Transcriber's Note:

 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. 

 WANDL THE INVADER

 by RAY CUMMINGS

 ACE BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y. 

 Copyright ©, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc. 

 Magazine version serialized in _Astounding Stories_, Copyright, 1932, by Clayton Publications, Inc. 

 * * * * *

1

"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 sayyesterday.... "

"Newscasters!" Venza broke in scornfully. "Say, you can take what theytell you about any danger or trouble and cut it in half; and even thenyou'll be on the gloomy side. See here, Gregg Haljan. "

"I'm not giving you newscasters' blare, " I retorted. Venza'sextravagant vehemence was always refreshing. The Venus girl glared atme. I added: "Anita mentioned newscasters; I didn't. "

Anita was in no mood for smiling. "Tell us, Gregg. " She sat uprightand tense, her chin cupped in her hands. "Tell us. "

"For a fact, they don't know much about it yet. You can call it aplanet, a wanderer. "

"I should say it was a wanderer!" Venza exclaimed. "Coming from heavenknows where beyond the stars, swimming in here like a comet. "

"They calculated its distance yesterday at some sixty-five millionmiles 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 acomet. "

The thing was indeed inexplicable; for many weeks now, astronomers hadbeen studying it. This was early summer of the year 2070 A. D. All ofus had recently returned from those extraordinary events I havealready recounted, when we came close to losing Johnny Grantline'sradiactum treasure on the Moon, and our lives as well. My ship, the_Planetara_, in the astronomical seasons when the Earth, Mars, andVenus were within comfortable traveling distances of each other, hadcarried mail and passengers from Greater New York to Ferrok-Shahn, ofthe Martian Union, and to Grebhar, of the Venus Free State. Now it waswrecked on the Moon. [1]

[Footnote 1: See "Brigands of the Moon", Ace Book, D-324]

I had been under navigating officer of the _Planetara_. Upon her, Ihad met Anita Prince, whose only living relative, her brother, wasamong those killed in the struggle with the brigands; Anita and I weresoon to marry, we hoped. 

I was waiting now in Greater New York upon the decision of the Lineofficials regarding another spaceship. Perhaps I would have command ofit, since Captain Carter of the _Planetara_ had been killed. 

It was a month or so before that adventure, April, 2070, that thismysterious visitor from interstellar space first appeared upon ourastronomical horizon. A little thing, at first, a mere unusual dot, apinpoint on a photo-electric star diagram which should not have beenthere. It occasioned no comment at the time, save that some thought itmight be another planet beyond Pluto; but this was not taken seriouslyenough to get into the newscasts. None of us had heard about it aslate as May, when the _Planetara_ set out on what was to be her finalvoyage. 

Presently, it was seen that the object could not be a planet of oursolar system; Coming in at tremendous speed, it daily changed itsaspect, gathering velocity until soon it was not a dot, but a streakon every diagram-plate. 

In a week or so the thing passed from an astronomical curiosity to anitem of public news. And now, early in June, when it had cut throughthe orbit of Jupiter and was approaching that of Mars, fear wasgrowing. The visitor was a menace. No astronomical body could comeamong us, with a mass as great as a fifth of the Moon, without causingtrouble. 

The newscasters, with a ready skill for lurid possibilities, wereblaring of all sorts of horrible events impending. 

I told the girls all I knew of the approaching wanderer. The densitywas similar to that of Earth. The oncoming velocity and the calculatedelements of its orbit now were such that within a few weeks more thenew planet would round our Sun and presumably head outward again. Itwould pass within a few million miles of us, causing a disturbance toEarth's orbit, even a change of the inclination of our axis, affectingour tides and our climate. 

"So I've heard, " Venza interrupted me. "They say that, and then theystop. Why can't a newscaster tell you what is so mysterious?"

"For a very good reason, Venza: because you can't throw people into apanic. This whole thing, up to today, has been withheld from thepublic of Earth and Venus. The Martian Union tried to withhold it, butcould not. Every heliogram between the worlds is censored. "

"And still, " said Venza sarcastically, "you don't tell us what is somysterious about this wanderer. "

"For one thing, " I said, "it changes its direction. No normal heavenlybody does that. They calculated the elements of its orbit last April. They've done it twenty times since, and every time the projected orbitis different. Just a little at first, but last week the accursed thingactually took a sudden turn, as though it were a spaceship. "

The girls stared at me. "What does that mean?" Anita asked. 

"They're beginning to make wild guesses but we won't go into that. "

"What else is 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 theMoon could be seen plainly by our 'scopes when well beyond Pluto. It'snow 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. Withinstruments, we ought to be able to see its surface; see whether ithas land and water, inhabitants perhaps. You should be able todistinguish an object on its surface as large as a city, but youcan't. "

"Why not?" asked Anita. "Are the clouds too thick? What causes it?"

"They don't even know that, " I retorted. "There is something abnormalabout the light-waves coming from it. Not exactly blurred, but adistortion, a fading. It's some abnormality of the light-waves. "

A swift rapping on our door-grid interrupted me, and Snap Dean burstin. 

"Hola-lo, everybody! Is it a conference? You look so solemn. "

He dashed across the room, kissed Venza, pretended that he was aboutto kiss Anita, and winked at me. He was a dynamic little fellow, small, wiry, red-headed and freckle-faced, and had been theradio-helio operator of the ill-fated _Planetara_. He was a perfectmatch for Venza, for all the millions of miles that separated theirnative lands. Venza, too was small and slim, her manner as readilyjocular as his. 

"And where have you been?" Venza demanded. 

"Me? My private life is my own, so far. We're not married yet, sinceyou insist on us going to Grebhar for the ceremony. "

"Do stop it, " protested Anita. "We've been talking of.... "

"I know very well what you've been talking about. Everybody is. I'vegot news for you, Gregg. " He went abruptly solemn and lowered hisvoice. "Halsey wants to see us, right away. "

I regarded him blankly and my mind swept back. No more than a fewshort weeks ago Detective-Colonel Halsey of Divisional Headquartershere in Greater New York had sent for us, and we had been precipitatedinto the Grantline affair. "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. Itwas moonlit now, and two hundred feet above the pedestrian viaduct. 

But Snap continued to frown. "Easy, I tell you. Why shout aboutHalsey? The air can have ears. "

Venza moved and closed and sealed the window. 

"What is it?" I asked, more softly. 

But Snap was not satisfied. "Anita, do you have a complete isolationbarrage for this room?"

"Of course I haven't, Snap. "

"Well, Gregg do you have a detector with you?"

I had none. Snap produced his little coil and indicator dial. "It'sout of order, but let's see now. Shove over that chair, Gregg. "

He disconnected one of the room's tube-lights and contacted with thecathode. It was a makeshift method, but as he dropped to the floor, uncoiling a little length of his wire for an external pick-up, we sawthat the thing worked. The pointer on the dial-face was swaying. 

"Gregg!" he muttered. "Look at that. Didn't I tell you?"

The pointer quivered in positive reaction. An eavesdropping ray wasupon us. 

Anita gasped, "I had no idea!"

"No, but I did. " Snap added softly. "No one very close. "

He and I carried the detector to the length of the hall. The indicatorwent nearer normal. "It must be the other way, " I whispered. 

We went to the moonlit balcony. "Way down there on the pedestrianarcade, " I said. 

"We'll soon fix that, " Snap said. 

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, and it's about this interstellarinvader. It all connects. His office paged me on a public mirror. Ihappened to see it at Park-Circle 40. When I answered it, Halsey's manwanted me to talk in code. I can't talk in code; I have enough toworry about with the interplanetary helios. Then they sent me to anofficial booth, where I got examined for positive legalidentification, and then they put me on the official split-wavelength. After all of which precautions I was told to be at Halsey'soffice tonight at midnight, and told a few other things. "

"What?" demanded Venza breathlessly. 

"Only hints. Why take chances, by repeating them now?"

"You said he wants me, too?" I put in. 

"Yes. You and Venza. We've got to get into his office secretly, by thevacuum cylinders. We're to meet a man from his office at the EighthPostal switch-station. "

"Venza?" Anita said sharply. "What in the universe can he want withVenza? If she's going, I'm going too!"

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. 

We left half an hour before midnight. The girls were both in gray, with long capes. We took the public monorail into the mid-Manhattansection under the city roof of the business district, and into theEighth Postal switch-station where the sleek bronze cylinders cametumbling out of the vacuum ports to be re-routed and dispatched again. 

A man was on the lookout for us. "Daniel Dean and party?"

"Yes. We were ordered here. "

The detective gazed at the girls and at me. "It was three, Dean. "

"And now it's four, " said Snap cheerfully. "The extra one is MissAnita 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 oversized mail cylinders and routedthrough the tubes like sacks of recorded letters; in ten minutes, witha thump that knocked the breath out of all of us, we were in theswitch-rack of Halsey's outer office. 

We clambered from the cylinder. Our guide led us down one of thegloomy 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-litapartment, steel-lined like a vault. 

2

Colonel Halsey sat at his desk, with a few papers before him and abank of instrument controls at his elbow. He pushed his audiphone andmirror-grid to one side. 

"Sit down, please. " He gave us each the benefit of a welcoming smile, 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 want her for, youmight need me, too. "

"Quite so, Miss Prince. Perhaps I shall. " It seemed that in his mindwere many of the thoughts thronging my own, for he added: "Haljan, Irecall I sent for you like this once before. I hope this may be a moreauspicious occasion. "

"So do I, sir. "

Snap said, "We've been afraid hardly to do more than a whisper. Butyou're insulated here, and we're mighty curious. "

Halsey nodded. "I can talk freely to you, and yet I cannot. " His gazewent to Venza. "It is you in whom I am most interested. "

"Me? You flatter me, Colonel Halsey. " She sat gracefully reclining inthe metal chair before his desk, seeming small as a child between itsbig, broad arms. Her long gray skirt had parted to display hershapely, gray-satined 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 carmine lips bore an alluring smile. It was all instinctive. Tothis girl from Venus it came as naturally as she breathed. 

Halsey's gray eyes twinkled. "Do not look at me quite like that, MissVenza, or I shall forget what I have to say. You would get the betterof me; I'm glad you're not a criminal. "

"So am I, " she declared. "What can I do for you, Colonel Halsey?"

His smile faded at once. His glance included us all. "Just this. Thereis a man here in Greater New York, a Martian whom they call _Set_Molo. He has a younger sister, _Setta_ Meka. Have any of you heard ofthem?"

We had not. Halsey went on, slowly now, apparently choosing his wordswith the greatest care. "There are things that I can tell you andthere are things that I cannot. "

"Why not?" asked Venza. 

"My dear, for one thing, if you are going to help me you can do itbest by not knowing too much. For another, I have my orders; thisthing concerns the very highest authorities, not only of the U. S. W. , but in Ferrok-Shahn and Grebhar too. "

He paused, but none of us spoke. Then Halsey said quietly, "Well, thisMartian and his sister are here now in Greater New York. They havesome secret. They are engaged in some activity, and I want to findout what it is. I have picked up only little parts of it. "

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, MissVenza, need only understand this: the Martian, Molo, must be inducedto give you some idea of what he is doing here. "

"And I am to induce him?" Venza asked calmly. 

"That is my idea. " The faint shadow of a smile swept Halsey's thin, intent face. "My dear, you are a girl of Venus. More than that, youhave far more than your normal share of wits and brains. "

It did not make Venza smile. She sat tense now, with her dark-eyedgaze fastened on Halsey's face. Anita, equally breathless, reachedover and gripped her hand. 

Then Venza said slowly, "I realize, Colonel Halsey, that this issomething vital. "

"As vital, my child, as it could be. " He drew a long breath. "I wantyou to understand I am doing my duty. Doing, what seems the bestthing, not for you, perhaps, but for the world. "

I seemed to see into his mind at that moment. He might have been afather, sending a daughter into danger. 

"I need not disguise the danger. I have lost a dozen men. " He lighteda 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, look here; you know I'mgoing to marry this girl very soon. "

"Yes, I know. You'll have to consider this a sacrifice, a voluntarydescent into danger, for a great cause in a great crisis. You fourhave just come out of a very considerable danger. We know of whatstuff you are made, all of you. "

He smiled again. "Perhaps that prominence is unfortunate for you, butlet me settle it now. Is there any one of you who will not take myorders and trust my judgement 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. "

"Yes, " I said at last. It was not too hard for me, for I thought I wasyielding him Venza, not Anita. 

Snap was very pale. He stared from one to the other of us. 

"Yes, " he said finally. "But Colonel, surely you can tell us more. "

Halsey tossed his cigarette away. "I will tell you as much as I thinkbest. These Martians, Molo and his sister, do not know of Venza; atleast, I think that they do not. They apparently have not been herevery long. How they got here, we don't know. There was no passenger orfreight ship. In Ferrok-Shahn, they have a dubious reputation at best;but 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. "

He reached for his inter-office audiphone. "I want to locate theMartian _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 visualconnection?"

"Yes, the whole room; they have a dozen finders. "

"Use a magnifier. Get me the closest view 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 imageof the interior of the Red Spark Cafe. I knew the place by reputation:a fashionable, more or less disreputable eating, drinking and dancingrestaurant, where money and alcholite flowed freely. The patrons weresuccessful criminals of the three worlds, intermingled with thrilled, respectable tourists who hoped they would see something really evil. 

The Red Spark was not far from Halsey's office; it was perched high ina 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 largeoval room, balconied and terraced; a dais dance-floor, raised high inthe center with three professional couples gyrating there; and beneaththem the public dance-grid, slowly rotating on its central axis. Ahundred or so couples were dancing. The lower floor was crowded withdining tables; others were upon the little catwalk balconies, andstill others in the terraced nooks and side niches, half-enshrouded, half-revealed by colored draperies. 

The image now was silent, for Halsey was not bothering with audioconnection. But it was a riot of color, flashing colored floodlightsbathing the dancers in vivid tints; and there were twinkling spots ofcolored tube-lights on all the tables. I saw, too, the blankrectangles of darkness against the walls which marked the privatedining rooms, insulated against sight and sound. Here one might go forfrivolous indiscretion, or for conspiracy, perhaps, and be as securefrom 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 seemto 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 view. "

The table in question was no more than a square inch on our image. Wecould see an apparently gay party of men and women. One of the coupleswas gigantic, a Martian man and woman, obviously. The others seemed tobe Earth or Venus people. 

Francis' voice added: "I've got an audio magnifier on them. Foley'sbeen listening for an hour. Nice, clear English. Much good it does us;this fellow is as cautious as a director of the lower air-lane. Here'syour near-look. "

Our image shifted to another view. The lens-eye with which we wereconnected now gave us a view directly over the Martian's table. Wewere looking down diagonally upon the table, at a distance of no morethan ten feet. 

There were three Earthwomen in the party. There was nothing peculiarabout them. They were rather handsome, dissolute in appearance, all ofthem obviously befuddled by alcholite. There was a man who could havebeen Anglo-Saxon. A wastrel, probably, with more money than wit; hewore a black dinner suit edged with white. 

Our attention focussed upon the other two. They were tall, as are allMartians. The young woman, _Setta_ Meka, seemed perhaps twenty ortwenty-five years of age, by Earth reckoning, in stature perhaps verynearly my own height, which is six feet two. It is difficult to tell aMartian's age, but she was very handsome, even by Earth standards; andin Ferrok-Shahn she would be considered a beauty. Her gray-black hairwas parted and tied at the back with a plaited metal rope. Her shortdark cloak, so luminous a fabric that it caught and reflected thesheen of all the gaudy restaurant lights, was parted, its ends thrownback over her shoulders. Beneath it she wore the characteristicMartian leather jacket, and short, wide leather trousers ornamentedwith spun metal fringes and tassels. Most Martian women have anamazonian aspect, but I saw now that _Setta_ Meka was an exception. 

Her brother, who sat beside her, was a full seven feet or more. Ahulking sort of fellow, far less spindly than most of his race, hemight have come from the polar outposts beyond the Martian Union. Hewas bare-headed, his gray-black hair clipped close upon a round bullethead, with the familiar Martian round eyes. 

I gazed into the face of Molo, as momentarily he turned his head. Itwas a rough-hewn, strongly masculine face with a hawk-like nose, bushyblack brows frowning above deepset round eyes. The face of a keenscoundrel, I could not doubt, though the smooth-plucked gray skin wasflushed now with alcholite, and the wide, thin-lipped mouth wasleering at the woman across the table from him. 

Like his sister, he 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 tableI do not know. I was aware of Halsey's quiet voice: "Look him over, Miss Venza. It depends on you. "

Another interval passed. It seemed, as we watched, that Molo'sinterest in his party was very slight. I got the impression, too, thatthough at first he had seemed to be intoxicated, actually he was not. Nor was his sister. Anxiety seemed upon her; the smile she had forjests seemed forced; and at intervals she would cast a swift, furtiveglance across the gay restaurant scene. 

More drinks arrived. The Earthpeople at the table here seemed upon theverge of stupor; and suddenly it appeared that Molo had completelylost interest in them. With a gesture to his sister, he abruptly rosefrom his seat. She joined him. They left the table, and a red-cladfloor manager of the restaurant came at their call. Then in a momentthey were moving across the room. 

Halsey called sharply into his audiphone: "Francis! Hold us to them ifyou can. "

They were standing now by the opened door of one of the Red Spark'sprivate insulated rooms. We caught a glimpse of its interior, a gailyset 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 hadjust arrived to meet the Martians here, and a hooded long cloakenveloped him. It may have been a magnetic "invisible" cloak, with thecurrent now off. 

We caught only the fleetest of impressions before the insulated doorclosed and barred our vision. The glimpse was an accident. Molo, takenby surprise at this appearance of his visitor, could hardly haveguarded against it. The waiting figure was very tall, some ten feet, and very thin. The hood shrouded his face and head. In his hand heheld a large circular box of black shiny leather, of the sort in whichwomen carry wide-brimmed hats. As Molo joined him he put the boxgently on the floor. He handled it as though it were extraordinarilyheavy; and as he took a step or two, he seemed weighted down. Just asthe room door was hastily closing, Meka sliding it from the inside, wecaught a fleeting glimpse of horror. 

The lid of the hat box had lifted up. Inside was a great round thingof gray-white, a living thing; a distended ball of membrane, with anetwork of veins and blood-vessels showing beneath the transparentskin. 

For the instant we gazed, stricken. The ball was palpitating, breathing! I saw convolutions of inner tissue under the transparentskin of membrane; a little tentacle, like an arm with a flat-webbedhand, was holding up the lid of the box. The lid rose a triflehigher; the colored lights overhead gave us a brief but clear view ofit. 

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 gashupended for a vertical mouth. It was a face. And the little tentaclearm holding up the box-lid was joined to where the ear should havebeen. 

Was this something human? A huge distended human brain, with the bodywithered to that tiny arm?

The palpitating thing sank down in the box and the lid dropped. Andupon our horrified gaze the insulated door of the room slid too. 

"By the gods!" exclaimed Halsey. "One of them dares come to the RedSpark. Here, almost in public. "

So Halsey knew what this meant. His eyes were blazing now; his facewas white, with an intensity of emotion that transfigured it. 

"Francis, tell Foley I'll be in the manager's office in five minutes. "

He snapped off; our image connection with the Red Spark went dead. 

"We're going to the Red Spark, " he announced. "This changeseverything, yet I don't know. Venza, I may need you more than ever, now. "

Halsey herded us to the office door. From his desk he had snatched upa few portable instruments, and he flung on a cloak. 

It was a brief trip to the Red Spark, on foot through the sub-cellararcade to where, under Park Circle 29, we went up in a vertical liftto the roof. We were in the side entrance oval of the restaurant infive minutes. 

In the dim metal room of Orentino, the Red Spark's manager, a barragewas up and Foley was waiting for us. We could hear it faintly humming. Now we could talk. 

Halsey slammed the door down. He said swiftly, "My men caught one ofthese things this morning. They have it now and I think Molo does notyet know we captured it. A brain; we're convinced it understandsEnglish 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 manager of the Red Spark was in the control room. Halsey killed our barrage to let the outside connections get throughto us. We all crowded around the mirror-grid which stood on Orentino'sdesk. Foley gave us connection with the control room. We sawOrentino's face, his eyes nearly popping with fright. "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. Thengive us connection, audio and vision. "

"But I have no image-finders in the insulated rooms. "

"Cut off the barrage. I'll get connection there. "

Foley was already setting up his eavesdropper on the desk. The mirrorblurred a little; then it clarified. We had the interior of the secretroom, and voices were coming out of Foley's tiny receiver. 

The image showed the box on the floor, with its lid down. The tallhooded shape of the stranger stood with Molo and his sister by thetable. They were talking in swift, vehement undertones. The languagewas Martian, a dialect principally used in Ferrok-Shahn. Our equipmentbrought it in and I could understand it. 

Molo was saying: "But you are the fool to have dared to come here!"

"The master knows that there is danger. Something is wrong. " Thehooded stranger spoke like a foreigner, but not a Martian, nor anEarthman, and not like any person of Venus I had ever heard. It was astrange, indescribable intonation, a flat, hollow voice. 

"I say the master is concerned. "

"Let him be. "

"And he demanded I bring him here to find you. He is displeased thatyou are here. "

What gruesome thing was this? Their glances seemed to go to the box onthe floor at their feet, as though the master were in there. But thelid of the box did not rise. 

"Well, you have found me, " Molo declared impatiently. "When you knowme better, always you will find I have my wits. The thing is fortomorrow night, not tonight. "

"But that, my master is not sure. " The hollow voice was deferentialbut insistent. "He fears danger; something has gone wrong. He isworking on it now, striving to receive the message! There is amessage. He knows that much. Perhaps from our world, Wandl, itself. "

For a moment Molo had no answer. His sister had not spoken. I noticedthat her gaze seemed roving the room. 

"What is it I should do?" Molo asked at last. 

"Come with us to your home-room. "

"But I have everything ready there. The contact is ready for tomorrownight. Your world will control Earth. "

"But if it be tonight?"

Again Molo was silent. My breath stopped. On our mirror I saw thestranger's hood part just a little. There seemed to be no face; justthe blur of something brownish. 

"But if it be tonight?" the voice insisted. 

"I will go, " Molo said abruptly, "but your coming here was dangerous. Suppose we cannot get out undetected? You know I will never go towhere all our instruments are set up and have some damnable spy followme. Is all going well on Venus and Mars?"

"Yes. My master feels so. He seems to get messages. The contacts willbe made simultaneously. " A gruesome chuckle. "The capture of thesethree worlds. We shall have all three enchained at once. Helpless. "

The lid of the black box seemed again about to rise when there came asharp cry from Meka. "This room is not insulated!"

Our eavesdropping was discovered. Beside me, I heard Halsey give a lowcurse. On our mirror we saw sudden action. The ten-foot, cloakedfigure laboriously lifted the black box, and swung with it toward theouter wall of the room. I saw now clearly with what a dragging, heavytread that giant shape moved, as though it weighed, here on Earth, farmore than the normal weight to which it was accustomed. 

"Over there!" Molo gasped. "The escape-port; 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, that's better. "

I saw the room's escape-port swing open as Meka and the hooded shapecarrying the box moved for it. The moonlit darkness of the outercatwalk enveloped the disappearing figures. 

Molo was left alone. He closed the port swiftly. His detector now wasin his hand, but Halsey anticipated him by a second or two. Ourlistener went dead; our mirror darkened. Doubtless Molo was never surewhether he had been spied on or not. 

Halsey was on his feet. "Foley, get out into the main room. Stay withhim. "

But there was no need to follow Molo. He had sent his visitor andsister out by the escape-port, which was usual enough; now he was backin the main room as though nothing of importance had happened, with anappearance of intoxication about him. He wavered jovially across theroom, threading his way through the gay diners, and reached the tablewhere his party still sat carousing. 

Again Halsey shut us off. 

"He's got a base somewhere in the city; you heard what they said aboutit. We've got to trick him into going there, unsuspecting. "

Halsey seized the audiphone. "Your chance, Venza. It's the only way. Foley, keep away from that Martian. Shut off all contacts. I'll meetyou out there in a moment. I'm sending a girl; she'll go after him. "

"Now?" Venza asked. 

"Yes. It's the only way. Perhaps you can get him drinking. Venza, useall the wiles you possess now. "

"No!" gasped Snap. "It's too dangerous!"

Anita was clinging to Venza. "Colonel Halsey, I'm going too. "

Halsey stared, then made a swift decision. "Right. That is stillbetter. "

I jumped to my feet. "Colonel, I should prefer that one of us men.... "

He gripped me by the shoulders. "Gregg Haljan, I take no suggestionsfrom you!" His blazing eyes bored into me. "There isn't a second tolose. Don't you realize this means destruction of our three inhabitedplanets? I'll sacrifice myself, you, or these girls! Venza, take Anitaoutside. I'll join you immediately, give you last instructions. Take aportable audiphone with you. "

He turned to Snap. "This is the only way. These demons can't beforced. You know that. "

The girls were moving toward the door. 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, but one of his rays struck us. With all senses numbed, I felt myselffalling. 

"Gregg--don't--let them.... "

Snap had tumbled upon me. My senses did not quite fade. I was aware ofAnita's and Venza's horrified cries, but Halsey pushed them toward thedoor. It slid up. I vaguely saw the two girls going out with Halseyafter them; and the door coming down. 

3

I have no idea how long it was before Halsey came back. Snap and Iwere seated on a low metal bench against the wall. The effect of theparalysing ray was wearing off. We were tingling all over, our sensesstill confused. 

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 anythingelse, believe me, I would have. But I don't think harm will come tothem. They're clever. "

"Are they outside?" I asked. "Did they find a way of meeting theMartians? 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 yousay bring them?"

We could not hear the answering voice, for Halsey had the muffler incontact. 

"No, I would prefer not to come. I'm watching something. I'm at theRed Spark Cafe. Well, I'm going back to my office presently to waitthere. "

He continued in code. Like Snap, I had never had occasion to learn it. The words were a strange sounding staccato gibberish. He ended, "Iwill send them, Grantline. Very well, I'll tell them to locate him. Atonce, yes. " He closed off the audiphone. 

Halsey swung on us. "You're all right now?"

"Yes. " I stood up, drawing Snap up with me. "What is wanted of usColonel?"

"That's better, Gregg. " He smiled, but he was still grim. "I wantedyou here to wait for this call from the Conclave of Public Safety. Itmet at midnight. They have ordered both of you there. "

"That's a secret meeting, isn't it?" asked Snap. "There was no reportof it over the air tonight. "

"Yes. Secret. " He was leading us to the door. "They won't need you formore than half an hour. When they finish, come back to my office. Youcan come openly. " He stood with his finger on the door lever. "Good-by, lads. Foley will lead you to the service room. You are totake a mail cylinder for Postal Switch-station 20. They'll re-routeyou from there to the conclave auditorium. "

The door slid up. "When you disembark, " he added, "Ask for JohnnyGrantline. You are to sit with him. "

He showed us out and the door slid down before him. We trudged thecorridor, and Snap gripped me. 

"For myself, " he whispered swiftly, "I'll go to the damnable conclavebecause I'm ordered. But I won't stay there long. Once we get out ofit, if I don't route myself back to the Red Spark, I'm a motor-oiler. "

I agreed with him. We had a mental picture of Anita and Venza in theRed Spark's public room. Doubtless Orentino had created a way for themto meet Molo. They would sit there in the Red Spark with that drinkingparty, and in less than an hour we would be back. 

But as we crossed diagonally across an end of the main room with Foleyleading us, we caught a glimpse of Molo's table. The party was stillthere, but Molo, Anita, and Venza were gone!

We had no time to get any information. Foley abruptly left us andanother man took his place. In the service room a passenger cylinderwas waiting. Our guide entered it with us. 

At the switch station we had the breath knocked out of us. Afteranother ten minutes in the vacuum tube, we reached our unknowndestination. The cylinder-slide opened. We found ourselves with a loneguard; and through a gloomy arcade opening, Johnny Grantline wasadvancing, to greet us. 

"Well, so here you are, Gregg. Hell to pay heaven, going on here. Comeon in; I'll tell you. "

"We were sent for, " Snap said. 

"Yes, but they don't want you yet. Come in here. "

He waved away the guard and led us through a padded arcade into alow-vaulted audience room, windowless and gloomy. Across it, a doorwaypanel stood ajar. Grantline peered through it. There was the glow oflight from the adjoining room and the distant murmur of many voices. 

Grantline closed the door. "Sit down and I'll tell you.... "

"Where are we?" I asked. 

"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 wassteady as a tower-base, but he was excited. I could see it by theglint 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'sreally been learned about it!"

"Well, what?" I asked. 

He sketched what he had heard this night at the conclave. Themysterious invader was inhabited. 

"How do they know that?" Snap put in. 

"Wait. I'll tell you the rest of it. The accursed thing changes itsorbit. It banks and turns like a spaceship! It stopped out in space;it's poised out there now between Mars and Jupiter. A world about afifth the size of the Moon, and the beings on it can control itsmovements. They've brought it in from interstellar space, into oursolar system. Evidently the point they've reached now is far as theywant to come. They've poised out there, getting ready to attack, notonly us, but Mars and Venus simultaneously. "

Grantline gazed at us through the smoke of his cigarette. He was muchlike Snap, small, wiry, brisk of movement and manner, but older. Hishair was graying at the temples; his voice carried the authority ofone accustomed to commanding men. 

"Don't ask me for the technicalities of how they reached theseconclusions. I'm no astronomer. I'm only telling you their conclusionsand what their discussions have been here for the past hour. "

Heaven knows, we had no inclination to dispute him. What we had seenand heard at the Red Spark tallied with his words. 

He went on swiftly, "The attack, of whatever nature it may be, isimpending 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 beengoing on for the past two days on Earth, and Venus and Mars. It's allbeen suppressed. Neither did I, until I heard it here tonight. TheU. S. W. , the Martian Union, the Venus Free State, are all preparing forwar. Every government spaceship on Earth is being commissioned. We'renot going to sit around and wait for invaders to land; the war won'tbe fought on Earth if we can help it. "

We stared. Snap asked, "What makes them so sure?"

"That war is coming? Plenty. This new planet has sent out spaceships. The planet itself is hovering sixty million miles away from us, aboutforty million miles from Mars and close to ninety million from Venus. Perhaps its leaders think that's the most strategic spot. 

"Then it sent out spaceships, three of them. One is hovering close toVenus. Another is near Mars, and the third is some 200, 000 miles offEarth. Several of our interplanetary freighters are overdue; it seemsnow that they must have encountered these invading ships and beendestroyed. 

"Still more, and worse: these three hovering ships have already landedthe enemy on Mars and Venus. The helio-reports mention mysteriousencounters in Ferrok-Shahn and Grebhar. For three or four days, Marshas been in a panic of apprehension; Venus almost as bad. And somehave landed here. Not many, perhaps; but one has been captured. Athing--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 ittalk. They can't but they're going to try again. "

He jumped to his feet and went to the door. "They're bringing it in. "Upon his face was a look of awed horror. 

We stood crowding the small door-oval. It gave onto a darkened balconyof the conclave hall. The girders of the city roof were over us. Therewere a few official spectators sitting up here in the dark on thebalcony, but none noticed us. 

The lower floor of the hall was lighted. Around the polished oblongtables perhaps a hundred scientists and high governmental officials ofthe three worlds were seated. Near the center of the hall was a smalldais-platform. On a table there, someone had just placed a circularblack box, similar to the one we had seen previously. 

The hall was hushed and tense. On the dais stood a group of Earthofficials. One of them spoke. "Here it is, gentlemen. And this time, by God, we'll make it speak. "

Grantline whispered, "That's the War Secretary from Greater London. "

I recognized him: Brayley, Commander in Chief of the land, air, waterand space armies of the United States of the World. He was gigantic instature, with a great shock of gray-white hair. A commanding figure, if there ever was one. 

Beside him, Nippor, the Japanese representative in Greater New York, seemed a pigmy. The acoustics of the silent hall carried his softvoice up to us. "I would be afraid of drugs. Will we use force? It isvital. "

"Yes, by God! Anything. "

It seemed that everyone in the hall must be shuddering: I could feelit like an aura pounding up at me. Brayley lifted the box-lid, reachedin and raised the horrible thing. He held it up, a two-foot ball ofpalpitating gray-white membrane. Another living brain. 

"Now, damn you, you're going to talk to us! Understand that? We'regoing to make you talk. Get that box out of the way. "

They flung the box to the floor, and Brayley placed the brain on thetable. 

A glare of light, focussed on it, showed beneath the stretched tautmembrane the convolutions of the brain, like tangled purple worms. Theblood-vessels seemed distended almost to bursting now. The gruesomeface, with popping eyes and that gaping mouth, showed a horribletravesty of terror. From where its ears should have been, a crookedlittle arm of flabby, gray-white flesh came down, one on each side andbraced the table. And I saw now that it had a shriveled body, or atleast little legs, bent, almost crushed under by its weight. 

"Now, damn you, " Brayley said, rubbing off his hands on a rough towel, "for the last time: will you talk?"

The goggling eyes held a terrified but baleful gaze upon Brayley'sface. Did it understand? The eyes were fronted our way, and suddenlytheir glance swung up so that I seemed for an instant to see down intothem. And it struck me then: this was a thing of greater intelligencethan my own. A humanoid, with brain so developed that through myriadgenerations the body was shriveled, almost gone. A mind was housedhere, an intelligence housed in this monstrous brain. 

Were these the beings of the new planet which had come to attack us?But how could this helpless creature, incapable of almost everything, obviously, save thought, do the work of its world?

Then I recalled again that insulated room of the Red Spark Cafe: thethin, ten-foot hooded shape which was carrying the box. Was that, perhaps, an opposite type of being with the brain submerged, dwarfed, and the body paramount? Were there, on this mysterious planet, twoco-existing types, each a specialist, one for the physical work andthe other for the mental?

I stood with Snap and Grantline in that dark balcony doorway, gazingdown to where the giant brain stood braced upon its shriveled arms andlegs, and realized why we of Earth and Venus and Mars are all cast inthe same mould we call human. It is a little family of planets, herein our solar system; for countless eons we have been close neighbors. The same sunlight, the same general conditions of life, the sameseed, were strewn here by a wise Creator. A man from the Orient isdifferent from an Anglo-Saxon; a man of Mars differs a little more. But basically they are the same. 

Yet, confronting us now was a new type, from realms of interstellarspace, far beyond our solar system. 

"For the last time, will you talk?" snapped Brayley. 

There was another interval of silence. The eyes of the brain were verywatchful. Its gaze roved the hall as though it were seeking for help. It shifted its little arms on the table, seemingly exhausted from thephysical effort of supporting itself. 

Brayley's voice came again. "Doubtless you can feel pain acutely. Weshall see. "

With what effort of will to overcome his revulsion we may only guess, he reached forward and pinched the little arm. The result waselectrifying. From the upended slit of mouth in that goggling face, came a scream. It pierced the heavy tense silence of the hall, ghastlyin its timbre, like nothing any of us had ever heard before. And in itwas conveyed agony as though Brayley had not merely pinched thatflabby arm, but had thrust a red-hot knife into its vitals. 

The brain could feel pain indeed. It crouched with stiffened arms andlegs. The membrane of its great head seemed to bulge with greaterdistension; the knotted blood-vessels were gorged with purple blood. The eyes rolled. Then it closed its mouth. Its gaze steadied uponBrayley's face, so baleful a gaze that as I could see the reflectionof 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'twant more, you had better speak. How did you get here on Earth? Whatare you trying to do here?"

There seemed an interminable silence; then Nippor took a menacing stepforward. "Speak! We will force it from you!"

And then it spoke. "Do--not--touch--me--again. "

Indescribable voice! Human, animal or monster no one could say. Butthe words were clear, precise; and for all their terror, they seemedto hold an infinite command. 

A wave of excitement swept the hall, but Brayley's gesture silencedit. He leaped forward and bent low over the palpitating brain. 

"So you can talk. You came as an enemy. We have given you everychance today for friendship, and you have refused. What are you tryingto 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 Greater New York is a hidingplace. Where is it?"

No answer. 

"Where is it? You are perhaps a leader of your world. I lead ours, andI'm going to master you now. Where is this hiding place?"

The thing suddenly laughed, a gruesome, eerie cackle. "You will knowwhen 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 as Nippor grasped the crookedlittle arm. "Tell us!"

"No!" It screamed again. "Let--me--go!"

"Tell us!" Nippor strengthened his squeezing grip. The thing waswrithing, the thin ball of membrane palpitating, heaving. And suddenlyit burst. Over all its purpled surface, blood came with a gush. 

Nippor and Brayley staggered backward. The scream of the brain endedin a choking gurgle. The little legs and tiny body wilted under it;the round ball of membrane sank to the table. It rolled sidewise uponone arm and ear, and in a moment its palpitation ceased. A purple-redmass of blood, it lay deflated and flabby. 

It was dead. 

4

"But see here, " I said, "did they mention the Martian, Molo, at all?"

"They were discussing Molo before you arrived, " Grantline told us. 

We had drawn back from the doorway. The conference, with the deadthing removed, was proceeding. Snap and I had momentarily forgottenAnita and Venza; but now we were in a panic to get back to the RedSpark. 

"But you can't go, " said Grantline. "Brayley ordered you here. He'llwant to see you in a moment. "

"Well, why doesn't he see us now?" Snap protested. "I'm not going tocool myself off sitting here. "

"Oh yes, you are. "

Grantline sent word to Brayley that we were here. In a moment theanswer came. We were to wait a short time; he would want to see us. 

We swiftly told Grantline what had happened at the Red Spark, andfound that already he knew. Francis had relayed it to the conference, and Halsey was in constant communication with the officials here. 

"Then what is happening?" I demanded. "Where are the girls? Has Halseyheard from them?"

Again Grantline went to a nearby room. 

"Anita sent a message, " he said, when he returned. "They are withMolo. Halsey is ordering a squad of men to be ready. "

Grantline told us what had been happening in the Red Spark. Anita andVenza, simulating drunkenness with a skill for acting which I knewboth of them possessed, had joined Molo's party. Perhaps if Meka hadbeen there she would have seen through them. 

But Molo did not. And they have since told me that the Martian himselfwas far from sober, although he was probably not aware of it. Heyielded to their demands to leave the restaurant with him. He wanted, as we know, to leave unobtrusively; and Venza threatened a sceneunless she could go. 

He took them, leaving openly in a public fare-car. Doubtless he atfirst intended to de-rail them somewhere, but they convinced him thathe was not being followed. Twice he used his detector, and Anita andHalsey were clever enough to throw off their rays in time to avoid it. Then Halsey lost connection with the fleeing car, and after that Molochanged his mind about ditching the girls. 

"But where are they now?" I demanded. 

"You, " said Grantline sternly, "are out of it. Do you think thatHalsey, under Brayley's orders, will neglect any chance to find outwhere Molo is hiding? Something is about to happen. This conference iswrestling with it. In Grebhar and Ferrok-Shahn they're striving tofind out what it is. Something impending _now_. Helios are pouring inhere from Venus and Mars. They're mobilizing their spaceships, just aswe are. "

Grantline at last was letting out all his apprehensions on us, withthis burst. "Halsey didn't tell you that the entire resources of hisorganization are out upon this thing tonight. Here at this conclavethere's a room of information-sorters. That's just where I came from amoment ago. Every country on our Earth is making ready--for what, nobody knows!

"He's had two fragmentary calls from Anita. He has a hundred men readyto rush to their aid, and to capture Molo's lair. He expects anothermessage from Anita any moment. This conference here knows everymovement that is being made, within ten or twenty seconds of itsmaking. Perhaps upon Anita and Venza the whole outcome of this thingmay hang. "

We had no answer to that. "Do you know who Molo is? He's aninterplanetary pirate; his ship is the _Star-Streak_. "

"Good Lord!"

We had heard of him. For five years past, a gray spaceship, with abase supposedly hidden in the Polar deserts of Mars, had beenterrorizing interplanetary shipping. 

"They think, " Grantline went on, "that Molo was cruising with hispirate ship. He has, as you know, a band of criminals drawn from allthe three worlds. There are about fifty of them, commanded by hissister and himself. We think that Molo encountered the three shipswhich that new planet sent out. The _Star-Streak_ was captured, perhaps destroyed. Molo and his band, joined with this new enemy, tosave themselves, and because they have been promised rewards. "

"But why should these brains want their help?" Snap demanded. 

"Wouldn't you say it was because, in Ferrok-Shahn, Grebhar and here inGreater New York, simultaneously tonight, something has to beaccomplished, something the brains themselves could not do? Molo andhis band know all three cities. How they landed here in Greater NewYork nobody knows; the enemy spaceship is 200, 000 miles out. Obviouslythey came from it, landed secretly with some smaller ship somewhere onEarth and made their way here. "

A buzzer sounded beside us. A voice commanded: "Grantline, bring GreggHaljan and Daniel Dean to room six at once. "

 * * * * *

In room six we stood before the War Secretary, who had arrived there amoment ahead of us. 

"Ah, Haljan and Dean. I'm glad to see you. "

He was still white and shaken. Beads of perspiration stood upon hisforehead. He mopped them off. 

"I've just had a rather terrible experience. " He did not suggest thatwe sit down. He went on crisply: "Grantline no doubt has told you ofwhat's going on. Disturbing, terrifying. Haljan, we have a ship beingrushed into commission tonight. You know her, the _Cometara_. "

"I know her, " I said. 

"Quite so. She is taking off as soon as we can ready her. She willcarry about fifty men. Grantline is in charge of the armament and men. You, Dean, we want to handle her radio-helio. "

"Right, " said Snap. 

"And you, Haljan, we can think of no one better to navigate her. "

He waved away my appreciation. "Within a brief time we shall havethirty such ships in space. Mars and Venus also are mobilizing. "

He stood up. "We feel, Haljan, that if anyone can handle the_Cometara_ with skill enough to combat this lurking enemy, it will beyou. "

"I'll do my best, sir. "

"We know that. The ship is leaving from the Tappan InterplanetaryStage shortly after dawn. When have you and Dean last slept?"

"Last night, " we both said. 

"Quite so. Then you need sleep now. I want you to go at once to theTappan Fieldhouse. The commander there will make you comfortable. Eat, and sleep if you can. We want you in good shape. You're to keep out ofthis night's activities here in the city; you understand?"

"Yes sir. "

An orderly was approaching behind Brayley. "I'll be back in a moment, Rollins. "

He shook hands with us. "I may not see you again before it's over. Good luck, lads. Grantline, they need you for a moment in the hall;something about electronic space weapons, further equipment for the_Cometara_. Then you'd better go to Tappan House too, and get somesleep. "

We were dismissed. Snap and I regarded each other hesitantly. I saidimpulsively, "Mr. Brayley, Detective-Colonel Halsey is using twogirls. "

"Yes, we're watching that, Haljan. "

"They're the girls we're to marry, " I added. "May we communicate withColonel Halsey?"

"Yes. Call him from here. " He smiled wanly. "But keep out of it; weneed you at dawn. "

The Tappan departure-stage was only a few miles up the Hudson; wecould get there in half an hour. It was now nearly trinight, halfwaybetween midnight and dawn. I had my portable audiphone and got Halseyat once. 

"You Gregg?"

"Yes. They're through with us at the Conclave. Where is Anita?"

"We heard from her twice. I'm expecting.... "

We could hear someone interrupting him. Then he came back. "Gregg?Molo took them somewhere. I didn't dare fling after them. He had hisdetector going, and Anita warned me not to try it. She had to stopconnection herself. God knows how she was able to whisper to me atall. "

His voice, like Brayley's, had the ring of a man strained to thebreaking point. I could appreciate how Halsey must feel, forced toremain at his desk with its encircling banks of instruments; holdingall the network of his farflung activities centralized; hisdecisions, his commands in a hundred places almost simultaneously, while his body sat there inactive. 

"Gregg, the girls must have arrived at Molo's place by now. If onlythey know where they are! I have lookouts throughout the city withintricate and complete connecting equipment. Gregg, I mustdisconnect. "

"Colonel, give me Anita's frequency. Maybe Snap or I can pick up themessage. "

He named the oscillating frequency, then disconnected. 

"Try that frequency, " Snap suggested. "We've got to do something. "

The door-slide opened suddenly and an orderly appeared. "Haljan?"

"Get the hell away, " roared Snap. "We've had our orders; we don't wantany from you. "

"Gregg Haljan and Daniel Dean are paged on the mirrors. "

Someone in the city wanted us; our names were appearing on the variousmirror-grids publicly displayed throughout the city in the hope thatwe would answer. 

"That's different, " said Snap. "Answer it for us, that's a goodfellow. We're busy. "

"It must be important, " the orderly insisted. "The caller registered afee at the Search Bureau; that's how they located you here. He paidthe highest fee to search you. An emergency call. "

It was against the law to invoke the services of the Search Bureauunless based upon actual impending danger. "We'll take it, " I said. 

"Come with me. " He turned to the left and down the corridor. 

We hastened with him to a corridor cubby. Upon the audiphone there Iwas at once connected with a voice, and an anxious man's face with atwo-day growth upon it. 

"Haljan! Thank God you answered. This is Dud Ardley. Me and Shac arehere. Listen, this is the lower cellar corridor, Lateral 3, underBroadway. Me and Shac just have seen your girls down here. "

News of Anita and Venza! I could see in the mirror-image, behind Dud'shead the outlines of the little public cubby from which he wascalling. He and his brother, on some illicit errand of their own inEast Side lower Manhattan, had seen figures alighting from afare-car. They had caught a glimpse of the faces of Anita and Venza. The girls were hooded and cloaked; a hooded man was with them. Thefare-car quickly rolled away, and the hooded figures, suddenlybecoming invisible within their magnetic cloaks, had vanished. 

"S'elp me, we couldn't do nothin'. You know we take no chances withthe 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, supposedthat the girls were being abducted, and decided 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 aquarter of a mile from here, over toward the river. Plenty of rottendumps down there. "

"Wait for us, Dud. We'll come in a rush. "

I slammed shut the audiphone. Snap, beside me, had heard it all. Heshoved the astonished orderly out of the way. 

"What's the nearest exit-route out of here?"

"To the city roof, sir. Up this incline. "

We dashed up the spiral incline, through a low exit-port, and were inthe starlight of the city roof. 

 * * * * *

"Connect it, Gregg! You can't tell; her message might come over anyminute. "

I tuned my coils to the seldom used oscillation frequency which Halseyhad told us Anita's transmitter was sending. 

"Anything, Gregg?"

"No. Dead channel. "

The air, in Anita's channel, was bafflingly silent. 

We had been challenged by a roof-guard when we appeared from the upperport of the Conclave Hall; the city roof was not open to publictraffic. But with our identifications, he found us a single-seathand-tram, and started us southward on the deserted route. 

It was a cloudless night, with stars like thickly-strewn diamonds onpurple velvet. The city roof lay glistening in the starlight. In mygreat-grandfather's time there had been no roof here; the open citywas exposed to all the inclement weather. But gradually the arcadesand overhead viaducts, cross balconies and catwalks which spanned thecanyon street between the giant buildings became a roof. It spread, now terraced and sloped to top the lofty buildings, like a greatrumpled sheet propped by the knees of sleeping giants. Some of theroof was of opaque alumite, dark patches, alternating with the greatglassite panes which in places admitted the daylight. 

Our little tram sped along southward, wending its way over theterraces. Save for the guards and lookouts in their occasionalcubbies, and the air-traffic directors in their towers, we were aloneup here. The roof was tangled with air-pipes, line-wire conduits, aerials, arterial systems of the ventilating and lighting devices. Asfar as one could see the ventilators stood fronting the night breezelike listening ears. There were water tanks, great cross-bulkheads andflumes to handle the rain and snow. A few traffic towers maintainedorder in the overhead air-lanes. Their beacons shot up into the skywhen 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 empty. It was, I suppose, no more than tenminutes during which we sped south along the grotesque maze of theroof; but to us it was an eternity. If only some message would come!

"I'll pull up here. "

"Yes. "

I gathered up my little audiphone, thrust it under my dark flowingcloak. If only our cloaks were magnetic!

We leaped from our car. "In a rush, Haljan?" asked a guard. 

"That's us. Orders from Mr. Brayley. "

We left him and plunged into a descending automatic lift. A drop of athousand feet; we shot downward past all the deserted levels, past theground-level, the undersurface transportation lanes, the sub-rivertubes, the sub-cellar, down to the very bottom of the city. 

"Come on, Gregg. Two segments from here. "

We advanced at a run. At this hour of night, hardly a pedestrian wasin evidence. It was an arched vaulted corridor, almost a tunnel, dimlyblue-lit with short lengths of fluorescent tubes at intervals on theceiling. For all the vaunted mechanisms of our time, the air here washeavy and fetid. Moisture dripped from the concrete roof. It lay onthe metal pavement of the ground; the smell of it was dank, tomb-like. 

There were frequent cross-tunnels. We turned eastward into one ofthem. For a segment there were the lower entrances to the cellars ofthe giant buildings overhead. We passed a place where thetunnel-corridor widened into a great underground plaza. The sewerageand wire-pipes lay like tangled pythons on its floor. Half across it, by the glow of temporary lights strung on a cable, a group ofrepairmen were working. We passed them, headed in to where the tunnelnarrowed again and there were now occasional cubby entrances tounderground dwellings. 

It was a rabbit warren from here to the river, haunted by criminalsand by miserable families, many of whom never saw the daylight forweeks at a time. The giant voices of the city hardly carried downhere, so that an oppressive silence hung upon everything. 

"That next crossing, Gregg. They said they'd wait for us there. "

Occasional escalators led upward. In advance of us was a narrowintersection. There were a few lights in the bullseyes of thesubterranean dwelling rooms, but most of them were dark. 

"Easy, Snap. Not so fast. "

I pulled Snap to a walk. We edged over against the tunnel side. We hadpassed a small lighted audiphone cubby, evidently the one from whichDud and Shac had paged us. They should have been here waiting; butthere was nothing but the empty, gloomy tunnels. 

"Something is coming!" Snap clutched at me; we drew our cloaks aroundus and waited in a shadowed recess. Down a side incline, a segmentbehind us, a small automatic food truck came lurching. It pulled up atan arcade entrance. Its driver slid the portals, deposited his casesof food, locked the panel after him; and in a moment he and his truckwere gone up the incline. 

We heard, in the ensuing silence, a low groan near at hand; thenabruptly it stopped. We saw, within twenty feet of us, two darkfigures lying on the pavement grid in a black patch of shadow wherethe mailtube came down in a curve and disappeared into the tunnelwall. 

We bent over the figures of two men. They lay together, one half uponthe other, black-garbed figures with white, staring faces. Onetwitched 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 on either of them. 

I found my wits. "Snap, we can't stand like this wholly visible. "

I pulled Snap away. We darted a few feet. The light of the tunnelintersection was directly over us. "Not here, Snap! Run!"

Under the curving vacuum tube a little further along, we foundshelter. Snap murmured: "The girls went past here. But which way, Gregg?"

As though I knew!

I felt at that moment, under the shirt against my skin, the anode ofmy audiphone tingling. A receiving signal! In the gloom, I could seeSnap's white face as he watched me bring it out. 

We heard a tiny microphonic voice, Anita's voice. 

"Colonel Halsey. Yes I have the location. Lafayette 4--East corridor, lowest level. A descending entrance. Don't you speak again; I've onlya minute! Venza safe--but send help. Something we don't understand--astrange mechanism here. "

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. "

"Ten minutes will be too late. Molo is.... "

It seemed that we heard her scream; then the waves blurred and died. 

Lafayette 4--East corridor, lowest level. "Snap, that's here! Adescending entrance. "

We stood back against the great curving side of the postal vacuumtube. Within it I heard the hiss and clank as a mail cylinder flashedpast. Halsey's secret orders must be going out now. His men nearestthis place would come in a rush. But Anita said that would be toolate. 

Snap and I were frantically searching. Somewhere here was an entranceto Molo's lair. It seemed in the silence that Anita's scream was stillringing in my ears. Had it been entirely from the instrument, or werewe so close that we had heard its distant echoes?

"Gregg, help me. " Snap was tugging at a horizontal door-slide, like atrap in the tunnel floor, partly under the vacuum tube. "Stuck!" hegasped. 

It yielded with our efforts. It slid aside. Steps led downward intoblackness. We plunged in, caution gone from us. The steps went downsome twenty feet; we were in another smaller corridor. It was vaguelylighted by a glow from somewhere, and as my pupils expanded, I couldsee this was a shabby alley, opening ahead into a winding passage withthe slide-port above us like its back gate. A warren of cubbies washere, a little sequestered segment of disreputable dwellings. 

We stood peering, listening. "Shall I try the eavesdropper, Gregg?"

"Yes. No, wait!" I thought I heard distant sounds. 

"Voices, Snap. Listen. "

More than voices. A thud: footsteps running. A commotion, back in thiswarren, within a hundred feet of us. 

"This way, " I murmured. 

We plunged into a black gash. There was a glow of light, a glassitepane in a house wall nearby. The commotion was louder, and under itnow we heard a vague humming: something electrical. It was anindescribably 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 no door. In our hands weheld small electronic bolt-cylinders, short-range weapons. 

The hum and hissing was louder. It seemed to throb within us, asthough vibration were communicating to every fiber of our bodies. 

Light was streaming through the glassite pane, and we glimpsed theinterior of the room. The light now came from a strange mechanism setin the center of the metal cubby. I caught only an instant's glimpseof it, a round thing of coils and wires. The metal floor of the roomwas cut away, exposing the gray rock of Manhattan Island. And againstthe rock, in a ten-foot circle, a series of discs were contacted, withwires leading from them to the central coils. 

The whole was glowing with opalescent light. It was dazzling, blinding. Within in it the goggled figure of Molo was moving, adjusting the contacts. He stooped. He straightened, drew back fromthe light. 

Only an instant's glimpse, but we saw the girls, crouching with blackbandages on their eyes. Meka, goggled like her brother, was holdingthem. A tall shape carrying a round black box darted through the lightand ran. Molo leaped for the girls; the hum had mounted to a wildelectrical scream. Molo flung his sister back out of the light. 

They all vanished. There was nothing but the light, and the mountingdynamic scream. 

Beside me, Snap was pounding on the glassite panel. I joined him. Everything was dreamlike, blurring as though unconsciousness was uponme. 

Where was Snap? Gone? Then I saw him nearby. He had found a door, butit wouldn't yield. 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 sointense, so gigantic a sound that it must ring around the world. 

And the light burst with an exploding puff. The black metal cubbywalls seemed to melt like phantoms in a dream. A titan's blowtorch, the opalescent light shot upward, a circular ten-foot beam, eating itsway through all the city levels as though they were paper, up throughthe city roof. 

Molo's cubby was gone. His mechanism was eaten by the light anddestroyed. There was only this motionless, upstanding beam, contactedhere with the Earth, streaming like an opalescent sword into thestarry sky. 

5

I must paint now upon a broader canvas to depict the utter chaos ofthis most memorable night in the history of the Earth, Venus and Mars. 

From that point in the bowels of Greater New York, near the southerntip of Manhattan Island, the mysterious light-beam shot up. Itscreamed with its weird electrical voice for an hour, so penetrating asound that it was heard with the unaided ears as far away asPhiladelphia. A titan voice it was, shrill as if with triumph. Therewere millions of people awakened by it this night; awakened and struckwith a chill of fear at this nameless siren shrilling its note ofdanger. The sound gradually subsided; it seemed to reach its peakwithin a few minutes of the appearance of the light, and within anhour it had ceased. 

But the light beam remained. Those who inspected it closely have givena clear description of its aspect; but to this day its real nature hasnever been determined. 

It was a circular beam of about a ten-foot diameter. In color it wasvaguely opalescent, rather more brilliant at night than in the day. With the coming of the sun it did not fade, but remained clearlyvisible, with a spectrum sheen when the sunlight hit it so that it hadsomewhat the appearance of a titanic, straightened rainbow. 

From that contact point with our Earth, the inexplicable beam stoodvertically upward. It ate a vertical hole like a chimney up throughall the city levels, through the roof and into the sky. It had atremendous heat, communicable by contact so that it melted the cityabove 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 hadbeen an explosion, so that Molo's metal room was gone; but from whereI 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 notinjured. I think now that the sound and not the light overcame me. Ipresently recovered consciousness; for another hour I was blind anddeaf, but that quickly wore off. They rushed me through the chaos ofthe city to the Tappan Headquarters. Grantline was there, but notSnap. I sent them back when once I was fully conscious. They searchedall the vicinity at the base of the light. Snap, alive or dead, wasnot to be found. 

Anita and Venza were gone. I had seen Molo and Meka plunge away withthem as the light-beam burst forth. They were gone, and Snap was gone. 

There was, by now, a turmoil unprecedented throughout all themetropolitan area. The motionless light-beam itself had done littledamage, but its appearance brought instant chaos. Within a radius offive miles of its base, the city was plunged into darkness. All powerwas cut off. Every vehicle, even the aeros passing overhead, and, theventilating system stopped. Audiphones were wrecked; it subsidedwithin an hour, though, and after that, lights and instruments broughtinto the area were not affected. 

But during that hour, south Manhattan was in panic. A multitude ofterrified people awakened in the night to find blackness and thatscreaming sound. The streets and corridors and traffic levels werejammed with throngs trampling and killing one another in their effortsto escape. 

This was in the stricken area; but everywhere else the panic wasspreading. Transportation systems were almost all out of commission. The panic spread until by dawn there was a wild exodus of refugeesjamming the bridges and viaducts and tunnels, streaming from all thecity exits. 

This was Greater New York. But from Venus and Mars came similarreports. In Grebhar and in Ferrok-Shahn, doubtless almost simultaneouswith Greater New York, similar light-beams appeared. 

"But what can it be?" I demanded of Grantline. "Something Molocontacted there? He did it. That was what he was working for, and heaccomplished his purpose. But what will the beam do to us?"

"It's doing plenty, " said Grantline grimly. 

"He didn't intend that. There was something else. "

But what? As yet, no one knew. I had already told the authorities whatI had seen. I was the only eye-witness to Molo's activities; andheaven knows I had but a brief, confused glimpse. 

The beam remained; it streamed upward from the rock. They thought, this night, that Molo's strange current had set up a disintegration ofthe atoms, and that electronic particles from them were streaming intospace. 

The light-beam seemed impervious to attack. Within a few hours theauthorities were attacking its base with various vibratory weapons butwithout success. 

From where Grantline and I sat, we saw the dawn coming. But theradiance-beam remained unaffected. "Gregg, look there at Venus!"

To the east of us there was a distant line of metal structuressurmounting the mid-Westchester hills; above them, in the brighteningsky of dawn, Venus was just rising. Mars had already set at ourlongitude. Venus, fairly close to the Earth now, was the "MorningStar. "; it mounted now above that line of metal stages in thedistance. 

And as Grantline gestured, I saw from Venus the same sword-like beamstreaming off almost to cross our own. 

Grantline and I, with a mutual thought, ran around the balcony andgazed to where Mars had set. A narrow radiance was streaming up amongthe stars off there. 

Three swinging swords of light in the sky! With the rotation of theplanets, they swept the firmament. The mysterious enemy had plantedthem--but why? 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 mountingspeck of something dark, with streamers of tiny radiance flowing fromit. 

"A spaceship, Gregg. "

It seemed so. It came slowly from above the maze of distantstructures, gathered speed, and in a moment was gone. 

But others, better equipped, had observed it. It was a cylindricalprojectile, with stream-fluorescence propelling it upward, an unusualform of spaceship. Telescopically it was seen until well after dawn. Speeding out in the direction of the Moon. 

Molo and his weird allies had escaped, I thought. With their workdone here on Earth, they were off to rejoin the hovering enemy ship200, 000 miles out. 

I stood gripping Grantline on that balcony, and gazed with sinkingheart. Were Anita and Venza prisoners on that mounting ship? And Snap:I prayed he was there with the girls to lend them the protection I hadfailed to give. 

"Haljan and Grantline wanted below. "

The voice of a mechanic on the balcony behind us roused us from ourthoughts. We went down through the busy building. 

The workshops of Tappan Interplanetary Headquarters had for hours beenringing with busy activity. The _Cometara_ rested upon her departurestage outside, with a score of workmen conditioning her. Newly-installed additional armament was aboard, ready to be assembledafter the start. The men to handle it were embarked. My half dozenofficers and the ten members of the crew I had already briefly met. They were waiting for me. 

"On we go, Gregg. Let's wish ourselves luck. " From grim, silentabstraction, Grantline had now sprung into his familiar dynamic self. 

There was a solemn group of officers and a hundred or so workmen here;they stopped their fevered labors now to watch the _Cometara_ getaway, first of Earth's ships speeding into space to confront thisnameless enemy. Grantline and I went past them with silent handshakesand murmured good-bys. I saw the towering figure of Brayley. He raisedan arm for a farewell gesture to us. 

We mounted the incline to the _Cometara_. She rested upon her stage, agreat, sleek bronze ship, low and rakish, with pointed ends and aflattened, arched turtle-back dome of glassite covering thesuperstructure and the decks from bow to stern. She lay quiescent, gleaming in the glow of the departure beacons; but there was an aspectof latent power upon her. 

My ship! My first command! As we went through the opened port of thedomeside and I touched foot upon the deck, I prayed that I mightjustify the faith reposed in me. 

Men crowded the narrow, covered deck. I saw the space-guns at the deckpressure-ports, partly assembled. My chief officer, a young fellownamed Drac Davidson, who with his twin brother had been in theInterplanetary Freight Service, rushed up to me. 

"We're ready, sir. "

"Very good, Drac. "

He hurried me to the turret control room. Grantline instantly hadplunged into details of assembling the weapons. 

"Her ports are all closed, " said Drac. He spoke calmly, but his thinface was pale and his dark eyes glowed with excitement. "The interiorpressure is set at fifteen pounds. You can ring us up at once. "

No formalities to this departure! With pounding heart I entered thesmall circular turret and mounted its tiny spiral stairs to the uppercontrol room. But as I touched the levers, calmness came to me withthese familiar tasks at which I was skilled. 

I slid a central-hull gravity-plate. It went smoothly, perfectlyoperated by the magnets. The vessel trembled, lifted; outside theenclosing dome I could see the dawn-light of the sky and palingfloodlights of the stage. Figures of men out there, made silentgestures of farewell, dropping slowly beneath our hull as we lifted. 

The bow gravity-plates slid into the repulsive-force positions. Thebow lifted. The _Cometara_ responded smoothly. We went up, poised at aforty-five degree angle. I saw the outer beacons on the stage swingupward with their warning to passing traffic in the lower lanes. 

"Light our bow-beacon, Drac. "

We lifted through the lower thousand and two thousand-foot lanes. Thelights of Tappen were dwindling beneath us. The interior of the_Cometara_ was humming with the whirr of its circulators andair-receivers, mingled with the throb of air pressure pumps. At threethousand feet I started the air-rocket engines. They came on with agentle purring. The fluorescence from them streamed along our hull anddown past the stern, like twin rocket tails. 

With gathering speed we slid smoothly upward through the highesttraffic lanes, out of the atmosphere, through the stratosphere andinto space. 

Leaving the stratosphere, I cut off the air-rocket engines, slid thestern gravity-plates for the Earth's repulsion and the bow plates forthe attraction of the Moon and Sun. The firmament swung, in a slowarc, and steadied with the Earth behind us and the Sun and Moon inadvance of our bow. We were on our course, plunging through space withaccelerating velocity toward the unknown enemy ship hovering twohundred thousand miles ahead of us. My orders were to find the shipand maneuver us close to it; and Grantline's orders were to assail it. 

I gazed down at the convex North Atlantic with the reddening coastlineof North America spread like a map. 

What was the nature of this strange enemy whom we sought? Thatopalescent beam from Greater New York mounted with its radiance intothe dome-like starfield; the one from Venus and the other from Marsseemed crossing overhead amid the stars. 

Three swords crossing the sky! What did they mean?

 * * * * *

"Will you swing east or west of the Moon?"

"We haven't decided. "

Drac Davidson and I were alone in the _Cometara's_ control turret. 

We were some ten hours out from Earth. Over such short astronomicaldistances it was impossible to attain any great velocity. When once wewere clear of the Earth's atmospheric envelope, the rocket-streamengines were useless. The _Cometara_ was equipped also withtail-streamers of electronic nature. They exerted a slight pressure, useful for sudden curving and turning; but they had only negligibleinfluence upon the main velocity of the vehicle. 

I used the repulsion of the Earth upon our negatively charged sterngravity-plates; and with those of the bow electronified to thepositive reaction, we were drawn forward by the Sun and the Moon. 

For three or four hours I held to this combination with steadyacceleration; but then I had to retard. In close quarters such asthis, the retarding velocity must be calculated with a nicety manyhours in advance. 

We hung now, very nearly poised, within some forty thousand miles ofthe surface of the Moon. Bleak and cold, sharply black and white, ithung in a gigantic crescent in advance of our bow. The Sun, whoseattraction I had ceased using some hours back, was visible sharply toone side now. Its great gas streams of giant flame licked up into theblackness of the firmament. The sunlight caught the lunar mountainswith a white glare, and left the valleys black with shadow; moonlightand the mingled sunlight painted our bow. Behind our stem the greatdisk of Earth hung somber and glowing. 

And everywhere else was the great black enclosing firmament. The starsblazed with a new white glory never seen through the haze of anatmosphere. Like a little world in the vastness of this awesome void, we hung poised. 

Grantline came into the turret. "I've got everything ready, Gregg. Bythe gods, once you can lay telescope upon that accursed enemy ship, I'm ready to open fire on it. "

"Good, " I said. 

But the thought of hurling our bolts at this enemy ship had struckterror into my heart for hours past. I was convinced that the threewho in all the world were dearest to me--Anita, Venza, and Snap--wereupon that enemy vessel. 

Grantline asked, "Are you going closer to the Moon?"

"No. "

"The ship couldn't be between us and the Moon. Waters and I have beenin the helio room for the past hour, searching with the 'scope there. Nothing doing, Gregg. Not a sign. "

"I know. Our instruments here show that. "

"There might be a way of sighting them, " Drac put in. 

"I'll try the Zed-ray, " I suggested. "Drac and I have it corrected. But I doubt if it would penetrate the sort of invisibility this enemywould use. "

Grantline nodded. "Or the Benson curve-light. You think the ship wentbehind the Moon? Or landed on the Moon?"

"It could have done either. Has Waters still got contact with theEarth? Have they seen it?"

"No. "

I made a sudden decision. It would take us two hours at least to makea careful scanning with the Zed-ray; and to take an elaborate seriesof spectro-heliographs of the Moon's surface, which might show theenemy vessel if it had landed there, was a laborious process. 

After brief thought, I discarded the idea. "We'll go to the helioroom, " I told Grantline. "I'm going to try the Benson curve-light. "

Grantline and I left the turret, heading along the catwalk under theglassite dome toward the helio cubby where the rotund, middle-agedWaters was in charge. It made my heart sink to think of the helioroom. Snap should have been there. 

We crossed the transverse catwalk. The superstructure roof was underus. Farther down, the narrow decks showed with Grantline's men groupedat the firing ports, where his weapons were mounted and ready. As Isaw those grouped men loitering on the deck, waiting for me to givethem a sighting, I prayed I could do so; and yet there was theshuddering fear that the first blast would bring death to Anita. 

Waters met us at the door of his cubby. His face was red; he moppedthe perspiration from his bald head. "I'm so glad you came! Will youwant the Benson-light? I say, I've lost connection with the Earth. Ihad the Washington transmitter. Five minutes ago they sent me a flashof the Mars and Venus news. They both sent ships, out. "

He gasped for breath, then added in a rush: "Both the Mars and Venusships were destroyed and the enemy escaped!"

Grantline and I gasped with horror. 

"Destroyed?" I said. "How?"

Waters did not know. The news came; then, immediately after, theWashington transmitter changed its wavelength and he lost connection. 

"But why, in heaven's name, man, didn't you ring and tell us?"Grantline demanded. "Destroyed--only that! Just destroyed. "

"I was afraid to leave my instruments, " Waters said. "How could Itell? I might be able to renew connections with Washington any minute. Come on in. Do you want to try the Benson curve-light, Mr. Haljan?"

"Yes, " I said. "I do. " We entered the dim helio cubby. "See here, Waters, what about the projectile that ascended from Earth last night?Did the Washington observatory report what happened to it?"

"No, not a word. They lost it, evidently. "

Our 'scopes on the _Cometara_ had not been able to locate theprojectile. The large instruments of Earth had lost it. Was thatbecause, with tremendous velocity, it had sped directly for the newplanet out beyond Mars?

Or, with some form of invisibility, might it be close to us now, justas the lurking ship might be somewhere around here?

From the little circular helio cubby, perched here under the dome likean eagle's nest, I could see down all the length of the ship, and outthe side ports of the dome to the blazing firmament. The Sun, Moon andEarth and all the starfield were silently turning as Drac swung usupon our new course. 

Waters bent over the projector of the Benson curve-light, makingconnections. The cubby was silent and dim, with only a tiny spotlightwhere Waters was working, and a glow upon his table where his recentmessages from Earth were filed. Grantline and I glanced at them. 

Panic in Greater New York, Grebhar, and Ferrok-Shahn. The threestrange beams which the enemy had planted on Earth, Venus and Marsstill remained unchanged. I could see them now plainly from the heliocubby windows, great shafts of radiance sweeping the firmament. 

Waters straightened from his task. "That will do it, Mr. Haljan. " Hemet me in the center of the cubby. "When you locate the enemy, do youthink they'll destroy us as they did those other ships?"

Grantline laughed grimly. "Maybe so, Waters. But let's hope not. "

Fat little Waters was anything but a coward, but being closed up hereall these hours with a stream of dire messages from Earth had shakenhim. 

"What I mean, Mr. Grantline, is that prudence is sometimes better thanreckless valor. The _Cometara_ is no warship. If Earth had sent aninternational patrol vessel.... "

Grantline did not answer. He joined me at the Benson projector. "Canwe operate it from here, Gregg, or will you mount it in the bow?"

"From here. Drac's swinging. When he's on the course I gave him, I canthrow the Benson-ray through the bow dome-port. Waters, you're alldone in. Go below and sleep awhile. "

But he stood his ground. "No, sir; I don't want to sleep. "

"We've had ours, " said Grantline. "We'll call you if anything showsup. "

We sent Waters away. "Ready, Gregg?"

"Yes. I've got the range. "

The coils hummed and heated with the current, and in a moment theBenson curve-beam leaped from the projector. 

The Benson curve-light was similar to an ordinary white searchlightbeam, except that its path, instead of being straight could be bent atwill into various curves--hyperbola, parabola, and for its extremecurve, the segment of an ellipse--gradually straightening as it leftits source. It was effective for police work, with hand torches forseeing around opaque obstructions. It had also another advantage, especially when used at long range: the enemy, when gazing back at itssource, would under normal circumstances conceive it to be a straightbeam and thus be misled as to the location of its source. Or evenrealizing it to be curved, one had no means of judging the angle ofthe curve. 

A narrow white stream of light, it flung through our window-oval, forward under the dome and through the bow dome bullseye, into space. I saw the men on the deck spring into sudden alertness with therealization we were using it. The bow lookout on the forwardobservation bridge crouched at his 'scope-finder to help us search. 

From the control turret came an audiphone buzz, and Drac's voice: "AmI headed right? The swing is almost completed. "

"Finish the job and don't bother me now. "

I bent over the field-mirror of the projector. On its glowing ten-inchgrid the shifting image of my range was visible, a curving, brilliantlimb of the Moon, with the sunlight on the jagged mountain peaks;everywhere else was the black firmament and the blazing dots of stars. 

Grantline crouched beside me. "I'll work the amplifiers. Going tospread it much, Gregg?"

"Yes. A full spread first. We're in no mood for a detailed narrowsearch. "

I gradually widened the light. Three feet here at its source, itspread in a great widening arc. With the naked eye we could see itswhite radiance, fan-shaped as an edge of it fell upon the Moon. Andthough optically it was not apparent, the elliptical curve of it wasrounding the Moon, disclosing the hidden starfield to ourinstruments. 

"Nothing yet?" I murmured. 

"No. "

"I'll try a narrower spread and less curve. "

Grantline was searching the magnified images on the series ofamplifier grids. There was nothing. For an hour we worked; thensuddenly Grantline cried: "Gregg! Wait! Hold it!"

I tensed, stricken. I held the angle and the spread of light steady. 

"Two seconds of arc, east; try that. The damned thing is shifting. " Hegripped me. "It's at the eastern edge of the field; it shifts off. Itmust be in rapid motion. "

Then I saw it, a mere moving dot of black; but suddenly it clarified. I saw a dot which I could imagine was a shape with discs along itsedge, moving with high velocity. Grantline was shifting our field tohold it. 

"Got it, Gregg. By God, that's it! Now we'll see. "

Then presently we saw that from its bow a very faint radiant beam wasstreaming. Beside me I heard Grantline gasp, "Gregg, am I crazy or isthat bow beacon like the light-beam planted in Greater New York?"

There did seem to be a similarity, but thought of it abruptly wasswept from my mind. Our cubby was alive with signals. Both the bow andthe stern observers saw the enemy ship now with their 'scopes gazingdirectly along our Benson-light. And Drac was calling, "I've got themeasurement of its velocity. Doubling every ten seconds. God, whatacceleration!"

I flung off the Benson-light. The enemy ship had come from behind thelimb of the Moon; our straight-light telescopes showed it clearly. Itwas heading unmistakably in our direction. 

Drac was pleading, "We need velocity! Are you coming to the turret?"

"Yes. "

Grantline and I rushed out upon the catwalk. Waters was mounting thespiral ladder from the deck. "Into your cubby, " I shouted. "CallEarth. Keep calling until you get them. "

Grantline rushed for the deck. I gained the control turret, Drac, withhis thin face white and set, met me at the door. "We need velocity. "

I nodded. "We'll get it, Drac; have no fear of that. "

I set the gravity-plates for the greatest possible accelerationforward and added the stern rocket engines for narrow-anglemaneuvering. 

With gathering speed we plunged directly for the oncoming enemy ship. 

6

"But there's something wrong, Drac. "

"We've got grade five acceleration. "

Grantline had joined us in the control turret. "How far would you say, at a rough guess, that ship is from us now?"

"Thirty thousand miles; about that. " Drac scanned his page ofcalculations. "Impossible to gauge with any exactness; they changetheir pace so often and I can't figure out how large the damn thingis. "

"Say they've got a forty thousand velocity; added to our ten, that'sfifty. "

"And we're accelerating. In half an hour we'll be within range. "

"But there's something wrong, " I persisted. 

For several minutes now I had been aware that the _Cometara_ wasacting strangely. A sluggish response to the controls, I thought, butwhen I called engine chief Franklin, he had not noticed it. Yet I wascertain. 

Grantline stared at me. "Something wrong?"

"Yes. Drac, try orienting us. I did it ten minutes ago. " I shoved himat my equations, giving the angles with the Sun, Earth and Moon whichwe should now have. "There's our flight course as it ought to be. Measure how we're heading, actual position. If it's what it ought tobe, with the plate-combinations I'm using, then I'm crazy. "

"Oh, you're just naturally apprehensive, " Grantline said. 

But we were not where we should be. The _Cometara_ was off herpredetermined course. And then I realized the factor of error. Therewas a gravitational force here for which I was not allowing. Theerror was not within the _Cometara_; she was responding perfectly. Butthere was a force upon her, and not that of the Sun, Earth, Moon orthe distant starfield. I had calculated all of these. It was somethingelse. Some gravitational pull, so that we were not upon the course offlight we should have been on. 

"But what could be wrong?" Grantline demanded. 

It was Drac who guessed it. "That radiance from the enemy's bow?"

It was that, we felt certain. Even at this thirty thousand miledistance, the bow-beacon seemed streaming upon us. We could not seethat it illumined the _Cometara_, nor could our instruments measureany added illumination. Our flight-orbit, if held, would carry us witha swing some ten thousand miles above the South Pole of the Moon. Itwould cross diagonally in front of the trajectory that the enemyvessel was maintaining. But we were off our predetermined course, witha side-drift toward the enemy. That bow-beacon radiance was exerting aforce upon us, a strange gravitational pull. 

Grantline gasped when Drac said it. "If it's that now, what will it bewhen we get closer?"

The minutes were passing. The thirty thousand miles between us and theenemy was cut to ten thousand; to five. The ship was soon visible tothe naked eye. Its visual movement, for all this time measurable onlyas a drift upon the amplified images of our instruments, now wasobvious. We could see it plunging forward, could see that probably wewould cross its bow. Within fifty miles? We hoped and guessed thatwould be the result, so that with this first passing we could use ourweapons. Fifty miles of distance at combined speeds of some fiftythousand miles an hour: that would be something like three secondsfrom a collision. The danger of a collision, which both ships would doanything to avert, was negligible; in the immensity of space twoobjects so small could not strike each other, even with intention, once in a million times. 

We could not calculate the passing so closely, but suddenly it seemedthat perhaps the enemy could. The bow-beacon radiance, so obviously aminiature of the weird light-beams streaming from Earth, Mars andVenus, now swung away from us and was extinguished. Whateveralteration of our course the enemy had made, they seemed to besatisfied. The passing would be to their liking. Would it be to ours?

Grantline had left the turret. He was down on the deck, ready with hismen. The weapons were ready. 

We had long since advanced beyond the possibility of mathematicalcalculations keeping pace with our changing position in relation tothe enemy, but it seemed that the passing would be within fifty miles. Grantline's weapons would carry their bolt that far. 

It was barely two thousand miles away now. Two minutes of time beforethe passing. I stared at it, a long, low ship of dark metal, red wherethe moonlight struck upon it. I estimated its size to be about that ofthe _Cometara_, but it was much more nearly globular. Upon its top, seeming to project from the terraced dome, was an up-pointing funnel, like the smokestack of an old-fashioned surface steam vessel; or likea great black muzzle of an old-fashioned gun. And in a row along thebulging middle of the hull there was a series of little discs. 

The vessel was still a tiny blob, but every instant it was enlarging, doubling its visual size. Drac said tensely, "Fifteen hundred miles!We'll pass in a minute and a half. "

I turned the angle of the stern rocket-streams. The firmament slowlybegan swinging; the enemy ship seemed swaying up over us. I wasturning our top to it, so that Grantline might fire directly upwardfrom both sides almost simultaneously. It might be possible, if Icould roll us over at just the proper seconds. 

But the enemy anticipated us. As they observed our roll, again thebow-beacon flashed on. It visibly struck us, bathed all our length inits spreading opalescent radiance. 

It seemed for an instant to do nothing. Our dome did not crack; therewas no shock. But our side-roll slowed. The heavens stopped theirswing, and then swung back! We were upon an even keel again, the enemylevel with our bow. Against the force of my turning rocket-streamsthis radiation had righted us. It clung a few seconds more, and againvanished. 

Grantline's deck audiphone rang with his startled voice: "Gregg, rollus over! Quick! I can only fire from one side. "

"I can't. "

It was too late now. A few hundred miles of distance! Drac stoodclutching me, staring through the port. And I stared, breathless, awaiting the results of these next few seconds. 

The ships passed like crossing, speeding meteors. A few seconds offinal approach; I saw the enemy vessel as an elongated, flattenedglobe, with a triple-terraced dome and terraced decks beneath it. Thatqueer stack on top! The round discs, like ten-foot eyes, gleamed alongthe equator of the bulging hull. 

One of Grantline's weapons fired a silent flash. Still out of range. The spit of our electrons leaped from our side. The enemy wasuntouched. 

The thought stabbed at me: _Anita! Not killed by that one. _

Another shot from Grantline. 

No result. It seemed that I saw the bolt strike. There was areddening, a flash upon that bulging hull, but nothing more. 

I was aware again of the enemy bow-beam swinging upon us. The beam waspressing us over again so that in a moment we would be hull-bottom tothe enemy and Grantline could not fire. 

He anticipated it. The ship was broadside to us. In the split secondof that passing I saw that it was not fifty miles away, hardly ten. Grantline flung his remaining bolts. The enemy was a streaked blurgoing by; and all in that second it was past, reddening in thedistance. Untouched by our bolts? It seemed so. The bow radiancedarted ahead of it. The globular shape, unharmed, dwindled in thedistance behind us. 

And it had done nothing to us!

The control levers were in my hands. I would shift the gravity-plates, and make the quickest turn we could. We would go around the Moon, probably, and come back within an hour or two. Perhaps our adversarywould also turn to encounter us again. 

At that second I had not seen the little discs, but I saw them now!They came sailing in a line, ten foot, flat, circular discs of a darkmetal; they gleamed reddish where the sunlight painted them. They hadbeen fastened outside the enemy vessel and in our passing they hadbeen discharged. They sailed now like whirling plates. There seemedperhaps twenty of them, heading in a curve toward us. 

Grantline's voice came again from the deck audiphone. "Missed them, Gregg. That's what I thought but at least two of our bolts must havestruck. But it didn't hurt them. "

"No, " I replied. "It seemed not. They must have a defensive barrage. "

Drac was pulling at me. "Those things out there, those discs.... "

Grantline demanded, "Yes, what in hell are they?"

We could not tell. It seemed that their curve would take them behindour stern. Grantline added: "Will you try going back after that ship?"

"Yes. "

But I did not. To the naked eye the enemy ship had alreadydisappeared; but with the 'scopes we saw that it seemed to be turning. 

I did not attempt to turn us, for we were afraid of those oncomingdiscs which took all our attention. They passed within five milesastern of us, but in a great curve they swung and now seemed headingacross our bow. With what tremendous velocity they had been endowed bytheir firing mechanisms! Their elliptical curve swung them a mile orso ahead of us. 

They were circling us like tiny satellites in a narrowing spiralellipse. Our attraction, the normal gravity of our close bulk, wasdrawing them to us. 

The men on the _Cometara's_ deck stood gazing, surprised but not yetalarmed. The lookout calls sounded with routine notification each timethe discs passed across our bow and stern. In the helio cubby, Waterswas still trying to raise an Earth station. 

Grantline came running to the control turret. "If those cursed things, should strike us, Gregg!"

I had set the gravity-plates into new combinations, turning our coursedownward, trying to swing us under the plane of the discs' orbit. Butthey swung downward with us; they were no more than two thousand feetaway now. 

Grantline said, "At the next broadside passing I'll fire at them. "

Drac looked up from his calculating instruments. "Look! A circularrotation: Horribly swift. But I've caught a picture. Look!"

He had a still image of one of the discs. It had saw-teeth at its thinknife-like outer circumference. Whirling at tremendous speed, thesesaw-toothed metal discs might cut into our dome, or some other part ofour ship. 

At the next round, Grantline fired. The discs reddened a little, butcame on unharmed. From the other side, he fired again. Three of thediscs seemed to have been caught full. His bolts, sustained for theirfullest ten seconds of duration at this close, thousand-foot range, took effect. The three discs seemed to crumble with a puff ofqueerly-radiant vacuum spark-glows, then were gone. 

But the others came closing in. 

The _Cometara_ rang now with the excitement and alarm of the men. Grantline could not set his gauges fast enough to fire at every round. 

I had a sudden thought. With the rear rockets, I rolled us over. For amoment we were hull-down to the passing discs. From our hullgravity-plates I flung a full repulsion. Would it stave them off, bendtheir orbit outward? It did not. Their course was unaltered. 

Again Grantline was shouting at me, "Roll us back! I must fire!"

It had been an error, that rolling; Grantline lost several shotsbecause of it. I swung us level. The discs passed within a hundredfeet; half a dozen of them were still closer. Gleaming, whirlingcircles, thin as knife-blades; they passed close under our stern, camebroadside. 

These were tense, horrible seconds. The discs skimmed our bow; oneseemed to miss our dome by inches. Grantline's volley annihilated fourmore, but there were still eight of them. They swung in at our stern. 

I was aware of confusion throughout the _Cometara_. The crew andstewards were running up to the bow quarter-deck. My second officerstood there, stricken. The stern lookout screamed his futile warning. 

Useless! I saw one of the discs strike our stern dome, then another. Still others. They were silent blows, but it seemed that I could feelthem cutting into the dome-plates. 

The dome was cracking! Then, after that horrible instant, came thesound: crunch, a rumble; the grind of crushed and breaking metal;then the puff and surge of the outward explosion. 

I saw the whole tip of the stern dome cracking, bursting outward, forced by our interior air pressure. And over all the _Cometara_ theoutgoing air was sucking and whining with a growing rush of wind. 

I shouted, "Drac! Close the stern bulkhead!"

I set the word-buttons for the distress siren, and pulled the lever. Its voice screamed over the uproar. "_Keep forward! Take thespace-suits! Prepare to abandon ship!_"

7

In the midst of the chaos I was aware that all the remaining discsstruck us upon the port stern quarter. The broken dome of the sternshowed a jagged hole, but the up-sliding cross-bulkhead partially shutit off. Two or three of the crew and the stern lookout were gonebehind that closing bulkhead. Their bodies in a moment would be blowninto space. 

"It may hold, Drac. Order Waters out of his cubby. Forward!"

I was calling the engine-room. "Order your men up by the bow, not thestern. " But I got no answer from the engine-chief. 

I raised Grantline. "Order your men forward: Clear amidships! I wantto close the central bulkheads. If the stern one breaks with thepressure.... "

"Right, Gregg. Are we lost?"

"God knows! We'll know in a minute or two. Get all your men into theirspace-suits. Keep in the bow. Prepare the exit-port there. "

"Right, Gregg. You coming down?"

"Yes. When I finish. " I cut him off. "Drac, get out of here! Did youorder Waters forward?"

"He won't leave. "

"Why the hell not?"

"He thinks he may be able to get communication with Earth. "

"He can't stay where he is; there's no protection up here! When thatstern bulkhead goes.... "

It was breaking. I could see it bending sternward under the pressure. And at best it was leaking air, so that the decks were a rush of wind. Already Drac and I were gasping with the lowered pressure. 

"Drac, get out of here. Go get Waters; bring him forward. The hellwith his transmitter: this is life or death!"

"But you?"

"I'm coming down. From the forward deck, call the hull control rooms. Order everybody forward and to the deck. "

"What about the pressure pumps?"

"I can keep them going from here. "

I set the circulating system to guide the fresh air forward, but itwas futile against the sucking rush of wind toward the stern. As thepumps speeded up I saw, with the little added pressure, the greatcross panel of the stern bulkhead straining harder. It would go in amoment. 

Drac was clinging to me. "Tell me what to do!"

"I've told you what to do!" I shoved him to the catwalk. "Get out ofhere. Get Waters forward. Get the men out of the hull. "

His anguished eyes stared at me; then he turned and ran forward on thecatwalk. I saw him forcibly dragging the bald-headed Waters from thehelio cubby. It was the last time I ever saw either of them. 

A buzzer was ringing in the turret, and I plunged back for it. Theexertion put a band of pain across my chest, a panting constrictionfrom the lowering pressure. 

Fanning, assistant engineer, was still at the pressure pumps. Hisvoice came up: "Pumps and renewers working. Will you use the gravityshifters?"

"Hell, no! Get out of there, Fanning. We're smashed. Air going. It's amatter of minutes--abandoning ship. Get forward!"

Suddenly the stern bulkhead cracked with a great diagonal rift. Iwaited a moment to give them all time to get forward; then I slid allthe cross 'midship bulkheads. 

It was barely in time. The stern bulkhead went out with a gale ofwind, but the barrier amidships stemmed it. Half of the vesselsternward was devoid of air, but here in the bow we could last alittle longer. Beneath me I could see Grantline's men--some of them, not all--and a few of the stewards, crew and officers, crowding thedeck, donning space-suits. The two side chambers were ready; half adozen men crowded into each of them. The deck doors slid closed. Theouter ports opened; helmeted, goggled, bloated figures were blown bythe outgoing air from the chamber into space. Then the outer slideswent closed. The pumps filled up the chambers; the deck doors openedagain. Another batch of men.... 

I saw Grantline, suited but with his helmet off, dashing from one sideof the deck to the other, commanding the abandonment. 

The central bulkheads seemed momentarily holding. Then little redlights in the panel board before me showed where in the hull corridorsthe doors were leaking, cracking, giving away, breaking under thestrain. The whole ribbed framework of the vessel was strained andslued. The bulkhead sides no longer set true in the casements. Air waswhining everywhere and pulling sternward. 

It was the last stand; I was aware that the alarm siren had ceased. There was a sudden stillness, with only the shouts of the remainingmen at the exit-ports mingling with the whine of the wind and theroaring in my head. I felt detached, far-away; my senses were reeling. 

I staggered to the gauges of the Erentz system, the system whereby anoscillating current, circling within the double-shelled walls of hulland dome, absorbed into negative energy much of the interior pressure. The main walls of the vessel were straining outward. The _Cometara_could collapse at any moment. I started for the catwalk door. Theelectro-telescope stood near it and I yielded to a vague desire togaze into the eyepiece. The instrument was still operative. I swept itsternward. 

The enemy ship had not vanished. By what strange means, I cannot say, its velocity had been checked. A few thousand miles from us, it wasmaking a narrow, close-angle turn. Coming back? I thought so. 

I suddenly realized my intention of having all the gravity-plates inneutral before abandoning the ship. I seized the controls now. Anagony of fear was upon me that the shifting valves would fail. Butthey did not. The plates slid haltingly, reluctantly. 

I recall staggering to the catwalk. It seemed that the centralbulkhead was breaking. There were fallen figures on the deck beneathme. I stumbled against the body of a man who had tangled himself inthe stays of the ladder rail and was hanging there. 

I think I fell the last ten feet to the deck. The roaring in my ears, the bands tightening about my chest encompassed all the world. 

Then I was on my feet again, and I stumbled over another body. It wasgarbed in a space-suit, with the helmet beside it. I stripped it ofthe suit. I was panting, with all the world whirling in a daze, bursting spots of light before my eyes. 

Ten feet away down the deck was the opened door of the pressurechamber. A bloated figure came into my dreamlike vista, moving for thepressure door. It turned, saw me, came leaping and bent over me. I sawbehind the vizor that it was Grantline. His bloated, gloved handshelped me don my suit. 

He helped me with my helmet. The metal tip on Grantline's gloved handtouched the contact-plate on my shoulder. His voice sounded from thetiny audiphone grid within my helmet. "Gregg! Thank God I found you!All right?"

"Yes. " My head was clearing. 

"I've got the chamber ready. We're the last, Gregg. "

I gripped his shoulder. "You're sure there's nobody else?"

"No. I've been everywhere I could reach. The central bulkheads arealmost gone. "

He pushed me into the pressure chamber. There was hardly need to closethe door after us. I stood gripping him as he opened the small outerslides. The abyss was at our feet; the outgoing wind tore at us like agale, so that we stood gripping the casements. 

"Thank God you've got a power-suit, Gregg. So have I. We must keeptogether. "

"Yes. "

I could feel the floor grid of the chamber shuddering beneath my feet. The _Cometara_ was cracking, bursting outward throughout her length;at any instant she might collapse. 

For a moment we stood poised. Beneath us, here at the brink weremillions upon millions of miles of emptiness, the remote, unfathomablevoid. Blazing worlds down there in the black darkness. 

"Good-by, Gregg. It may be the end for us. "

"Good luck, Johnny. "

His bloated figure dropped away from me. I waited just an instant, andthen I dove into space. 

For a moment there was a chaos of strangeness, the wrench to my senseof the transition. I had been the inhabitant of a little world, the_Cometara_, with a gravity beneath my feet. Now, in a breath, I had noworld to inhabit. I was alone in space. No gravity; nothing solid totouch; emptiness. 

I was in a world to myself, and the abnormality of it brought a mentalshock. But in a moment the adjustment came. I passed the transition, the sense of falling. 

The firmament steadied and my senses cleared. My dive from the_Cometara_ carried me in a slow arc some three hundred feet away. There had been a sense of falling, but no actual fall. My velocity wasretarded, with the mass of the _Cometara_ pulling at me. I went like atoy boat in water shoved by a child, quickly slowing. In a fewmoments, the velocity was gone, and I hung poised. I saw Grantline'sbloated form not over fifty feet from me. He waved an arm at me. 

Out here in the void I lay weightless, as though upon an infinitelysoft feather bed. I could kick, flounder, but not endow myself withmotion. I craned my neck, gazed around through the bulging vizor pane. 

The Earth and the Sun hung level with the white star-dots strewneverywhere. I could not see that unknown light-beam from Greater NewYork; it was shafting out now in the other direction, so that theEarth hid it from me. Venus was visible to one side of the Sun. Theenemy light-stream from Grebhar was apparent; and as I turned my bodyand bent double to look behind me, I saw Mars and the sword-like rayfrom Ferrok-Shahn. The beams streamed off like the radiance of theMilky Way, faintly luminous but seemingly visible for an infinitedistance. 

The _Cometara_ was obviously falling now toward the Moon, drawnirresistibly, and all of us with her, toward the lunar surface. Itseemed so close, that black and white mountainous disc. We were, Isuppose, some twenty thousand miles from it, gathering speed as itpulled at us. But that motion was not apparent now. Distance dwindledall these celestial motions, so that all the firmament seemed frozeninto immobility. 

But there was some motion. Twenty or more bloated figures, thesurvivors from the wreck of the _Cometara_, were encircling it invarying orbits, revolving around it like tiny satellites. Some wereclosing in, drawn against it. I saw one plunge against the wreckeddome, and begin crawling like a fly. And I found that the forces ofthe firmament were molding my orbit also. My outward plunge waschecked. I poised for an indeterminate instant, and then I took myorbit. I too, was a satellite of the _Cometara_. 

I gazed at the wreck of the _Cometara_. My ship! My first command! Sosmoothly, confidently rising from the Earth only a few hours ago; andshe had come to this. She lay askew in the heavens. The dome wascracked throughout all its length and smashed like a shell at thesterntip. 

I could see the interior litter beneath the dome, the twisted andstrained lines of the hull. A dead ship now, the mechanisms stilled;dead and silent inside, with all the warmth gone out of it. All theair dissipated, so that in every cubby, every dark corridor of thatbroken hull there was the coldness and silence of interplanetaryspace. 

I suppose these thoughts swept me within a few seconds. I saw myselfstarting to revolve in my orbit. Perhaps my motion would carry mearound indefinitely; or I might be drawn down to the vessel as thoseother survivors had been drawn. 

Grantline, with one of the few power suits, was coming toward me now, with tiny fluorescent streams back along his body from his shoulderblades. I switched on my own mechanism. It moved me toward him, andour gravity attracted us. We shut off the power when twenty feetapart; drifted together; contacted; bounced apart like rubber balls asour inflated suits struck. Then in a moment we had drifted back andclung. 

I touched the metal plate of his shoulder. "Working all right?"

"Yes. Thank God for this much, Gregg. I wonder how many are alive. "

In the chaos of the abandonment, many of the men's air mechanisms hadfailed to operate. It is always so in times of disaster. We could see, revolving around the wreck, and motionless against its dome, thosehorrible flabby, deflated suits where the delicate Erentz mechanismhad failed. Within was only a corpse. 

"Too many, " I said. "And not more than four or five of us with power. What shall we do first? Round them up? We must all get together. "

His answering voice was grim. "We can tow them from the wreck. Six orseven of us altogether have power. Do you suppose we can get away, Gregg? Get loose from the ship before she falls?"

Only trying it could tell us that. The _Cometara_, and all of us withher, were plunging for the Moon. We would seek out the men who werealive and tow them in a string. If we could break the gravity pull ofthe ship, and then struggle upward from the Moon, we could maintainourselves here in space until some rescue ship from Earth, Venus orMars would come and pick us up. 

"You take one side, Gregg; I'll take the other. Don't go aboard; shemight collapse. "

"I'll pick up the men without power and alive. The others with powersuits will do the same. Then we'll meet out here, about where we arenow?"

"Yes. And hurry, Gregg! Every mile toward the Moon makes it that muchharder. We're falling fast. "

"Good luck!" I shoved away from him. And within a minute, as he wentin an arc toward the _Cometara_ bow and I toward her stern, I suddenlythought of that returning enemy vessel. My last look through the'scope had shown that she was returning; and then I had forgotten it. 

My gaze swept the firmament now. I had no 'scope instruments withinthe helmet. With the naked eye the enemy ship was not in sight. But Iknew that meant little; within a moment she could come in view and behere if she were going at any great velocity. 

There were on the _Cometara_, at the time of the disaster, somesixty-odd men; perhaps forty had gotten away. And I could see verysoon that not more than fifteen, or less, out here were alive. Twowith power were ahead of me now, slowly floating past the wrecked domeof the stern. One had picked up two others, found them alive and wastowing them out. They went past me, moving very slowly so that I couldsee that two were all that one of us could tow and attain any velocityat all. 

I contacted with the leader. He was one of Grantline's men. 

"Two or three hundred feet out, " I directed. I gestured. "Grantlinesaid to meet out there. I'll tow others. "

"Yes. Around the stern you'll find--God! Haljan, look!"

A mile from us the enemy ship was in view. Passing--no! Stopping! Withincredible retardation she had plunged into view, was here, and yethad no great forward velocity. She seemed no more rapid than a greatair liner winging past, so close that her reddish-tinged bulging hulllength showed clearly. The discs were gone. The funnel set on top ofher was sloped diagonally toward us as she rolled on her side, so thatmomentarily I could see down into it. There was some mechanism downthere. The bow radiance was a narrow opalescent beam in advance of thebow. 

"Slowing, Haljan!"

"Yes, stopping. Don't try to meet Grantline. Tow your men away!"

"Or should we board the _Cometara_ and hide?"

"No. They've come back to bombard her. "

I kicked at him violently. With his two drifting figures clingingbehind, he swung past me. I headed behind the stern. Upon its danglingframework several of our men were glued, lying there inert. I caught aglimpse of the interior of the stern, the littered deck; men lyingthere had been stricken before they had time to get into their suits. 

On the outside, forward, I saw Grantline come rounding the bow, towinga figure and heading for another. On the outside of the bow-peak agroup of others were perched, gesticulating for help. I started thatway; then I saw another, and nearer figure in a power suit heading forthem. I swung back. There were two figures on the outside of theunder-hull whom I could more quickly reach. Inverted flies. Their feetwere on the keel. They stooped and waved toward me. 

I took a swoop. Passing close down the hull, my rocket-streams struckthe hull plates and gave me sudden downward velocity. I shot down, outpast the keel. And again I saw the enemy ship. She hung poised, nomore than two miles away. And as I looped over, with all the black, star-strewn firmament in a dizzy whirl, the great Moon-disc, firstabove, and then below me, I saw the bow-beam of the enemy swinging. Itcame to the _Cometara_, and there it clung. 

I had gone perhaps fifty feet below the keel with my dive when Irighted. I was mounting. I saw the opalescent ten-foot circle of thebeam moving along the _Cometara_ hull. It seemed to do no damage; thensuddenly it darted down and clung to me. 

I felt nothing save the impact of a gentle push, something shovingwith a ponderable force against me. 

I saw the _Cometara_ receding, the heavens swinging as I turned over. The red disc of the distant Earth swooped. The Moon surfacemomentarily seemed rotating and lifting above me. 

I was helpless, rolling, then whirling end-over-end. Then again Isteadied. The beam was gone from me. 

I saw the _Cometara_, a full mile away from me! The enemy ship wasagain in motion, moving toward me, and between the _Cometara_ and theEarth. And the beam was steady upon the _Cometara's_ mid-section. 

The _Cometara_ had a new velocity now. I could not miss it. She wasdwindling rapidly in visual size; relative to me, she was receding, falling upon the Moon. More than that she was being pushed downward bythe repulsive force of the strange enemy beam upon her. I stared, aswith all the little dots which were our men around and upon her, shewent down into the void. 

I found myself presently alone up here, with the enemy ship hoveringnearby. Its maneuvering to thrust the wrecked _Cometara_ toward theMoon had brought it within a mile of me. The bow-beam was still on the_Cometara_; and then abruptly it vanished. 

The _Cometara_ had almost dwindled beyond the sight of my unaidedvision. By chance, undoubtedly, the beam had fallen upon me and thrustme from the wreck. I was alone up here now with the enemy, but theymay not have noticed me, or cared. I found my power mechanism intact. I turned it on; slowly, like a log in water, I began moving away. 

A minute. Five minutes. The _Cometara_ was lost. Grantline, all themen, were lost; with that added downward thrust they could never freethemselves from the falling wreck. 

I was jerked out of my thoughts by the sight of an oncoming red blob. Something was coming from the enemy ship, red with the sunlight andearthlight, silvered by the Moon and the stars. It took form. It was adisc, another of those cursed whirling discs, sent to annihilate me!

Then, when it was a quarter of a mile away, I saw that it was a discwhich was turning slowly. Rocket radiances came from its rotatingcircumference; it came sailing directly at me, so swiftly that my ownvelocity was futile. 

Another minute and I was caught. I saw that the disc was some fifteenfeet in diameter, and that it bulged, so that within its convex floorand ceiling was a space of several feet. 

I cut off my power and with pounding heart lay waiting. The space-suithad no weapons for equipment save a knife hung in the belt. I drew itout, held it in my gloved fingers. 

The disc sailed upon its level, vertical axis. Its rotation slowed; Isaw little windows set around its convex middle. It came up and bumpedme with its metal side. I kicked away, shoved off. Shapes were movingin a dim interior light behind the port-panes. Little hand-beams ofradiance darted out. They seemed to seize me, draw me. 

I found myself glued helplessly to the convex outer surface of thedisc. The rotation gathered speed again, but I looked presently onlyat the gleaming surface to which I was pinned. Had I been a metal barupon the horns of an electro-magnet, I could not have been morehelpless. 

An interval passed. With the contact plate of my fingers against thishull it seemed that I could hear voices within, strange, indistinguishable words. I twisted, but could not see into the port. 

Again the rotation was slowing. The near shape of the enemy vesselswung close and past; and again and again I saw that we were over it, dropping down into the wide black opening of the funnel-top. It yawnedpresently like a great black tunnel, into which we fell. 

The jar of landing knocked me loose, and no doubt the attractionradiance also released me. I fell another space, bounced up and sankback. I thought that something like a sliding port-door closed overme. 

And then, in the dimness, figures were gripping me. I lashed andstruck, but the knife was wrenched away. 

I was a prisoner in a pressure-port of the enemy ship!

8

It seemed that the small room had a very faint radiance showingthrough my vizor pane. Narrow enclosing walls were visible. It was atriangular-shaped space, fifteen feet or so down one side, with aconcave ceiling overhead. I was lying on the floor. The darkness atfirst had been impenetrable. The figures which had flung me down andseized my knife were gone; I had not seen them nor where they went. 

For a moment I lay cushioned by my bloated suit. When I struggled tomy feet, I was almost weightless. The movement of getting uprightflung me upward as though I were a tossed feather. My helmet struckthe metal ceiling, so sharp a blow that I feared for an instant I hadsmashed the helmet. 

From the ceiling, with flailing arms and legs, I sank back to thegrid-floor; and in a moment I was able to stand upright with so slighta feeling of weight that I could have been a bit of thistle ready toblow away in the least wind. 

There was, as I stood there balancing myself, a queer feeling oftriumph within me. A triumphant hope; for coming down in the ship'scapacious funnel--larger than it had seemed from a distance--I hadseen what appeared to be a small projectile, resting in some strangelanding gear. The disc bearing me had settled on a stage alongside it. Was that the projectile from Earth?

A growing air pressure was around me; the tiny Erentz dials within myhelmet had been immovable, but now they were showing outside pressure. Istood waiting. Whatever sounds were here I could not tell. Thenpresently the dials stopped. They registered seventeen pounds--whateverthat might mean here. I loosed the helmet and took it off. 

With the first gasping breath my senses reeled. I sank to the floor, and though I tried to replace the helmet, it was too late. My thoughtswere fading. A strange chemical odor was in my nostrils. It was likebreathing a thin, perfumed water. 

The drifting away was pleasant. 

Tortured dreams came with my awakening. I found myself in the same dimroom upon the floor. I could breathe better now, and in a few morehours the strangeness had almost gone. I found now that I was notinjured, but I was ravenously hungry. 

Again, gingerly as before, I stood up and slid my space-suit from me;and now I was aware of movement and sound. The floor-grid vibrationswere apparent. And there was a dim, distant, tiny throbbing; it wasmuch like the interior of the _Cometara_ while in flight. 

And there were other sounds, indescribably faint, yet strangely clear. I thought they might be distant voices. 

I took a cautious step. I could see a dim blank wall nearby with whatseemed a bowl-like article of furniture on the floor against the wall. For all my caution, I sailed upward; but this time I held my balance. And I found that with my negligible weight, I could almost swim inthis strange air! I hit the wall and slid slowly down it to the flooragain, like a man sinking to the bottom of a tank. 

It suddenly occurred to me to put my ear against the wall. At once thesounds all became incredibly louder. It was a confusion of sound: themechanisms of the vessel, some of which I thought I could identify, and some not; the strange swish and thump of what might have beenpeople moving; and there were voices. 

The voices seemed mingled babble coming from everywhere. The timber ofthe sound was very strange. It held no suggestion of how far away fromme the voices might be. There were so many of them I could only thinkthey were scattered about the ship; and yet they all seemed together. After a moment, the blend was less confusing. Again, very strangely myhearing seemed able to separate one from the other. 

I was to learn that the atmosphere handled sound vibrationsdifferently from that of Earth. Voices had a muffled tone, as thoughthey were smothered. There was undoubtedly a vibrational distortion;and a sound-wave speed slower than Earth's normal-pressure rate of1, 050 feet a second, perhaps as slow as 700. Yet sounds remainedaudible over longer distances than on Earth. 

In this instance now, as I listened with my ear to the wall of theship, I was hearing all its sounds picked up and carried by the metal. 

Now I heard a strange tongue: two types of voices, slow, measured, carefully-intoned phrases, and voices of a curiously sepulchral, hollow sound. My mind went back to the Red Spark restaurant room. 

And suddenly I realized that amid the babble I was hearing English. Aman's voice, talking English. I caught, very clearly the phrase:

"Master, yes. She means well. Can you not see it?"

Molo's voice! Then the girls must be here also. 

Another voice: "I am not sure. Perhaps. The Great Intelligence willtalk with her when we are arrived. " It was the slow measured voice ofone of the brains. 

"When will that be? Pretty soon now, won't it, Molo?"

Venza! A great wave of thankfulness swept me. And then I heard Anita. "Your two captives, where are they? You're not going to kill them, areyou?"

"No, " said Molo. "Perhaps not. No one has inspected the new one yet. The other is being cared for. The Great Intelligence will question himwhen we arrive. "

"We are arriving, " said Venza. "That's your world, Wandl, down there, isn't it?"

"Yes. We are dropping fast. "

The voice of the brain: "Come, Wyk. The instruments are showing eventson our captured worlds. Take me to watch. I am tired of movement. "

"Yes. Master. "

It seemed that the brain was being carried away; Molo and the twogirls were being left alone. I had thought at first that they were inthe adjacent room to me, but they could have been far distant. Theyhad mentioned two captives. One, obviously, was myself. Was the otherSnap?

"Come, " Molo was saying, "stand here with me and we will watch thisworld. Not mine, Venza _chia_, as you just called it, But my adoptedworld. And it will be yours, until we rule the new Mars. "

I heard them moving to gaze through the window-port. Then came Anita'svoice: "If it's anything like this ship, it will be very strange. "

"Strange indeed, little dove. I was there only once, a month ago, andfor a few hours only. The Great Intelligence, as they call him, talkedwith me, absorbing my knowledge: they call it that. And he was muchimpressed by me, and made very wonderful promises in exchange for myfidelity. And for my sister, too. "

I learned further how Molo and Meka became identified with theWandlites; it was as we had suspected. 

"You will rule Mars?" Venza was saying. "When this is over, you meanyou will really be given Mars to rule?"

"I would rather live on the Earth, " said Anita. "There was a young manthere. "

"He will not be there much longer. " Molo laughed. "You are very luckythat I fancy you!"

"Lucky indeed, " Venza echoed. "No death for me. I'm too young. "

"But all those millions dead. It seems so terrible. "

"It is, for them!" Molo was in high good humor, pleased with himselfand with these girls. "See down there; that blurring is the heavy air. We're almost down into it now. "

I heard the sound of someone joining them, and then the hollow voiceagain: "Molo! Bad tidings come from Mars. One of the Masters wascaptured there in Ferrok-Shahn. They tortured him as they did the oneon Earth. But he did not die unyielding. He spoke and told our plans!"

"Hah! Did I not advise you to keep those helpless things on Wandl?"

"But it is done now. The worlds know our purpose. They are preparingspaceships. Already some are rising from Ferrok-Shahn, from Grebharand from Greater New York. "

"We knew they were doing that. "

"But now they know our purpose. The Master Intelligence fears thatthey will come raiding Wandl. Our vessels are being made ready to goout and repel them. "

The hollow voice ceased. 

"Your purpose discovered?" asked Anita. "What does that mean? Won'tyou tell us now? Twin queens for your future Mars, and you treat uslike children!"

"That light-beam he so cleverly planted in Greater New York, " Venzahinted. 

"Yes, I will tell you. Without me in New York and my men who went withthese Wandlites to Ferrok-Shahn and Grebhar, the vital gravity beamscould never successfully have been planted. The apparatus wascomplicated; you saw it. You saw the labor I had making the contact?"

"But what are the light-beams for?"

I listened, breathless, as he told them. The electronic beams couldnot be destroyed; a disintegration of the rock atoms had been set up. With each rotation of the Earth it was sweeping the sky. From a greatcontrol station, Wandl was flinging attraction gravity upon that beam, using it as a monstrous lever upon the rotation of Earth. With everydaily passage now the force was being exerted. The rotation wasslowing. In a few days it would stop, with the end of the beam drawnto Wandl and held there. 

And the beams from Grebhar and Ferrok-Shahn were the same. Three giantchains! Then Wandl, traveling of its own gravitational volition, wouldwithdraw from our solar system. The gravitational chains would pullthe Earth, Venus and Mars after it!

Titanic tow-ropes! The destruction, not of our worlds, but of all lifeupon them, for the cold of interstellar space would leave no livingorganism. Three dead worlds; Wandl would draw them to her own Sun andthen free them, send them, with new orbits, around the distant blazingstar. Three new worlds brought home triumphantly by Wandl to join thelittle family of inhabited planets revolving around this other Sun. Three fair and lovely worlds, warmed back by the other sunlight to begreen mansions untenanted, ready to receive the new beings who wouldcome and possess them. 

9

"You, Snap!"

"Gregg! But how... ?"

"Hush! They might hear us. "

"They can do more than that. They can almost hear you think. "

"Anita and Venza are here. "

"I know it. I was with them for a time. This accursed gravity! I can'twalk. "

"Careful, " I whispered. "You can crack your head on something with theleast false step. Are they taking us ashore?"

"I guess so. How did you happen... ?"

"Tell you later. "

They had come for me in that dark pressure-port, taken me along a dimcorridor of the ship, which evidently had landed a few moments before. Then Snap, with strange figures around him, had been flung at me. 

These weird beings! The brains were here, but not many; I saw half adozen on the ship. They could move easily now. They bounced upon theirsmall arms and legs, hitching with little leaps of a few feet. Closeat hand they were gruesome; from a distance they had the aspect ofthirty-inch ovoids, bouncing of their own volition. And I saw too thatunderneath, toward the back, was a shriveled body. 

The other figures were wholly different; they seemed at first to beten-foot, upright insects. The two legs were like stilts, the bodynarrow but with bulging chest. The neck was thin, holding the smallround head, about the size of my own. 

Words seem futile to picture this thing which was a man of Wandl. There was no skin, but instead what seemed to be a glossy, hard brownshell. It was laid in scales; and upon the legs was a brown fuzz ofstiff hair. There were many joints, both of the legs and the torso. Clothing was worn; a single garment, hanging from a wide belt halfwaydown the legs seemed incongruous, fantastically aping humanity. 

This was the worker, equipped by nature for mechanical tasks. Therewere not two arms, but at least ten. From what could have been calledthe shoulders, they were tentacles, half the length of an elephant'strunk, with many-fingered hands at the ends. From the waist dependedhuge lobster-like pincers; and from the chest and back the arms weresmaller, each with a different type finger-claw. 

The head and face were most of all a personal mocking of mankind. Wide, upstanding, listening ears were upon the sides of the head, oneon the forehead and one on the back. The face was mobile, with tinybrown scales small as a fish. A nose orifice, with two protrudingbrown eyes above it was set outward on stems, and an upended slit of amouth. There was an eye in the back of the head. 

Probably, over eons of upward development from what was perhaps anoriginal single type, these two specialized forms had developed. The"Masters, " as they were known upon Wandl, neglected the body for thebrain, and the "Workers, " the reverse. There was no separateindividual for the female. As is the case with primitive organisms, they were all bi-sexual, the parent dying in the reproduction ofoffspring. 

Of necessity I have been forced into digression. But at the time, Snapand I clung together, whispering, as a group of workers pushed us downa descending incline. Snap, back there in Greater New York when Molo'scontact light had burst into existence, had fallen, half unconscious. They picked him up. Molo was going to kill him, but the girlspersuaded him to take Snap with them. 

"Anita and Venza pretended never to have seen me before, " Snapwhispered to me now. "You take the same line. "

"If we get with them. "

"We will. "

It was weird, this landing upon Wandl. We had left the vessel'sside-port and were descending what seemed a narrow, hundred-footlanding incline. We were outdoors, and it was night. Shafts of coloredradiance flashed around us. The ship was poised on a disc-likeplatform, with skeleton legs. It seemed a hundred feet or more down tothe ground level from where the colored lights were darting up. Overhead was a cloudless, purple-red sky of blurred, reddish stars. Nodoubt the curious atmosphere of Wandl gave the sky and stars thisabnormal look. 

Later, what a multiplicity of obscure wonders we were to glimpse uponWandl! The slowing rotation of the Earth caused climatic changesthere, volcanic and tidal disturbances, but Wandl rotated and stoppedat will. Undoubtedly she was equipped to withstand the shock. Herinternal fires could not break into eruption; she had very littlefluid surface. And the nature of her atmosphere was such that it wasnot easily disturbed into storms. Only if there was laxity in thehandling of the planet's motion would a storm come. 

But now, questions pounded at me. Earth, Venus and Mars were to betowed into interstellar space; all life on our worlds would perish inthe cold of that stellar journey. Yet Wandl had made that journey. Washer atmosphere inherently such that it did not transmit rays of heat?

Snap and I had been pushed down the incline with half a dozen figuresin advance of us. Without difficulty we could have leapt down thathundred feet, unaided. Figures were leaping into mid-air from severalpressure-ports of the ship. They did not fall, but floated, drifteddown. I saw one of the insect-like workers drop with motionlessoutstretched arms. Others came mounting up, using their arms and legswith sweeping strokes, as though swimming. It was like being underwater. 

It was a strange, weird scene, the vessel wavering above us; theflashing lights; waving beams of radiance. A fantastic structurenearby reared itself several hundred feet with lights on top andoutlining its many lateral balconies one above the other. The air wasfull of the leaping, swimming insect-like figures. The brains, themasters, were not in evidence; then I saw one of them being carried, and others, floating down like distended falling balloons, to becaught by the workers in small nets and thus saved from jarringcontact. 

Snap was suddenly whispering: "That fellow back of us is our guard. Ican feel his ray. Some form of attraction; it's pulling at me. "

Snap was a little behind me. I turned and saw the faint radiance of anarrow light-beam upon him. It came from an instrument in an uppershoulder hand of the insect figure following us, no doubt the reverseform of the same ray which had been used to thrust the wrecked_Cometara_ toward the Moon. 

We reached the bottom. I saw now that the group of workers in advanceof us were carrying metal cubes, seemingly of considerable weight;they also had to use the incline. 

We stood presently on a smooth ground surface. We had not seen Anitaand Venza, nor Molo and his sister. The insect figure who was ourguard came forward. "You stand here. Molo comes. "

"Where is he?" I demanded. "I want to see him. " I stopped myselfquickly; I had very nearly mentioned the girls. "And talk with him. "

"He comes soon. "

"I'm hungry. " I gestured to my stomach. "Food. You know what that is?"

The brown scaly face contorted for a smile, a ghastly grimace. "Yes. You shall have food and drink. "

It seemed that the hollow voice came not from the neck but from theshell-like, bulging chest. He stood aside, with the globular weapon ofthe ray in a pincer hand. 

We waited, standing gingerly together, wavering with our slightweight. A wind would have blown us away, but there was no wind. Instead, there was a heavy, sultry air, warm as a mid-summer Earthnight, warmer even than the Neo-time of Venus. 

Snap and I were dressed much the same, wearing heavy boots, for whichweight we were thankful, tight, puttee-like trousers, flaring at thetop, and high-necked white blouses. Both of us were bare-headed. Doubtless we were as fantastic a sight to these Wandlites as they tous. Some of the workers crowded up, reaching out to pluck at us, butSnap waved them away and our guard dispersed them. 

One of the master brains came bouncing up. Upon his little uprightbody the great head wavered. 

"You will wait here. " His eyes glowed up at us. 

"But listen, " Snap began. 

"You will wait here for the Martian. He has his orders to take you tothe Great Intelligence. " The little arm from the side of the head hada hand with a finger pointing for a gesture. "There is a meeting placethere. We decided now what to do to destroy the warships of yourworlds. I do not like your thoughts; they are black. I will inform theGreat Intelligence when he can spare the thought for you. "

He added something in the Wandl tongue. A worker came forward; liftedhim carefully, held him in the hollow of an encircling tentacle. Andwith a bound, the worker sailed upward and was gone. 

Again we stood through an interval. I noticed now that the toweringstructure near us, with its storied balconies, was not perpendicular. Its front curved up and back. It was convex, somewhat in the fashionof an irregular globe, a three-hundred foot ball, with a flattenedbase set here on the ground. The balconies were segments of its frontcurve. At the top, the roof was as though the ball had been slicedoff, like a giant apple with a slice gone for a base and another forthe roof. At the bottom was a huge portal with a glow of light fromwithin. And at the terraced balcony levels were lighted windows. 

"Is that the meeting place?" Snap whispered. 

"Probably. And look to the side of it, Snap. "

It was a city. There was a vista of distance to one side of the greatglobe structure. Now that our eyes were more accustomed to thequeerness of this night upon Wandl, we could ignore the coloredlight-beams of the landing stage and the disembarking palisade uponwhich we were standing. Gazing into the distance, the curvature of thesurface of this little world was immediately apparent. The reddishfirmament of stars came down to meet the sharply-curving surface at ahorizon line which seemed about a mile away. 

Spread upon this near distance were a variety of structures withlittle roads of open space winding between them. Most of the buildingsseemed globular in shape. Some were small, little round mound-shapedindividual dwellings. Others were larger. Some were tiered like half adozen apples speared in a row upon a stick and set upright. 

I saw a ribbon of what might be a river in the distance, with thereddish starlight glinting upon it. To our left, half a mile awayperhaps, was a row of buttes and rocks which stood like a miniaturerange of mountains. The city seemed entirely to encompass them; andevery little rock-peak had upon its top a globelike dwelling. 

Lights were winking everywhere and figures bounded a hundred feet andmore, and sailed in an arc, coming down to the ground to bound again. A row of workers went by overhead, not swimming or leaping but stifflymotionless. Tiny opalescent rays went from them to the ground, asthough to give them power. 

Five minutes of Earth-time might have passed while Snap and I gazed atthis busy night scene in this Wandl city upon the occasion of thelanding of their ship so triumphantly returned from its mission toEarth. As I stood, certainly a helpless captive if ever there was one, nevertheless a strange sense of my own power was within me. 

This was so small a world; the people were so flimsy. With a poke ofmy fist I could kill any one of these master brains. The ten-footworkers seemed mere shells, light and fragile; even the buildings werelight and flimsy. The little globe-houses on their sticks seemed towaver, almost like nodding flowers. If we ran amuck we could smasheverything we saw here on Wandl. 

We became aware of Molo approaching. What a solid giant thisseven-foot Martian seemed now in the midst of this buoyant, almostweightless city! He was still bare-headed and wearing his garments ofornamented leather, with his brawny legs bare. Upon his feet werestrange-looking, wide-soled shoes. His hands and forearms were thrustinto loops of small shields. These shields appeared to be constructedof a heart-shaped flexible framework, covered with an opaque membrane. They were about two feet long and half as wide. With a hand andforearm thrust into fabric loops, the shield appeared to serve aswings so that the arms had more thrust against the air. He came at uswith a sort of swimming stroke. He landed somewhat awkwardly, half-stumbled and almost fell, but gathered himself up and confrontedus. 

He gained his balance and waved our guard aside. His gaze went to me. 

"You are the new prisoner taken from that wrecked Earth-ship?"

"Yes. "

"What is your name? You are an Earthman, evidently. "

"Yes. " I hesitated. I had seen Molo and heard him talk, back there inGreater New York; but he had not seen me nor heard of me probably. 

"Gregg Haljan. " I added, "I am a skilled navigator; perhaps it wasfortunate you saved me. "

He flung me a look and there was a tinge of amusement in it. "Youwould save your own skin now?"

"Why not? You're a Martian, and this is a war also against Mars. "

His look darkened, but then again sardonic amusement struck him. 

"We shall see what the Great Master says. There will be a few of ourtype humans, men and women, wanted when the worlds begin anew. TheGreat Master said so. He wants to study life on Earth as it was beforethe destruction. "

Molo's glance swept behind us. I turned to see three figuresapproaching. My heart pounded. They were Anita, Venza and Molo'ssister, Meka. They came slowly, trying to walk, with balancingoutstretched arms. With a dozen curious Wandl workers crowding them, they came and joined Molo before us. My heart was pounding, but Iflung them a curious, impersonal stare. 

"You are here, " said Molo. "Good. We go now. " He bent over Snap andme. "I advise you make no effort to leap away, though it may lookeasy. "

"Not me, " said Snap. "Where would I go alone in this damned world? Ican't very well leap back to Earth, can I?"

"True enough, " said Molo. "You have sense, little fellow. But I justwarn you: the guard who will watch you always is very sharp of eye. And the weapons here bring very swift death. "

I could feel Anita's gaze upon me, but I did not dare look her way. 

"Let's go, " I said, "You will have no trouble with me. "

With Molo leading us, and the giant insect-like guard following closebehind, we made our slow, awkward way across the esplanade portals ofthe huge globular building. 

And within, we traversed a cylinder-like, padded corridor and camepresently upon the strangest interior scene I had ever beheld. 

10

The room was so large that it seemed almost the entire interior of thebuilding. It was a globular room, a hundred and fifty feet or more indiameter. The inner surface was crowded with people. It was a huge, hollow interior of a ball; and upon its concave surface a throng ofthe brown-shelled workers were gathered. They sat on low seats at thecurved bottom of the room, where we entered, and up the sides and uponthe slopes and the top, like flies in a globe, hanging head downward. There was no up or down here; the slight gravity made littledifference. 

I gazed up amazed to where, a hundred and fifty feet above me, headdownward, the crowd of figures were calmly seated. These wereclinging, of course; the pound-weight of each of them would drop themdown if they let loose. But it required only a slight effort. 

Between the tiers, there were narrow open aisles bearing glowlights atintervals. With Molo leading us, we stared up the curving incline ofone of these aisles. 

"Gregg! Good Lord, it's weird!" Snap said. "Where are we going to sit?Don't speak to the girls yet. "

"Have you spoken to them?"

"Yes. A little, on the ship. They're watching for an opportunity butwe have to be cautious. Gregg, I've got so much to tell you, but nochance. The brains can just about hear your thoughts. "

We went only a short distance up the incline. There were vacant seatsseemingly held ready for us. Our passage created a commotion among thefigures. Some leaped up and over us to get a better look. I found thatwe were clinging to the mound-like convex surface of a smallhalf-globe. It raised us some ten feet above the floor. There were lowseats with arms against the side-pull of gravity. I found Anita closebeside me. Her hand touched me, but she did not turn her head orspeak. 

Molo was on my other side. I chanced to see his feet. They wereplanted firmly on the floor. He wore wide-soled shoes equipped withsuction pads, no doubt, which would enable him, like the Wandlites, to walk and stand upon the upper inner surfaces of buildings. 

As during the moments when Snap and I stood on the landing esplanade, there was so much here that at first I could not encompass it. But nowI began to grasp other details of the strange scene. 

Poised in mid-air, almost exactly in the center of the huge globularroom, was a metal globe of some thirty feet in diameter. It was held, not by any solid girders, but by four narrow beams of light whichmounted to it from widespread points of the convex room. 

Upon the entire surface of this thirty-foot globe, a group of masterswere seated, in little, cup-like seats upon resilient stems. Theyswayed and nodded with movement. There seemed to be glowing wires andgrids and thread-like beams of light carrying current. Light-threadsshot from the mechanisms to the heads of the seated brains. All thedevices were evidently in operation; and upon this poised centralglobe the attention of the audience was directed. 

Molo bent over me. "The Great Intelligence soon will see you. "

Snap, from the other side of Molo, whispered: "What are they doing upthere?"

The faint hiss and throb of the devices were audible. I stared, tryingto understand. Images, and sounds, invisible and inaudible were beingreceived from across the millions of miles of space, and they werebeing transmuted within the brains themselves. I saw that discs werefastened upon the bulging foreheads of the brains, upon which the tinylight-beams carrying the vibrations impinged. 

These brains, receiving "waves" of some unknown variety were, withinthe mechanism of the brain-cell, transmuting, translating thevibrations into things knowable. They were not seeing, not hearing, but _knowing_ what went on millions of miles across space!

Again Molo bent over me. "They are about to show this audience what ishappening on the three worlds. "

Upon the thirty-foot globe I saw now a dozen or so balls of aboutthree-foot diameter. These had been dark and I had not noticed them. Now they began glowing, not from wires carrying the current, but fromthe little hands of the brains touching them. 

I stared at the brain nearest me. His flabby little arm was extended;his hand touched the image-ball; gave it light and color, like afortune-teller of Earth with a crystal before her. 

Even though I was some sixty feet from it, I could see the movingimages clearly, and recognized the scene. The Tappan InterplanetaryStage. Ships were rising; two of our spaceships mounting. 

And all in an instant the scene blurred, took form again. Thered-green spires and minarets of Ferrok-Shahn. The Central Canalextended like a gash across the foreground; the "Mushroom Mountains"were in a line upon the horizon. Three Martian space-flyers slid upwhile we watched. 

And now Grebhar. The silver forest in all its shining beauty, whereVenza was born. The sunlight sparkled on the river. A spaceship wasrising in the distant sky over the shining forest. 

Beyond Anita, I heard Venza murmuring, "Home! If only we were there. "

I could feel Anita move to silence her. 

Molo was whispering: "They come. But we will be ready for them. "

Another image: mid-space. The allied ships gathering, waiting forothers to arrive. A group here of about ten of our ships from thethree worlds: poised, waiting. 

I was aware that upon the mound-like protuberance of the room-floorwhere we were sitting, a door was opening. It slid, or melted away. Atour feet was an opening downward into the small interior of the mound. 

Molo whispered, "The great Master. Sit quiet! He will talk to us. "

Over us now a barrage came with a hiss, a circular curtain ofinsulation. The huge globular room faded. We were alone on the mound, Snap, Molo, myself, Anita, Venza and Meka upon the end of our bench. Behind us stood our single Wandlite guard, with a weapon in hisshoulder hand. 

At our feet an opening yawned into the mound-interior. It was a tiny, lighted room. In a cup-like seat a brain was perched, just below thelevel of our feet: the great Master Brain of Wandl. He was alone here. Not attended by retinue; no pomp and ceremony to usher us into hispresence; no underlings obsequiously bowing to mark him for a greatruler. 

We stared down, and the great brain stared up at us, seemingly equallycurious. His head was a full four feet in diameter; the little bodysat in the cup, with dangling legs. The clothes were ornamented: therewas a glowing device on the chest. 

He spoke with a measured rumble, in Martian. "You are Molo, ofFerrok-Shahn. "

"Yes, " said Molo. 

"You must say, 'Yes, Great Master. '"

"Yes, Great Master. "

"I know about you. I know that we trust you. "

The huge round eyes next fastened upon me. Then to Snap, and back tome. The words were English this time. "Men of Earth, are you decided, like the Martian, to join with us?"

I tried with sudden vehemence to still my thoughts, or to change themso that they lied. Fear surged upon me. Could this vast mechanism ofhuman mind here at my feet interpret the vibrations of my thoughts?Could this Great Master of Wandl see into my mind?

The brain said, "You are uncertain. You do not want to die?"

"No Great Master, " we both answered. 

"You shall not, unless you attempt to cause us trouble. Your thoughtsare black. " He addressed Molo. "Have they ever been read?"

"No, Great Master. "

"When opportunity comes, have them read. " He added to Snap and me: "Iplan to take prisoners. My Supreme Rulers, rulers of a neighboringmore powerful planet, which sent Wandl upon her mission of conquest, ordered it. When your worlds are vacant of life, those who command mewill want some of you left alive to be studied. Your thoughts are veryblack, Earthman. I think when they are carefully read you will proveno great advantage to us. "

There was irony in the voice, and upon the monstrous bulging face camethe horrible travesty of a grin. 

The grin on the brain's face faded. His interest went again to Molo. "That is your sister. " The eyes swung to Meka and back. 

"Yes, Great Master. "

"She is caring for this Earth-girl and this girl from Venus?"

"Yes, Great Master. I am fond of them. I have plans. "

"They are in your charge, Martian; I will not interfere with you. Butguard them well. I trust you and your sister. These others.... "

"The Earth and the Venus girl can be of help to me, Great Master. "

"How?"

"They knew young men who were in the Spaceship Service. They can tellme the armament of men and weapons on most of the spaceships whichEarth will send against us. "

Did Molo really believe that? Probably not, but he wanted the girlswith him. Again came that grotesque smile. "Let them not bother you, Martian. You have work to do. Listen carefully. There will be abattle. Earth, Mars, and Venus may perhaps have a hundred ships. Icannot bring destruction upon those three worlds in a day. We soonwill make contact with the light-beam you placed on Earth. That I willshow you. But the rotation cannot be stopped at once. It will taketime. 

"The enemy ships might dare to come to Wandl, but I shall not wait forthat. All my spaceships are very nearly ready. If there is to be abattle, it shall be far from here, in the neighborhood of the enemyworlds. We are at this time about sixty-two million of your miles fromthe Earth, a third less than that from Mars, and about a third morefrom Venus. I understand, Martian, that you are skilled in spacewarfare. "

The brain went on, "I have given you a vessel to command. You will besurprised to know its name: the _Star-Streak_. "

Meka gasped, "But you destroyed it, Great Master!"

"Only wrecked it, Martian girl. It is repaired now. You, Molo--andyour sister to help you--who could command it to more advantage? Allyour own weapons, and ours of Wandl have been added. You may selectyour crew. Is it to your liking?"

"Yes, Great Master. "

"You will be housed in this city, Wor, in the dwelling-globe youoccupied before. Keep your prisoners with you, if you like. "

"These two Earthmen.... " began Molo, but he was interrupted. 

"Settle that later. I do not want the annoyance. "

I was dimly conscious of a great clanging, coming through the curtainof barrage which was over us. 

The brain added, "Keep Wyk with you, to guard the prisoners; he willalso attend your needs. In the battle, Martian, I expect great thingsof you and your _Star-Streak_. "

"Great Master, you will not be disappointed. "

"And prisoners, but not too many. Bring me a few young specimens likethese, representative of Venus, Mars and the Earth. I want both of thesexes, an equal number of each. "

"Yes, Great Master. "

"The warning signal is coming. You will now see our first contact. "

The light at our feet was fading. It clung last by the gruesome faceof the huge brain; the goggling eyes shone green, and as the light inthe little mound-room dimmed there was in a moment nothing left butthose lurid green pools of the brain's eyes. 

Then I was aware that the aperture at our feet had closed. Over us, the barrage curtain was dissipating, sight and sound coming in to us. The huge ball-shaped conclave room again became visible, the audiencecrowding its entire inner surface. 

I suddenly felt Anita's fingers twitching at my sleeve. 

"Gregg, darling, can you hear me?"

"Yes. Be careful. "

But Molo was gazing up over our heads. The crowd was shifting, bendingso that they all seemed gazing at their feet. A dim white radiance, seeming to come from down here somewhere near us, lay in a splotch ona segment of the throng overhead. Molo was watching. 

I whispered, "All right, Anita. Quick, what is it?"

"The great control station is not far from here. Venza and I have beentrying to find out where it is exactly. "

She stopped, evidently fearful of Meka. Then she added:

"Gregg, we haven't been guarded very closely; they're not suspiciousof us. "

"Later, Anita. Can't talk now. "

"No. Watch our chance. Later. "

I turned toward Molo. "What's that up there?"

"The transparent ray is opening the top of the globe. "

The clanging signal gong had stilled. The audience was hushed andexpectant. The white patch of light overhead spread until itencompassed all the top of the globe. The whole area was glowing. Thepeople were white, spectral shapes, transparent! And the top of theglobe was transparent; I saw the night sky, with the gleaming reddishstars. 

It was, in a moment, as though we were staring up at a huge squarewindow orifice cut in the top of the room. A broad vista of cloudlesssky and stars was visible. Across it, like a shining sword, was anarrow, opalescent beam. 

"The Earth-beam which I planted, " Molo whispered triumphantly. "Ourcontrol station will contact with it now. The first contact!"

Earth was below our angle of vision, but the beam from Greater NewYork, sweeping the sky with the Earth's rotation, was passing nowcomparatively close to Wandl. 

There was an expectant moment. Then into the sky leaped another ray, narrow, luridly green. It swung up from Wandl and darted into space. The hissing, agonized electrical scream from it as it burst throughthe Wandl atmosphere was deafening. I saw it strike the Earth-beam, grip it with a blinding burst of radiance up there in the sky, clinging, pulling against the rotation of the Earth with a lever sixtymillion miles long. 

A moment of screaming sound in the atmosphere around us, and thatconflict of light in the sky. Then the screaming suddenly stilled. TheWandl beam vanished. 

The Earth-beam still swept the heavens like a stiff, upstanding sword. But in that moment when Wandl gripped it, the axis of the Earth hadbeen changed a little. The rotation was slowed. By a few minutes, theday and the night on Earth were lengthened. 

It was the beginning of Earth's desolation. 

11

"But when do we eat?" Snap demanded. 

"Soon, " said Molo. 

"I hope so. "

We were leaving the great room as we had come. Walking? I can onlycall it that, though the word is futile to describe our progress as wemade our way to the lighted esplanade, across its side and into whatmight have been called a street. Globular houses, single, or one setupon another, or half a dozen swaying on a stick, gardens ofvegetables and flowers. I saw what seemed to be a round patch ofhundred-foot tree-stalks, like a thick batch of bamboo. It was lacedand latticed thick with vines. 

"A house, " Snap murmured. "That's a house. "

Another type of dwelling. This patch of vegetable growth, so flimsy itwas all stirring with the movement of the night breeze, was woven intocircular thatched rooms, birds' nests of little dwellings. Staring up, I seemed to see a hundred of them. Rope-vine ladders; flimsy vineplatforms; tiny lights winking up there in the trees. 

On a platform twenty feet above us a group of tiny infant brains satin a gruesome row, goggling down on us. 

We passed the tree patch; again the city seemed all a thin, flexiblemetal. The ground was like a smooth rock surface, alternating withsmall patches of soil where things were growing. 

We walked in a slow, unsteady line. Molo led. Behind Snap and me camethe girls, ignoring us; and at the rear, the brown-shelled giant guardstalked after us. 

Molo stopped at a large globe-dwelling. "We rest here. I will go seethat our rooms are ready. " He gestured to his sister. "Meka, you comewith me. Wyk will guard them. "

We stood at an oval doorway. A worker came out, stared at us, thenwent back. On an upper balcony, a brain was gazing down at us. 

I caught Molo's brawny arm. "Won't you tell us what's going on?"

"Rest here with Wyk. "

"What are you going to do?" asked Snap. 

"I am going to select my men for battle. "

"When do you go?"

"In a few hours, Earth-time. "

"And you're taking us on the ship, Molo? Where is your _Star-Streak_?"

"That I must find out. " He, gazed at us with a slow, faint smile. "Notfar. Nothing is far on Wandl. I do not know if I will take you on myship. You might be of help, or you might be troublesome. The GreatMaster wants prisoners, or I would have killed you long ago. "

He took his sister and left us. There was a brief moment when Wyk, standing aside incuriously, gave us opportunity for swift whispers. 

Again Anita clutched me. "Gregg, we'll be separated now. But with Mologone, Venza and I can get away from Meka. "

Venza whirled on us. "Gregg, listen! Snap, be quiet! If we're evergoing to escape, now is the time. You get away from Wyk. We'll handleMeka. "

"And do what?" Snap demanded. 

"The control station! We'll find it!"

Anita whispered, "We've got to wreck it, Gregg. Stop those contacts. It'll mean the end of Earth if we don't. "

I protested. "Better try for Molo's vessel. We might be able tonavigate it, escape from this world. "

"The control station first, " Anita insisted. "Gregg, we know somethingabout it. You and Snap, with your strength, can demolish it. And then, if we can locate the _Star-Streak_.... "

It was a desperate, mad plan, but there seemed nothing better. Thegirls insisted now that though they did not know where the controlstation was located, they knew the details of its interior; itsphysical layout; its human operators. 

"In an hour, " whispered Snap. "Have you got a timer? Is it going?"

The little timers we still had with us were undoubtedly operatingdifferently from on Earth; but they were in agreement. 

"An hour by our timers, " I whispered. "We'll make the break then, tryto find you inside. Anita, if you get free of Meka, don't come out. "

"All right. "

We had only a moment to try and plan it. "Anita, in an hour, with Mologone.... "

He came suddenly with a driving leap from the doorway and droppedamong us. "All is ready. Come. "

We ignored the girls. Snap again protested that he was hungry, whichindeed, for me at least, was certainly the truth. And I was parchedwith thirst. I felt that this vaunted strength of my Earth body wouldnot last long without food and drink. 

We entered the globular interior. There were narrow corridors;triangular rooms; a slatted, ladder-like incline leading upward to ahigher level. 

The girls followed Meka up the incline. Molo and Wyk herded us into anearby room. "You will have your food and drink here. Cause Wyk notrouble and you will be quite safe. "

He turned, but Snap plucked at him. "When are you coming back?"

"Not too long. "

I said, "We will cause you no trouble. Take us on the ship. "

"I will see. "

He murmured to Wyk in Martian, then left us. 

 * * * * *

The small triangular room had no windows and only the single door. Wyktouched a mechanism and it slid closed. The place was a queerapartment indeed. The floor was convex, curving upward to the walls. The light radiance dimly glowed, as though inherent to the metalceiling. There was strange metal furniture: a table and chairs, highand large; bunks of a size evidently for the ten-foot workers. 

The door opened, and a worker brought us food and drink. Wyk sat apartand watched us while we consumed the meal. I noticed that he seldomlet himself get close to us. He sat stiffly upright, with his jointedlegs bent double under him, his many arms and pincers hanging inert, save the one short shoulder-arm with flexible fingers gripping hisweapon. At his waist, and upon several hook-like protuberances of hischest, other weapons and devices were hanging. 

Snap gazed up from where, on the floor, we were ravenously eating anddrinking. "Aren't you hungry?" he asked Wyk. 

"No. "

"You eat often?"

"No. "

An incurious, taciturn creature, this insect-like being. Snapwhispered, "Got to talk to him; make him let us get close. Thatweapon.... "

How the weapon operated, we did not know; but that a flash from itwould bring instant death we well imagined. 

Half of that hour of waiting was past. 

I said to Wyk, "You would call this night on your world; the sunobviously is on the other hemisphere. When will it be day?"

His gaze swung on me. His hollow voice, deep from the capacious shellof chest, echoed and blurred in the room. 

"I think Wandl has no rotation now. Or almost none. "

He was not as taciturn, as he had seemed, and presently we had himtalking. We learned several things regarding the gravity-controls ofWandl, by which at will the planet could be rotated on its axis; andby which also it could navigate space. We learned that the greatcontrol station contained these gravitational mechanisms, as well asthe mechanism by which the Earth had been attacked. But we could notdiscover where on Wandl that station was located. 

Then, with our meal finished, Snap rose to his feet. "Those arms ofyours, seem very strange to us. But they must be mighty useful. "

Snap had taken a cautious, shoving step. It wafted him directly towardthe guard. 

The weird, brown-scaled face of Wyk, with its popping eyes upon stemsand its upended mouth, contorted with surprise. 

"Back! Don't come near me!"

He flung himself back, but struck the wall of the room. All his armswere writhing. Alarm was in his voice. It was the first time eitherSnap or I had made an unexpected move, and it startled Wyk. 

"Wait! Let me go!" Snap cried. 

Wyk's longest arms were around Snap, like the tentacles of an octopus, and Snap was struggling, fighting. We had not intended this at thistime, but the opportunity was here. 

I scrambled from the floor. Now, with the need for powerful action, the lack of gravity was a tremendous handicap. I went up withflailing arms into the air. Wyk fired his weapon, but it missed me, asoundless, dimly-white bolt. It hissed along the curving wall of theroom. The smell of it was a stench in my nostrils. 

I hit the concave ceiling, shoved down, and like a swimmer in waterstruck against the struggling bodies of Snap and the guard. The wavinglittle shoulder arm with the weapon came at me. 

Snap shouted, "Gregg, look out!"

I seized the little arm; it felt like the shell of a huge crab. For amoment we were all three entangled, floundering, unable to find afoothold. Then suddenly I felt Snap pulling me loose. 

"We've got him!"

The brown-shelled body of Wyk sank away from us, hit the floor and laystill. I felt the floor under me, and Snap clutching at me. 

In my hand I was clutching Wyk's little shoulder arm, with fingersstill gripping the weapon. I had jerked it out of his shoulder socket. With a shudder I cast the noisome thing away. Whether Wyk was dead ornot we did not know. He lay on his back; the hideous face staredupward. 

"I cracked the shell, " Snap gasped. "We've got to get out of here. Better try and get the girls loose now. "

We wasted no further time on Wyk. Snap snatched several of his weaponsand mechanical devices. We stowed them hastily in our pockets. One waslike another to us; we could only guess at their uses. 

"His shoes, Gregg. I can't get the damn things off him. "

"Here are shoes. "

A small pile of shoes was in a corner of the room; wide, resilientsuction soles, built like sandals. They were very large, but thethings were so placed that it seemed we could fasten them to ourboots. 

"But not now, Snap. "

We snatched up four pairs of the shoes. 

There seemed nothing else to do. Could we get the door open? Snap wasalready fumbling at it. "Accursed thing! It won't give. "

Then it slid open. The dim corridor was visible. No one, nothing, outthere. "Come on, Gregg! In a rush!"

We went like bouncing rubber figures up the incline ladder. 

"Snap, watch out!" He all but cracked his head with an upward leap. Every instant we expected to be set upon. There was a terraced upperhall, black with shadow; dark ovals of doorways led into rooms. 

No one here. As yet we were not discovered. 

We stood at the intersection of two corridors. One went almostvertically up, like a chimney extending into the dome peak of theglobe. Its sides were latticed; we could go up it hand over hand, likemonkeys. The other sloped at an angle downward. 

"Which way?" Snap whispered. "What do you think? Got to find them. "

It still lacked about five minutes of our designated time, but itwould not do to burst in upon the girls, perhaps to find Molo andguards there. 

"Let's wait a minute, listen, see if we can't get some idea. "

We were backed against the corridor wall, almost in darkness. From thedark length of the descending corridor came a thump, the sound of astruggle, and then a muffled scream. Venza! And we heard her words:"Anita! Look out for her! She's got a knife!"

As though diving into water, Snap and I plunged head first into theblackness of the corridor. 

12

Later, we learned that Anita and Venza had tried much the same tacticson Meka that we had used on Wyk, but their task was more difficult. She was suspicious of them. Venza asked her where the control stationwas, but she wouldn't answer. 

"Your brother said it was just beyond the dark forest, " Anita said. "What is the dark forest?"

"A place with trees where no one lives. "

"Off that way. " Venza gestured. "That's what Molo said. Will it be daysoon, or will the night keep on?"

"If they cause Wandl to rotate, it will soon be day. " An ironic lookcrossed Meka's face. "I am in no mood for answering more of your sillyquestions. Save the breath. "

"Well, if that's they way you feel about it, " replied Venza laughing, "we will. There's not much air in here. " She shoved herself across thefloor toward the closed window. 

"Get back!"

"Oh, all right--all right!"

Perhaps Meka herself felt there was not enough air. She stoodwaveringly upright, and pushed herself with a slow leap for thewindow. Her back for that moment was to Anita and Venza. They shovedfrom the floor, whirled through the air and were upon her. 

It was a brief struggle, and instantly they knew that they had lost. The huge Martian whirled and flung them off. Her upflung fist, with ablow like a man's, caught Anita's thigh and knocked her toward theceiling. She sank in a heap on the floor, saw that Venza had shovedback, but was standing upright. 

Anita bent double, with her feet braced against a chair, tensed toshove forward again. At the still unopened window, Meka crouched. Anita heard Venza's warning outcry. "Anita, look out for her! She'sgot a knife!"

Upon this scene, in a moment, Snap and I came with a rush. The closeddoor was not barred. We slid it down and catapulted through theopening. Meka sailed over us. I swam up at her; seized her. The kniferipped my blouse and slit the flesh of my upper arm with a glancingblow. Then Snap came and struck against us; we sank to the floor. 

Meka had fought silently, but now she was shouting. I twisted herwrist, seized the knife handle and flung the knife away. I was awareof Anita lunging to retrieve it. And over us Venza appeared, waving ametal chair as though it were a huge feather. 

Snap gasped, "Gregg get your hand over her mouth. Shut her up!"

We had her subdued in a moment, but it seemed almost too late. Outsidethe opened door a distant shout sounded. 

I shoved Meka toward the door. "If you don't do what I say, I'll killyou, " I whispered into her ear. 

"What shall I do?"

There came another shout, closer, now. Someone was coming. 

"Call out in Martian. Say there's no trouble, nothing wrong. You werearguing with these girls. "

She did as I commanded. The voice down the corridor answered, and thensubsided. 

Snap slid the door closed. "Hurry! We'll go by the window. I droppedthose damn shoes. "

Anita and Venza tore their dark coats into strips. We bound and gaggedMeka, laid her in a corner of the room. We had dropped the shoes as wecame plunging through the door oval. We found that we could all fastentheir things to our feet. I put Meka's knife in my belt. 

"Hurry, all of you!" Snap was saying. "Got to get out of here; jump bythe window. "

"Say, look at these wing-shields!" From a recess in a corner of theroom Venza appeared with an armful of the small shields. We thrust ourhands and forearms into their loops. The shields extended from a fewinches beyond our fingers to the elbow. 

Snap had slid the window blind. I bent over the prone form of Meka. "Don't try to move. Molo will release you when he comes back. "

We gathered on the starlit balcony. The city stretched around us. There was as yet no alarm. No swimming figures near here; but adistance away we saw the towering conclave globe, with its audiencejust beginning to emerge, like bees coming from a hive. 

"Let me go first. " I held Anita and Venza at the rail. "It's likeswimming. I suppose we'll get the way of it pretty quickly. "

I balanced on the rail, and then leaped off. With the others after me, we swam awkwardly upward into the reddish starlight. 

The city structures dropped away, showing in a dark blur with winkinglights. Over us were the stars and the cloudless night sky. Behind, the flashing light beams of radiance at the landing stage, thefigures fluttering, the great globe, all dropped swiftly beneath asharply curving horizon. 

We had passed the city. A thousand feet below us, a dark foreststretched. It was beyond this that the control station was located. 

The swimming flight became less awkward, but it was an effort in thisabnormal Wandl air. Snap and Venza were behind me. Anita was leading, a strange, bird-like little figure. White blouse; long parted darkskirt from which her gray-sheathed legs kicked out as she swam, sometimes half upon one side, or with a breast stroke. The braids ofher dark hair fell forward over her shoulders. 

She was tiring: I could not miss it. How far had we gone? Ten miles, perhaps. There was only a small vista of this little world visible atonce, it was so sharply convex. A line of distant mountains was to ourleft. We had crossed a river at the forest edge. 

I suppose we had been half an hour swimming those ten-miles. Wasdaylight coming? It seemed that the sideline of mountain-tops had alittle light on them. The opalescent beam from Earth had swept thisportion of the sky and was gone below the horizon. 

Apparently there was no pursuit from the city. Behind me, Venzapanted, "Say, I'm about finished. Can't we rest?"

With this altitude we could cease our efforts and drift down. It wouldtake several minutes. 

We gathered together, falling with a slow drift toward the dark forestunder us. The trees seemed huge and spindly, a porous growth somethingon the Martian style, with huge leaves and a tangle of matter vines. They came mounting up at us as we fell with slowly gathering speed. 

"Shall we go on?" I suggested. 

"Yes. " But she was tired, and Anita as well. 

"Girls, " I asked, "where is the _Star-Streak_?"

They did not know. 

Anita said, "Perhaps we can land in the trees, and examine whatdevices we have here. "

The girls had carefully watched Molo upon several occasions. Theythought we might find we had a hand-globe or a couple of the repulsiverays. With these we could attain rapid flight without effort. 

We sank, fluttering, into a dark and tangled mass of the foresttree-top growth. I had understood that Wandl was crowded with itshuman population, yet this dark and silent forest evidently wasuninhabited. We clung, like awkward birds, to a swaying limb of atree-top. The trees were close together. 

"Let's see what you've got, " Venza demanded. 

We handed the girls the various devices we had taken from Wyk. Most ofthem were the size of my fist: globular metallic projectors like handbombs; ray cylinders; a device with multiple barrels the size of one'sfinger, set in a small circumference of a circular grid of wires. 

Anita said, "I saw Molo with one of these. He killed an unwillingworker on the ship. "

"I'll take a look around, " Snap said anxiously. "Suppose we're beingfollowed? Give me that weapon. "

There was vegetation partly over us, so that the sky was halfobscured. Snap took the weapon, and like a monkey swayingprecariously, he ran and leaped among the upper branches, crashing hisway until he could see back toward the horizon beyond which lay thecity of Wor. 

We heard his voice. "All clear. Nothing in sight. You coming up?Better get started. "

I put the weapons in my pocket. Snap had one now in the branches overus. I was examining an electronic bolt, when suddenly there cameSnap's call. "Gregg! Look out!"

We heard the hiss and saw the flash of his bolt. 

Anita swung at me. "Gregg, see there!"

I followed her gesture, and then I knew why this forest was shunned byhumans!

13

The forest swarmed with living things. Here in the dark they had beencrawling upon us. Every branch of this leafy tree-top angle hadsomething staring at us; the darkness was suddenly glowing with amyriad little green torches which were their eyes. They all winked onin an instant, as though at a signal, or at the sound of Snap's shoutand the hiss of his bolt. 

Insects? I suppose I should call them that. With a glance I saw thatthey were of many sizes and shapes; tiny little things with eyes likelanterns; things of many legs, finger-length, hand-length, and some aslong as my forearm. Brown-shelled things, with eyes glowing on stems. There was one quite near us, a smooth, brown-shelled body; a roundhead on top, as big as my fist. And these things had heads like littledistended brains. 

What horrible jest of nature this was, with miniatures of the Wandlworkers, crawling here, unable to stand erect, groping with littlepincers. And miniature brains with naked, shriveled bodies. 

It seemed that the eyes of that little brain were fixed on me with abaleful green glare in the darkness. Anita and Venza were flounderingto their feet in horror. They all but slipped from the limb. Theweapons and devices they had arranged there slid off and went downinto the darkness unheeded. From above us came Snap's horrified shoutsand the hiss of his bolts. 

"Here!" I gasped. "My hand--Anita, Venza, jump!"

I shoved Anita upward. The little eyes suddenly were all in movement, advancing upon us. Anita floundered, fluttered, got into the air andmounted toward Snap. Again Venza slipped off the limb. I lunged anddrew her up. Green eyes nearest us came swooping. I did not dare firea bolt; it was too close to Venza. I flung the entire weapon at thegreen eyes, but I missed. 

The little thing bit Venza's arm. She screamed and her flailing handhit the tiny distended head. Its hideous little scream mingled withhers. It floated downward, massed and purple-red with gushing blood. 

I struggled upward with the inert form of Venza under one arm. Anitawas mounting, free. Snap came lunging down. 

"Fired every bolt in the damn weapon!" He saw the unconscious Venza. "Good God, Gregg!"

Never have I heard such anguish in his tone. "Gregg, she isn't.... "

"One of them bit her. Help me. "

He floundered up with her, a hundred feet above the tree-tops of thathorrible forest. The little lanterns of eyes down there had all winkedout. The open starlight was over us. 

Anita came swimming, then Venza stirred. She murmured, "... Allright. "

She had fainted. It seemed nothing more; but I found her upper armswelling. She tried to bend her body and sit up; but it threw us allout of balance. 

"Lie straight, " Snap murmured. "Venza, are you all right?"

"Yes. Why not?" And then she laughed. It sent a shuddering chill overme. "What's the fuss about? Let's get away from here. Somebody will becoming. "

She was swimming now and we let her loose, but stayed close by her. The reddish firmament was like an inverted bowl. The curving Wandlsurface gave us a narrow little vista, the forest rolling up from thehorizon in front. Then we saw where the forest seemed to end. Waterwas beyond it: a ribbon like a broad river, and beyond that, frowningmountains, terraced and spired with jagged peaks. 

Snap and I suddenly recalled the gravity ray projectors. We triedthem; found that they would fling little beams of two varieties. Pencil points of radiance, they seemed to have an effective range ofno more than a few hundred feet. 

I let myself drift downward, experimenting. The tiny beam struck theforest-top. I felt the projector pulling violently downward in myhand. I clung to it. I was being drawn swiftly down by the attractivegravity force of the ray. The forest rose rapidly under me: I was allbut flung upon it before I could find the other controls. 

Then the ray altered its nature; the projector in my hand pulled mesteadily up. But after a few hundred feet, I felt I was mounting onlyof my own momentum, with gravity and air-friction retarding me. 

Snap had tried similar experiments. We rejoined the swimming girls. Istared into Venza's face; it was pale but she did not seem distressed. She winked at me. 

"How's your arm, Venza?"

"It hurts, but I guess it's all right. "

I turned to Snap. "I guess we can work these things. Get Venza tocling to you. "

Our progress now was far less difficult. Venza clung to Snap's anklesand Anita to mine. With the repulsing rays directed downward, we had astrong upward and forward thrust. We went forward with greatthousand-foot bounds. The forest rolled back under us. We came overthe gleaming river. It seemed several miles broad. It appeared to havea swift current. 

I saw sunlight upon the mountain ahead. The darkness had been paling. Now day suddenly burst upon us. The sun, smaller than on Earth, mounted swiftly up. It was a flattened, distorted, dull-red disc, blurred by Wandl's strange atmosphere. We were in a dim red daylight. 

Anita twitched at my ankles. "Look back of us!"

We were going up. Venza and Snap, behind us, were in a descending arc. Above them, far back in the direction from which they had come, twoblobs were visible up against the reddish day sky. 

Pursuit? It seemed so. The blobs went down, but came up again, traveling with rays, like ourselves. 

I called to Snap, "Someone after us! Two figures back there!"

He was shouting, "Gregg! Gregg, help!"

My gaze had been on the distant figures. I saw now that at the bottomof his arc, and starting upward again, Snap had lost Venza. Theimpulse of his ray had twitched his ankle from her grasp. Or had shelet loose? He was about a hundred feet above the river, and Venza, with acceleration downward unchecked, was falling into it. 

"Gregg, help! Venza, swim up!" His frenzied call reached me as I usedthe attractive ray and Anita and I whirled over and lunged downward. 

"Gregg, help! Venza use your arms! Swim!"

She was lying inert, making no effort to keep from falling. Her bodyturned slowly, end-over-end. She struck the swiftly-flowing riversurface but did not sink; instead, she half emerged, came up and layin a crumpled heap; and with its rapid current, the river carried heraway. 

It was several minutes before we could reach Venza. Snap was alreadythere, floundering on the water, awkwardly maintaining his balance, bending over Venza. "Gregg, she's unconscious. Fainted again. "

The bite of that insect! The thought of it turned me cold. 

The river surface was like a very soft rubber mattress. The waterclung to us, wet us. We could not kneel or stand erect; but in sittingdown only a few inches of our bodies were submerged. We floated likecorks, we were so light, and so little water did we displace. 

We struggled with Venza across the gluey river surface. She had fallennear the further shore. Rocks, crags and strewn boulders were passingas the current swept us along at a speed of about ten miles an hour. She lay in our arms, eyes closed, her face pallid but calm. She seemedto breathe rapidly; but that on Wandl was normal. 

We landed on the rocky shore. It was still daylight. The blurred sunwas winging across the zenith so swiftly that its movement wasvisible. Wandl had been suddenly endowed with axial rotation. Even inthese few minutes, the day was past its noon. On the distant mountainpeaks looming above the nearby horizon; it seemed that the sheen ofcoming night was mingled with the red sunlight. 

Anita and Snap laid Venza on the rocks. I suddenly remembered the twoblobs in the sky behind us, which had seemed to be following. I stoodgazing across the river. The red sky there seemed empty. 

"Thank God, she's reviving!" Snap called at me and I joined them. Venza was stirring. Color was coming into her cheeks. Her lips weremurmuring as though she were talking in her sleep. 

Then she opened her eyes. Her gaze fixed on us as we bent over her. "Why, what's the matter? Where are we? I thought we were in thetree-tops. Snap, don't look at me like that, dear. I'm all right--onlyconfused. "

She could remember nothing since that gruesome thing bit into her arm, but the attack of its poison in her veins seemed definitely over. Wesat with her, soothing her, explaining what had happened. And she waswholly rational. Her strength came back; her mind cleared. 

The brief red day came to its close. The sun plunged below thehorizon; the stars winked into being. The red-purple Wandl nightagain was here. And now we saw that the whole firmament was swinging, the rotation made visible. 

The darkness leaped around us. Shadows filled the rock hollows. Thecaves and recesses of this rocky shore turned black with darkness. Andin the sky now we saw another of those familiar opalescent beams. Thiswas the one from Mars: we could identify the red disc of the planet. 

And then, from the mountains ahead of us but still below our horizon, the Wandl control station shot its attacking beam upward. Again therewas that conflict in the sky. The axis of Mars was being altered, itsrotation slowed. 

We could see now that we were much nearer than before to the controlstation. It seemed only about twenty miles ahead of us. The screamfrom it was deafening. 

The Wandl beam died presently. The electrical scream from the controlstation was stilled. 

The Earth's axis had been altered. Now Mars; and next would be Venus. A few more of these gravitational attacks and then the helplessplanets, with rotation checked, would be towed away by Wandl, out intothe deadly cold of interstellar space. 

Anita abruptly gave a startled outcry. The four of us, sitting in agroup, had no time to rise. From behind a dark crag nearby, twofigures appeared. The starlight showed them clearly. 

Molo and Wyk! They lunged forward at us. 

14

We were unarmed. I had flung my weapon at the thing in the forest; andSnap had exhausted all his bolts firing at the multitude of greeneyes. Molo and Wyk came with a dive through the air. Two tiny flashesleaped from them to the rocks behind them, and flung them forward. 

Snap and I seized Venza and Anita. It was a second of confusion; thenI saw we would not be able to rise in time. The driving, oncomingfigures were no more than twenty feet away. 

"Protect Venza, Snap! Get her behind you!"

Snap shoved Venza behind him; I got myself in front of Anita. We hadalmost gained our feet. I tried to thrust Anita and myself violentlyupward. We rose, but only a few feet. And then we were struck by theoncoming body of Wyk, like a huge, light-shelled, three-pound insectlunging in mid-air against us. The two longest tentacle arms wrappedaround us. Anita twisted and kicked. The gruesome, goggling face ofWyk thrust itself almost into mine. The hollow voice panted, "I haveyou fast. "

One of my arms was free and I struck with my fist at the gaping, upended mouth. There was a crack. My fist sank through the shell; acold, sticky ooze spurted out. 

Wyk screamed. His encircling arms fell away. The grisly smashed facewas white with ooze and pulp where my fist had gone in. 

We had sunk back to the rocks. I kicked the dead body of Wyk away. 

"Anita! Swim up!"

"No!"

Sinking beside us were the flailing bodies of Molo, Snap and Venzawere drifting down. They seemed intermingled. Snap was shouting: "Noyou don't! Drop that!"

I leaped for them. Something long and thin and glowing was danglingfrom Molo's hand. He broke loose from the struggling Snap and Venza;his feet struck the rocks and he shoved himself backward. My leap hadcarried me too high. I saw that in his hand was a six-foot length ofglowing wire. He whirled it. The weight on its end described an arc, and then he flung the handle. The weighted wire struck Venza and Snapjust as their repulsive ray shot down against the rocks and shovedthem upward. The whirling wire wrapped itself around them, bound themtogether. Its glow vanished. Snap had been shouting, "Gregg, come up. "But it died in his throat. 

All this while, in those few seconds, I was vaulting over Molo, tryingto get back to the ground to leap again. I saw that Anita was crawlingon the rocks. My gravity cylinder was at my belt. I had jammed itthere to leave my hands free just as Wyk struck me. 

I saw that Snap and Venza, wrapped together by the wire, had droppedtheir gravity projector. Their entwined figures went up some fiftyfeet and stopped; then began drifting down. 

Molo was shouting, "You, Gregg Haljan! Now for you!"

I struck the rocks and fell twenty feet beyond him. I jerked out mygravity projector, but I did not know what I wanted to do with it. Andin that second I saw that the standing Molo was aiming at me. Directlyover my head the inert bound bodies of Venza and Snap were falling. 

A flash leaped over the dark rocks from Molo. There was a split-secondwhen I thought it was the end of me. But I was still alive. The bodiesof Venza and Snap struck my head and shoulders; knocked me down. Ifelt Molo's ray upon me. Not death, but only his gravity ray, like agiant hand pulling me. Apparently he wanted us alive. I was scramblingon the rocks, entangled with Venza and Snap. Molo's radiance clung. All three of us went tumbling forward toward him. I flashed my ownray, but I was rolling end over end, and it went wild. 

I dropped it, saw Molo's beam vanish, saw his upright standing figuretowering above me. Snap, Venza and I were in a heap at his feet. Heleaned down and seized me. "Now, Gregg Haljan, I will teach you not totry escaping like this!"

With the huge, muscular Martian gripping me, his fist striking for myface but missing and hitting my shoulder, this was a semblance ofnormality. I could understand fighting like this. I wrapped my legsaround him; my fingers reached for his brawny throat as he kicked usinto the air free of the entangling bodies of Snap and Venza. 

We rose a few feet and sank back, gripping each other, lunging andstriking. He was very powerful, this Martian. I caught the roundpillar of his throat with my hands. For an instant I shut off hiswind, but I could not hold the grip. He struck me a glancing blow inthe face, then the heel of his hand was under my chin. It forced backmy head, broke my hold on his throat. With returning breath, he gaspedan inhalation. And I heard his exulting words: "You are not strongenough!"

We rolled and bumped over the rocks. I caught a blow from his fistsfull in my face. It was almost the end; I felt my strength going. Helaughed as he struck away my answering swing. I was on my back againstthe rocks, with his body on top of me. Then beyond and behind hishulking shoulder, silhouetted against the sky, I saw Anita rise up. She was lifting a jagged gray mass of stone, full four feet indiameter. She poised it, then crashed it down on Molo's head. He sankaway from me; his arms relaxed. The boulder rolled beside him. 

It was over now. Wyk was dead; his gruesome body with its smashed facelay near us. Molo was unconscious, breathing heavily, lyingmotionless, with a wound on the back of his head, the blood wellingout, matting his hair. 

Anita and I were uninjured, victorious--but what a hollow victory. Onthe rocks here, bound together by that strange wire, Snap and Venzalay inert. We bent over them. The wire was cold to the touch now. Itresisted our efforts to untwine it. We pulled frantically as wepleaded: "Snap, speak to us! Venza, can't you speak?"

Their eyes were open. I was aware that there was no starlight aboveus, but instead, a lurid sky of flying clouds, shot with a greenishcast. The darkness here was green. The glow of it struck upon thewide-open staring eyes of Venza and Snap. It seemed that there wasintelligence in those eyes. 

"Snap, can't you hear us?"

His eyelids came down and up again, slowly, as though by a horribleeffort. "Can you move, Snap?"

His right eyelid moved. Was his answer, no?

Anita and I had never felt so horrible a sense of aloneness as thatwhich swept us in those succeeding minutes. A breeze was springing upin the lurid green night. It came from the mountains. It wafted acrossthe nearby river, rippling the surface which was now green and sullen. We did not know where to go, what to do. 

We found at last that we could untwist the stiffly clinging wire. Welaid Venza and Snap on the rocks side-by-side, about thirty feet backfrom the river. The glowing wire had burned their clothes only alittle, as the current was absorbed by the contact with their bodies. 

"Snap, are you in pain?"

His eyes seemed to be trying to talk to me. Anita rose from Venza:"Oh, Gregg, what shall we do? Can't we carry them?"

But where? To what purpose? Wild thoughts thronged me: Wandl's controlstation, bringing chaos and death upon Earth. Mars and Venus. What wasthat now to me? I thought of Molo's ship. 

"Anita, if we can get to the _Star-Streak_, seize it and escape fromthis world.... "

"Carry Snap and Venza there now? But we don't know where it is. Can wemake Molo lead us?"

But Molo lay unconscious. I could not rouse him. 

Anita and I were so alone! We clung together. 

"Gregg, look at that sky!"

The mounting wind was tugging at us. It whined through the darkmountain defiles, surged out over the river where the water now wasbeginning to toss with waves crossing the swift current. The sky wasshot with green shafts of radiance. Over us, the lowering, leadenclouds were scudding, riding the wind. 

It burst now upon us; I found suddenly that Anita and I were bracingagainst it. A puff dislodged us, so that we were blown a dozen feet, bringing up against a crag, as though we were balloons. 

"Anita--this wind--we can't maintain ourselves here. We.... "

Horror checked me at the thought of Venza and Snap, lying there on therocks. We saw the body of Wyk, like a great dried insect, lifted bythe wind, whirled like a brown leaf over and over, and carried away. 

A little pebble came hurtling and struck me. Then a rain of pebbles, like hailstones was pelting at us. 

The storm was probably caused by the axial rotation of Wandl. Thelight-beam upon Earth had been attacked by the Wandl control stationwithout axial rotation. But to attack the beam from Mars, amanipulation of Wandl was necessary. The planet's rotation wasstarted; and suddenly checked. It remained night now, here in thishemisphere. Perhaps there were natural storm tendencies here; perhapsthe operators of the control station were unduly eager, manipulatingthe rotation too suddenly. 

At all events, it was frightening. I shouted above its whine and theclatter of the pebbles: "Hold onto me! We'll get to Venza and Snap. "

We reached the two inert forms, where they had blown into a nichebetween two boulders. "Can't stay here, Anita. "

"No! If it begins again!"

"Over there! A cave!"

We got Venza and Snap into it, just as another gust came, with a rainof dirt and loose stones pelting past outside. 

Suddenly I thought of Molo. "Anita, stay here! Must get to Molo. "

"Gregg, no!"

"I must. If we can bring him to consciousness, make him tell us wherethe _Star-Streak_ is.... "

I flung off her restraining hold. The wind had eased up. I leaped outinto it, swimming. The rocks slid by close under me in a swiftsidewise drift. In a moment I would be carried out over the river. Itwas a chaos of green, windswept darkness. But there was bursting lightnow overhead and rumbling claps, like thunder. 

I saw Molo's body where the wind held him pinned against the side of aflat, ten-foot rock butte, and dove for him, swimming down franticallyuntil I struck against the rock with a blow that almost knocked thebreath from me. Molo was still obviously unconscious. 

How long it took me to get back to Anita, floundering with Molo'sbody, I do not know. I managed to keep against the ground; was blownback, and struggled forward again. The wind came with strange puffs. In one of the lulls, I hauled Molo through the air and into the cave. 

"Gregg!" Anita held to me, her arms around me. "Gregg dear, you weregone so long!"

I was battered and bruised and breathless. The cave's mouth was like aten-foot tunnel leading downward into blackness. 

"Gregg, I put Venza and Snap here. "

They lay side by side, like two dead bodies, here in the greenishdarkness. We placed Molo with them. Together Anita and I crouchedbeside them, clinging to each other, listening to the wild sweep ofthe wind outside. The storm had burst into full fury now. It wouldwhirl us away like feathers, outside there now. The lightning andthunder hissed and crashed. Stones and boulders were being flung likehailstones. 

This flimsy, weightless world! It seemed as though the rocks here onwhich we were crouching would be shifted and carried away. 

"Gregg! Gregg, is this the end?"

A mass of rocks fell at the opening, closing it, so that we wereburied here in the darkness. "Anita, my darling, I will never stoploving you. "

Darkness, with her arms around me and a shuddering world outside. Buthere, only Anita and her soft arms. 

"Gregg!"

Horror was in her voice. Then I saw what she was seeing. It was notjust Anita and I buried here in the darkness with the bodies of Snapand Venza and Molo. Something else was here. 

From the blackness of the cave, two green, glowing eyes were staring. Their radiance showed me the outlines of a distended head. An insanething? But it was not another of the forest insects. This seemed to bean animal. The glow of its distended head disclosed a lythe, horizontal body, seemingly solid and muscled. A chattering, insaneanimal, here in the dark with us! We heard mouthing, mumbling words, and an eerie, cackling laugh as it came padding toward us. 

The thing in the cave stared at us as we clung together in thedarkness, transfixed for a moment by horror. The distended head, ghastly of face with its green glowing eyes, wobbled upon a long, spindly neck. The eyes seemed luminous of their own internal light. The radiance from them faintly lighted the black cave so we were ableto see its tawny, hairy body. It was long sleek, the size of an Earthleopard. A muscled body, with ponderable weight, it was moving towardus, padding on the rocks. 

I recovered my wits and shoved Anita behind me. I crouched on oneknee. There was no escape, nowhere to run. This tunnel was blocked bya fallen rock mass behind us, with the wild storm raging outside. Thething was some twenty feet away, where the tunnel broadened into ablack cave of unknown size. Beside me Snap and Venza lay inert, thestill-unconscious Molo with them. 

There was nothing to do but crouch here and protect Anita. I waved myarms, shouted above the outside surge of the storm; my voicereverberated with a muffled roar in this subterranean darkness. 

"Get back! Back! Back, away from me!"

It stopped. Round ears stood up from the bloated head. Then it laughedagain. I felt Anita shoving a rock at my hand, a chunk of rock thesize of my head. "Its face, Gregg! Aim for its face!"

The rock felt like a ball of cork. I flung it and hit the thing on thebody. Its laughter checked abruptly; it crouched, as though gatheringfor a spring. 

And then I thought of my gravity projector. I flashed on the repulsiveray to its full intensity. 

The tawny body leaped. It came hurtling, but my beam met it inmid-air. For a second I thought that I had been too late. The thingwas clawing the air; its momentum carried it against the push of myray. For an instant it hung, snarling, and then laughed that wildlaugh. 

The ray forced it back. It receded through the air, back across theblackness of the cave, gathering speed until, in a moment it broughtup against the opposite wall some forty feet away. There it hung, pinned as I held the ray upon it. The body had struck the rocky wallbut the head was uninjured. It was writhing and twisting: the cave wasfilled with the reverberations of its screams. 

Over the screams, I heard another voice: "Oh Gregg, where are you?"

Snap! Behind me, Anita was moving sidewise toward where Snap and Venzawere lying. The thing pinned in my light stopped its screaming, withcuriosity perhaps at this new sound. 

"Snap! We're here, Snap!"

Then Venza's voice: "It's letting me talk. We're better now. "

They were recovering, Anita was bending over them. "Gregg, they're allright. The shock is wearing off, thank God. "

But I did not dare move to them. My light on the snarling thing acrossthe cave held it, but I did not dare to relax my attention. 

I called, "Stay with them, Anita. " I moved slowly forward, holding thebeam steady. The cave floor was littered with loose stones andboulders. Ten feet from the pinned animal I selected a great chunk ofrock. It towered in my hand, but the weight of it was only a fewpounds. 

The gravity held the animal as though I had pinned it by a pole. Fromthe distance of a few feet I heaved the boulder. The palpitating headmashed against the wall. The body and the pulp of the head and theboulder sank to the floor when I removed the beam. 

"Snap, thank God you've recovered! And you, Venza!"

Anita and I sat with them. They had been fully conscious all thewhile, but they were out of it now. 

An hour passed while we sat crouched, listening to the storm. 

"It's letting up, " Venza said out of a silence. 

Anita was sitting over the prone form of Molo. He had stirred andmumbled several times. 

"Let's see if we can get out of here, " Snap suggested. 

Rocks had fallen and blocked the only exit from the cave. But to ourstrength, even the hugest of the rocks was movable. 

"Shall we try it now, Gregg?"

As though we were elephants, heaving and pushing, we struggled withthe litter choking the passage. There was a danger that the wholething would cave in on us; but we were careful of that. We tossed thesmall rocks aside like pebbles. There was one main mass. Together wepulled and tugged and shifted it. A small opening was disclosed, largeenough for our bodies. The wind puffed in through it. 

The girls called us. Molo had regained consciousness. The blow fromthe rock had only stunned him. We bound his wrists with a portion ofhis belt which we cut into strips. 

"What is it you do with me? Is Wyk dead?"

"Yes. "

He lay silent and sullen. "Look here, Molo, we're going to get out ofthis, and you're going to help us. If you don't.... " The knife whichwe had taken from him to cut his belt was in my hand. I drew its bladelightly across his throat. "Will you talk freely and truthfully?"

"Yes, I will talk the truth. "

"Do you know where the control station is located?"

"Yes. "

"Where?"

"Not far. "

"The hell with that!" Snap burst out. "Get it meshed in your mind, Molo, that we're in no mood for talk like that. How far is it?"

"On Earth you would call it ten miles. "

"In these mountains?"

"He told us it was, " said Anita. "Underground. "

"Do you know where your ship is?" I persisted. 

He told us that it was some thirty miles in another direction, not inthe mountains, but in the outskirts of a city like Wor. It wasequipped and ready for flight, all but the assembling of its crew. 

And now we had weapons! Molo was carrying several of the gravityprojectors; two small searchlight beams, little hand torches; andthree electronic ray-guns of short-range size. 

Hope filled us. The storm was abating. We could creep upon the singlesmall control room of the gravity station, where usually but twooperators were stationed. The delicate mechanisms there could bewrecked. 

And then we would seize the _Star-Streak_. No one would be on thelookout for us. The fact that Molo's prisoners had escaped was as yetunknown; he and Wyk had not dared tell it. Meka was back therewaiting. Our absence from the globe dwelling might have beendiscovered; but Meka would say that we were with Molo. She was waitingthere, hoping that her brother and Wyk would recapture us. All this wedragged piecemeal from Molo. 

Snap and I shared the gravity projectors and the small electronicguns. "Let's get started, Gregg. The storm seems over. "

It was. We found the purple-red starry night again outside. The riverwas lashed white with waves, but they were spent. There was only amild warm breeze remaining. 

Molo's legs were free, but his wrists were lashed behind him. I hookedan arm under his, holding him like a huge, but light, oblong bundle. Snap called, "Ready, Gregg?"

"Yes. "

Snap flashed on his gravity ray and mounted, with the girls clingingto his ankles. Then I followed with Molo. By great arching swoops, weswung up into the frowning, tumbled mountains. 

15

"This will be the place to land, Gregg Haljan. "

We were drifting down upon a barren region of naked crags, dark, frowning rock-masses, broken and tumbled, as though by some greatcataclysm of nature. Mountains upon the Moon could not be moredesolate of aspect. 

We landed on the rocks. The heights here had a purple-red sheen fromthe starlight. We had seen frequent evidence of the storm; and itshowed here. Rocks were abnormally piled in drifts; smooth areasshowed, where the pebbles, stones and boulders had been swept away bythe wind. 

Snap and the girls landed beside us. We spoke softly. None of us, noteven Molo, knew how far sound would carry in this air. 

"Where is the place from here?" Snap demanded. 

"Off there. "

Molo spoke with docile, guarded softness. He gestured with his headand shoulder. A quarter of a mile away, over these uplands, the brokenland went down in a sharp depression. 

"It is there. I think from here we should go on the ground. There isno guard, and I think seldom is anyone on top. "

"If I help you now, if we should wreck the gravity controls, thenWandl will be helpless to navigate space, or to interfere with therotation of Earth, Mars and Venus. The allied worlds might then defeatthe Wandl ships in battle. If that happened, perhaps your governments, because of my help here, would forgive what my _Star-Streak_ hasdone. "

"Your piracy?" I said. 

"Yes. I am outlawed. I might be reinstated if you would speak the goodwords for me. "

"Maybe. "

"Maybe even they would reward me. You think so, Gregg Haljan?"

He wanted to be on the winning side; this suited us. "Let's try it andsee, Molo. I'll speak plenty of good words for you. "

Now, as we landed on the uplands, he said, "You will do best to freemy hands. "

"Oh, no!" Snap declared. 

"But I am a good fighter. Something unexpected might come. "

"Too good a fighter, " I said. "We trust you because we have to, Molo, but no more than is necessary. "

A small recess in the rocks was near us. We put Molo there, with hishands bound, and with Anita and Venza to guard him. Venza held theelectronic gun; she knew how to fire it. The girls crouched in adepression about twenty feet away. They could see Molo plainly; if hemoved, a flash of the gun would kill him. He knew that. 

The girls gazed at us as we were ready to start. "Good-by, Gregg. Good-by, Snap. Good luck!"

"We won't be long. Sit where you are. " Snap touched Venza's shoulderfor his good-by. "Listen, Venza: Molo has already told us enough toenable us to find the ship. If he tries anything, kill him. "

"Right, " she said. 

We left them. A minute or two, cautiously shoving ourselves along therocks, and we were crouching there. The cauldron was about two hundredfeet broad and fifty feet deep; an irregular circular bowl. Thestarlight gleamed on it, and there were dots of small artificiallight. We saw a group of small metal buildings, very low and squat, like balls mashed down, flattened in a bulging disc-shape; betweenthem were tiny skeleton towers. 

The towers, twice the height of a man, were spread at irregularintervals in a hundred-foot circle, with a group of three or four inthe center. There seemed some twenty of them. Taut wires connectedtheir tops, each tower with every other, so that the wires were alacework above the small disc buildings. The bottoms of the towerswere grounded with electrical contacts, and every tower had a groundconnection with each other by means of cables. 

Far to one side, across the bowl from us, was a single globe-dwellingwith lighted windows. From its ground doorway, a narrow metal catwalkextended like a sidewalk on the ground, winding and branching amongthe towers and discs. 

This was the exterior of the Wandl gravity station. It lay silent anddark, save for the starlight and the little lights on the towers. Nosign of humans. Then we saw movement in the globe-dwelling. A man cameto the doorway, gazed at the sky and went back. 

I whispered, "Which is the best entrance to the underground rooms?"

We saw where, at several points, the winding catwalk terminated inlow, dome-like kiosks, giving ingress downward. One was on our slopeof the cauldron. "That's the one we'll try, " Snap murmured. 

He stopped suddenly. The top of the distant globe-dwelling wasglowing. A little round patch there was radiant, like a lightedwindow. A transparent ray was coming from inside. The operators withinthis globe were observing the sky, training instruments upon it, nodoubt. 

And now we saw in the sky the third of those sword-like beams. It hadprobably been visible there for some time but we had not noticed it. "That's Venus, " I murmured. 

It seemed so. A blurred star, red in this atmosphere, was close abovethe horizon. The light-beam stood out from it, sweeping up to thezenith. 

The gravity station here was about to make contact with the Venusbeam. We heard a muffled siren, a signal echoing from the subterraneancontrol rooms. The current went into all these wires and towers andtwenty-foot ground discs. The hissing and throbbing hum of it wasaudible. The discs and towers were glowing; red at first, then violet. Then that milky, opalescent white. The overhead wire-aerials weresnapping with a myriad of tiny jumping sparks. 

I saw now that the top of each tower was a grid of radiant wires, asix-foot circular projector with a mirror reflector close beneath itand a series of prisms and lenses just above. It all glowed opalescentin a moment, a dazzling glare. 

Then the tower tops were swinging. The lights from them had reachedthe intensity of an upflung beam, and the projectors were swinging tofocus the beam inward. The focal point seemed about a thousand feetoverhead. All the beams merged there; and guided by the towersdirectly underneath, a single shaft was standing into the sky. 

The entire cauldron depression was now a blinding mass of opalescentlight. We could see nothing but the milk-white inferno of glare. Itpainted the rocks up here on the rim so that we shrank back, shadedour eyes and gazed into the sky. And from the cauldron, the hum andthe hiss of the current, the snapping of sparks, were all lost in awild electrical screaming turmoil. 

Overhead, we saw the Wandl beam from Venus. 

Apparently this control station had two functions: the control of theplanet's movements, its axial rotation and its orbital flight, and itsability to apply gravitational force to other celestial bodies. 

Wandl was controlling her own movements by applying gravity force, attraction and repulsion, to all the celestial starfield; anddoubtless also by applying the repulsive beam tangentially against theether like rocket streams. In this respect, I realized, the planet wasprobably operated not unlike one of our familiar spaceships. Ineffect, it was itself a gigantic globular vehicle. Later I learnedthat it was thought that Wandl's atmosphere could be highlyelectronized at will, with a resulting aberration of the naturallight-ray reflected from her into space. This could have caused theblurring of the image of Wandl when viewed telescopically from otherworlds. 

Again, for a moment of the contact, there was that bursting light inthe sky. 

The contact with the Venus beam lasted a minute or two. Snap and I, onthe cauldron rim, were engulfed in the blaze of reflected light andthe wild scream of sound. Then presently the turmoil subsided. Thecontact in the sky was broken. The tow-rope of Venus jerked itselfaway. But on the next Venus rotation it would be attacked again. 

Another few minutes passed. The little circular depression beneath uswas dim and silent as we had first seen it. Figures were moving withinthe dwelling structure. From several of the underground entrancesfigures came up, the ten-foot insect-like shapes of workers. Three orfour of the brains came bouncing up, moving along the ground catwalkwith little leaps. All the figures entered the distant main dwellinghouse. The contact was over. 

"Probably hardly anyone left down below, " Snap whispered. "Now's ourchance. "

"If we can get into that opening without being seen, " I said. 

"Shadows, down the rocks to the left. Damnation, Gregg, we can make itin one calculated leap. "

"I'll try it first. I'll get in and wait for you. "

"Right. "

We each had a gravity cylinder at our belt and a ray-gun in our hand. The slope of the depression was dim here, merely starlit; it was asteep, broken and fairly shadowed descent, fifty feet to the littledome-like kiosk which marked the nearest subterranean entrance. I wentdown it with a swoop, landed in a heap beside the kiosk and duckedinto it. Instinct made me fear a guard, but reason told me none wouldbe here; there was only the danger of encountering someone coming up. 

I was at the top of a winding, descending passage, a step-terracedfloor; there were occasional lights in the ceiling. In a moment Snapjoined me. "Got here! I wonder how far down it goes?"

I gripped him. "Snap, no matter what happens, do it with a rush. Keepwith me. And if I shout to get out.... "

"We go out with a rush!"

"Yes. Back to the girls. Use your ray-gun and the gravity projector ingetting back to them and get away without me, if I fall. "

"Same for you, Gregg. "

We went down the deserted passage. We had had experience in movementon Wandl now; we handled ourselves more deftly. We went down severalhundred feet. The passage branched, but there always seemed a maintunnel. 

It was all deserted. There were distant, dimly-lighted, silent rooms. Were these factories of the strange forms of electronic gravitycurrents Wandl used? Some were in operation. A hum issued from them. Workers moved about. 

We stopped to consult. The girls, and Molo himself, had described whatwe would find: a main route leading to the control room where thedelicate mechanisms which operated all this were centralized, thenerve center of Wandl. It seemed that we were following that mainroute. 

A worker came with a swimming leap past us. We dropped into a hollowedshadow at a tunnel intersection, and he went swooping by. 

"Lord, Snap, " I muttered, "that was too close for comfort. "

Again we advanced. The tunnel turned sharply. Down a short slope, aglowing room was disclosed, with two or three workmen moving withinit. 

The main control room! We could not doubt it. Molo, in his enthusiasm, had once described it clearly to the girls, its great skeins of littlethread-like wires spread upon the walls, the myriad tiny opalescentdiscs contacted with the small gray rock surface under the tangledmasses of thread-wire, the levers and dials banked on the circulartables: they were unmistakable features. 

"There it is, Snap, " I whispered in his ear. "In that central rack. Those insulated rods, see them? Anita told us they used them to adjustthe discs. Watch out for the current. "

"But it's off now, Gregg!"

"There's still danger in it, and you'd short-circuit somewhere. Keepyour hands off. Use the rods. "

"The operators.... "

He got no further. A figure lunged into us from behind, a giantworker! His largest pincer bit into my shoulder; his hollow shoutresounded. The operators of the control room came with leaps at us. 

There was a moment of wild confusion. Light, seemingly almostweightless bodies flapped against us. Arms gripped us, but they wereflimsy. The huge body-shells cracked gruesomely as we struck with oursolid fists. 

A moment of turmoil passed. No bolts were fired. The shouts were briefdown here in the narrow confines of the tunnel. Panting, bruised moreby our collisions against the rocks than by our adversaries, we ceasedour wild lunges. We did not look at the scattered, broken and crushedbodies drifting now to the floor. 

"Now, Snap! Hurry! Others may come. "

We lunged into the glowing control room, seized the long insulatedpoles from the central rack. They had a grateful feel of weight. Ipicked one up, jumped with a twenty foot leap to the wall. 

The wires came down like cobwebs under my sweeping blows; the littlediscs knocked off as though they were fungus growth. Sparks flewaround us. Shafts of electronic radiance spat out. The wall washissing over all its length as I ranged up and down it. The tangledbroken threads of wire writhed like living things on the floor; thencrumpled, fused and turned black. 

I swept that wall-segment with frantic haste, lunged around andstarted another way. Across the room I saw Snap doing the same. Aturmoil of electrical sound was reverberating around us, deafening, and the glare was blinding. A belt-shaft shot from the wreckage undermy rod. It seared my left arm. My sleeve burned off; the arm hung limpand tingling at my side. I stopped to rub it; in a moment strengthcame back to its muscles. 

Snap was raging like a great heavy bird gone amok. Through the greenfumes of electrical gases which were filling the room I saw himlunging at the circular tables, overturning them. They cracked likethin polished stone as they struck the metal floor. 

I finished with the wall. There was a twenty-foot square piece ofmetal apparatus, ramified and intricate; I heaved it over upon itsside. A thousand little mirrors and prisms, dislodged from it, cameout in a splintering deluge. 

I was aware of Snap fighting with a brown-shelled figure. Then he wasfree of it. I saw it mashed and broken at his feet as I dove past, swimming in the smoke to lunge the length of a great fluorescent tubewhich was still dimly glowing. My pole pried it over; it crashed witha brief puff of light and the rush of an explosion as air went intoits vacuum. 

I found Snap panting beside me, clinging to me in mid-air. The glarewas dying around us; the din was lessening. We were choking in thechemical fumes of the released, half-burned gases. Turgid darkness wascoming to the wrecked room, with little hissing flares spittingthrough it. 

"Enough, Gregg! Listen! Up overhead.... "

A great siren from up there was screaming into the night. 

Snap panted, "Got to get out of here. Can't breathe. "

Together we lunged for the tunnel by which we had entered. I stood amoment, gazing back upon the strewn and scattered room. 

The delicate nerve-center of Wandl. Heavy green-black gas fumesswirled in it; darkness and silence closed down. 

16

Over us was turmoil, that screaming siren. Then suddenly it waschecked and we heard the thump and swish of what on Earth would havebeen called running footsteps and shouts. 

Snap shoved me. "Don't stay there, you fool!"

We lunged up the passage. Figures barred it but they scattered; a bolthissed at us, but missed. At the kiosk a group of workers and severalpeering little brains leaped away in terror to let us pass. 

We gained the open air. With the small gravity rays darting down withrepulsion upon the rocks we mounted like rockets out of the cauldron. The upper plateau lay silent in the starlight, but the cauldron behindus was ringing with alarm, and again the danger siren was blaring. 

I changed my way of direction, swung it to the plateau rocks ahead. The arc of my flight was sharply bent as I went hurtling down. Overme, I saw Snap use the same tactics. I tried to aim for where we hadleft the girls and Molo. I could not see them down there amid thestarlit crags; and suddenly a wild apprehension filled me. How had wedared leave them to Molo's trickery?

Then, ahead and below me, I saw the slight figure of one of the girls, standing on a rock with arms outstretched to signal us. I changed myray to repulsion barely in time to avoid crashing. The landing flungme in a heap. Twenty feet away, Snap came whirling down. We pickedourselves up, saw Anita waving from the rock, and bounded to her. 

The girls were safe. Venza sat intent, with unwavering watchful gazeacross the intervening space to where Molo had flattened himselfagainst his rock, not daring to move. 

"Still got him, " Venza exulted. "He wasn't willing to take any chanceswith us. You did it, Snap?"

"I'm a motor-oiler if we didn't. Come on; got to get out of this. They're after us! We wrecked the whole damn place, Venza. Wandl's anormal planet now. No more of this accursed dislocation of Earth. "

We learned later that our hope and our assumption that we hadirretrievably wrecked the entire gravity control system of Wandl wasproven to be a fact. Wandl was, in effect, a normal celestial bodynow. The beams planted in Greater New York, Ferrok-Shahn and Grebharstill streamed across space. But there was no giant beam from Wandl toseize them, and Wandl now could not move through space of her ownvolition. Like Earth, and all other known planets, satellites, cometsand asteroids, she was subject now to all the normal natural laws ofcelestial mechanics. We had done a thorough job of it. 

Now I shoved at Snap. "No time to talk. You tow the girls; I'll takeMolo. Got to get to the _Star-Streak_. "

I lunged over and seized Molo. "We did it. Now for your vessel! Itwill be ill for you if she is not where you say she is. "

"She will be there, Gregg Haljan. "

He docilely put himself in position for me to hook my forearm underhis crossed, bound wrists and carry him. Snap rose up past us, towingthe girls. Over the nearby cauldron a figure mounted to gaze and seethe nature of this strange attacking enemy, and then sank back. 

With Molo hanging to me, I mounted with my ray, following Snap and thegirls into the starlight, with the turmoil of the cauldron recedinguntil in a moment or so it was gone behind our horizon. 

We headed now, not toward Wor, whence we had come, but over at anangle to the side. Our great bounding arcs soon left the mountainsbehind. We crossed the river, another portion of the forest, and cameover undulating lowlands. 

It was a flight of under half an hour. The pursuit, if indeed anyonefollowed us, remained below our little segment of curving horizon. Everywhere there was evidence of the storm; the forest trees were laidflat, strewn like driftwood over the area. The river had in severalplaces lashed over its banks. The lowlands were dotted thick withglobe-dwellings. Some were hanging awry on their stems; others werepulled from their place, cracked and piled into a litter. 

We kept well aloft. The surface scenes were only glimpses of wreckage, moving lights and people. And there were areas which the wind hadseemingly spared. 

The confusion from the storm was mingled now with the spreading alarmfrom the gravity station; the sound of the danger siren there wasstill audible behind us. As we advanced into what now seemed theoutskirts of a city like Wor, with a pile of solid-looking metalstructures ranging the horizon ahead, I saw a distant spaceship riseup and wing away. Wandl was proceeding with the dispatching of herspace navy to oppose the distantly gathering ships of Earth, Venus, and Mars. No doubt with the wrecking of the control station, themasters of Wandl immediately recognized the paramount importance ofthe coming battle. 

The huge, globular, disc-like ship sailed high over us, rotating withthe impulse of its rocket-streams. In a moment it was lost in thestars. And then another rose and followed it. 

There were many human figures in the air around us now. I mountedhigher, and Snap with the girls followed me. The figures, intent upontheir own affairs, did not seem to heed us. 

Molo's vessel lay alone upon a low metal cradle. No other ship wasnear it; but half a mile away on both sides we could see othersresting on their stages. Lights were moving around and upon them, butthe _Star-Streak_ was dark and neglected. 

We poised a thousand feet over her, and to one side. I saw her as along, low, pointed vessel, dead gray in color, longer than the_Cometara_, and seemingly narrower, but very similar in aspect. 

"Meka and I are supposed to be gathering our crew, " said Molo. "No onebothers with my vessel. Will you take me to Wor now to get Meka?"

"I will not. "

Snap was drifting down with the girls. They were near us. His armwaved at me with a gesture. And then came the muffled tone of hisvoice: "Shall we drop down, Gregg?"

"Yes, but cautiously. Have your gun ready. "

Molo protested, "I would like to take Meka with us, and a few of mycrew. You will have trouble handling the _Star-Streak_, just us threemen. "

"We'll take our chances. "

We dropped swiftly down upon the dark and vacant platform. The grayhull of the _Star-Streak_ loomed beside us, her dome arched stillhigher. An inclined catwalk went up to her opened deck-port. 

"I'll go first, " I said softly to Snap. "Come quickly after me. Watchout: there might be someone on board. "

Venza still clung to her weapon. Mine was in my hand as I lifted Molo. And, ignoring the incline, bounded the thirty feet for the deck-port. I landed safely, and stood Molo upon his feet. "Don't you move, " Iadmonished him sternly. 

He stood docilely against the cabin wall of the superstructure. No onehere. We had thought there might easily be one or two workers onboard. 

Snap and the girls came sailing, one after the other, and landed onthe deck beside me. We stood silent, alert. No one appeared fromwithin the cabin or from the lengths of the deck. Venza was watchingMolo with her weapon upon him. Snap and I had planned this boarding:Anita and Venza to stay here and guard Molo while we searched theship, and inspected the controls. We started for the cabin door oval. 

"Gregg!"

It was all the warning Snap could give. I was within the dim cabin, but he, behind me, was still on the deck. I whirled to see a dozendark forms leaping from the roof of the cabin superstructure. Snap wasall but buried by them. These were not men of Wandl, but Molo's piratecrew, Martians, Earthmen and Venusians. Snap's ray-gun spat as he wentdown; one of the men dropped away. I saw Venza turn with startledhorror, as the huge figure of Meka leaped down upon her and Anita fromthe roof. 

For an instant, weapon in hand, I paused in the doorway. I could notfire into the turmoil of that struggling group, so instead plungedinto it, striking with my fists. 

Molo was shouting, "Do not kill them! I was ordered not to kill them!"

These men, so different from the insect-like workers and the brains ofWandl, were solid in my grip; but we were all so weightless! I felledone, but others gripped me, pounded me. A struggling mass of bodies, arms and legs, we surged up to the superstructure roof and droppedupon it. My weapon was gone. Half a dozen adversaries had me pinioned. 

Down on the deck I saw that Venza had lost her weapon; Molo and Mekawere clutching her. Snap was fighting with several antagonists. Anitawas loose. She dove for the group in which Snap was struggling, hitthem, kicked and bounded upward, to be seized by two of my owncaptors. 

"Anita, don't fight! They'll kill you!"

I tried to break loose, but four huge Martians were holding me. 

"Oh, Gregg!"

There was horror in Anita's voice. Snap had broken away. At the opendeck-port he stood, as though undecided what to do. The deck wasalmost black around him; he was silhouetted against the outsidestarlight. From almost at his side, in the darkness, a tiny bolt spatupward at his head. His arms went wildly out; he tumbled backward. Atthe top of the boarding incline his body seemed spasmodically to kick, and the thrust whirled it down into the darkness. 

The end of Snap! A pang went through me. Snap, my best friend!

Molo cursed the unknown man of his crew who had fired the shot. Butnone would admit who did it. 

"Get to your posts, " Molo roared in Martian. "Enough of you are here. Lash up the prisoners; we're launching away now. " He thumped hisbrawny sister as she passed him. "Well played, Meka!"

These wily Martians! Molo had planned that Meka was to gather the crewand wait here at the ship for him and Wyk. If they returned with us ascaptives, it would be here that they would come. But if by chancethings went adversely, Molo reasoned we would act just as we did; andMeka and her men were lurking here in ambush, waiting for us. 

All the many various ports swung shut. Anita, Venza, and I, with armsand legs bound, were taken by Molo to the forward observation andcontrol room. 

The ship was resounding with signals. The interior controls in thehull-base raised the gravity-pull within the vessel to a strengthcomparable to that of Earth. Within a few minutes the _Star-Streak_lifted from the stage. Strange, weird Wandl fell away from us. Weslid upward through the atmosphere, following one of the globularWandl vessels, and headed into space toward the point where, a fewmillion miles distant, the ships of allied Earth, Venus, and Mars weregathering. 

17

"They are visible. " Molo turned from the eyepiece of hiselectro-telescope. "Do you want to see them, Gregg Haljan?"

We were in the forward control and observation turret of the_Star-Streak_, Molo and his sister Meka, Venza, Anita and myself. Unobtrusively squatting on the floor was a small, gray, rat-facedfellow, put there, weapon in hand, to watch us. He was a ruffian fromthe underworld of Grebhar, a member of the _Star-Streak's_ piratecrew. 

We were some ten hours out from Wandl. A group of four of the globularWandl ships were with us, strung in a line some ten thousand miles toour left. We had been heading diagonally toward Mars. Some fifteenother Wandl vessels were ahead and others following. 

We were no more than fifteen million miles from Mars when Molo sightedthe allied ships. "Will you observe them, Gregg Haljan?"

I moved to take his place at the 'scope-grid, with the gaze of Anitaand Venza upon me. They sat huddled together on a low bench againstthe back curve of the circular turret. 

It was dim here, with little spots of instrument lights, and theradiance coming in the glassite plates of the encircling dome. Theloss of Snap had put a grim look upon the girls. They were dispirited, docile with Meka. They had hardly had a word with me. I think that allof us had about given up hope during those hours. Molo had consultedme several times with his policies of navigation. 

But I saw no chance to trick him. He was indeed, far more experiencedthan I, and more skillful, in celestial mechanics. I worked with him. I learned the operation and the handling of the _Star-Streak_, whichwas not greatly different from the _Cometara_ or the _Planetara_. 

Poor Snap! He and I had planned to capture and navigate this_Star-Streak_. We could have handled her. There were, I gathered, somefifteen men aboard her now, but no more than two or three were engagedat the navigating mechanisms. Even they could be dispensed with attimes, for the ship's controls were all automatic, handled directlyfrom the forward turret. 

I learned too, something, though not much, of the _Star-Streak's_weapons. They were similar to those of the allied ships, since Molo inequipping his pirate craft had seized upon all the best he could findof the three worlds. 

The _Star-Streak_, during this flight toward Mars, was in closecommunication with the Wandl craft. There was a giant vessel, the Wor, off to our left now. It carried the brain master in command of theWandl forces. Molo took his orders from the Wor, but since hisequipment and his weapons were so wholly different, the _Star-Streak_was set apart. 

"I can do what I like, " Molo told me. "With my own judgement I canact; you shall see. "

"You've had plenty of experience, Molo. "

"Have I not! The terror of the starways, your world called me. " Hechuckled vaingloriously. "I must justify it now. "

"Act, do not talk, " Meka commented sourly. "Children with toys makespeeches like that, and then the toys get broken. "

"Fear not, sister. Never again will the _Star-Streak_ come to grief. "

And now I gazed through the 'scope at the waiting allied ships. Theywere lying some eight million miles off Mars. I gazed and saw thepoised little group. There were perhaps fifty of them. The majoritywere Martian, long, low and very sharp-ended, and dull red in color. The wider Earth and Venus ships were silvery and drab. I coulddistinguish the several different types of craft in this hastilyassembled fleet: many converted commercials like my ill-starred_Cometara_; a few rakish police ships; and about a dozen of the long, narrow supermodern warships. It was their first voyage into battle. They had only been built these past few years, by peaceful governmentsthat protested there never again would be another war!

The little fleet was lying waiting for us. It was being augmented byoccasional other ships from Mars. They saw us coming now. The radianceof a Benson curve-light enveloped them, with a shaft toward us. Theimage of them shifted over a million miles to one side. 

Molo laughed when he saw it. "Protecting themselves already! But weare not going to attack them there. "

The first tactics of the Wandl commanders surprised me. We swung awayfrom the course to Mars and headed diagonally toward Earth and Venus. Earth was the nearer to us, with Venus some forty million miles beyondher. For hours we turned in that sweeping curve. Then with our Wandlconvoy following, we headed for Earth. I could not help admiring theway the _Star-Streak_ was handled. She turned more sharply than theWandl craft; and before our next meal, we were leading them all. 

Would the allied ships follow us? It was immediately apparent theywere coming; but from their poised position, hours of attainingvelocity would be needed. The other allied vessels approaching fromVenus and Earth checked their flight and turned after us. We passedwithin five or six hundred thousand miles of several of them. 

I found now that some twenty other Wandl ships, leaving Wandl afterus, had headed directly for Earth. We were all together presently, the_Star-Streak_ and nearly fifty Wandl ships, gathered close to one sideof the Moon. The allies, about a hundred of them, were strung throughspace, scattered, with varying velocities and flight direction, butmost of them endeavoring to get between the Moon and Earth. 

This was the day! I call it that: a routine of meals which Meka grimlyserved us in the turret, and a little sleep when she took the girlsbelow and I lay on the turret floor. I wondered who was in command ofthis allied force, and did not learn until afterward that it wasGrantline. The _Cometara_ had fallen upon the Moon Apennines, not veryfar from where my old _Planetara_ still lay, near the base ofArchimedes. But Grantline and a few of his companions, with theirpowered suits, had struggled free from the gravity pull of thewreckage; and a few hours later, a ship out from Earth picked themup. 

Grantline, on one of the Earth police ships, commanded the fleet now, and he afterward told me in detail how he endeavored to conduct hisforces in the battle, thus enabling me to describe it from bothviewpoints. He had been cruising toward Mars when he saw us make theturn. He thought a landing upon Earth might be planned and hastenedall his ships into the area between the Moon and Earth to cut us off. 

But that was what Wandl wanted. The Wandl ships, with the_Star-Streak_ among them, made a complete slow circuit of the Moon. Ittook another day. Molo said very little to me in explanation of theWandl tactics, but I could see that the object was to lure Grantlineinto following. A few of the allied ships did follow us around, butnot many. The rest stayed carefully guarding the line between the Moonand Earth. 

There had been no encounter yet between the hostile ships. The hugedistances involved in the engagement must be kept in mind. The gravityrays from the Wandl ships were only a slight disturbing element atsuch a long distance; Grantline's Zed-rays and Benson curve-lightswere defensive only. For offence, Grantline's electronic guns andother weapons were of varying range, but none for such distances asthese. 

Wandl seemed unwilling to begin the battle, and Grantline was cautiousas well. He did not know what weapons these strange globular vesselswould use; his only experience had been our encounter with thewhirling discs. 

Then, at the end of the second day, came the first clash. The_Star-Streak_, and all the Wandl ships, were again clustered on theEarth side of the Moon; they were hovering perhaps twenty thousandmiles above its surface. Grantline's force was a hundred thousandmiles off, toward Earth. One of the Wandl ships came tentativelyforward, and Grantline sent one of the new-style warships to meet it. 

They encircled each other. Both were cautious, but there was a passingwithin fifty miles. The Earth ship fired her bolts. The insulatedbarrage of the Wandl ship withstood them. There was a shower of ethersparks close to the ship, and a reddening of the hull, but nothingmore. It seemed that the electro-barrages of the Wandl and alliedships were very similar in nature, an aura of electro-magnetism, enclosing the ship like a curtain fifty feet away, absorbed theelectronic stream of the enemy bolt. The Wandl ship flung no bolts;she loosed a score of the whirling discs during the passing. They wereof varying sizes, but similar to those which cut and wrecked the_Cometara_; in this instance, the Grantline ship was able to destroyeach of them as it came close. 

This was the first encounter. The Earth warship went back to itssquadron and the Wandl vessel rejoined its fellows. It had fired nobolts. Grantline suspected now what afterward proved to be the fact:these Wandl vessels were not equipped with long-range electronic guns. The Wandl defensive tactics were necessary; they feared a widespreadencounter. They were hovering in a compact group, covering a fivehundred mile area, over the Moon surface. Their purpose was not yetapparent, but Grantline saw now that one of the Wandl ships wasdropping down and landing on the Moon. It skimmed the Apennines andlanded not far from Archimedes. 

What was that for? Grantline noticed that the lowering, closely-gathered Wandl fleet tried to mask the landing. And theirgravity-rays, with repulsive force, darted out to impede the Grantlinevessels should they try to advance. 

This Earthward hemisphere of the Moon was now largely in shadow, butGrantline's Zed-ray magnifiers showed the vessel on the Moon. Apparatus was being unloaded. It seemed, down there on the rocky Moonplain in the foothills of the Apennines, that some extensive, elaborate base was being prepared. 

It was for this the hovering Wandl fleet was waiting, holding off fromconflict until this Moon base was ready. When Grantline reached thatconclusion, he ordered all his vessels forward to a general attack. 

18

During this time, on the _Star-Streak_, as we and the Wandl fleet madethat preliminary circuit of the Moon, an incident occurred whichchanged everything for me. I had noticed several times as we gatheredin the _Star-Streak's_ forward turret, that Venza and Anita were eyingme. Their expressions were furtive, but I realized that they weretrying to attract my attention. 

We had no opportunity to speak secretly. Molo or Meka, or thatrat-faced guard, were always too near us; and Molo kept me busy withcomputations of our course. 

We rounded the Moon. We gathered with the Wandl fleet some twentythousand miles above the lunar surface, and I watched that shipdescend and land. Like Grantline, I wondered what for. Molo gave me nohint. I saw, through his 'scope, bloated figures in pressure suitsunloading mechanisms. They seemed to be placing huge contact-discs ina circle on the lunar rocks. It was reminiscent of the Wandl gravitystation, and the contact-beam which Molo had planted in Great-NewYork. 

Then at last the girls had an opportunity to whisper to me. A swiftphrase came from Anita. "Gregg! Snap is alive. Hiding on board. "

I gasped. Snap alive?

"Planning to rescue us. You and he can capture the _Star-Streak_!"

"Anita! Tell me how. "

"No more now! Our room below--he's near it. He spoke to us. "

No more. She moved away from me. But it was enough. Snap alive! Irecalled that when he fell beside the ship, no one had bothered to godown after the body, and at that time the hull-ports were open. 

After a time Meka took the girls below. I sat with Molo, gazing downat the dark and gloomy surface of the Moon. I had finished themathematical work Molo had given me. My thoughts were with Anita andVenza, down in their cabin now with Meka. Perhaps even now Snap wasjoining them. 

I hardly heard Molo's low, muttered curses, as he set his lenses for aslight alteration of our slow circular course among the Wandl fleet. "That fellow at my gravity-shifts acts like a nitwit. He has themdisarranged. "

It snapped me to sudden alertness. "Something wrong, Molo? Nonsense!"

"These men of my crew answer my controls too slowly. They should jumpwhen my signals come. "

The plates suddenly shifted normally, but there had been an intervalof delay. Molo was puzzled and annoyed. My heart pounded as I wonderedif he would investigate. But he did not. 

"You had better sleep, Haljan. Take advantage now; we shall haveaction presently. Did you figure our emerging curve?"

I shoved my computations across the table to him. "There. "

"You are quick, Haljan. "

"We should emerge from the Moon's shadow in about two hours. "

"But I will not hold that course. We're staying close near here withthe other vessels, but I want some velocity always. Take your sleep, Haljan. "

I stretched on the narrow floor mattress. The turret was silent. 

I was aroused from a doze by Molo's activities in the turret. Thegirls and Meka were still below. The ever-silent Venusian, squattingin the turret corner, still had his gun upon me. 

I saw that Grantline's ships, over a wide fan-shaped spread, wereadvancing. 

And presently we were engaged in the soundless turmoil of battle. Icannot relate more than fragments, things I saw and experienced, during six or more hours of bursting electronic light and puffs ofdarkness in that spread of battle area within the Moon-shadow. It wasa silent battle of crossing lights, ships a thousand miles apart, gathering velocity with great tangential curves; passing each other ina second; sweeping a thousand miles apart again; turning and comingback. A hundred engagements. 

The _Star-Streak_ was very fast, very mobile, and, unlike all theother Wandl ships, had the allies' own weapons to use against them. Isaw now why they called Molo the terror of the starways!

We swept into the shadowed battle area. Over all its thousand-milespread were the radiant Wandl gravity-beams, disturbing and impedingthe course of Grantline's ships. There was the luminous gleam ofprojectile rockets, like little comets, soundless, launched by theWandl craft, and the radiance of the rocket-streams which all thevessels were using now for close maneuvering; the glare of Grantline'ssearchlight bombs and his white search-beams to disclose the deadlywhirling discs which the weapons of his vessel must seek out anddestroy. A chaos of silent light, stabbed here and there withGrantline's darkness bombs, bombs of limited local range whichexploded in space and which, for a few minutes duration, absorbed alllight-rays, giving a temporary effect of darkness. 

And then wreckage! Broken, leprous Wandl vessels whose barrage atclose range had been smashed by Grantline's guns; torn and litteredallied ships, struck by the huge exploding comet-projectiles and thewhirling discs; airless hulks, and scattered fragments which no longerresembled a ship at all but only a hull plate or a torn segment ofdome. And little drifting blobs, the survivors in pressure suits whohad leaped from the wreckage; little blobs ignored, whirled away ordrawn forward as by chance the sweeping gravity-beams fell upon them;tiny derelicts, floating stormtossed until the Moon's attractioncaught and pulled them down, or a whirling disc cut through them, orthe distant aura of a bolt shocked them to a merciful death. 

It was a three-dimensional, thousand-mile spread of fantasy infernal. Out of it, after an hour or two, a steady sift of every manner ofwreckage was drifting down upon the Moon. The scene began to blur. Ahaze like glowing star-dust, or the radiance from a comet's tail, wasspreading a weirdly luminous mist, blurring, obscuring the scene. Thiswas the released electrons and the dissipating gases of the space gunsand exploding projectiles, forming dust which glowed in the mingledstarlight and Earthlight. 

The _Star-Streak_ had plunged, during those six or eight hours, through the battle area. Our several encounters were all characterizedby the _Star-Streak's_ extreme flexibility, her speed, mobility, andMolo's reckless skill. We came through unscathed. There is a certainadvantage for the man who seems not to care for his own life. Butthere was an encounter, the last one as it chanced, just before weemerged downward out of the fog and found ourselves no more than athousand miles above the Moon's surface, where our adversary wasequally reckless and only Molo's skill saved us. 

We came upon a Venus police ship. We plunged, as though seeking acollision, and the Venus ship was willing. For a moment of chaos, bothbarrages held against the exchange of bolts. Then we rolled over andtilted down from the impulse of the stern rockets. The passing musthave been within feet, not miles; and in that second, Molo timed ashot to strike at the enemy bottom. It went through their barrage. Behind us, a second later, there was only strewn wreckage of the ship, so finely powdered that it became a silvery radiance, like moonlightshining on a little patch of fog. 

"Not too bad?" Molo gazed around for appreciation. "Not bad, GreggHaljan? Molo is not too unskillful?"

We hung now close above the Moon's surface, with the battle area overus. Out of the fog up there came the drifting wreckage; and now theWandl ships were coming down, one by one. Not so many of them now; nomore than ten of them emerged. 

Grantline did not follow. His ships withdrew the other way. The foggradually dispersed. Grantline could now take stock of the battle; hehad been victorious. One might call it that, since his percentage ofstrength, numerically, was greater now than when the battle began. Tenremaining Wandl ships, and the allies had about twenty-five. 

Another hour passed. Grantline's twenty-five ships were gathered in aclose group, ten thousand miles above the Moon's surface. Under them, the ten Wandl vessels and the _Star-Streak_ seemed ranging in a fivehundred mile circle. Down through it, on the rocks of the Moon in thefoothills of the Apennines, the mechanism established there abruptlysprang into action. 

It was a giant gravity-beam. Of infinitely greater power than anyWandl vessel could generate, it flung out its spreading, conical ray. 

So this had been the purpose of all the Wandl tactics, to manipulateGrantline into his present position. This gravity-beam, though farsmaller, was comparable to the one used by the Wandl control station. A rock contact against a huge mass, Wandl, and here, the Moon werenecessary to give the ray its power. No ship could generate such aray, so the Wandlites chose this battleground where they couldestablish themselves upon our deserted Moon. 

The beam had about a hundred foot diameter at its base on the rocks;it passed upward through the circle of Wandl vessels and its spreadbathed all of Grantline's ships at once. An attractive beam, sopowerful that the ships were helpless; against all their efforts theywere pinned and drawn downward. A slight velocity at first, but with atremendous acceleration. 

Within an hour they were hurtling, coming together as they speededdown the narrowing cone of the beam. The ten thousand miles, theirdistance above the Moon, was cut to five thousand. The Wandl shipsdrew aside, keeping well out of range to let them pass; in anotherthirty minutes they would crash against the rocks. 

I gazed in horror from the _Star-Streak's_ turret. We were sidewise tothe angle of the beam. Grantline's ships were pulled together now intoalmost a fifty-mile group. They hung all askew, helplessly pinned, some broadside, some upended. The movement of their fall was so rapidthat even with the naked eye it was apparent. 

"Got them now, " Molo chuckled. "This is the end for them, GreggHaljan. "

There were only three of us in the turret: Molo and I, and mywatchful, silent guard who sat cross-legged, with a ray-gun pointed atme. 

Meka and the two girls were below during all the engagement. 

It was over now. 

During this lull Molo had sent the men from the deck gun ports totheir hull quarters. Our decks were empty now; the bridges andcatwalks up here had momentarily no occupants. The _Star-Streak_ hadlittle velocity, only a slow drift downward toward the Moon's surface, which now was only a few hundred miles beneath us. 

The lunar disc was a great dark spread of desolation, with only thesunlight topping the distant horizon limb. And from under us, to theside, was the source of the giant gravity-beam. Over us were thewatch-Wandl vessels, and, still higher, the helpless knot ofGrantline's ships hurtling down. 

"Got them now, " Molo repeated. "In another.... "

He never finished. From the open doorway of the turret a figure roseup. Snap! His aspect, even more than his appearance, transfixed me. Snap, with his clothes torn; grimy and spattered with blood; his facepale and gaunt, with hollow, blazing eyes. And above it, the shock ofrumpled red hair. In one hand he clutched a ray-gun, and in the othera blood-stained knife!

My guard squatting on the floor, half-turned. Snap's bolt met himbefore he could raise his weapon. He tumbled dead almost at my feet. And mingled with the hiss of the bolt was Snap's shout at the unarmedMolo. 

"Into the corner, you! Back up, you damned traitor, else I'll kill youas I've killed everyone else on this ship!"

19

I had leaped and seized the gun which was still in the hand of thedead guard. "Snap, the girls!"

"Down below. Free. They've got Meka bound and gagged, locked andsealed in a bunk-room. You bring them up! I'll hold this accursedtraitor. No need to kill him. By the gods, I've killed enough!"

He saw for the first time the vast silent drama in the firmamentoutside the dome windows. "Gregg, for the love of.... "

"No time now, Snap! I'll get the girls. "

"Watch out. I might have missed somebody down below. "

He had. Three men appeared on the forward deck near the foot of ourturret ladder. My bolt spat down upon them; two of them fell. Theother ran aft, toward where I saw Venza and Anita appearing from thelounge doorway of the cabin superstructure. I fired again, and therunning man tumbled forward on his face. He was the last of the piratecrew. 

Molo was crouching, half-bending forward over his instrument table, with Snap's gun upon him. The girls burst upon us. We armed them. Mekawas safely fastened down below. We backed Molo to the floor in thecorner, with Venza and Anita watching him. 

Snap and I were in control of the ship. For temporary periods theautomatics would handle the gravity-shifters. I could operate themhere from the turret. We had a downward velocity toward the Moon. Fivehundred miles below us, no more, was the base of that diabolicalgravity-ray which was so swiftly pulling the twenty-five Grantlineships to their destruction. 

I gripped Snap and told him what we must do. "The forward gun on thestarboard side is almost identical with our Earth guns, the Francineprojectors. With a short range you can handle it and I'll give you aclose mark!"

He dashed for the deck. I set the levers. Gravity-plates with full bowattraction. Stern repulsion to the Earth and the stern rocket-streamsat highest power. 

The _Star-Streak_ responded smoothly; with acceleration such as onlyMolo's famous terror of the starways could attain, we dove for theMoon. 

Breathless minutes! Those Wandl ships up in the firmament behind ourstern would probably do nothing; they would not understand this suddenmove of their friendly ship. The brain masters, the insect-likeWandlites down on the Moon rocks operating the mechanism of thegravity-ray, would not suspect until too late what the _Star-Streak_was doing. 

Uprushing rocks, the Apennines to one side; the dark yawning maw ofArchimedes on the other. We were diving parallel with the gravity-raynow, hardly a mile from it, diving for the mechanisms of its source. Twenty thousand feet of altitude. I bent our rocket-streams up for thestart of our turning. Bow-hull gravity-plates next. Ten thousand feet. Five thousand. 

How close we went I never knew. It was seconds now, not minutes. Ishifted all the controls. Our bow lifted as we straightened. The wholespreading lunar surface tilted and dipped. Snap fired. I saw the boltflash at the tilting landscape and a puff of light down there on therocks. And an instant later there were vacant rocks where the littlecluster of men and mechanisms had been. And the upflung gravity-beamwas gone!

The giant towering cliffs of the mountain of Archimedes seemed to rushat our upturning bow. The great dark crater-mouth slid under our hull. But we cleared it; the maw of blackness slid down and away; the wholelunar world tilted down and dwindled as we mounted again into thestarlight. 

Minutes passed while we mounted. Above our upstanding bow was a newdrama. The suddenly-released Grantline ships, almost level with theten Wandl vessels when the ray vanished, turned sidewise. The poisedWandl craft, devoid of velocity, could not pick up the ray toescape now. Grantline, for those minutes, ignored the franticallyflung discs; it was a desperate encounter, all at close quarters. Wesaw the spitting, puffing lights and the silent turmoil, hiddenpresently by the spreading clouds of luminous fog. 

Then out of it came drifting the wreckage. We plunged through an endof the glowing fog, encountered nothing but two triumphant Venusvessels. With them we mounted into the upper starlight. 

This was the end of the battle. The victorious Grantline ships one byone came lunging up: only twelve of them now. No Wandl vessels wereleft. 

The great spreading cloud drifted down like a shroud to hide thewreckage, drifted and settled to the lunar surface, a great, radiantarea of fog, gleaming in the Earthlight. 

20

There is very little more, pertinent to this narrative, that I needadd of the events on Earth, Venus, and Mars during this momentoussummer. The main facts are history now: the wild storms, the damagedone by outraged nature and the panic among the people--all of it hasbeen detailed as public news. The strange light-beams planted by Wandlin Greater New York, Grebhar, and Ferrok-Shahn have not yet burnedthemselves away. But they are lessening and scientists say that theywill soon be gone. 

The changed calendars call this the New Era. The axis of each of thethree worlds was not appreciably altered; the climates are at lastrestoring to normal. But the axial rotations of all three planets wereslowed by that attacking Wandl beam before we wrecked the gravitystation. The Earth day has been lengthened, resulting in the newcalendar, the New Era. Our year, formerly of approximately 365-1/4days, now contains, but 358. 7 days. 

Molo and Meka have been returned to Ferrok-Shahn. They were triedthere for piracy and treason and are imprisoned. 

And Wandl? With her gravity-controls wrecked, Wandl became subject tothe balancing celestial forces. During those succeeding months of thesummer and autumn no other spaceships appeared from her: nor did ourworld investigate. Her presence here, even a little world one-sixththe size of the Moon, was causing disturbance enough!

Wandl moved with slow velocity, like a dallying, strangely sluggishcomet about to round our Sun. What would her final orbit be? Byfortunate chance she headed in, far from the Earth and Venus; missedMercury by a wide margin; went close around the Sun: came out again. 

But the pull of the Sun, and Mercury dragged her back. Her velocitywas not great enough. 

I recall that late autumn afternoon when, with Anita, Snap, and Venza, I sat in the observatory near Washington, gazing at Wandl through thedark glass of the solar-scope. Doomed invader! She showed now as atiny dark dot over the Sun's giant, blazing surface. This was herfinal plunge. The dot was presently swallowed and gone. It seemed, amid those giant, licking streamers of blazing gas, that there was anextra puff of light. 

And some claim now that for a brief time our sunlight was a triflewarmer, a little pyre to mark the end of Wandl, the Invader. 

 * * * * *

A CLASSIC NOVEL OF INTERPLANETARY WARFARE

There were nine major planets in the Solar System and it was withintheir boundaries that man first set up interplanetary commerce andbegan trading with the ancient Martian civilization. And then theydiscovered a tenth planet--a maverick!

This tenth world, if it had an orbit, had a strange one, for it washeading inwards from interstellar space, heading close to theEarth-Mars spaceways, upsetting astronautic calculations and raisingturmoil on the two inhabited worlds. 

But even so none suspected then just how much trouble this new worldwould make. For it was WANDL THE INVADER and it was no barrenplanetoid. It was a manned world, manned by minds and monsters andtraveling into our system with a purpose beyond that of astronomicalaccident!

It's a terrific novel from the classic days of great science-fictionadventure--now first published in book form. When RAY CUMMINGS tookleave of this planet early in 1957, the world of modernscience-fiction lost one of its genuine founding fathers. For theimagination of this talented writer supplied a great many of the mostbasic themes upon which the present superstructure of science-fictionis based. Following the lead of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, Cummingssuccessfully bridged the gap between the early dawning ofscience-fiction in the last decades of the Nineteenth Century and thefull flowering of the field in these middle decades of the Twentieth. 

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Born in 1887, Cummings acquired insight into the vast possibilities offuture science by a personal association with Thomas Alva Edison. During the 1920's and 1930's, he thrilled millions of readers with hisvivid tales of space and time. The infinite and the infinitesimal wereall parts of his canvas, and past, present, and future, theinterplanetary and the extra-dimensional, all made their initialimpact on the reading public through his many stories and novels. 

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D-449 THE GENETIC GENERAL by Gordon R. Dickson and TIME TO TELEPORT by Gordon R. Dickson

D-453 THE GAMES OF NEITH by Margaret St. Clair and THE EARTH GODS ARE COMING by Kenneth Bulmer

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D-457 VULCAN'S HAMMER by Philip K. Dick and THE SKYNAPPERS by John Brunner

D-461 THE TIME TRADERS by Andre Norton

D-465 THE MARTIAN MISSILE by David Grinnell and THE ATLANTIC ABOMINATION by John Brunner

D-468 SENTINELS OF SPACE by Eric Frank Russell

D-471 SANCTUARY IN THE SKY by John Brunner and THE SECRET MARTIANS by Jack Sharkey

D-473 THE GREATEST ADVENTURE by John Taine

D-479 TO THE TOMBAUGH STATION by Wilson Tucker and EARTHMAN GO HOME by Poul Anderson

D-482 THE WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER by A. E. Van Vogt

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