team.* The earlier pattern was set by Goethe's Faust andMary Shelley's Frankenstein, where the problem is to escape or destroy theproducts of knowledge. The excitement of the later formula lay in theintellectual understanding of hypothetical inventions, their logic,
plausibility and capacity for generating large action scenes; and thecharacters were not helpless victims, but agents of ingenuity and heroism.
In The Space Beyond, atomic energy is regarded as an imaginary but imminentsource of power; the story shows us how the SF writers of the 30s were lookingforward to it, in much the same way as we look forward to fusion power. InMarooned we are shown a continuous-thrust atomic rocket-a torchship-one whichis quite modern even today. A spacecraft of this type could take astronautsacross the solar system in weeks rather than the years required by rocketsinjected into unpowered trajectories today. The story also shows us aprimitive mechanical arm for making repairs on the outside of a spaceship. The
* See Leon Stover's fine essay, "Science Fiction, The Research Revolution, andJohn Campbell", Extrapolation, Vol. 14, No. 2, May 1973, page 142-3.
arm is controlled by an astronaut from a pod much like the one in 2001: A 

SPACE ODYSSEY but the observant reader will recognize the prototype ofHeinlein's "waldoes"-the name given to remote-control manipulators for use inatomic research-from the Astounding cover story of August 1942, titled"Waldo." 
Another interesting detail in The Space Beyond is the use of computers, called"calculators" in the story. Campbell was one of the few SF writers, if not theonly one, to describe the usefulness of computers in research at such an earlydate. The Space Beyond also shows us an arms race, in addition to consideringthe ethics of placing decisive weapons in the hands of a people at war. Allreflects the use of atomic physics in medicine, which many forget was theearlier fruit of atomic science-radiation therapy through isotopes-predatingthe atomic bomb by at least a decade and a half.* The natural inventiveness ofCampbell's scientists and engineers is a constant reminder of the group whichgathered in New Mexico to produce the reality of atomic energy. In later yearsCampbell was often credited with instilling the enthusiasm and curiosity thatled many young scientists into a career.
In their description of new energies, new technologies, new building materialsof great strength, and the use of these to create a better world despitemisuse by villains, Campbell's stories make tangible reference to manyelements of the postwar world, as well as showing us something of the socialand political climate in which they were written. For example, All expressesthe pre-war fear of Asia, especially Japan, as well as presenting the idea ofAmerica as a "sleeping giant" of great scientific and industrial potential. Inboth Heinlein's novel and Campbell's original there is the sense of the comingstruggle with Japan (Heinlein's story appeared in 1941). There is even a hintof the Nuremberg trials in the weighing of the fate of the Eastern conquerorsafter their defeat by the Western atomic scientists. This is probably a viewof hindsight,

* The healing powers of the atom were a popular subject during the 30's. InTHE INVISIBLE RAY, a film starring Boris Kar-loff, the hero restores hismother's sight using a radioactive substance. This reminds us of the highlyprivate therapy performed on his ailing mother by the great Americanphysicist, Ernest Lawrence and his brother, John, using a neutron beam from acyclotron. (See Lawrence and Oppenheimer by Nuel Pharr Davis, pp. 76-77)
but the postwar world seems to cast its shadow back over these three stories.
This is not surprising, since the SF Campbell accepted for Astounding duringthe 1940s shows an even more accurate aim in depicting the world of the 50sand 60s. Campbell's technological forecasting became a guiding method (in afictional mode) for Heinlein, Asi-mov, Kuttner, Moore, Blish, Williamson, andothers; at the same time the method bore a richer fruit through itsapplication by more than one writer.*
Marooned is probably the best of the three stories in this collection. It is agood example of the modern hardcore SF story-almost. I say almost because thefinal invention which saves the day for the explorers owes much more to aspace opera like The Space Beyond than to the fairly realistic narrative ofthe rest of the story. Although the characters in Marooned are the familiar,
extraordinarily competent men, predominantly Northern Europeans, they are morefilled out and believable than the characters in the two other stories,
especially Corliss-a big tall fellow of the kind so admired by John Waynemovie fans; Campbell makes the point that his size makes him less well suitedfor space travel than the smaller men in his crew. Corliss even worries aboutdying in a fairly mature way. The story gives the appearance of shifting toDon A. Stuart for a few moments, then back to the style of a very realisticJohn Campbell (writing in the manner of the later The Moon Is Hell!), thenback to the universe-spanner of The Mightiest Machine when Corliss invents thesolution of the story's major problem.
The world of the story (not filled in, but seen in bits) is the familiar, neo

capitalistic one of free enterprise- individualistic scientific entrepreneursand technological companies; yet it seems fairly real. It follows, of course,
in such a world, that anyone attempting an expedition to Jupiter will do so ina competitive spirit. Science and hardware are well integrated with the story,
becoming necessary parts of the drama as well as acquiring and exciting

* The wedding of religion and tl-chnology also appeared in another Heinleinstory, "If This Goes On . . .", and in Fritz Letter's Gather Darkness! All maybe the unpublished ancestor of these stories, including the religious satirein Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, in the sense that Campbell mined hisown story in discussions with these writers, even if he did not show them hisown effort. 
interest in themselves, since the fate of the expedition rests on calculationand inventiveness. The narration (author-omniscient, relating past history) ismore sophisticated than in the other two stories.
The point of still current interest in the story concerns the view Campbelldeveloped of the major scene stealer- the planet Jupiter. At once the'interested reader will compare the story to others about the giant planet-stories 
by Simak, Blish, Anderson, Clarke, and others (all can be found in afine collection, Juniter, edited by Carol and Frederick Pohl, Ballantine1973). The story dates from the same time that Campbell wrote a major sciencearticle on Jupiter (1937). The sheer visual-scientific interest of Maroonedwill be enough to interest readers. I refer the reader to Isaac Asimov'sintroduction to this volume for a discussion of Campbell's view of Jove.
The Space Beyond may have been intended as the first of a series, since welearn at the end that the villains are badly defeated, and no more. We knowthat Warren and his group can return home at will, but this is not shown. Thestory must be read as an early kind of SF adventure. The excitement, tensionand emotional impact do not derive from the interplay of characters and ideas,
as we expect from modern SF, but from (1) the description of new technologiesand what can be done with them, (2) cosmic battles involving large fleets ofextraordinary spaceships, and (3) the spectacle of alien worlds, largedistances and astronomical vistas. 
Both the hero and the villain of The Space Beyond are fascinated by eachother's technological tricks. There is a fair amount of campy fun to be foundin their posturings and dueling. Except for the fact that one is power mad andwantonly cruel, the two men could almost be taken for brothers. I suspect thatif Campbell had written a series from The Space Beyond, the villain might havebeen "reformed", in the manner of Wade, who became a permanent character inthe trilogy of novels, The Black Star Passes, Islands of Space, and Invadersfrom the Infinite. E. E. Smith developed this same problem with his super-
villain, Blackie DuQuesne in his Skylark tetralogy,* as
* Smith finally wrote a last "Skylark" novel, Skylark DuQuesne, which finishedserialization in IF just two weeks before his death in 1965. Blackie DuQuesneis reformed more than thirty years after his first appearance.
did Robert Louis Stevenson with Long John Silver. These kinds of villains tendto be more interesting than the heroes. The problem goes back at least as faras Milton's Paradise Lost. If approached for the kind of story this is, thereader will be rewarded with many fascinating action sequences that are ofcinematic quality. Campbell was a heavyweight in this kind of storyteller'sfun, and took it just about as far as it could go long before the invention ofcamp. The interested reader might wish to compare The Space Beyond toCampbell's other work in this sub-genre.
All is an entertainingly written fairy tale about an oppressed group winningfreedom with the aid of mighty powers (atomic energy of a mystical variety).
The story seems curiously nationalistic, but this can be excused on thegrounds that the situation involves an invaded country fighting for itsfreedom. The story suggests the work of A. Merritt, in its color and 

pageantry, and reverence for the vast forces of nature. In Heinlein's version,
the characters treat their invented religion pragmatically, as a cover for theresistance movement; but Campbell's scientists seem almost to believe theirown Platonic myths. Heinlein was perhaps commenting on this aspect of hiseditor's version when he showed us a character who goes insane thinking he hasbecome a diety.
Each of these three stories has at least one brilliant scene. The Space Beyondhas the awesomely beautiful spectacle of the giant blue suns. The sequence ofdescriptions becomes almost hypnotic. Campbell was very fond of the colorblue, and used it often as part of his settings and as details (see, forexample, Who Goes There?). Marooned has a wonderful scene showing us a stormof giant sno'wflakes as the exploratory ship drifts in Jupiter's atmosphere.
All gives us the sight of a thousand-foot giant, dressed in priestly robes,
striding across America. Heinlein retained this figure in his version. Theseare all potent images, both entertaining and satisfying dramatically.
A few words about the state of the text. The Space Beyond seems to have beenin a first draft, and needed smoothing and cutting to bring it to the versionin this book. Marooned and All were virtually finished texts and only minorcorrections were necessary. As I went overthese stories, it occurred to me suddenly that I was editing a John Campbellwho had been about my age, in his late twenties, when he finished thesestories. I thought back, remembering how I had come to meet him, and how myviews of him had changed and developed, and what I had concluded, about theman and his effect on science fiction. These conclusions, I thought, rqighthelp make a fitting context in which to place the stories in this book.
As a teenager I called John Campbell on the phone once or twice in the early60's. I heard a big man, speaking loudly, yet ready to talk as much as Iwished. I rang off after a polite minute or two, probably out of shyness, notreally believing what my feelings told me-that he would have talked gladly aslong as possible. I met him at the World Science Fiction Convention inWashington, D.C. in 1963, where he signed his introduction to George O.
Smith's Venus Equilateral for me, in his usual large fluidly curvedhandwriting. I still own that book.*
When next I met him in 1970, I was already a published writer. We sat in theAnalog office on Lexington Avenue as he picked up a copy of one of the bestknown continuing collections of SF and said, "The trouble with these writersis they can write, but they can't think much!" We both agreed that was whyAnalog had so many lesser stories in it with interesting ideas. He preferredto publish them because they would provoke dis-discussion, disagreementthought-
while the well-written ones usually had little else in them.
But that was the extent to which Campbell and I could agree. He asked me whatI thought thinking was, and refused all answers, including his own. Generallyhe did not like to agree, probably because he felt it led to laziness. He toldme that his editorials were meant to provoke discussion, and that a week afterpublication he might disagree with himself. I glimpsed the sight of a man whohad lost the environment of productivity; his old writers

* I met Isaac Asimov at this same convention. I was so overwhelmed by myrecent reading of The Foundation Trilogy that I stumbled over my words as Ishook his hand. "Er, would . . . you ask me a question?" I asked. "Of course!'
he shouted, "What would you like me to ask you?" I went red and my kneesshook. To this day he thinks I'm someone else when he sees me.
had left, and he had to be his own adversary. It brought home to me theimportance of content in science fiction, criticism, and the environment ofcolleagues. This may be one of the reasons why Astounding/ Analog declined inthe late 50s and 60s. 
A year later John Wood Campbell, Jr. was dead, and as editor of the SFWABulletin, the official publication of the Science Fiction Writers of America, 

I put together a memorial issue for the man I had always suspected hadprovided at least one of the major ingredients for a good theory of sciencefiction, and more. As Don A. Stuart, he had been a "new wave" all by himself;
and that writer, who was lost to us in the new editor of Astounding, mighthave been able to do it all-style, content, everything we would like to saybelongs to a high, enduring science fiction. The writers he trained, however,
started on this path for him. The work of these writers, together with his ownbest work, makes a fitting monument.
We have to say today, to adapt a comment made by John Brunner, that so-called"hard core" SF, to truly be itself, must be well thought out and well written,
in terms of the standards one must apply to the best fiction. It must benovelistic in the best literary terms, as well as science fiction in content.
When he became editor of Astounding, Campbell instituted a higher standard forthe fiction that he would accept, as well as demanding a development ofscience fiction's unique potential. But no editor can maintain any kind ofdemanding standard indefinitely. Campbell held to it for less than a decade,
just long enough to create modern science fiction and see his writers go on tobetter markets and publishers. Some came back occasionally, but there neverseemed to be more of them-no new names comparable in stature. The lesson to belearned is that the supply of first-class talent is always limited, and canonly very rarely be increased by conscious effort on the part of editors. Thetrue heirs of Campbell (and this may seem heretical) are writers like Ursula

K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Stanislaw Lem, Gregory Benford, D. G. Compton, andothers who have a sense of unified values, literary and science fictional.
They have not forgotten the special beauties which can be found in these threestories, the oft spoken about"sense of wonder." In their own way the newer writers are trying to serve itbetter, perhaps more intensely and with more depth of feeling and intellect.
This is the further vision we can see standing on John CampbelPs shoulders.