August 1930 Read online

  * * * * *

  He smiled brightly upon them.

  "But though in tiny quantities it has but little effect, in larger quantities--when fresh it makes the functioning of the gray cells of the human brain as far superior to the unmedicated gray cells, as those human gray cells are to the white cells of the ape! That is what I have to offer to the human race! Intelligence for every man, which shall be as the genius of the past!"

  He laughed softly.

  "Think, Senores! Compare the estate of men with the estate of apes! Compare the civilization which will arise upon the earth when men's brains are as far above their present level as the present level is above the anthropoid! The upward steps of the human race under my rule will parallel, will surpass the advance from the brutish caveman to intellectual genius. But I have seen, Senores, the one danger in my offering."

  There was silence. Jamison shook his head despairingly. The Master could not see him. He formed the word with his lips.

  "Crazy!"

  * * * * *

  But Bell said coldly:

  "Go on."

  "I must rule," said The Master soberly. "It is essential. If my little secret were known, intelligences would be magnified, but under many flags and with many aims. Scientists, with genius beside which Newton's pales, would seek out deadly weapons for war. The world would destroy itself of its own genius. But under my rule--"

  "Men go mad," said Bell coldly.

  The Master smiled reproachfully.

  "Ah, you are trying to make me angry, so that I will betray something! You are clever, Senor Bell. With my little medicine, in such quantities as I would administer it to you...."

  "You describe it," said Bell harshly and dogmatically, "as a brain stimulant. But it drives men mad."

  "To be sure," said The Master mildly. "It does. It is not excreted from the body save very, very slowly. But it changes in the blood stream. As--let us say--sugar changes into alcohol in digestion. The end-product of my little medicine is a poison which attacks the brain. But the slightest bit of unchanged medicine is an antidote. It is"--he smiled amiably--"it is as if sugar in the body changed to alcohol, and alcohol was a poison, but sugar--unchanged--was an antidote. That is it exactly. You see that I have taken my little medicine for years, and it has not harmed me."

  "Which," said Bell--and somehow his manner made utter silence fall so that each word fell separately into a vast stillness--"which, thank God, is the one thing that wins finally, for me!"

  * * * * *

  He stood up and laughed. Quite a genuine laugh.

  "Paula," he said comfortably, "get on the plane. In the cabin. Jamison and I are going to strip The Master."

  Paula stared. The Master looked at him blankly. Jamison frowned bewilderedly, but stood up grimly to obey.

  "But Senor," said The Master in gentle dignity, "merely to humiliate me--"

  "Not for that," said Bell. He laughed again. "But all the time I've been hearing about the stuff, I've noticed that nobody thought of it as a drug. It was a poison. People were poisoned. They did not become addicts. But you--you are the only addict to your drug."

  He turned to Jamison, his eyes gleaming.

  "Jamison," he said softly, "did you ever know of a drug addict who could bear to think of ever being without a supply of his drug--right on his person?"

  Jamison literally jumped.

  "By God! No!"

  The Master was quick. He was swarming up the plane-wing tip before Jamison reached him, and he kicked frenziedly when Jamison plucked him off. But then it was wholly, entirely, utterly horrible that the little white haired man, whose face and manner had seemed so cherubic and so bland, should shriek in so complete a blind panic as they forced his fingers open and took a fountain pen away from him.

  "This is it," said Bell in a deep satisfaction. "This is his point of weakness."

  * * * * *

  The Master was ghastly to look at, now. Jamison held him gently enough, considering everything, but The Master looked at that fountain pen as one might look at Paradise.

  "I--I swear," he gasped. "I--swear I will give you the formula!"

  "You might lie," said Jamison grimly.

  "I swear it!" panted The Master in agony. "It--If the formula is known it--can be duplicated! It--the excretion can be hastened! It can all be forced from the body! Simply! So simply! If only you know! I will tell you how it is done! The medicine is the cacodylate of--"

  Bell was leaning forward, now, like a runner breasting the tape at the end of a long and exhausting race.

  "I'll trade," he said softly. "Half the contents of the pen for the formula. The other half we'll need for analysis. Half the stuff in the pen for the formula for freeing your slaves!"

  The Master sobbed.

  "A--a pencil!" he gasped. "I swear--"

  Jamison gave him a pencil and a notebook. He wrote, his hinds shaking. Jamison read inscrutably.

  "It doesn't mean anything to me," he said soberly, "but you can read it. It's legible."

  Bell smiled faintly. With steady finger he took his own fountain pen from his pocket. He emptied it of ink, and put a scrupulous half of a milky liquid from The Master's pen into it. He passed it over.

  "Your medicine," said Bell quietly, "may taste somewhat of ink, but it will not be poisonous. Now, what do we do with you? I give you your choice. If we take you with us, you will be held very secretly as a prisoner until the truth of the information you have given us can be proven. And if your slaves have all been freed, then I suppose you will be tried...."

  * * * * *

  The Master was drawn and haggard. He looked very, very old and beaten.

  "I--I would prefer," he said dully, "that you did not tell where I am, and that you go away and leave me here. I--I may have some subjects who will search for me, and--they may discover me here.... But I am beaten, Senor. You know that you have won."

  Bell swung up on the wing of the plane. He explored about in the cabin. He came back.

  "There are emergency supplies," he said coldly. "We will leave them with you, with such things as may be useful to allow you to hope as long as possible. I do not think you will ever be found here."

  "I--prefer it, Senor," said The Master dully. "I--I will catch fish...."

  Jamison helped put the packages ashore. The Master shivered. Bell stripped off his coat and put it on top of the heap of packages. The Master did not stir. Bell laid a revolver on top of his coat. He went out to the plane and started the motors. The Master watched apathetically as the big seaplane pulled clumsily out of the little cove. The rumble of the engines became a mighty roar. It started forward with a rush, skimmed the water for two hundred yards or so, and suddenly lifted clear to go floating away through the air toward the north.

  * * * * *

  Paula was the only one who looked back.

  "He's crying," she said uncomfortably.

  "It isn't fear," said Bell quietly. "It's grief at the loss of his ambition. It may not seem so to you two, but I believe he meant all that stuff he told me. He was probably really aiming, in his own way, for an improved world for men to live in."

  The plane roared on. Presently Bell said shortly:

  "That stuff he has won't last indefinitely. I'm glad I left him that revolver."

  Jamison stirred suddenly. He dug down in his pocket and fished out a cigar.

  "Since I feel that I may live long enough to finish smoking this," he observed dryly, "I think I'll light it. I haven't felt that I had twenty minutes of life ahead of me for a long time, now. A sense of economy made me smoke cigarettes. It wouldn't be so much waste if you left half a cigarette behind you when you were killed."

  * * * * *

  The tight little cabin began to reek of the tobacco. Paula pressed close to Bell.

  "But--Charles," she asked hopefully, "is--is it really all right, now?"

  "I think so," said Bell, frowning. "Our job's over, anyhow. We go up the Chilean coast and find that navy boat. We
turn our stuff over to them. They'll take over the task of seeing that every doctor, everywhere in South America, knows how to get The Master's poison out of the system of anybody who's affected. Some of them won't be reached, but most of them will. I looked at his formula. Standard drugs, all of them. There won't be any trouble getting the news spread. The Master's slaves will nearly go crazy with joy. And," he added grimly, "I'm going to see to it that the Rio police take back what they said about us. I think we'll have enough pull to demand that much!"

  He was silent for a moment or so, thinking.

  "I do think, Jamison," he said presently, "we did a pretty good job."

  Jamison grunted.

  "If--if it's really over," said Paula hopefully, "Charles--"

  "What?"

  "You--will be able to think about me sometimes," asked Paula wistfully, "instead of about The Master always?"

  Bell stared down at her.

  "Good Lord!" he groaned. "I have been a brute, Paula! But I've been loving you--" He stopped, and then said with the elaborate politeness and something of the customary idiotic air of a man making such an announcement. "I say, Jamison, did you know Paula and I were to be married?"

  Jamison snorted. Then he said placidly:

  "No. Of course not. I never dreamed of such a thing. When did this remarkably original idea occur to you?"

  He puffed a huge cloud of smoke from his cigar. It was an unusually vile cigar. Bell scowled at him helplessly for a moment and then said wrathfully:

  "Oh, go to hell!"

  And he bent over and kissed Paula.

  (The End.)

  The Flying City

  By H. Thompson Rich

  [Sidenote: From Space came Cor's disc-city of Vada--its mighty, age-old engines weakening--its horde of dwarfs hungry for the Earth!]

  In the burning solitude of the great Arizona desert, some two miles south of Ajo, a young scientist was about to perform an experiment that might have far-reaching results for humanity.

  The scientist was Gordon Kendrick--a tall, tanned, robust chap who looked more like a prospector in search of gold than a professor of physics from the State University of Tucson.

  Indeed, he was in a way, a prospector, since it was gold he sought--some practical method of tapping the vast radio-energetic treasure of the sun--and it was an apparatus designed to accomplish just this that he was about to test.

  The primary unit of the mechanism comprised a spheroidal vacuum-tube measuring a little over a foot across its long axis, mounted in a steel bracket that held it horizontal with the ground. Down through its short axis ran a shaft on which was centered a light cross of aluminum wire, carrying four vanes of mica, one face of each coated with lampblack. A flexible cable led from the bottom of this shaft to the base of the bracket, where it was geared to a small electric motor driven by two dry cells. A rheostat-switch for delivering and controlling the current was mounted nearby.

  At the wide arc of the egg-shaped tube was a concave platinum cathode, at the narrow arc a nib of some sort, ending in a socket. From this socket, two heavy insulated wires extended sixty feet or so across the sand to the secondary unit of the mechanism, which was roughly a series of resistance coils, resembling those in an ordinary electric heater.

  * * * * *

  As Kendrick prepared to test this delicate apparatus that represented so much of his time and thought, held so much of his hope locked up in it, a turmoil was in his heart, though his brown face was calm.

  If his theories were right, that revolving cross would tap and draw into its vanes radio-energetic waves of force, much as the whirling armature of a dynamo draws into its coils electro-magnetic waves of force. For the blackened sides of the vanes, absorbing more radiation than the bright sides, would cause the molecules to rebound from the warmer surfaces with greater velocity, setting up an alternate pressure and bringing the rays to a focus on the cathode, where they would be reflected to the nib as waves of heatricity, to use the word he had coined.

  Those were Kendrick's theories, and now he moved to put them to the supreme test. Switching on the current, he set the motor going. In response, the cross began to revolve, slowly at first--then faster, faster, as he opened the rheostat wider.

  Eyes fixed on his resistance coils, he gave a sudden cry of triumph. Yes, there was no doubt about it! They were growing red, glowing brightly, whitely, above the intense desert sunlight.

  Here was a means of convening solar radiation into heat, then, that offered tremendous commercial possibilities!

  But even as he exulted, there came a blinding flash--and the overtaxed coils burst into flame.

  * * * * *

  Shielding his eyes from the glare, he reached for the rheostat, shut off the current, rushed to his secondary unit--where he beheld an amazing sight. Not only had this part of the apparatus completely disintegrated, but the sand of the desert floor under it as well. On the spot quivered a miniature lake of molten glass!

  As Kendrick stood ruefully beside that fiery pool, meditating on the spectacular but not altogether gratifying results of his experiment, a peculiar low humming sound reached his ears. Rushing back to his primary unit, with the thought that perhaps by some chance he had not fully closed the rheostat, he looked at the cross. But no, the vanes were still.

  The humming increased, however--grew into a vibration that made his eardrums ache.

  Puzzled, he looked around. What on earth could it be? Had his unruly experiment called into play some tremendous, unsuspected force of the universe. Was he to bring the world to ruin, as a result of his blind groping after this new giant of power?

  Such predictions had often been made by the ignorant, to be dismissed by scientists as the veriest nonsense. But was there some truth in the universal fear, after all? Was he to be the Prometheus who stole fire from Olympus, the Samson who toppled down the temple?

  Chilled, dizzied with the pain of the ever-increasing vibration, he gritted his teeth, awaiting he knew not what.

  Then it came--a spectacle so staggering that he went rigid with awe as he regarded it, all power of motion utterly numbed for the moment. The vibration ceased. The thing appeared.

  It was a city--a city in the air--a flying city!

  * * * * *

  As Kendrick stood staring at this phenomenon, he could scarcely credit his senses.

  Had the magic carpet of Bagdad suddenly materialized before him, he would not have been more astounded. And indeed, it was in a way a magic carpet--a great disclike affair, several miles in diameter, its myriad towers and spires glinting like gold under the noonday sun, while its vast shadow fell athwart the desert like the pall of an eclipse.

  The lower portion, he noted, was in the main flat, though a number of wartish protuberances jutted down from it, ejecting a pale violet emanation. Whatever this was it seemed to have the effect of holding the thing motionless in the air, for it hovered there quite easily, a hundred yards or so above the ground.

  But what was it? Where was it from? What had brought it?

  Those were the questions he wanted answered; and they were to be, sooner than he knew.

  As he stood there speculating, a device like a trap-door opened in the base of the disc, and creatures resembling human beings began descending. Began floating down, rather.

  Whereupon Kendrick did what any sensible man would have done, under similar circumstances. He reacted into motion. In short, he ran.

  * * * * *

  Glancing back over his shoulder after a minute or two, however, he drew up sheepishly. Of that strange apparition and those who had descended from it there was not a trace, not a shadow!

  But the peculiar humming had recommenced, he realized in the next breath--and at the same instant he felt himself seized by invisible hands.

  There was a struggle, but it was brief and futile. When it was over his captors became visible once more. They were singular little beings about four feet tall, with strange, wise, leathery faces, their heads grotesquely bal
d.

  The humming had ceased again. The disc, too, was once more visible.

  What happened next was something even more astounding, if there could be any further degrees of wonder possible for the utterly baffled young scientist. He felt himself lifted up, leaving the desert floor, whirling away toward that incredible phenomenon hovering there.

  Another moment or two and he had been borne up through its trap-door opening, was standing in a dark space bounded by solid metal walls. Then he was thrust into a cylinder with several of his tiny guards, shot swiftly upward.

  * * * * *

  A door opened as they came to rest, and he was led out into a vast court of gleaming amber crystal. Something like a taxi slid up, with irridescent planes, and he was bundled into it, whirled away again.

  Down broad, gleaming avenues they passed, where similar traffic flowed densely, but under marvelous control. Towering skyscrapers loomed to right and left. Tier on tier of upper and lower boulevards revealed themselves, all crowded with automotive and pedestrian activity.

  At length a stupendous concourse was reached. Thousands of these taxis and similar vehicles were parked along its broad flanks, while literal swarms of diminutive individuals circulated to and fro.

  Assisted from the vehicle that had brought him to this obvious center of the disc's activities. Kendrick was led into a monumental structure of jade-green stone that towered a full hundred, stories above the street level. There he was escorted into another of those projectilelike elevators, shot up, up--till at length it came to rest. The door opened and he was led out into a small lobby of the same amber crystal he had observed before.

  By now his guards had diminished to two, but he no longer made any effort to escape. Wherever this amazing adventure might lead, he was resolved to follow it through.

  One of the guards had advanced to a jewelled door and was pressing a button. In response, the door opened. A golden-robed, regal creature stood there.