Wandl, the Invader

 

Beginning a Four-Part Novel
(A Sequel to "Brigands of the Moon")

By Ray Cummings

 

Once more Gregg, Anita, Snap and Venza are united in high peril—this time in the van of Earth's defense against the interstellar invader Wandl.

 

CHAPTER I

Menace from the Stars



“IT'S a planet," I said. "A little world." 

"How little?" Venza de­manded. 

"One-fifth the mass of the Moon. That's what they've calculated now."

"And how far is it away?" Anita asked. "I heard a newscaster say yesterday—"

"Newscasters!" Venza broke in scornfully. "Say, you can take what they tell you about any danger or trouble and cut it in half. And even then you'll be on the gloomy side. See here Gregg Haljan—"

"I'm not giving you newscasters blare," I retorted. Venza's extrava­gant vehemence was always refresh­ing. The Venus girl, as different from Anita as Venus is from the Earth, sat and glared at me. I added, "Anita mentioned news­casters; I didn't."

Anita was in no mood for smiling. "Tell us, Gregg." She sat upright and tense in the big metal-framed, upholstered chair with her knees drawn up under a dark red Skirt and her chin cupped in her hands. "Tell us."

"For a fact, they don't know much about it yet," I resumed, "A planet—you can call it that. A wanderer—"

"I should say it was a wanderer," Venza exclaimed. "Coming from heaven knows where beyond the stars—swimming in here like a comet!"

"They calculated its distance yes­terday at some sixty-five million miles from Earth," I said. "It isn't so far beyond the orbit of Mars, coming diagonally and heading very nearly for the Sun. But it's not a comet. It's not rational."

 

THE thing was indeed inex­plicable. For many weeks now astronomers had been studying it. This was early summer of the year 2070 A.D. We had all of us only recently returned from those ex­traordinary incidents which I have already recounted, when very near­ly we lost the radium treasure of Johnny Grantline on the Moon; and very nearly lost our lives as well. My ship, the Planetara, which in the astronomical seasons when the Earth, Mars and Venus were within comfortable traveling dis­tances of each other, carried mail and passengers from Great-New York to Ferrok-Shahn, of the Mar­tian Union, and to Grebbar, of the Venus Free State—that ship was wrecked now, upon the Moon.* (*An account of these incidents was given by Gregg Haljan in "Brigands of the Moon," which appeared in the March, 1930, issue of Astounding Stories.)

 



 

I had been an under navigating officer of the Planetara. Upon her, I had met Anita Prince, whose brother and only relative now was dead; and Anita and I were soon to marry.

I was waiting now in Great-New York upon the decision of the Line officials regarding another space-flyer. Perhaps I would have command of it, since Captain Car­ter of the Planetara had been killed. Certainly Anita and I hoped so.

And then, in April of 2070, this mysterious visitor from interstellar space appeared upon our astro­nomical horizon. A little thing at first—a mere unusual dot, a pin­point on a photo-electric star-diagram which should not have been there. It occasioned no com­ment at first, save that the astrono­mers thought it might be another lost outpost beyond Pluto, belong­ing to our solar system.

Then presently they saw it was not that, for it was coming in with the great curve of an elon­gated elipse. Coming at tremen­dous speed, it daily changed its aspect, gathering velocity until soon it was not a dot, but a streak on every diagram-plate.

In a week or so the thing passed from a mere technical astronomical curiosity to an item of public news. And now, early in June, when it had cut through the orbit of Jupi­ter and was approaching that of Mars, the people of all our three inhabited worlds were in a fever of curiosity. And fear was grow­ing. The visitor was a menace. No astronomical body with a mass as great as a fifth of the Moon could come among us without caus­ing trouble—or disaster, perhaps. The newscasters, with a ready skill for lurid possibilities, were blar­ing all sorts of horrible events impending.

 

YET for once the newscasters were short of a horrible ac­tuality. This "wanderer," as they called the oncoming little planet, was destined to plunge the Earth, Venus and Mars into a turmoil unprecedented in the recorded his­tory of any of the three worlds. We could not guess it, but we were upon the brink of a new warfare. Interplanetary no longer; this was interstellar. From realms so remote that our mail-ships from Venus and Mars were like children's toys flying over a grassy country lawn, this wanderer was coming with a new and almost in­conceivably terrible menace. Well for us that the Martian Union, the Venus Free State and the U.S.W. were in an alliance of friendly amiability, with all our interplanetary differences adjusted! We had need of that alliance now, for standing alone any one of our worlds would have been destroyed.

But this evening in early June, as Anita, Venza and I were seated in Anita's home in the northern residential area of Great-New York beyond the terraced confines of the roaming metal city, we had no more than a premonition of these dire events.

I told the girls all I knew of the approaching wanderer. The density was similar to that of our Earth. The oncoming velocity and the calculated elements of its orbit now were such that within a few weeks more the new planet would round our Sun and presumably head outward again. It would pass within a few million miles of us, causing perhaps a disturbance to our own orbit, possibly even a change of the inclination of our axis; affecting our tides, our climate—bringing abnormality and disturbance in a thousand ways.

All this was understandable. But there were many things which were not.

 

"SO I've 'heard," Venza interrupted me. "They say that, and then they stop. Why can't a newscaster tell you what is so mys­terious?"

"For a very good reason, Venza: because the government holds it back. You can't throw people into a panic. This whole thing, up to today, has been withheld from the Earth and the Venus publics. The Martian Union tried to with­hold it, but could not. Every hellogram between the worlds is cen­sored."

"And still," said Venza sarcas­tically, "you don't tell us what is so mysterious about this wanderer."

"For one thing," I said, "it changes its direction. No rational heavenly body does that. They cal­culated the elements of its orbit way back last April. They've done it twenty times since, and every time the projected orbit is dif­ferent. Just a little at first, so that it could have been the mathe­matician's error. But last week the accursed thing actually took a sud­den turn, as though it were a space­ship!"

The girls stared at me. "What does that mean?" Anita asked finally.

I shrugged. "They're beginning to make wild guesses—we won't go into that."

It was far from me to frighten these two girls. I had that feeling now, but within a few hours I was forced to abandon it!

"What else mysterious?" Venza demanded.

"The thing isn't normally vis­ible."

Venza shifted her silk-sheathed legs. "Don't talk in code!"

"Not normally visible," I repeat­ed. "A world one-fifth as large as the Moon could be seen plainly by our electrotelescopes when well beyond Pluto. It's now between Jupiter and Mars. Invisible to the naked eye, of course, but still it's not very far away—I've been out there myself. With instruments we ought to be able to see its surface; see whether it has land and water—inhabitants, perhaps. You should be able to distinguish an object on its surface as large as a city—but you can't."

"Why not?" asked Anita. "Be­cause there are clouds? It has an atmosphere?"

"I don't even know that," I retorted. "There is some­thing abnormal about the 'light-waves coming from it. Not exactly blurred, but a distortion, a fading. It's obviously some aberration, some abnormality of the light-waves, so that our telescopes can almost, but not quite distinguish the details. Even the spectroheliograph operates abnormally. Hydro­gen photo-diagrams with stereo­scopic lenses and wave-length se­lection should give a surface depth of vision."

"Cannot you say it in Anglo-Saxon, Gregg?" Venza frowned.

"I mean, the thing should not look like a flat disc. You ought to be able to tell a mountain height from a valley. But you can't. Nothing works normally. Everything is weird—"

A swift rapping on our door-grid interrupted me, and Snap Dean burst in upon us.

"Hola-lo, everybody! Is it a con­ference? You look so solemn."

He dashed across the room, kissed Venza, pretended that he was about to kiss Anita, and winked at me. As always, Snap lunged upon us with an energy like a battery supercharged. He was a dynamic litle fellow, small, wiry, Ted-headed and freckle-faced, and had been the radio-helio operator of the ill-fated Planetara. Under almost every adverse circumstance —and heaven knows he and I had seen enough of them together—he could muster a quick, ready laugh and the kind of wit that made everyone like him. Certainly he was a perfect match for Venza, for all the millions of miles which separated their native lands. Venza, too, was small and slim, her man­ner as readily jocular as his. And she had a feminine irony with which even Snap could not cope.

"And where have you been?" Venza demanded.

"Me? My private life is my own —so far. We're not married yet, since you insist on us going to Grebbar for the ceremony."

"Stop it," protested Anita. "We've been talking of—"

"I know very well what you've been talking, about. Everybody is. I've got news for you, Gregg." He went abruptly solemn and lowered his voice. "Halsey wants to see us. Right away—this evening."

 

I REGARDED him blankly and I my mind swept back. No more than a few short weeks ago De­tective-Colonel Halsey of Division­al Headquarters here in Great-New York had sent for us, and we had been precipitated into many dire events. Was this a meaningless coincidence? Or an omen?

"Halsey!" I burst out.

"Easy, Gregg!" Snap cast a vague look around Anita's draped apart­ment. An open window was beside us, leading to a tiny catwalk bal­cony. It was moonlit now, and two hundred feet above the pedestrian viaduct.

But Snap frowned at it. "Easy, I tell you! Why shout about Halsey? The air can have ears upon occasion."

Venza moved and closed the win­dow.

"What is it?" I asked, more softly.

But Snap was not satisfied. "Anita, have you got an isolation barrage for this room?"

"Of course I haven't, Snap."

"Well, you never can tell. It seems to me that anyone who even speaks to Halsey is cursed with eavesdroppers. And I've just had his office on the audiphone. Gregg, have you got a detector with you? Mine is out of order."

I had none. Snap produced his little coil and indicator dial.

"Shove me over that chair, Gregg."

He was resourceful. He discon­nected one of the room's tube-lights and contacted with the cathode. It was a makeshift method at best, but as he dropped to the floor, uncoiling a little length of his wire for an external pick-up, we saw that the thing worked. The pointer on the dial-face was swaying.

"Gregg! Look at that! Didn't I tell you?"

 

THE pointer quivered, prised with a positive reaction. An eavesdropping ray of some sort was upon us!

Anita gasped, "Good Lord, I had no idea!"

"No, you didn't. But I did." Snap drew the balcony sheath curtains closer together. They were metallic dyed, but it helped little. With this crude equipment we could not tell if it were eavesdropping for au­dibility, or visibility, or even if someone with a magnetic non-re­flecting invisible cloak were near us.

"No one very close," Snap said softly. He and I carried the detector to the length of its wire out into the arcade. The indicator went nearer normal.

"It's the other way," I whis­pered.

We went to the moonlit balcony. I searched its little length with my hands. No one—nothing here.

"Way down there on the pedes­trian arcade," I said.

"To hell with it," Snap mur­mured. "I'll fix that."

Inside the room we made con­nection with a newscaster's blaring voice. Under cover of it we could talk.

Snap gathered us close around him. "Halsey has something impor­tant—by the gods of the airways he has! And what's more"—his voice was a furtive whisper— It s about this damned interstellar in­vader. Would you think that could be connected in any way with hu­mans here in the city, so that they would bother to eavesdrop us?"

"No," I murmured, "I wouldn't."

"Well, evidently it's true. Hal­sey's office paged me on a public mirror. I happened to see it at Park-Circle 40. When I answered it, Halsey's man wanted me to talk in code! I can't talk in code; I have enough to worry over with the interplanetary hellos. Then they sent me to an official booth, where I got examined for positive legal identification, and then they put me on the official split-wave length. After all of which precau­tions I was told to be at Halsey's office tonight at midnight. And told a few other things."

"What?" demanded Venza breath­lessly.

"Only hints. What's the use of taking a chance by repeating them now?"

"You said he wants me also?" I put in.

"Yes. You and Venza. We've got to get into his office secretly, by vacuum cylinders. We're to meet a man from his office at the Eighth Postal switch-station."

“Venza?" Anita said sharply. "What in the universe can he want with Venza?"

"Don't ask me, because I don't know."

"Well, if he wants Venza, I'm going."

Snap gazed at her, and grinned. "That sounds like a logical deduction. Naturally he must want you—that's why he said Venza."

"I'm going," Anita insisted. "May I, Gregg?"

 

IT ended by her going. Venza thought it a good idea, and Snap and I had crossed these two girls before and been defeated at it. We left about half an hour be­fore midnight. The girls were bath in gray, with long dark capes. We took the public monorail down into the mid-Manhattan section under the city roof of the business dis­trict, and into the Eighth Postal switch-station where the sleek bronze cylinders came tumbling out of the vacuum portes to be re­routed and dispatched again.

A man was on the lookout for us.

"Daniel Dean and party?"

"Yes," said Snap. "We were or­dered here."

The detective gazed at the girls and at me. "It was three altogether, Dean."

"And now it's four," said Snap cheerfully. "The extra one is Miss Anita Prince. Ever heard of her?"

He had indeed. "All right," he said, "if you and Haljan say so."

We were put into one of the oversize mail cylinders, routed through the tubes like sacks of recorded letters; and in ten min­utes, with a thump that knocked the breath from all of us, we were in the switch-rack of Halsey's outer office.

We climbed from the cylinder. Our guide led us down one of the gloomy metal corridors. It echoed with our tread.

A door lifted.

"Daniel Dean and party."

The guard stood aside. "Come in."

The door slid down behind us. We advanced into the small blue-lit apartment, steel-lined like a vault, and were in the presence of Detective-Colonel Halsey, who matched wits with the criminals of three worlds and now seemed con­cerned with another.

 

CHAPTER II
The Brain in the Box

 

COLONEL HALSEY sat at his desk, with a few papers before him and a bank of instrument con­trols at his elbow. He pushed his audiphone and mirror-grid to one side.

"Sit down, please." He gave us each the benefit of welcoming smiles, and his gaze finished upon Anita.

"I came because you sent for Venza," Anita said quickly. "Please, Colonel Halsey, let me stay. I thought, whatever you wanted her for, you might need me."

"Quite so, Miss Prince. Perhaps I shall." It seemed that in his mind were many of the thoughts throng­ing my own, for he added:

"Haljan, I recall I sent for you like this once before. I hope this may be a more auspicious occa­sion."

"So do I, sir."

Snap said, "We've been afraid hardly to do more than whisper. But you're insulated here, and we're mighty curious—"

Halsey nodded. "I can talk free­ly to you, and yet—well, even so, I cannot." His gaze went to Venza. "It is you in whom at the moment I am most interested."

"Me? You flatter me, Colonel Halsey." She sat gracefully reclin­ing in the metal chair before his desk, seeming small as a child be­tween its big, broad arms. But her posture was anything but child­like. Her long gray skirt had part­ed to display her shapely, gray­satined legs. She had thrown off the hood of her cloak. Her thick black hair was coiled in a knot low at the back of her neck; her carmined lips bore an alluring smile. It was all instinctive. To this girl from Venus it came as nat­urally as she breathed.

 

HALSEY'S gray eyes twinkled. "Do not look at me quite like that, Miss Venza, or I shall forget what I have to say. You would get the better of me; I'm glad you're not a criminal."

"So am I," she declared. "What can I do for you, Colonel Halsey?"

His admiring, amused smile faded at once. His glance included us all.

"Just this. There is a man here in Great-New York—a Martian, whom they call Set Molo. He has a younger sister, Setta Meka. Have any of you heard of them?"

We had not. Halsey went on, slowly now, apparently choosing his words with the greatest care.

"There are things that I can tell you, and things that I cannot."

"Why not?" asked Venza.

"My dear, for one thing, if you are going to help me you can do it best by not knowing too much. For another, I have my orders. I am only supreme in this department, you know, and this thing concerns the very highest authorities, not only of the U.S.W., but in Ferrok­Shahn and Grebbar too."

He paused, but none of us spoke. It seemed to me that here in the dim muffled seclusion of this vault­like room we were dabbling with things gigantic, sinister, diabolical perhaps; things about which one dared not talk openly. And to me there came a presage of infinite evil. The life or death of a few people—what is that? The capture of this criminal or that one; the recovery of stolen money; a little treasure which one might put into a bank and find a few extra ciphers on his deposit balance! All that seemed so trivial.

 

BUT this which was now upon us, I could envisage, was a thing very different. Nations, worlds involved. The life or death perhaps of millions of people. It swept me with a breathless feeling of awe. And yet, how far short of the diabolical truth I really was!

Halsey was saying quietly, "Well, this Martian and his sister are here now in Great-New York. They have some secret—they are engaged in some activity—and I want to find out what it is. Little parts of it I have picked up—"

He stopped; and out of the si­lence Snap said, "If you don't mind, Colonel Halsey, it seems to me you are mostly talking in code."

"I'm not. But I'm trying to tell you as little as possible. You, Miss Venza—well, you need only un­derstand this: the Martian, Set Idolo, must be tricked into giving you some idea of what he is doing here in Great-New York."

“And I am to trick him?" Venza said calmly.

"That is my idea. By what method—" The faint shadow of a smile swept Halsey's thin, intent face. "My dear, you are a girl of Venus. More than that, you are traveled, sophisticated, and you have far more than your normal share of wits and brains."

It did not make Venza smile. She sat tense now, with her dark-eyed gaze fastened on Halsey's face. Anita, equally breathless, reached over and gripped her hand.

Then Venza said slowly, "I re­alize, Colonel Halsey, that this is something vital."

"As vital, my child, as It well could be." He drew a long breath. "I want you to understand I am doing my duty. Doing what seems the best thing—not for you, per­haps, but for the world."

 

I SEEMED to see into his mind at that moment. He might have been a father, sending a daughter into danger.

He added abruptly, "I need not disguise the danger. I have lost a dozen men. He lighted a cigarette. "I don't •seem to be able to frighten you?"

"No," she said. And I heard Anita murmur, "Oh, Venza!"

"But you frighten me," said Snap. "Colonel Halsey, look here; you know I'm going to marry this girl very soon?"

"If you live to marry her," he said quickly. And he added, "But I think we're needlessly pessimis­tic. You can call it a sacrifice, a voluntary going into danger, great danger, for a great cause, in a great crisis. That's rather a usual thing; it's been done many times. You four—you have just come out of a very considerable danger. We know of what stuff you are made —all of you."

He smiled again. "Perhaps that prominence is unfortunate for you. But let me settle it now. Is there any one of you who will not take my orders and trust my judg­ment of what is best? And do it, if need be, blindly? Will you offer yourselves to me?"

We gazed at each other. Both the girls instantly murmured, "Yes." The feminine mind needs no slow process of thought!

"Yes," I said at last. And it came not too hard for me, for I thought I was yielding him Venza; not Anita.

Snap was very pale. He stared from one to the other of us.

"Yes," he said finally. "But Colonel -Halsey, surely you can tell us—"

 

HALSEY tossed his cigarette away. "I will tell you as much as I think best. These Mar­tians, this Set Molo and his sister, do not know of Venza. Or, at least, I think they do not. They apparently have not been here very long. How they got here we don't know. There was no passen­ger or freight ship. They have, in Ferrok-Shahn, a dubious repu­tation at best. I won't go into that.

"Venza, I will show you these Martians—and the rest depends upon you. There is a mystery; you will find out what it is! Get me even a hint of it!"

He reached for his inter-office au­diphone. "I want to locate the Martian Set Molo. Francis, Staff X2, has it in charge."

The audible connection came in a moment.

"Francis?"

We could hear the answering microphonic voice.

"Yes, Colonel."

"Is the fellow in a public place by any chance?"

"In the Red Spark Cafe, Colonel. With his sister, and a party."

"Good enough! The Red Spark has an image-finder. Have you visual connection?"

"Yes. The whole damn room; they got a dozen finders. Any time the Red Spark passes up publicity—"

"Use a magnifier. Get me the closest viewpoint you can."

"It's done, Colonel. I did it just in case you called."

"Connect it."

In a moment our mirror-grid was glowing with the two-foot square image of the interior of the Red Spark Cafe. I knew the place by reputation: a fashionable, more or less disreputable eating, drinking and dancing restaurant, Where money and aicholite flowed freely, and the patrons were drawn from all the most successful crim­inals of the three worlds, inter­mingled with thrilled, respectable tourists who hoped they would see something really evil—and gener­ally were disappointed.

The Red Spark was not far from Halsey's office; it was perched high in a break of the city roof, almost directly over Park-Circle 29.

"There he is," said Halsey.

 

WE crowded around his desk. The image showed the in­terior of a large oval room, bal­conied and terraced; a dais dance-floor, raised high in the center with three professional couples gyrating there; and beneath them the pub­lic dance-grid, slowly rotating on its central axis. A hundred or so couples were dancing. The lower floor was crowded with dining tables; others were upon the little catwalk balconies, and still others in the terraced nooks and side niches, half enshrouded, half re­vealed by colored draperies. 

The image now was silent, for Halsay was not bothering with au­dible connection. But 'it was a riot of color—flashing colored flood­lights bathing the dancers in vivid tints; and there were twinkling spots of colored tube-lights on all the tables. I saw, too, the blank rectangles of ,darkness against the walls which marked the private dining rooms, insulated against sight and sound, where one might go for frivolous indiscretion—or for dire plotting, perhaps—and be as secure from interruption as we were, here in Halsey's, office.

Venza asked eagerly, "Which is he?"

"Over there on the third ter­race, to the left. That table. There seem to be six of them in the party."

We heard Francis' voice; he was in Halsey's lower Manhattan office, with this same image before him.

"We'll get a closer viewpoint."

 

THE table in question was no more than a square inch on our image. We could see an apparent­ly gay party of men and women. One of the couples was gigantic, a Martian man and woman obviously. The others seemed to be Earth or Venus people.

Francis' voice added:

"I've got a sound-wave Magnifier on them. Foley's been listening for an hour. Nice, clear English—much good it does you! This fellow is as cautious as a director of the lower air-lane. . . . Here's your near-look."

Our image shifted to another viewpoint. The lens-eye with which we were connected now was mount­ed over the draperies behind the Martian's table. We were looking down diagonally upon the table, at a distance of no more than ten or fifteen feet, so that its image filled all our grid.

There were three Earth-women in the party. There was nothing peculiar about them: rather hand­some, dissolute in appearance, all of them obviously befuddled by alcholite. There was a man who could have been Anglo-Saxon; about him too there appeared nothing unusual—a wastrel, probably with more money than wit. He wore a black dinner suit, edged with white.

Our attention focussed upon the other two. They were tall, as are
all Martians. The young woman—Setta Meka—seemed perhaps twenty or twenty-five years of age, by Earth clocking; and in stature perhaps very nearly my own height, which is six feet two. It is difficult to tell a Martian's age; but she was, I saw, a very handsome young woman even by Earth standards; and in Ferrok-Shahn she would be considered a beauty. Her gray-black hair was parted and tied at the back with a plaited metal rope. Her short dark cloak—so luminous a fabric that it caught and reflect­ed the sheen of all the gaudy res­taurant lights—was parted, its ends thrown back over her shoulders. Beneath it she wore the charac­teristic Martian leathern jacket, and short wide leather trousers or­namented with spun metal fringes and tassels. Most Martian women have a very war-like aspect, more masculine than feminine; but I saw now that Setta Meka was an ex­ception.

 

HER brother, who sat beside her, was a full seven feet or more. A hulking sort of fellow, far less spindly than most of his race, so that I judged he might have come from the polar outposts beyond the Martian Union. He was bare-headed, his gray-black hair clipped close upon a round bullet head, with the familiar Martian round eyes.

I gazed from the viewpoint of ten feet or so into the face of this Set Molo, as momentarily he turned toward the concealed lens-eye. It was a rough-hewn, strongly mas­culine face of high-bridged, hawk­like nose; bushy black brows frowning above deep-set round eyes. The face of a keen-brained villain, I could not doubt, though the smooth-plucked gray skin was flushed now with alcholite, and the wide, thin-lipped mouth was leering at the woman across the table from him.

Like his sister, he too had thrown back his cloak, disclosing a brawny, powerful figure, leather-clad, with a wide belt of dangling ornaments, some of which probably were weapons.

How long we gazed at this silent colored image of the restaurant table I do not know. I was aware of Halsey's quiet voice:

"Look him over, Miss Venza. It depends upon you."

Another      interval passed. It seemed, as we watched, that Molo's interest in his drunken party was very slight. I got the impression too that though he seemed intoxi­cated, he was not. Nor was his sister. An anxiety seemed upon her. The smile she had for the drunken jests seemed forced; and at intervals she would cast a swift, furtive glance across the gay res­taurant scene.

More drink arrived. The Earth people at the table here seemed upon the verge of stupor; and suddenly it appeared that Molo had completely lost interest in them. With a gesture to his sister, he abruptly rose from his seat. She joined him. They left the table; and a red-clad floor manager of the restaurant came at their call. Then in a moment they were mov­ing across the room.

Halsey called sharply into his audiphone: "Francis! Hold us to them if you can!"

 

OUR image blurred. Then Fo­ley, in the restaurant, picked them up from another viewpoint. They were standing now by the opened door of one of the Red Spark's private insulated rooms. We caught a glimpse of its interior—a gaily set table with a bank of colored lights over it.

The figure of a man was in there. He was on his feet, as though he had just arrived to meet the Martians here, and a hooded long cloak wholly enveloped him. It may have been a magnetic "invisible" cloak, with the current now off. I think perhaps that it was.

We caught only the fleetest of impressions before the insulated door closed and barred our vision. The glimpse was an accident. Molo, taken by surprise at this appear­ance of his visitor, could hardly have guarded against it. The wait­ing figure was very tall—I thought some ten feet—and very thin. The hood shrouded his face and head. In his hand he held a large cir­cular box of black shiny leather, of the sort in which women carry wide-brimmed festive hats. As Molo joined him the put the box gently upon the floor. He handled it as though it were extraordinarily heavy. And as he took a step or two, he seemed weighted down. Just as the room door was hastily closing—Meka sliding it from the inside—we caught a fleeting glimpse of horror.

The lid of the hat box on the floor had lifted up. Inside the box was a great round thing of gray-­white—a living thing; a distended ball of membrane, with a network of veins and blood-vessels showing beneath the transparent skin.

For that instant we gazed, stricken. The ball was palpitating. breathing! I saw convolutions of inner tissue under the transparent skin of membrane. A little tentacle, like an arm with a flat-webbed hand, was holding up the lid of the box. The lid rose a trifle higher; the colored lights overhead gleamed down and gave us a brief but clear view of it.

The thing in the box was a huge, living brain! I saw goggling, pro­truding eyes; an orifice that could have been a nose, and a gash up­ended for a vertical mouth. It was a face! And the little ten­tacle arm holding up the box-lid was joined to where the ear should have been!

Was this something human? A huge distended human brain, with the body withered to that tiny arm?

The palpitating thing sank down in the box and the lid dropped. And upon our horrified gaze the insulated door of the room closed—a blank rectangle of darness, with the silence and invisi­bility of the barrage upon it!

 

CHAPTER III
Diabolical Mystery

 

"BY the gods!" exclaimed Halsey. "One of them dares come to the Red Spark! Here, al­most in public!"

So Halsey knew what this meant? But he would not tell us. His eyes were blazing now; his face was white, and with an intensity of emotion which transfigured it.

"Francis, did you see that? No, I don't want you to do anything; let them alone in there. Tell Foley I'll be in the manager's office in five minutes. I'm coming."

He snapped off. Our image con­nection with the Red Spark went dead.

"We're going to the Red Spark?" I demanded.

"Yes. You can come. And I want you, Venza. This changes every­thing—yet I don't know. I may need you more than ever, now."

"No!" protested Snap.

But Halsey was herding us to the office door and he did not an­swer. From his desk he had snatched up a few portable instru­ments, and he flung on a cloak.

It was a brief trip to the Red Spark, on foot through the sub-cellar arcade to where, under Park-Circle 29, we went up in a vertical lift to the roof. We were in the side entrance oval of the res­taurant in under five minutes.

I had tried to question Halsey. "That thing in the box—" But he silenced me. In the dim metal room of Orentino, the Red Spark's man­ager, where Foley was waiting for us, a barrage was up. We could hear it faintly humming, and see the little line of blue-yellow sparks snapping along the angles of the walls. Now we could talk.

 

HALSEY slammed the door down. He said swiftly, "My men caught one of those things this morning. They have it now, and I think Molo does not yet know we captured it. A human brain; we're convinced that it un­derstands English and can talk—but no one has been able to make it talk yet! Foley, order that damned Orentino to de-insulate the room Molo is in. Now, by the gods, we may see and hear something!"

The frightened Italian manager of the Red Spark was in the restaurant's control room. Halsey killed our barrage to let the outside connections get through to us. We all crowded around the mirror-grid which stood here on Orentino's desk. Foley gave us con­nection with the control room; we saw Orentino's fat, swarthy face, with his eyes nearly popping from fright.

"But yet, Colonel Halsey, I will do whatever you tell me!"

"What room is that Martian oc­cupying?"

"Insulated 39."

"Break off the insulation. Do it slowly and he may not notice. Then give us connection—audible and visible."

"But I have no image-finders in the insulated rooms, for why should I have installed—"

"Cut off the barrage—I'll get connection there!"

Foley was already setting up his eavesdropper on the desk. The mir­ror blurred a little; then it clari­fied. We had the interior of the secret room! And voices were com­ing out of Foley's tiny receiver!

 

THE image showed the box on the floor, with its lid down. The tall hooded shape of the stran­ger stood with Molo and his sister by the table. They were talking in swift, vehement undertones. The language was Martian, a dialect principally used in Ferrok-Shahn. Our equipment brought it in, blurred and scratched, but clear enough to be distinguishable. I could understand it.

Molo was saying: "But you are the fool to have dared come here!"

"The master is confused. He knows that there is danger. Something is wrong." The hooded stran­ger spoke like a foreigner. Not a Martian, not an Earthman—and not like any person of Venus I had ever heard. A strange, weird­ly indescribable intonation. It was a queerly flat, hollow voice.

"I am saying the master is con­fused—"

"Well, let him be."

"And he demanded I bring him here to find you. He is displeased that you are here."

What gruesome thing was this? Their glances seemed to go to the box on the floor at their feet, as though the master were in there. But the lid of the box did not rise.

"Well, you have found me," Molo declared impatiently. "When you know me better, always you will find I have my wits. The thing is for to-morrow night—not to­night."

"But that, my master is not sure." The hollow voice was deferential but insistent. "He fears danger. He swears that something has gone wrong. He is working on it now, striving to receive the message. There is a message! He knows that much. Perhaps from our world Wandl itself."

 

FOR a moment Molo had no answer. His sister had not spoken. I noticed suddenly that her gaze seemed to be roving the room.

"What is it I should do?" Molo asked at last.

"Come with us to your home­room."

"But I have everything ready there. The contact is ready for to­morrow night. Your world will con­trol Earth! Tomorrow night—""But if it be tonight?"

Again Molo was silent. My breath stopped. On our mirror I saw the stranger's hood part just a little. There seemed to be no face; just the blur of something brownish!

"But if it be tonight?" insisted the voice.

"I will go," Molo agreed abrupt­ly. "But that your coming here was dangerous. Suppose we cannot get out undetected? You know I will never go to where all our instru­ments are set up and have some damnable spy follow me. Is all go­ing well on Venus and Mars?"

"Yes. My master feels so. He seems to get messages; the contacts will be made simultaneously." A gruesome chuckle! "The capture of these three worlds—we shall have all three enchained at once! Helpless!"

The lid of the black box seemed again about to rise when there came a sharp cry from Meka. "This room is not insulated! The hum is gone—the sparks!"

Our eavesdropping was discov­ered! Beside me I heard Halsey give a low curse. On our mirror we saw sudden action. The ten-foot cloaked figure laboriously lift­ed the black box, and swung with it toward the outer wall of the room. I saw now clearly with what a dragging, heavy tread that giant shape moved—as though it weighed, here on Earth, far more than the normal weight to which it was ac­customed.

"Over there!" Molo gasped. "The escape-porte; this room has one! Meka, go with him! I will join you—you know where!"

Foley cried, "Colonel, I may be able to stop them!"

But Halsey saw on our image that Molo was staying. "Wait! Let them go! If we have the Martian here we'll do better."

I saw the room's escape-porte swing open as Meka and the hooded shape carrying the box moved for it. How many indiscreet wives, on frivolous occasions, had done that! The moonlit darkness of outer catwalk enveloped the disappearing figures.

 

MOLO was left alone. He closed the porte swiftly. His detector was now in his hand, but Halsey anticipated him by a second or two. Our listener went dead; our mirror darkened. Doubtless Molo was never sure whether he had been spied upon or not.

Halsey was on his feet. "Foley, get out into the main room! Stay with him!"

But there was no need to fol­low Molo. Evidently he had stayed to allay suspicion; sent his visitor and sister out by the escape-porte, which was usual enough; and now he was back in the main room as though nothing important had hap­pened. An appearance of intoxica­tion had again come to him. He wavered jovially across the room, threading his way through the gay diners, and reached the table where his drunken party still sat carousing. We saw all this from Orentino's mirror-grid, here in the manager's office. And then we saw that surreptitiously Molo was using his detector, trying to verify if ray-vibrations were upon him. We saw him turn and gaze toward the lens in the curtains behind him. Again Halsey shut us off. "He won't make a move with any ray on him, that's evident."

"You want him to leave?" I murmur­ed.

“Of course I do. I want him to move unsuspecting. If we had caught him—and that thing in the bottle, it would have told us nothing. He's got a base somewhere in the city—something damnable—diabolic!  You heard what they said about it. We've got to trick him into going there, unsuspecting."

 

HALSEY seized the audiphone. His gaze went to Venza. "Your chance. It's the only way. Foley? Keep away from that Mar­tian! Shut off every ray, every lens in the place. I'll meet you out there in a moment. I'm sending a girl; she'll go after 'him."

"You—you want me to go now?" murmured Venza.

"Yes. It's the only way. He'll think, presently, that no one is interested in him. Perhaps you can get him drinking. Oh, Venza, if you have any wiles to beguile men, use them now!"

"No!" gasped Snap. "No, I tell you!"

Anita was clinging to Venza. She cried abruptly, "Colonel Halsey, I'm going! Two of us!"

Halsey stared. Upon many dire occasions he had been forced to swift decision. He made one now.

"You may go. That is still bet­ter. My girls—do your best! All your wits!"

I jumped to my feet. Anita going into this!

"Colonel Halsey, I should think you could do something better than—"

He gripped me by the shoulders. "Gregg Haljan, I take no sugges­tions from you!" His blazing eyes bored into me. "Don't you realize this means destruction of our three inhabited planets? I'll sacrifice any­thing—myself, or you, or these girls! Venza, take Anita outside! I'll join you in a moment—give you last instructions. You must take with you a portable audi­phone."

"I won't let her go," protested Snap. "This is diabolical!"

Halsey's face softened a little. "I can understand how you feel. But it's necessary. You can't force this Molo. Nor that thing in the cloak, nor the brain in the box. But if these girls can trick Molo, find the course of this thing—"

The girls were moving toward the door of the room. I met Snap's anguished gaze.

"Gregg! Don't let them go!" "No! No, I won't!"

I made a lunge past Halsey, with Snap after me. Halsey did not move from his place, but one of his rays struck us. With all my senses numbed I felt myself falling.

"Gregg—don't—let them—"

Snap had tusnbled half upon me. My senses did not quite fade. I was aware of Anita's and Venza's horrified cries, but Halsey forcibly pushed them to the door. It slid up. I vaguely saw the two girls going out with Halsey after them; and the door coming down, leav­ing Snap and me lying stricken on the floor.

 

CHAPTER IV
Death of the Brain

 

I HAVE no clear idea how long it was before Halsey came back. Ten minutes or half an hour? Snap and I were seated on a low metal bench against the wall. The effect of the accursed paralyzing ray was wearing off. We were tingling all over, clinging to each other on the bench, with our senses still con­fused; and within me—and I know that Snap felt the same—was a feeling of terror that the girls had gone upon such a mission, queerly mingled with a sense of shame at our actions in trying to stop them. A sacrifice? A danger for the good of many. others, whose lives are as important to them as ours to us? Of course we would risk such a sacrifice, and that Halsey had had to force us was humiliating. Yet the human mind individualizes. The terror menacing the worlds was a vague generality; our love for those two girls was very real.

Halsey stalked in upon us. "So you are recovered?"

Snap stammered, "We—I say, we're sorry as hell we acted like that."

"I know you are." His voice softened. "If I could have done anything else, believe me, I would. But I hope—I don't think harm will come to them. They are clever."

"Are they outside?" I asked. "Did they find a way of meeting the Martian? How long have you been gone?"

 

HALSEY merely stared at me as though he had no inten­tion of answering. And then the audiphone on the desk 'buzzed.

"This is Halsey," he said. "Yes, I have them here. Bring them—did you say bring them?"

We could not hear the answer­ing voice, for Halsey had the muf­fler in contact.

"No, I would prefer not to come. I'm watching something. I'm at the Red Spark Cafe. Well, I'm going back to my office presently, to wake there."

He turned suddenly into talking code. Like Snap, I had never had occasion to learn it. The words were a strangely sounding staccato gibberish. He ended, "I will send them. Grantline? Very well, I’ll tell them to locate him. At once, yes."

Halsey closed off the audiphone and swung on us.

"You're all right now?"

"Yes," I said. I stood up, drawing Snap up with me. I was determined now, at least, that we would have the stomach to act like men, and not like frightened, moonstruck lovers. I added, "What is wanted of us, Colonel Halsey?"

"That's        better, Gregg." He smiled. The flashing anger was gone from him now, but he was still grim. "I wanted you here to wait for this call from the Con­cave of Public Safety. It met at midnight. They have ordered you there—you two."

Where?" asked Snap. "That's a secret meeting, isn't it? There was no report of it over the air to­night."

"Yes, secret. I don't know the lo­cation myself. They wanted me also." He smiled his faint smile again. "But I begged off, as you heard."

He was leading us to the door. "They won't need you for more than half an hour. When they fin­ish, come back to my office. You can come openly." He stood with his finger on the door lever. "Good-by, lads. From the service room here—Foley will lead you to it—you are to take a mail cylinder for Postal switch-station 20. They'll re­route you from there to the con­clave auditorium—whichever one has been selected."

 

THE door slid up. "When you disembark," he added, "ask for Johnny Grantline. You are to sit with him."

"Good-by, sir," I said.

He showed us out, and the door slid down upon him. We trudged the corridor, and Snap gripped me.

"For myself," he whispered swift­ly, "I'll go to the damnable conclave because I'm ordered. But I won't stay there long. Half an hour, didn't he say? Once we get out of it, if I don't route myself back here to the Red Spark, I'm a motor-oiler."

I agreed with him. It did not seem so utterly terrifying now. We had a mental picture of Anita and Venza in the Red Spark's public room. Doubtless Orentino had cre­ated a way for them to meet Molo. They would sit here in the Red Spark with that drunken party, and in less than an hour we would be back.

But as we passed diagonally across an end of the main room with Foley leading us, we caught a glimpse of Molo's table. The drunken party was still there. But Molo, Anita and Venza were gone!

We had no time to get any in­formation. Foley abruptly left us, and another man took his place. In the service room a passenger cylinder was waiting. Our guide entered it with us. At the switch-station we had our breath knocked out with the bumping, but the cylinder remained sealed. And after another ten minutes in the vacuum tube, we reached our unknown des­tination.

The cylinder-slide opened. We found ourselves with a lone guard; and through a gloomy arcade open­ing Johnny Grantline was advanc­ing to greet us.

"Well, so here you are, Gregg. Hell to pay heaven going on here. Come on in; I'll tell you."

"We were sent for," Snap said.

"Yes. They told me to contact with you. But they don't want you yet. Come on in."

 

HE waved away the guard and led us through a padded ar­cade into a low, vaulted audience room, windowless and gloomy. Across it, a doorway panel stood ajar. Grantline peered through it. There was the glow of light from the adjoining room and the distant, blended murmur of many voices.

Grantline closed the door. "They don't want you yet. They'll buzz us. Sit down and I'll tell you—"

"Where are we?" I asked. "That damned cylinder routed us unknown."

"The Ninth Conclave Hall."

I knew its location: lower Man­hattan, high under the city roof. Grantline produced little cigarette cylinders.

"Steady your nerves, lads. You'll need it."

He grinned at us. The hand with which he lighted my cylinder was steady as a tower-base; but he was excited, nevertheless. I could see it by the glint in his eyes, and hear it in his voice.

"What's going on?" Snap de­manded.

"It's about this invading planet. By the gods, when you hear what's really been learned about it!—"

"Well, what?" I asked.

 

HE sketched what he had heard this night at the conclave. The mysterious invader was in­habited.

"How do they know that?" Snap put in.

"Don't be a nit-wit. Wait till you hear the rest of it. The accursed thing changes its orbit. It banks and turns like a space-ship! It stopped out in space. It's poised out there now between Mars and Jupiter. A world a fifth or sixth as big as our Moon, and it swims of its own volition! It's inhabited, and the beings on it can control its movements! They've brought it in from interstellar space, into our solar system. Evidently the point they've reached now is as far as they want to come. They've poised out there, getting ready to attack, not only us, but Mars and Venus simultaneously."

Grantline gazed at us through the smoke, of his cigarette. He was much like Snap, this Johnny Grant-line. Small, wiry, brisk of move­ment and manner. But he was much older than Snap; his hair was grey­ing at the temples; his voice always carried the authority of one accus­tomed to commanding men.

"Don't ask me for the technicali­ties of how they reached these conclusions. I'm no super-astrono­mer. I'm only telling you what the discussion has been here for the past hour."

Heaven knows we had no inclination to dispute them. What we had seen and heard at the Red Spark during this hour tallied very well with his words.

He went on swiftly, "The attack, of whatever nature it may be, they seem to feel is impending at once. Not next month, or next week, but now! Lord, Gregg, I don't blame you for staring like that! You don't know what's been going on for the past two days—on Earth, and Venus and Mars. Of course you don't; it's all been suppressed. Neither did I, until I heard it here to-night. The U.S.W.—the Martian Union—the Venus Free State—all of us are preparing for war! Call it governmental panic, if you like. You didn't know, did you, that every government space-flyer on the Earth is being commissioned? We're not going to sit around and wait for invaders to land! The war —if there is to be one—won't be fought on Earth if we can help it."

 

WE stared. Snap said: "What makes them think—" 

"That a war is coming?" Grant-line finished for him. "Plenty. This new planet has sent out space­ships! The planet itself is hovering sixty million miles away from us. About forty million miles from Mars and close to ninety million from Venus. Perhaps its leaders think that's the most strategic spot. At any rate, there it is, and it's poised there.

"Then it sent out space-ships, three of them. One—right now, tonight—is hovering close to Venus. Another is near Mars, and the third is some 200,000 miles off Earth! Several of our interplanetary freighters are overdue; it seems now that they must have encountered these invading ships and been destroyed."

An enemy ship hovering now within 200,000 miles of Earth! Closer even than our nearby Moon!

Grantline was continuing vehe­mently.

"Still more, and worse: these three hovering ships have already landed the enemy on Mars and Venus. The helio-reports mention mysterious encounters in Ferrok­Shahn and Grebbar. For three or four days Mars has been in a panic of apprehension, Venus almost as bad. And here on Earth: the enemy has landed here! Not many, per­haps; but one has been captured! A thing—God, it's almost beyond description."

We could well agree with that, since Snap and I had just seen one.

"They've got it here," Grantline was saying. "They've tried to make it talk! They can't, but they're going to try again. Force it, this time! It seems to understand our language; the light in its eyes when they speak to it—"

A shudder was in his voice. He jumped to his feet and went to the door of the room, probed it open a trifle and came back to us.

"They're bringing it in." Upon his face was a look of awed horror, the look which everyone bears when fronted with the gruesome mystery of the unknown. "Come on; let's watch."

We stood crowding the small door-oval. It gave onto a darkened little balcony of the conclave hall. The girders of the city roof were over us. There were a few official spectators sitting up here in the dark on the balcony, but none noticed us.

 

"THE lower floor of the hall was lighted. Around the polished oblong tables perhaps a hundred scientists and high governmental officials of the three worlds were seated. Near the center of the hall was a small dais-platform. On a table there someone had just placed a circular black box, similar to the one we had seen previously.

The hall was hushed and tense. On the dais stood a group of Earth officials. One of them spoke.

"Here it is, gentlemen. And this time, by God, if we can make it speak—"

"The War Secretary from Great-London," Grantline whispered.

I recognized him—Brayley, Com­mander in Chief of the land, air, water and space armies of the United States of the World. He was gigantic in stature, with a great shock of gray-white hair. A com­manding figure, if there ever was one.

Beside him the little Japanese representative in Great-New York—one Nippor—seemed a pigmy. The acoustics of the silent hall carried his soft voice up to us.

"Will we use force? Torture, now —it is vital, necessary."

"Yes, by God! Anything!"

It seemed that everyone in the hall must have been shuddering; I could feel it like an aura pound­ing up at me. Brayley lifted the box-lid; and with his naked hands reached in and raised the horrible thing; held it up, a two-foot ball of palpitating gray-white mem­brane. Another living brain! A human thing.

"Now, damn you, you're going to talk to us! Understand that! We're going to make you talk. Get that box out of the way!"

They flung the box to the floor, and Brayley placed the brain on the table. The glare of light from an overhead dome came down full upon it. Beneath the stretched taut membrane the convolutions of the brain showed like tangled purple worms. The blood-vessels seemed distended almost to bursting now, for the thing was terrified. The gruesome face, with popping eyes and that gaping mouth, showed a horrible travesty of terror. From where its ears should have been, a crooked little arm of flabby gray-white flesh came down, one on each side, and braced the table. And I saw now that it had a shriveled body, or at least little legs, bent, almost crushed under it by its weight.

"Now, damn you"—Brayley stood rubbing off his hands against his coat—"for the last time, will you talk?"

 

THE goggling eyes held with terrified but baleful gaze upon Brayley's face. Did it understand? The eyes were fronted our way, and suddenly their glance swung up so that I seemed for an instant to see down into them. And it swept me then: this was a thing of greater intelligence—greater knowl­edge, perhaps—than our own. A human, with brain so developed that through myriad generations the body was shriveled, almost gone, and only this distended brain was left. A mind was housed here, an intelligence—housed in this monstrous brain which itself was unhampered by any bony container of skull.

Were these the beings of the new planet which had come to attack us? But how could this helpless thing—incapable of almost every­thing, obviously, save thought—do the work of its world? How could this enemy space-ship, hovering now only 200,000 miles away, be built and launched and guided, with only things like this to command it?

Then I recalled again that in­sulated room of the Red Spark Cafe: the thin, ten-foot hooded shape which was carrying the black box. Was that, perhaps, an opposite type of being? A human, with the brain submerged, dwarfed, and the body paramount? It had called one of these brains "master." Were there, on this mysterious planet, two co-existing types of humans? Each a specialist, one for the physical work and skill, and the other for the mental?

It was an instant rush of thoughts as I stood with Snap and Grant-line in that dark balcony doorway, gazing down to where the giant brain stood braced upon its shriv­eled arms and legs, terrified and yet glaring defiance of these men of Earth, Mars and Venus who were here under its gaze. And I realized then why we of Earth and Venus and Mars are all cast in the same mould we call human. It is a little family of planets, here in our solar system. For countless eons we have been close neighbors. The same sunlight, the same general conditions of life, the same seed, were strewn here by a wise Crea­tor. A man from the Orient is different from an Anglo-Saxon. A man of Mars differs a little more. But basically they are the same.

 

YET here, confronting us now, was a new type. From realms of interstellar space, far beyond our solar system, this new human had come. What knowledge, what new methods of thought, conceptions of human relations it might hold, who could guess? But that it came as an enemy, intent upon destroying us unless we destroyed it—that much seemed obvious.

"For the last time, will you talk?" cried Brayley.

There was another interval of silence. The eyes of the brain were very watchful. Its gaze roved the hall as though it were seeking for help. It shifted its little arms on the table, seemingly exhausted already from the physical effort of supporting itself.

Brayley's voice came again. "Doubtless you can feel pain. We'll see."

With what effort of will to over­come his revulsion we may only guess, he reached forward and pinched the little arm. The result was electrifying. From the up-ended slit of mouth in that goggling face came a scream. It pierced the heavy tense silence of the hall, a scream ghastly in its timbre; weird, un­earthly, like nothing that any of us had ever heard before. And in it was conveyed an agony of physical suffering, as though Brayley had inflicted, not a little pinch of that flabby arm, but had thrust a red-hot knife into its vitals.

The brain could feel pain indeed! It crouched with stiffened arms and legs; the membrane of its great head seemed to bulge with greater distension; the knotted blood-vessels were gorged with purple blood. The eyes rolled. Then it closed its mouth. Its gaze steadied upon Brayley's face, so baleful a gaze that as I caught the reflection of its luminous purple glow a shud­der of fear and revulsion swept me.

"So you did not like that?" Brayley steadied his voice. "If you don't want more, you had better speak. How did you get here on Earth? What are you trying to do here?"

 

THERE seemed an interminable interval of silence. Then Nippor, the little Japanese, took a menacing step forward.

"Speak! We will force it from you!" He spread his lean brown fingers before the brain's face. "Shall I stab into you?"

And then it spoke. "Do—not—­touch—me—again!"

Indescribable voice! Human, ani­mal or monster no one could say. But the words were clear, precise; and for all their terror, they seemed to hold an infinite command.

A wave of excitement swept the hall, but Brayley's gesture silenced it. He leaped forward and bent low over the palpitating brain.

"So you can talk? You come as an enemy. We have given you every chance today for friendship, and you have refused. You come allied with Martian criminals. You have a ship, quite near us, out in space. What are you trying to do to us?"

It only glared.

"Speak!"

"I will not tell you anything!" 

"Oh, yes, you will!"

"No!"

All the men on the platform were crowding close to it now.

"Speak!" ordered Brayley again. "Here in Great New York the Mar­tian, Moto, has a hiding place. Where is it?"

No answer.

 

"WHERE is it? You are perhaps a leader of your world. I lead ours—and I'm going to master you now. Where is this hiding place?"

The thing suddenly laughed, a gruesome, eerie cackle. "You will know when it is too late! I think it is too late already!"

"Too late for what?"

"To save your world. Doomed, your three worlds! Don't—touch—me!"

It ended with a scream of ap­prehension. The exasperated, hot-tempered Japanese had reached for it. His fingers closed on the crooked little arm. He rasped:

"Tell us what to do to save our­selves!"

"No! Let—me—go!"

"Tell us! You damnable—"

"No!" It screamed again. "Let—me—go !"

“Tell us! By the Lord, if you don't—"

Nippor strengthened his squeez­ing grip. The thing was writhing; the thin ball of membrane palpi­tating, heaving. And suddenly it burst! Over all its purpled surface, blood came with a gush!

Nippor and Brayley staggered backward. The scream of the brain ended in a choking gurgle. The little legs and tiny body wilted under it. The round ball of mem­brane sank to the table. It rolled sidewise upon one arm and ear, and in a moment its palpitations ceased. A purple-red mass of blood, it lay deflated and flabby.

It was dead!

 

CHAPTER V

The Star-Streak

 

"BUT see here," I said, "did they mention the Martian, Molo, at all? Brayley told that ac­cursed thing out there—"

"They were discussing Molo be­fore you arrived," Grantline told us.

We had drawn back from the doorway. The conference, with the dead thing on the table removed, was proceeding. Snap and I had mo­mentarily forgotten Anita and Venza; but now we were in a panic to get back to the Red Spark.

"But you can't go," said Grantline. "Brayley ordered you here. He'll want to see you in a mo­ment."

"Well, why don't he see us now?" Snap protested. "I'm not going to cool myself off sitting here."

"Oh, yes, you are."

Grantline sent word to Brayley that we were here. In a moment the answer came; we were to wait a short time and then he would want to see us.

We swiftly told Grantline what had happened at the Red Spark, and found that already he knew most of it. Francis had relayed it to the conference. And Halsey now was in constant communication with the officials here.

"Then what is happening?" I demanded. "Where are the girls? Has Halsey heard from them?"

Again Grantline went to a nearby room.

"Anita sent a message," he said when he returned. "They are with Molo. An indefinite message; but Halsey is ordering a squad of men to be ready."

Grantline swiftly sketched for us what had happened in the Red Spark. Anita and Venza, flaunting a simulated drunkenness with a skill for acting which I knew both of them possessed, had joined that drunken party. Perhaps if Meka had been there, she would have seen through them.

 

BUT Molo did not. And they have since told me that the Martian was himself far from sober, although he was probably not aware that the drink was affecting him. Whatever his emotions—and in the light of what subsequently occurred I can guess at how he felt toward Venza—he yielded to their demands to leave the restaurant with him. He wanted, as we know, most des­perately to leave unobtrusively. And Venza threatened a drunken scene unless she could go.

He took them, leaving openly in a public fare-car. Doubtless he at first intended to de-rail them somewhere and proceed secretly to his lair. But they convinced him that he was not followed. Twice he used his detector, and Anita and Halsey were clever enough to throw off their rays in time to avoid it.

Then Halsey lost connection with the fleeing car, and after that Molo doubtless changed his mind. His as­sociation with these two supposedly drunken and wholly attractive young women amounted to an abduction.

These, we can only guess, were his motives for acting as he did. And we know that his sister showed immediate disapproval of his rashness.

"But where are they now?" I demanded of Grantline. "Good God, we can't let them—"

"You," said Grantline sternly, "are out of it. Do you think that

Halsey—under Brayley's orders, now—will neglect any chance to find out where Molo is hiding? He and these brains—you saw one of them die just now rather than tell the secret—they're planning some­thing. You heard, from the in­sulated room of the Red Spark, that shrouded figure say that his master thought it would be tonight. Something is about to happen. This conference is wrestling with it. In Grebbar and Ferrok-Shahn they're striving to find out what it is. Something impending now! The Martians and Venus people, like us, realize that. The helios are pouring in here from Venus and Mars. They're mobilizing their space-flyers, just as we are."

 

GRANTLINE at last was letting out all his apprehensions upon us, with this burst. "Something nameless, hideous. You've only been touching the surface, like the gen­eral public, which must be pro­tected from panic. Halsey didn't tell you that the entire resources of his organization are out upon this thing to-night. Here at the conclave there's a room of information-sorters. That's just where I came from a moment ago. Every country on our Earth is making ready—for what, nobody knows! Halsey and all his force are on the alert—for what? It's ghastly, not knowing what you're fighting. Halsey let that Martian woman and the hooded stranger get away. He thought he could pick them up again, but he hasn't.

"He's had two fragmentary calls from Anita. He has a hundred men ready to rush to their aid, and to capture Molo's lair. He expects an­other message from Anita any mo­ment. This conference here knows every movement that is being made, within ten or twenty seconds of its making. Perhaps upon Anita and Venza the whole outcome of this thing may hang, and you and Snap rail because you love them and they are in danger!"

We had no answer to that. We could only stare at him.

"But see here," I stammered. "who is this Molo? Halsey didn't tell us."

"He told us nothing," said Snap. "Nothing that he could avoid. You'd think we were damn children."

"You've been acting like it. Molo is an interplanetary pirate. The Star-Streak—"

"Good Lord!"

 

WE had heard of him indeed! For five years past, a mys­terious gray space-flyer, with a base supposedly hidden in the Polar deserts of Mars, had been terror­izing interplanetary shipping. Many of the smaller freighters between the worlds had mysteriously van­ished, captured and destroyed by the Star-Streak, as the pirate ship was called.

"They think." Grantline went on. "that Molo was cruising with his pirate ship. He has, as you know, a band of criminals drawn from all the three worlds; supposedly about fifty of them, commanded by him­self and his sister. We think that Molo and his pirate flyer—last month, probably—encountered the three flyers which this new planet sent out. The Star-Streak was cap­tured; perhaps destroyed. And Molo and his band, themselves outlaws, enemies to our three worlds, joined with this new enemy. To save them­selves—and because they have been promised greater rewards."

"But why would these brains want them, want their help?" Snap de­manded.

"This is all theory, probabilities only. Wouldn't you say it was be­cause, in Ferrok-Shahn, Grebbar, and here in Great-New York, simul­taneously to-night, something has to be accomplished? Something the themselves could not do. Molo and his band know all three worlds. How they landed here in Great-New York nobody knows. The enemy space-ship is 200,000 miles out. Obviously they came from it—landed secretly with some smaller vehicle somewhere on Earth and made their way here. And when whatever it is they're expecting to do is accomplished, they'll try to escape by the same method. But, by the gods, if we have our way—"

A buzzer hissed beside us. A mi­croscopic voice commanded:

"Grantline, bring Gregg Haljan and Daniel Dean to room six at once. Mr. Brayley wants them now."

In room six we stood before the War Secretary, who had arrived there a moment ahead of us.

"Ah, Haljan—and Dean. I'm glad to see you."

 

HE was still white and shaken. Beads of perspiration stood upon his forehead. He mopped them off.

"I've just had a—rather terrible experience." He did not suggest that we sit down. He went on crisply:

"Grantline has no doubt told you some of the things which are upon us tonight?"

"I have," said Grantline.

"Quite so. Disturbing, terrifying things. . . . Haljan, in a word, there is an enemy ship out in space. God knows of what character; we don't. It is at this moment seemingly poised visually not over twelve de­grees from the Moon. The observa­tory at Tokyohama reports that they can see it plainly with the solarscope. We have a ship, Haljan, being rushed into commission to­night. You know her—the Com­etara."

"I know her," I said.

"Quite so. She is taking flight, as soon after dawn as we can make her ready. She will carry about fifty men. The armament and men are in charge of Grantline. You, Dean, we want to handle her radio­helio."

"Thank you," said Snap.

"And you, Haljan—we can think of no one better fitted to navigate her."

He waved away my words of ap­preciation. "Within another day we shall have thirty such ships in space. Mars and Venus also are mobilizing. God know we hope it will prove unnecessary. This first ship may perhaps meet the enemy; conquer it."

 

BUT there was no conviction in his voice. He stood up. "We feel, Haljan, that if anyone can handle the Cometara with skill enough to combat this lurking enemy, it will be you."

"I will do my best, sir.”

"We know that. The ship is leaving from the Tappan Interplanetary Stage as soon after dawn as possible. When have you and Dean last slept?"

Snap and I gazed at each other "Last night," we both said.

"Quite so. Then you need sleep now. I want you to go at once to the Tappan Interplanetary Field house. The Commander there will give you a room, supper and make you comfortable. Eat, and sleep if you can. We want you to keep out of this night's activities here in the city. You understand?"

"Yes, sir," I agreed.

"We want you refreshed for what may come upon the Cometara. That, more than anything, is vital." An orderly was approaching behind Brayley. "I'm coming back in a moment, Rollins." Brayley smile wanly. "So much at once—it leaves one confused."

He shook hands with us. "I may not see you again until it's over.— Good luck, lads. Grantline, they need you for a moment in the hall; something about electronic space-gun equipment for the Cometara. Then you'd better go to Tappan House also, and get some sleep."

We were dismissed. Snap and I regarded each other hesitantly. I said impulsively:

"Mr. Brayley, Detective-Colonel Halsey is using two girls to­night—"

"Yes, we're watching that, Hal­jan."

"They are the girls we are to marry," I added. "May we communicate with Colonel Halsey?"

"Yes. Call him from here." He smiled his tired smile. "But keep out of it, you lads. Remember, we need you at dawn."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

He took Grantline with him and left us alone in the little room.

"Well," burst out Snap, "that's that. If I go up to Tappan before Venza and Anita are safe, I'm a motor-oiler."

"Same here. But Snap, we've got be there by dawn, or soon after."

 

THE Tappan departure-stage was only a few miles up the Hudson, across the Tappan-Zee from the Westchester residential dis­trict. We could get there in half an hour.

It was now nearly trinight, or halfway between midnight and dawn. There was no audiphone connection in this small room. We did not want to leave it and talk from an audiophone in some other room.

"Not me," said Snap. "When I go out of here, I go with a rush.
If we poke our heads out there now somebody'll grab us, route us
up to Tappan with a guard. Set up your speaker, Gregg. You can get him.”

I had my portable audiphone to use sound connection only. For lo­cal distances about the city it was dependable. In a minute or two Halsey accepted my call.

"You, Gregg?"

"Yes. We're at the conclave. They're through with us. Where is Anita? Oh, Colonel Halsey, please—"

"We've heard from her. Twice. Some time ago, Gregg. Just fragments; it's all I can tell you. I'm expecting—"

We could hear someone inter­rupting him. Then he came back. "Gregg? I was saying, Molo took them somewhere. He had his detec­tor commissioned; I didn't dare fling after them—Anita warned me not to try it. She had to stop connection herself. God knows how she has been able to whisper to me at all."

 

HIS voice, like Brayley's, had the ring of a man almost con­fused, mentally strained to the breaking point. I could appreciate how Halsey must feel. In his youth a man of physical action, forced now almost always to remain at his cen­tral desk, with his encircling banks of instruments; holding all the net­work of his far-flung activities cen­tralized; his voice, his decisions and commands, in a hundred places almost simultaneously—while his body sat there inactive at his desk.

"Gregg, it's all I can tell you. I have men strewn about the city. When the clue comes, I'll send them in force. The girls must have ar­rived at Molo's place by now, watching their chance to communicate. If only they know where they are, so that they can tell me. . . . Gregg, I must disconnect—"

"Colonel Halsey—Anita's fre­quency — the wave-combination —give me that! Maybe Snap and I can pick up the message when it comes and not disturb you any more."

He named the oscillating frequency of the instrument Anita was using. Then he disconnected.

"But can you pick up that fre­quency?" Snap demanded anxiously.

"Yes, I think so."

"Then come on. We'll try it as we go."

"Go where?"

It faced us down. We were long­ing for action. There was no place to go! Nothing we could think of to do!

"The hell; sit here then," said Snap. "Try that frequency. We've got to do something. If she'll only send us a hint!"

The room's door-slide suddenly opened, and an orderly appeared be­fore us.

"Haljan?"

"Get the hell away!" roared Snap. "We've had our orders; we don't want any from you!"

"Gregg Haljan and Daniel Dean are paged on the mirrors," the or­derly said mildly.

Someone in the city wanted us; our names were appearing on the various mirror-grids, publicly dis­played throughout the city in the hope that we would answer.

“That's different," said Snap. "An­swer it for us, that's a good fellow. Say we're too damn busy."

"It must be important," the or­derly insisted. "The caller registered a fee at the Search Bureau: that's how they located you here. He paid the highest fee to search you. An impending danger emer­gency call—"

"That is different," I exclaimed. It was against the law to invoke the services of the Search Bureau unless based upon actual impending danger. Such a call at once enlisted the services of Halsey's organiza­tion.

"We'll take it," I told the or­derly.

"Come with me, sir." He turned and left swiftly.

 

WE hastened with him to a corridor cubby. Upon the audiphone there I was at once con­nected with a voice, and an anx­ious man's face, with a two-day growth upon it.

"Haljan! Thank God you answer. This is Dud Ardley. Me and Shac are here. Listen, this is the lower cellar corridor, Lateral 3, under Broadway Street. For God's sake don't get it mixed. Me and Shac just have seen your girls down here."

News of Anita and Venza! I could see in the mirror-image, behind Dud's head, the outlines of the little public cubby from which he was calling. He and his brother had been traversing this deserted lowest cellar corridor of East Side lower Manhattan, upon some illicit er­rand of their own. They had seen figures alighting from a fare-car. By instinct, the brothers Ardley were always furtive. They had crouched and watched, and had caught a glimpse of the faces of Venza and Anita. The girls were hooded and cloaked. A hooded man was with them. The fare-car quickly rolled away, and the hooded fig­ures, suddenly becoming invisible within their magnetic cloaks, had vanished.

"S'elp me, we couldn't do nothin'. We ain't armed, Gregg—you know we take no chances with the police by carryin' cylinders. So I paged you in a hurry."

"Dud, that's damn nice of you. Where are you now? Tell me again." The Ardleys, knowing nothing of the events of this night, supposed that the girls were being abducted, or were perhaps upon some esca­pade about which Snap and I should be informed.

"Damn right, Dud. We'll come at once. You two wait for us?" "Sure. If you got instruments, maybe we can track 'em. It wasn't a quarter of a mile from here over toward the river. Plenty of rotten dumps down there."

The cellar tenements of the city, where all the scum of its popula­tion gathered! I knew that many criminal Martians and Venus people lived in that disreputable shambles.

"Wait for us, Dud. We'll come in a rush."

I slammed up the audiphone. Snap, beside me, had heard it all. He shoved the astonished orderly out of our way.

"What's the nearest exit-route out of here? Hurry up, you!" "To the city roof, sir, up this incline, and—"

We dashed up the spiral incline, through a low exit-porte, and were in the starlight of the city roof.

 

CHAPTER VI

The Screaming Light-Beam

 

"CONNECT it, Gregg! You can't tell—her message might come over any minute."

I tuned the receiving coils of the little portable audiphone to the seldom used oscillation frequency which Halsey had told us Anita's transmitter was sending.

"Anything, Gregg?"

"No. Dead channel."

The air, in Anita's channel, was so bafflingly silent!

Snap was rushing us, in a small official tram-car, along one of the south-bound roof-tracks. We had been almost immediately challenged by a roof-guard when we appeared from the upper porte of the Con­clave Hall; the city roof was not open to public traffic. But our well-known names, and a glib, half-true story of the recent interview with Brayley, calmed the guard's ire. He let us pass; he even found us a single-seat hand-tram, and started us southward on the deserted shin­ing rails.

It was a cloudless night, with stars like thickly strewn diamonds on purple velvet. The city roof lay glistening in the starlight. In my great-grandfather's time there had been almost no roof here; an open city, exposed to all the inclement weather. But gradually the arcades and overhead viaducts, cross bal­conies and catwalks which spanned the canyon street between the giant buildings became a roof. It spread, now terraced and sloped to top the lofty buildings, like a great rumpled sheet propped by the knees of sleeping giants. Some of the roof was of opaque alumite—dark patches, alternating with the great glassite panes which in places ad­mitted the daylight.

 

OUR little single-motor tram sped southward upon the nar­row, paralleled rails which wound their way over the terraces. Save for the guards and lookouts in their occasional cubbies, and the air-traffic directors in their towers, we were alone up here. The roof was tangled with air-pipes, line-wire conduits, ether-wave aerials — arte­rial systems of the ventilating and lighting devices. As far as one could see the ventilators stood fronting the night breeze like little listening ears. There were water tanks; great cross-bulkheads and flumes to handle the rain and snow. A few traffic towers maintained or­der in the overhead air-lanes. Their beacons stood up like swords into the sky when the passing lights marked the thinly-strewn trinight traffic.

We were stopped at intervals, but in each case were passed promptly. "Nothing yet, Gregg?"

"No."

Anita's channel remained so hor­ribly silent. It was, I suppose, no more than ten minutes during which we sped south along the gro­tesque maze of the roof ; but to us it was an eternity of horrible imag­inings. The girls were down in the shambles of the East Side city cellar. If only some message would come! . . .

"I'll pull up here."

"Yes," I said.

I gathered up my little audi­phone, thrust it under my dark flowing cloak. If only our cloaks were magnetic! But they were not.

We leaped from our car; aban­doned it on a siding.

"In a rush, Haljan?" said the guard.

"That's us. Orders from Mr. B rayley."

We left him and plunged into a descending automatic lift. A drop of a thousand feet; we shot down­ward past all the deserted levels, past the ground-level, the under-surface tramways, the sub-river tubes, the sub-cellar—down to the very bottom of the city.

"Come on, Gregg. Two segments from here."

 

WE advanced almost at a run. At this hour of the night hardly a pedestrian was in evidence. It was an arched, vaulted corridor, almost a tunnel, dimly blue-lit with short lengths of fluorescent tubes at intervals on the ceiling. For all the vaunted mechanisms of our time, the air here was heavy and fetid. Moisture dripped from the concrete roof. It lay on the metal pavement of the ground; the smell of it was dank, tomb-like.

There were frequent cross-tun­nels. We turned eastward into one of them. For a segment there were the lower entrances to the cellars of the giant buildings overhead. We passed a place where the tun­nel-corridor widened into a great underground plaza. The sewerage and wire-pipes lay like tangled py­thons on its floor. Half across it, by the glow of temporary lights strung on a cable, a group of repairmen were working. We passed them, headed in to where the tunnel nar­rowed again and there were now occasional cubby entrances to un­derground dwellings.

It was a rabbit warren from here to the river. A disreputable sham­bles, haunted by criminals and by miserable families, many of whom never saw the daylight for weeks at a time. The very air was sodden. The giant voice of the city hardly carried down here, so that an op­pressive silence hung upon every­thing—as though death were si­lently stalking here, with only our hastening footfalls on the metal grid of the pavement echoing through the stillness. The few pe­destrians whom we passed were furtive as ourselves.

"That next crossing, Gregg—they said they'd wait for us. But I don't see them."

Occasional escalators led up­ward; the overhead traffic—most of it at this hour concerned with the city's incoming food and milk sup­ply—sounded as a vague rumble. In advance of us was a narrow in­tersection. A giant pipe, one of the main arteries of the vacuum-tube postal-transit system, hung above the corridor intersection. There were a few lights in the bullseyes of the subterranean dwelling rooms, but most of them were dark.

"Easy, Snap! Not so fast."

 

A PREMONITION of evil, of something wrong here, sud­denly swept me. I pulled Snap to a walk. We edged over against the tunnel side. We had passed a small, lighted audiphone cubby—evidently the one from which Shac and Dud had paged us. They should have been here waiting; but there was nothing save the empty, gloomy tunnels. . . .

"Something is coming!" Snap clutched at me. We drew our cloaks around us and waited in a shad­owed recess. Down a side incline, a segment behind us, a small automatic food truck came lurching. It pulled up at an arcade entrance —doubtless some food-shop serving the dwellings of this area. Its driver slid the portals, deposited his cases of food, locked the panel after him; and in a moment he and his truck were gone back up the incline.

We heard, in the ensuing silence, a low groan! Someone moaning near at hand. It sent a chill over me. It seemed quite close to us. Then abruptly it stopped. We saw, with­in twenty feet of us, two dark fig­ures lying on the pavement grid in a black patch of shadow where the mail-tube came down in a curve and disappeared into the tunnel wall.

We bent over the figures of two men. They lay together, one half upon the other—black-garbed fig­ures with white, staring faces. One twitched a little and then lay still.

They were Shac and Dud Ardley! "Murdered, Gregg! Good Lord!"

 

BOTH were dead. But we could see no marks upon either of them. Something had killed them, as they waited here for us.

I found my wits. "Snap! We can't stand like this—wholly visible!" It seemed suddenly that there must be invisible enemies lurking here. Things, strange beings, watch­ing us, preparing to strike with hidden death, as they had struck at Shac and Dud.

I pulled Snap away. We darted a few feet. The light of the tunnel intersection was directly over us. "Not here, Snap. Run!"

A panic was on us. Like animals, terrified at the light, we plunged away, seeking darkness.

Under the curving vacuum tube a little further along we found shelter. Snap murmured:

"The girls were past here. But which way, Gregg? Which way?" As though I knew!

I felt at that moment, under my shirt against the skin of my chest, the annode of my audiphone re­ceiver tingling! A receiving signal! Anita's channel was not dead. In the gloom I could see Snap's white face as he watched me hastily bring­ing it out.

"A call, Gregg?"

"Yes, I think so!"

"Hurry, oh hurry!"

We heard a tiny microphonic voice—Anita's voice.

"Colonel Halsey! Yes, I have the location. Lafayette 4—East corridor, lowest level. There was a descend­ing entrance; I don't know the num­ber. Don't you speak again! I've only a minute! Venza safe—but send help! Something we don't un­derstand—a strange mechanism here. Molo is—"

Then Halsey's interrupting voice. "Anita, escape! You and Venza!" 

"We can't! They've got us!" 

"I'm sending men—they'll be there in ten minutes! If you—" 

"Ten minutes! Oh, that will be too late! Molo is—"

It seemed that we heard her scream. The waves blurred and died, but in my horrified ears her mi­crophonic scream was ringing.

 

THE channel was dead. Had Molo discovered her? Lafayette 4—East corridor, lowest level. A descending entrance. . . .

"Snap, that's here! As near here as we could place it! A descending entrance!"

We stood backed against the great curving side of the postal vacuum tube. Within it I beard the hiss and clank as a mail cylinder flashed past, grinding around the curve. Halsey's orders must be going out now. His men nearest this place would come in a rush. Ten minutes, and they would be here. But Anita said that would be too late!

Snap and I were frantically searching. Somewhere here was a hidden descending entrance, leading to Molo's lair. It seemed in the si­lence that Anita's scream over that audiphone was still ringing in my head. Had it been entirely from the instrument? Or were we so close that in actuality we had heard its distant echoes?

"Gregg, help me!"

Snap was tugging at what seemed a horizontal door-slide, like a trap in the tunnel floor, partly under the vacuum-tube.

"The damn thing—stuck."

No! It yielded with our efforts. It slid aside. Steps led downward into blackness. We plunged in. Caution was gone from us. The steps went down twenty or thirty feet; we were in another smaller corridor. It was vaguely lighted by a glow from somewhere. Then, as my pupils expanded further, I could see this was a shabby alley street, opening ahead into a winding pas­sage with the slide-porte above us like its back gate. A shambling warren of cubbies was here; a little sequestered segment of disreputable dwellings.

We stood peering, listening.

"Shall I try the eavesdropper, Gregg? Take only a minute to connect."

"Yes. No, wait!"

I thought I heard distant sounds. "Voices, Snap! Listen!"

More than voices! A thud, foot­steps running! A commotion, back in this metal shambles, within a hundred feet of us.

"This way," I murmured.

 

WE plunged into a black gash. There was a glow of light—a glassite pane in a house wall nearby. The commotion was louder. And under it now we heard a vague humming: something electrical. It was an indescribably weird sound, like nothing I had ever heard be­fore. Snap clutched at me. "In here—but where is the accursed door?" There was a glassite pane, but we could find, at first, no door. In our hands we held small electronic bolt-cylinders—short-range weapons —but they were all we had.

The hum and hissing was louder. It seemed to throb within us, as though its tiny ultra-rapid vibra­tion were communicating to every fiber of our bodies.

No door; then we rushed 'to the glassite pane. Snap drew back his fist as though he would smash his weapon into the glassite.

"You can't break it! Too thick!" Light was streaming through it now. We glimpsed the interior of a room. The place a few moments before must have been dark. The light now came from a strange mechanism set in the center of the metal cubby. I caught only an instant's glimpse of it—a round thing of coils and wires. The metal floor of the room was cut away, exposing the gray rock of Manhattan Island. And against the rock, in a ten-foot circle, a series of discs were con­tacted, with wires leading from them to the central coils.

The whole was humming, hissing and glowing with a weird opales­cent light. It was dazzling, blinding. Within it the goggled figure of Molo was moving, adjusting the contacts. He stooped. He straight­ened, drew back from the light.

Only an instant's glimpse; but we saw the girls, crouching with black bandages on their eyes. Meka, gog­gled like her brother, was holding them. A tall shape carrying a round black box darted through the light and ran. Molo leaped for the girls. Perhaps he shouted; the hum had mounted to a wild electrical scream. Molo flung his sister and the girls back out of the light.

They all vanished. There was nothing but the light, and the mounting, dynamic scream.

 

BESIDE me, Snap was pounding on the glassite panel. I joined him. We raged, baffled. But it was all only a moment. I was suddenly aware that my senses were reeling. I was pounding mechanically, in a vague, mechanical, hopeless frenzy. Everything was dream-like, blurring as though unconsciousness were upon me.

Where was Snap? Gone? Then I saw him nearby. He had found a door, but it wouldn't yield. Per­haps he thought he saw another door; his shout was lost in that screaming din, but I saw his arm go up in a gesture to me. He ran.

I found myself running after him, but I stumbled and fell. Then over me the scream burst into a great roar of sound. It seemed so intense, so gigantic a sound that it must ring around the world.

And the light burst with an ex­ploding puff. The black metal cubby walls seemed to melt like phantoms in a dream. A titan's blow torch, the opalescent light shot upward, a circular ten-foot beam, eating its way through all the city levels as though they were paper, up through the city roof.

Molo's cubby was gone. His mechanism was eaten by the light and destroyed. There was only this motionless, upstanding beam, con­tacted here with the Earth, stream­ing like an opalescent sword into the starry sky!

 

CHAPTER VII
Three Swords Crossing in the Sky

 

I MUST paint now upon a broader  canvas to depict the utter chaos of this most memorable night in the history of the Earth, Venus and Mars.

From that point in the bowels of Great-New York, near the southern tip of Manhattan Island, the mys­terious light-beam shot up. It screamed with its weird electrical voice for an hour, so penetrating a sound that it was heard with the unaided ears as far away as Phila­delphia. A screaming titan voice it was, shrill as if with triumph. There were millions of people awak­ened by it this night; awakened and struck with a chill of fear at this nameless siren shrilling its note of danger. The sound grad­ually subsided; it seemed to reach its peak within a few minutes of the appearance of the light, and within an hour it had ceased.

But the light-beam remained. Those who inspected it closely have given a clear description of its aspect. But to this day its real na­ture has never been determined.

It was a circular beam of about a ten-foot diameter. In color it was vaguely opalescent; rather more brilliant at night than in the day­time, though with the coming of the sun strangely it did not fade, but remained clearly visible, with a spectrum sheen when the sunlight hit it so that it had somewhat the appearance of a titanic, straightened rainbow.

From that contact point with our Earth, the inexplicable beam stood vertically upward. It ate a vertical hole like a chimney up through all the city levels, through the roof, and above that it streamed unim­peded into the sky. It had a tre­mendous heat, communicable by con­tact so that it melted the city above it with a clean round hole. But the heat was non-radiant.

I was found lying within fifty feet of the base of the beam. There had been an explosion, so that Molo's metal room was gone; but I had fallen beyond its destructive area, and from where I lay there was only a warmth to be felt from the light.

Halsey's men found me within half an hour. I was unconscious, but not injured. I think now that the sound and not the light overcame me. I presently recovered conscious­ness; for another hour I was blind and deaf, but that quickly wore off. They rushed me through the chaos of the city to the Tappan Inter­planetary Headquarters. Grantline was there, but not Snap. I sent them back, when once I was fully conscious. They searched all the vicinity at the base of the light. Snap, alive or dead, was not to be found.

 

ANITA and Venza were gone.

Not dead—I could not think that, for I had seen Molo and Meka plunge away with them as the light-beam burst forth. They were gone, and Snap was gone. My emo­tion at the loss, and my own inability now to do anything about it, was distracted by the rush of events.

There was, by now, a turmoil un­precedented throughout all the met­ropolitan area. The motionless light-beam itself had done little damage. There was the ten-foot burned hole of its upward passage, but of ma­terial damage, nothing more.

But its appearance brought in­stant chaos. Within a radius of five miles of its base, the city was plunged into darkness. All power was cut off. Lights were out. Every vehicle, tram, tube-train—the aeros passing overhead—the city ventilating systems—all ceased. Audiophones were wrecked; every coil and fuse-wire, the ignition systems of all the myriad devices, were ren­dered inoperative. Why, no scientist even now can clearly say. It was not, they claim, any unknown ray-aura from the light. They think now it was the vibrations from the sound. Whatever its physical na­ture, that sound was like nothing ever heard before on Earth. It sub­sided within an hour; and after that, lights and motors brought into the darkened area were not affected. But during that hour, within the stricken area, there must have been scenes most horrible. Grantline and I, up the Hudson in the distant suburban section, sat and listened to the incoming reports of what was transpiring. South Manhattan was in a black panic of death. A multitude of terrified people awak­ened in the night to find blackness and that screaming sound. The black streets and corridors and traffic levels were jammed with panic-stricken throngs trying to escape, trampling and killing each other in their terror.

 

THIS was in the stricken area; but everywhere else the panic was spreading. Transportation sys­tems were almost all out of commis­sion. The panic spread until by dawn there was a wild exodus of refugees jamming the bridges and viaducts, streaming from all the city exits into the suburban districts. This was Great-New York. But it was only one of three cities. Grantline and I, that dawn in Tap­pan, got only a confused summary of the interplanetary helios. From Venus and Mars came reports of similar chaos. In Grebbar; and in Ferrok-Shahn—doubtless almost si­multaneously with Great-New York —similar light-beams appeared.

"But what can it be?" I de­manded of Grantline. "Something Molo contacted there? He did it—that was what he was working for —and he accomplished his purpose. But what will the beam do to us?" "It's doing plenty," said Grant-line grimly.

"But he didn't intend that. Some­thing else—"

But what? As yet, no one knew. I had already told the authorities what I had seen of Molo's mech­anism. Snap, Venza and Anita were vanished; I was the only eye-wit­ness to Molo's activities; and heaven knows I had had but a brief, con­fused glimpse.

Obviously Molo had come to Earth with these weird beings from the new planet; had come to Great-New York to establish a contact with the Earth and create this light-beam. The mechanism he had planted down there on the naked rock of Manhattan Island brought the beam into being—and de­stroyed the mechanism.

 

THE beam remained. It streamed upward from the rock. They thought, this night, that the rock atoms might be disintegrating; that Molo's strange current had set up a disintegration of the atoms, and that electronic particles from them were streaming into space.

The light-beam seemed impervious to attack. Within a few hours the authorities were attacking its base with various vibrations, but without apparent success.

From where Grantline and I sat in an upper balcony doorway of the Tappan Headquarters, we could see the giant beam standing over the city far to the south. It was now just before dawn, a clear, starry, moonless night. The eastern stars were paling. To the south, above the metal ramparts of the giant city, the now silent beam mounted into space. Very strangely, even at this distance, it was as clear as though we were close to it. I tried to fol­low it with my gaze, into the sky. How far did it extend? It seemed, up there, like a narrow radiance of glowing star-dust; the straightened tail of a comet. A million miles, or a hundred million? No one could do more than guess.

The dawn was coming, but the beam-radiance remained unaffected. "Gregg, look there at Venus!" To the east of us there was a dis­tant line of metal structures sur­mounting the mid-Westchester hills. To us, they formed the horizon-line; and above them in the bright­ening sky of dawn Venus was just rising. Mars had already set at our longitude. Venus, fairly close to the Earth now, was the "Morning Star," visually at a narrow angle from the Sun and rising just before dawn. Telescopically it was a giant narrow crescent; but with the naked eye it was a brilliant blue-white star. It mounted now above that line of metal stages in the distance.

And as Grantline gestured, I saw from Venus the same sword-like beam streaming off almost to cross our own.

Grantline and I, with a mutual thought, ran around the balcony and gazed toward where Mars had set. A narrow radiance was stream­ing up among the stars off there.

 

THREE swinging swords of light in the sky! With the ro­tation of the planets, they swept the firmament. The mysterious enemy had planted them—but why? What was to happen next? Within Grantline and me—and countless millions on Earth, Mars and Venus felt the same—there came an in­finite dread, a horror unnamable.

What was coming next?

And as though to answer us, from far to the south, over mid-Jersey, came a new manifestation. We saw a speck rising: a distant mounting speck of something dark, with streamers of tiny radiance flowing from it.

"A space-vehicle, Gregg!"

It seemed so. It came slowly from above the maze of distant struc­tures, gathered speed, and in a mo­ment was in the upper air—then through it like a rocket, and gone to our sight.

But others, better equipped, had observed it. It was a cylindrical projectile, with stream-fluorescence propelling it upward. It was some unusual form of space-vehicle. Tele­scopically it was seen until well after dawn, speeding out in the direction of the Moon.

Molo and his weird allies es­caping! Grantline and I had that thought, and afterward it was proven the truth. With their work done here on Earth, they were es­caping into space to rejoin the hovering enemy ship 200,000 miles out.

I stood gripping Grantline on that little balcony and gazed with sinking heart. Were Anita and Venza prisoners on that mounting enemy vehicle? Would I ever see them again? And Snap—had Molo perhaps dashed out from his metal cubby just as the light was burst­ing and come upon Snap? Was Snap on this rising projectile-cyl­inder? With all my heart I could only hope that he might be there, uninjured, with the girls, so that he might lend them the protection I had failed to give.

"Haljan and Grantline wanted be­low."

The voice of a mechanic on the balcony behind us roused us from our thoughts. We went down through the busy building, Grant-line steadying me, for I was still shaken from my experience.

 

THE workshops of the Tappan Interplanetary Headquarters had for hours been ringing with busy activity, which Grantline and I had ignored. The Cometara rested upon her departure stage outside, with a score of workmen conditioning her. Grantline and I were to command her; but the efficiency of the organization kept us out of all activity until the start, so that we might rest.

Rest, indeed!

We were plunged now into the actual departure. The Cometara's newly installed armament was aboard, ready to be assembled after the start. The men to handle it were embarked. My half-dozen officers and the ten members of the crew I had already briefly met.

They were aboard now, waiting for me.

"On we go, Gregg. Let's wish ourselves luck!"

From grim, silent abstraction, Johnny Grantline had now sprung into his familiar dynamic self—so like Snap!

There was a solemn group of officials and a hundred or so workmen here, gathered to speed us off and wish us luck. No gaily applauded departure, this rising of the Cometara! The faces around me were white and haggard.

They stopped their fevered labors now for a moment to see the Cometara get away, first of Earth's ships speeding into space to confront this nameless enemy. No one was in the mood for applause. Grantline and I went past them silently, with silent handshakes and murmured good-byes. I saw the towering figure of Brayley. He raised an arm for a farewell gesture to us, and turned away as though overcome by emotion.

 

WE mounted the incline to the Cometara. She rested upon her stage, a great, sleek bronze ship, low and rakish, with pointed ends and a flattened arched turtle- back dome of glassite covering the superstructure and the decks from bow to stern. She lay quiescent, gleaming in the glow of the departure beacons; but there was an aspect of latent power upon her; an eagerness to get away, as though impatiently she waited here for me to come and speed her into action.

My ship! My first command! Upon such a mission I was destined now to take my first command! As we went through the opened porte of the dome-side and I touched foot upon the deck, I prayed that I might justify the faith reposed in me.

Men crowded the narrow covered deck. I saw the electronic space-guns at the deck pressure-portes, partly assembled. My chief officer—a young fellow named Drac David­son, who with his twin brother had been in the Interplanetary Freight Service—rushed up to me.

"We are ready, sir."

"Very good, Drac."

He hurried me to the turret con­trol room. Grantline instantly had plunged into details of assembling the weapons.

"Her portes are all closed," said Drac. He spoke calmly, but his thin face was pale and his dark eyes glowed with excitement. "The in­terior pressure is set at 15 pounds. You can ring us up at once."

No formalities to this departure! With pounding heart I entered the small circular turret and mounted its tiny spiral stairs to the upper control room. But as I touched the Levers, all the excite­ment dropped away.

A calmness came to me—an ab­sorption with these familiar tasks at which I was skilled.

I slid a central-hull gravity-plate. It went smoothly, perfectly operated by the magnets. The vessel trembled, lifted; outside the en­closing dome I could see the dawn-light of the sky and the paling floodlights of the stage. Figures of men out there, with silent gestures of farewell, dropping slowly be­neath our hull as we lifted.

 

THE bow gravity-plates slid into the repulsive-force positions. The bow lifted. The Cometara re­sponded very smoothly to my will. We went up, poised at a forty-five degree angle. I saw the outer bea­cons on the stage swing upward with their warning to passing traf­fic in the lower lanes.

"Light our bow-beacon, Drat." We lifted through the lower, thousand and two thousand-foot lanes. The lights of Tappan were dwindling beneath us. The interior of the Cometara was humming with the whirr of its circulators and air-receivers, mingled with the throb of the interior-air pressure pumps. At three thousand feet I started the air-rocket engines. They came on with a gentle purring. The fluor­escence from them streamed along our hull and down past the stern, like twin rocket tails.

With gathering speed we slid smoothly upward through all the highest traffic lanes; out of the at­mosphere, through the stratosphere and into space.

Leaving the stratosphere, I cut off the air-rocket engines, slid the stern gravity-plates for the Earth's repulsion and the bow plates for the attraction of the Moon and Sun. The firmament swung in a slow arc, and steadied with the Earth be­hind us and the Sun and Moon in advance of our bow. We were on our course, plunging through space with accelerating velocity toward the unknown enemy ship hovering two hundred thousand miles ahead of us. My orders were to find the ship and maneuver us close to it; and Grantline's orders were to assail it. If only we could have seen ahead a few hours, to what awaited us.

I gazed down at the convex North Atlantic with the reddening coastline of North America spread like a map. Great-New York was down there in the chaos of panic. The safety of three worlds, per­haps, depended upon the outcome of our encounter.

But what was the nature of this strange enemy? That opalescent beam from Great-New York was now so horribly apparent, mounting with its radiance into the dome­like starfield! And the one from Venus and the other from Mars seemed crossing overhead amid the stars.

Three swords crossing in the sky! What did they mean?

(To be continued.)