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Title: The life-masters
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Release date: May 12, 2024 [eBook #73611]
Language: English
Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1929
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE-MASTERS ***
The LIFE-MASTERS
By EDMOND HAMILTON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales January 1930.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The first intimation the world received of the life-masters and of the
doom that they were to loose upon it was contained in a news dispatch
sent out by the great press syndicates from New York in the last week
of May. That first article, a brief one, stated only that during the
last day or so the beaches about the metropolis had been closed to
bathers by reason of a thick scum of clear gray, jelly-like substance
that had been left upon them by the retreating tides. This clear slime,
which exhibited a few signs of rudimentary life and movement, had been
deposited also by the tides upon the sea-walls and dock-piles about the
city, and had been reported too from a score or more of places along
the New Jersey and New England seaboard. These glistening deposits, the
dispatch added, were considered to be in all probability the result of
some sea-migration of a great mass of minute, jelly-like organisms.
That first dispatch, the true sinister importance of which we can
well understand now, was treated at the time as merely one of scores
of other reports of mildly interesting incidents. The phenomenon
was unusual, certainly, but hardly enough so to merit any special
attention. This was evidenced by the small space given the matter by
the New York newspapers on that same evening, most of them according
it but a few inconspicuous lines; though one went so far as to publish
a photograph of the curious onlookers who had gathered to watch the
glistening scum of the stuff, slowly moving and flexing a little now
and then, that had been deposited on the Battery sea-wall. Save for
these casually curious ones, though, and the disgusted bathers who
found themselves barred by it from their favorite beaches, it can
not be said that any portion of the public, even in such seaside
cities as New York, gave the advent of the glistening gray stuff any
consideration on that afternoon and evening. It was not until the
newspapers of the following morning, the 26th, published their later
dispatches on the phenomenon that the world, or the scientific world at
least, began to awake to its extraordinary nature.
Those dispatches converted the matter from a mere unusual incident
into something like a minor sensation. For, according to them, the
deposits of glistening gray slime had been left by the tides not only
along the Atlantic coast but along the Pacific also, and not only along
American shores but upon those of Europe and Asia and Africa, upon
all the shores of all earth's seas, in fact. Upon the jungle-bordered
beaches of the Philippines, and the cold gray Norwegian shores, and the
shelving sands of the Chilean coast, and the rocky cliffs of England,
the retreating tides had left the same thick coatings of jelly-like,
living slime. The phenomenon, whatever its cause, was world-wide,
as those morning dispatches showed, and because of that world-wide
scope was accorded a greatly increased space by the majority of that
morning's newspapers, seeming extraordinary enough to call for greater
attention. And even more extraordinary was it made, later in that day,
by the Barr-McMasters controversy concerning it, that acrid dispute of
scientists about the phenomenon's causes that stirred even the public
into a somewhat greater interest in it.
The controversy was precipitated, with surprizing abruptness, by the
statement made by Dr. Almeric Barr early on the 26th. It was toward Dr.
Barr, whose reputation among contemporary biologists was exceeded only
by that of the brilliant Dr. Herbert Munson of the Starford Foundation,
that the puzzled newspapers had turned when the glistening deposits
had first appeared at New York. They had brought him samples of the
stuff, asking his opinion of it, and his curiosity had been so stirred
that he had undertaken an analysis of it. It had proved, apparently, an
interesting enough analysis, for it was not until the next day that he
had given to the waiting journals any summary of it. When that summary
was published, though, appearing in the noon editions of that day's
papers, it proved a startling one.
The glistening deposits, Dr. Barr stated, were nothing more nor less
than protoplasm, that gray, jelly-like stuff that is the primal
life-substance, the basis of all life upon earth. Protoplasm itself,
he explained, composed of an extremely complex mixture of organic
compounds, had never been analyzed or even partly analyzed, and no
more could these clear deposits be analyzed, but his investigation
had proved without doubt that they were living protoplasm, and not
the minute organisms that had been supposed. The appearance of these
deposits on all earth's shores, he added, meant that great quantities
of protoplasm had appeared in all earth's seas, and that could be
explained in only one way. Protoplasm, the primal life-stuff, had
appeared in earth's seas eons before, its complex compounds built by
some force out of the elements of sea-silt and sea-water themselves.
And if those protoplasmic masses had formed spontaneously out of the
sea's elements eons before, giving rise eventually to all earth's life,
it could only be supposed that similar great protoplasmic masses had
now suddenly formed again in earth's seas in the same way as in the
remote past.
That first report of Dr. Barr's, though puzzling enough to a newspaper
reading public but little interested in talk of organic and inorganic
compounds, proved a sensation in the scientific and especially in
the biological world. The New York biologist's classification of the
clear, jelly-like deposits as protoplasm was, it was admitted, correct;
since by that time scientists in laboratories at London and Stockholm
and Sydney had confirmed independently the fact that the glistening
gray stuff was indeed the basic life-substance of earth. What was not
admitted, though, and what swiftly became the center of as fiery a
scientific controversy as could be recalled, was his contention that
the great masses of protoplasm which had apparently appeared throughout
the seas had been formed spontaneously from the sea's inorganic
elements, as in the remote past. That contention, within hours of the
time his statement was published, became a veritable storm-center of
conflicting scientific opinion.
The opinion of a great mass of biologists was curtly summed up late
in that afternoon by Professor Theodore McMaster, biologist-in-chief
of one of the great Massachusetts universities. "While Dr. Barr is
undoubtedly right in assuming that great quantities of protoplasm have
in some way appeared in all earth's seas," he stated, "his theory that
those masses have formed suddenly out of the sea's inorganic elements
is, with all respect, a crazy one. It is true that in the earth's youth
such great protoplasmic masses did form thus from the elements of
sea-silt, but we know that their process of formation, their change
from inorganic to organic living matter, required eons in itself to
complete, so slow was it. This hypothesis, therefore, that the same
great process has taken place on a world-wide scale within a day or so
is patently absurd. My own theory is that great masses of protoplasm
have existed from the remote past on the sea's floor, and that some
subterranean or submarine convulsion has thrown them up to be scattered
by the tides upon all earth's coasts."
This new theory, it must be admitted, found much greater support in
biological circles than the more radical one of Dr. Barr, but it was
roundly criticized by the latter. The presence of protoplasm in great
masses on the sea's floor, he pointed out, had never been detected by
any of the great oceanographic expeditions of the past, and the stupid
hypothesis of a submarine convulsion could hardly be held when there
was no slightest seismographic evidence of such a convulsion having
taken place within the last weeks. Dr. Barr was supported in these
criticisms by a number of fellow biologists, and so acrid had become
the exchange of opinions by the next day, the 27th, that one of the
great scientific societies, the World Science Association, stepped in.
It proposed to settle the question of the phenomenon's causes to the
satisfaction of public and scientists alike by appointing a committee
of research to investigate it, to be headed by Dr. Herbert Munson of
the Starford Foundation, the most noted biologist of the day.
This was a proposition acceptable to all, for the cold, massive Dr.
Munson's competence and scientific impartiality were unquestioned. The
World Science Association found, however, to its disappointment, that
the brilliant biologist had been absent from the Starford Foundation
for some months. He had established a laboratory at Cone Island, a
little isle of rock and sand off the north Maine coast, it was stated,
and was engaged in research there with a small group of scientists,
which included Dr. Albert Labreau, a famous bio-chemist; Harlan
Kingsford, electro-dynamics expert of the American Electric Company;
Dr. Herman Krauner, the noted German bio-physicist, whose studies of
the biological effects of radio-active vibrations had been the subject
of much discussion; and Dr. Richard Mallett, a rising young cytologist,
who was also of the Starford Foundation.
It was from another of the younger scientists at the Foundation, Dr.
Ernest Ralton, that the Association had secured this statement of Dr.
Munson's whereabouts, and Ralton had offered, moreover, to fly north
in his plane to the island and lay the Association's request before
the famous biologist. This offer had been at once accepted, for it
was not doubted that Dr. Munson's passion for experimentation would
cause him to accept the chief place on the committee of research. Late
on the afternoon of the 27th, therefore, announcement was made from
the World Science Association's office that Ralton had left in his
plane for the island, and that when he returned with Dr. Munson the
Association's committee of research would be formed and would start its
investigations.
This announcement, though it caused the disputing biologists to await
keenly Dr. Munson's return, proved unexciting to newspapers and public,
whose first half-interest in the phenomenon had begun to wane. The
newspapers, indeed, in publishing the Association's announcement
humorously suggested that the whole controversy over the origin of
some slime on the world's beaches was a battle between tweedledum and
tweedledee. And the public, with a guffaw or a smile, assented. The
whole thing merely went to show the craziness of scientists--thus
did common sense deliver itself, that evening. Common sense was not
to suspect, certainly, what strange craziness it was that lay behind
the appearance of that glistening slime. Common sense was not to
dream, until it awoke to the thunder of crashing worlds, what terrible
craziness it was that had loosed upon humanity with that glistening
scum a titanic tide of dreadful death which even at that moment was
surging slowly upward to sweep across all the world.
2
Just before midnight on that same night it was, less than a dozen hours
after the Association's announcement, that the horror broke upon the
world. Had the thing come gradually upon us, place by place and event
after event, it would be possible to give some consecutive account of
it, now. But, crashing down upon almost all the astounded world at the
same moment as it did, the very scope of it makes futile any efforts to
describe completely the terror of that world when it awoke to doom. It
is enough, indeed, if we can give some impression of its action at such
a city as New York, for there, of all places, its horror was the most
intensified.
The accounts of the thing's coming to New York are almost numberless,
and it is from one of these, that of Edward Worley, that we find what
is perhaps our most vivid picture of the thing. Worley's account, to
which he has given the somewhat banal title of _My Experiences in the
Life Horror_, not only gives us a description of the first coming of
the horror at New York, but summarizes in fact the action of the thing
over all the world. For as it was in New York that night, so it was in
a thousand seaside cities in that same hour, and what Worley saw in its
streets was seen by millions of horror-stricken men in that same night.
The magnitude of the thing was greater at New York, but the horror was
the same, as Worley indeed points out.
This Edward Worley figures unconsciously in his own narrative as a
somewhat commonplace individual, a middle-aged person, the greater part
of whose days had been spent in the adding and subtracting of figures
in a Broad Street broker's office. To avoid crowded subways, as he
tells us, Worley had taken rooms in one of the narrow lodging-houses
jammed in here and there east of the financial section, at Manhattan's
lower extremity. It was this fact that conspired with circumstances to
project Worley into the very heart of the terror's first coming. For,
a half-hour before midnight on that fateful night of the 27th, he had
decided that a short stroll through the warm spring air would be a
pleasant one, and his steps had led him southward toward the Battery's
little open park.
It was an hour, that just before midnight, when the southern end of
that great island-mass of structures that is New York lies beneath a
silence and a loneliness supernatural, almost. So it seemed to Worley,
at least, strolling southward in the warm spring night through the
silent streets, from one pool of corner lamplight to another, between
the towering, vast buildings that loomed into the darkness on either
side. Those buildings, the center of unparalleled activity in the hours
of day, lay as silent beneath the white spring stars as though they
were the still unbroken ruins of some mighty, deserted city. Northward,
from the midtown section, a glow of light against the sky told of the
life that still surged through the crowded streets there, but Worley,
strolling on, met none save an occasional policeman who eyed him keenly
beneath the corner lights. Then within moments more puffs of fresh salt
air came to his nostrils, and he was passing out between the last of
the great buildings, out beneath the looming tracks of the elevated
and into the silent little park.
As Worley tells it, he had strolled half-way across the darkened park,
toward its southern sea-wall's rail, before he sensed that anything
unusual lay before him. The gleaming waters stretching out into the
darkness, the gliding lights of small craft here and there upon them,
the other far-flung blinking lights of Brooklyn and the Jersey cities,
away to left and to right--these were all that engrossed his attention
in those first moments. Then, as he drew within yards of the southern
rail, he stopped abruptly short. He had glimpsed, suddenly, a great
glistening wet mass that lay at the sea-wall's edge, ahead of him, and
that seemed to be slowly moving.
"It was," he says, "just as though someone had dumped a great mass of
glistening gelatin at the park's edge, wet and gleaming there in the
light of the few scattered bulbs about me. All along the park's edge,
along its sea-wall, that glistening mass stretched, hanging down over
the wall into the lapping sea-waters, and as the stuff seemed slowly
moving I thought it for that moment to be pouring down into the sea
beneath. Then as I stood there, gazing at that smooth-flowing movement
of the gleaming stuff, I saw something that made me rub my eyes in
amazement. The glistening masses were not flowing down into the sea at
all, I saw, but instead were flowing _up_ from it!"
For a moment of utter astonishment Worley stood still, gazing toward
the stuff. A gray, glistening mass, it was pouring slowly and smoothly
up over the wall's edge, from the sea beneath, flowing steadily up onto
the surface of the park and adding to the great, gleaming mass of the
stuff that lay already all around that park's sea-edge! The thing was
unprecedented; it was incredible, and for a moment that seemed unending
to Worley, he stared toward those shining, gathering jelly-like masses
that were flowing and flexing and writhing a few feet before him.
Then suddenly a great, thick loop of the glistening jelly--a great
_arm_--projected itself out from the gliding masses and darted straight
toward him!
It was that that finally broke the spell of Worley's stupefaction,
for as the great arm looped toward him he staggered back, giving
unconscious utterance to a high scream. At that same moment of utter
horror, he says, by some strange trick of the mind there had flashed
across his brain remembrance of the feebly moving clear slime that
had been found on beach and sea-wall in the last days, but that
fleeting thought dissolved for the moment in the stark horror that
now filled him. Another great looping arm had shot out beside the
first, lengthening smoothly and swiftly toward him, while the gliding,
jelly-like masses from which both projected were flowing toward him,
across grass and paving--great glistening, amorphous bulks a full yard
in height, now, gathering greater bulk each moment by the masses that
still were flowing up from the waters over the park's wall to add to
them. Worley, though, had seen this in but a single dazed glimpse, for
as the second arm had shot toward him he had stumbled backward again,
crying out, and then was running weakly toward the park's north end.
* * * * *
From beneath the overhung elevated tracks, as he ran toward them, there
leapt to meet him two blue-coated figures, one with a pistol gleaming
in his hand, and at sight of the policeman whom his cries had summoned
Worley became incoherent in his horror.
"Coming out of the water over the park!" he could only tell
them hoarsely, gesturing toward the southern end. "Gray
jelly-stuff--protoplasm like it said in the newspapers--masses of it
coming out----"
The two surveyed him doubtfully a moment, then, peering into the
darkness at the park's lower end, began to walk slowly in that
direction, their weapons outstretched. His heart pounding rapidly
Worley watched them vanishing into the darkness. There was a moment
of silence, a silence in which the rattle of a train far to the north
came preternaturally loudly to his ears. Then he heard a sudden sharp
exclamation from the darkness southward, and the next moment the
darkness was split by a spurt of flame and the deafening rattle of
shots. Then, against the gleaming waters beyond, he glimpsed great arms
flashing upward like dark, mighty tentacles, and as they flashed down
again the shots ceased, there were sharp screams, suddenly cut off,
and then silence again. Worley, trembling, gazed still down into the
little park, and after a moment saw movement there, a slow movement
approaching him. Finally it came within the radiance of the nearer
lights, and he saw that it was the great, glistening, gray masses,
flowing smoothly across the park toward him, flowing up as smoothly
still from the waters around it, and that in the clear, jelly-like bulk
gliding toward him were held, like flies in amber, the dark, twisted
bodies of two men!
With that sight a daze of horror settled upon Worley's brain. He was
dimly aware that he was racing unsteadily northward from the park,
through the darkened, silent streets, that from somewhere else behind
him were coming other screams, the high screams of a woman, this time,
and that from away across the waters to the east had come suddenly
other faint, agonized cries. He heard as though from a great distance
a sudden babel of shouts and screams that swept along the great city's
edges like spreading flame, heard bells jangling suddenly out to add to
that uproar. By then he had staggered eastward into the district of his
own lodgings, moved by unconscious habit, but as he stumbled down one
of those narrow streets eastward a sudden rising uproar a few blocks
ahead of him brought him to a stand-still. Then, the first swirling
mists of horror lifting from his brain, he stared down along the narrow
street.
Along its darkened length only circular patches of light at
intersections were visible to him but now he saw, fleeing into those
light-areas toward him, a growing mob of half-dressed people who were
pouring from the bordering buildings into the street, running wildly
with gesticulating hands and with hoarse cries of animal fear. Far
down the street, almost to the waterfront eastward, Worley could see
that growing mob pouring forth, fleeing toward him, and then he saw,
too, what was behind them and what they fled from so wildly. For at
the narrow street's eastern end there was rolling smoothly toward
him, and after those fleeing figures, a great, glistening gray wave,
waist-high, a gliding mass of gleaming jelly-stuff that stretched
across the street's width and flowed effortlessly after the fugitives,
great looping arms forming from it and reaching forth to draw them back
into its glistening masses, that flowed smoothly onward with those
fugitives' bodies in their grip!
Remembrance of half-read newspaper articles flashed again over Worley's
brain in that moment. "Protoplasm!" he cried, unconsciously, again.
"Masses of it--and sweeping-up over all the city!"
For in ever-increasing floods the gray, glistening masses of protoplasm
were rolling forward, from the waters eastward; were surging through
the narrow streets with that fear-crazed mob fleeing before them; were
flowing swiftly and smoothly into buildings, from the interior of which
came terrible shrieks; were shooting forth great tentacle-arms of their
own jelly-like substance to catch and draw back the weeping little
figures that fled before it. A mighty, mindless, brainless, nerveless
monster, a great wave of living protoplasm that was sweeping-up and
flowing through streets and buildings to lick them clean of all life!
From southward, and from westward, were coming screams and cries as
other great waves poured through the streets, as out over the doomed
great city there poured from the waters about it that mighty tide of
death!
[Illustration: "A great wave of living protoplasm swept through the
streets, licking them clean of life."]
Worley leapt back, suddenly, as down the street from behind him there
roared a long police-car, the fleeing mob ahead splitting to both sides
as it thundered through. It skidded to a stop but yards from that
advancing, glistening wave, and Worley saw blue-coated figures tumbling
from it, staring in an amazement of horror at the great gleaming wave
of protoplasm rolling toward them, then recovering themselves and
lining swiftly across the street before it. Then there came the swift
sharp drumming of powerful riot-guns, spraying tearing steel bullets
into that advancing wave. At the same time came the dull detonation of
grenades, hurled into the glistening masses, and for a moment Worley
stared down toward them in sudden leaping hope.
But the flood of protoplasm rolled onward, unchecked, unheeding. The
bullets that tore through its jelly-like masses left holes that closed
instantly of themselves. The bombs that exploded in those masses
splashed them violently to every side, but in the next moment the
glistening fragments had flowed smoothly forward of themselves; had
joined together again in a solid flood; were sweeping resistlessly
forward. Before the men lined across the street could comprehend the
fact that the thing before them could not be killed, or even hurt, by
human means, the wave had advanced upon them; a myriad tentacle-arms
had whipped out of it toward them; and then it had gripped and had
rolled over them, was gliding still smoothly on with their dark bodies
visible in its clear gray masses.
* * * * *
Never afterward could Worley remember clearly the things that befell
him in the next moments. He knew that with that sight a final mad
frenzy of utter horror and despair had settled upon him, that with
those other fleeing figures he was stumbling through the narrow
streets toward the northward and the one chance of escape from the
death-trap that the island had become, but his impressions of those mad
moments were always hazy, dim. Striking, trampling, pushing, he and
the panic-driven mobs about him fought their way through the choked
streets, through the darkness of that dread night, while ever behind
them, from south and east and west, there glided upon their track the
mighty wave of protoplasm, calm, smooth, effortless, sweeping out over
the island's tip and up through its narrow streets, absorbing into
itself steadily the exhausted fugitives who fled before it, advancing
northward and inward from the city's sides with its vast, glistening
masses still steadily increased by the floods of protoplasm pouring up
from the encircling waters.
To Worley, then, it was as though he was pushing his way onward through
the fear-choked nightmares of some terrifying dream. The hoarse shouts
of the fleeing thousands who were pouring forth from all the city's
buildings to flee northward about him; the frantic clanging of bells
and screeching of whistles; the thunder of bombs and crack of rifles as
the city's defenders sought in vain to halt those gliding, irresistible
masses; the agonized shrieks of those who fell before the great wave
of death, of those trapped by it in buildings or in blind streets;
the faint, far roar of panic that came from the other cities west and
eastward; these merged in his mind into one mighty, unceasing bellow
of utter terror.
For how many hours Worley had fought his way northward through the
horror-driven millions that surged through the night of the city's
streets before he reached at last the island's northern heights, he
could not guess. There, pausing and swaying in a doorway while the
roaring crowds surged ever by him toward the Harlem River bridges that
were the sole gates of escape from the island of death, he peered
southward through the darkness. The great city, a far-flung mass of
blinking lights, stretched before him, its streets alive here and there
with other moving lights, with the mobs that surged wildly northward to
escape from it, and from whom arose a dull, far roar of fear. Farther
southward, though, in the midtown and lower sections, no lights moved,
and there arose no cries, for there, surging up about and across the
island like a great tide of utter silence and death, there rolled the
mighty protoplasmic masses, sweeping all before them as they poured
still up from the bordering seas, gliding onward in a single gigantic,
glistening wave. As Worley turned and fought northward again with the
crazed mobs that filled the streets, it came to him dully to wonder
whether on all earth was any place of refuge from those mighty,
mindless masses that had rolled out so suddenly and strangely from the
sea.
Had Worley but known it, as he struggled northward through the last
hours of that dread night, it was not at New York alone but on all
the shores and in all the seaside cities of earth that humanity was
fleeing at that moment before the protoplasmic tides of death. Up from
all earth's seas at the same hour, the same moment almost, had rolled
the same mighty glistening waves, flowing upward and sweeping out over
mighty cities, and through tiny villages, and over lonely, barren
beaches--gigantic glistening protoplasm masses gliding at the same hour
through the streets of London, and of Yokohama, of Copenhagen and of
Miami, in a thousand cities sweeping humanity in fear-mad mobs before
them.
Doom! It was the word that was flashing already from city and village
by the sea to those inland, the word that was bursting across an
astounded and horror-stricken world in those dread hours. The mighty
waves of protoplasm, whatever their unthinkable origin, were unstopped,
were unstoppable. Bullet and bomb and knife were harmless to them.
High-explosive shells had scattered the waves only to have them in
another moment join again, and military batteries hastily summoned had
fired round upon round until they had been wiped out by those calmly
advancing floods. Planes had swooped to bomb them with no greater
effect than the shells. Gas had no effect upon these living floods.
Onward, outward, they rolled, mighty glistening masses flowing upward
from the sea to sweep across all the earth.
Doom! Man was facing it, and the reign and existence of man, with every
horror-filled message coming by clicking wire or unseen radio-wave.
England had become a death-trap, the mighty waves of protoplasm rolling
in from all its coasts. India and Malaya were infernos of superstitious
fear and horror as their crowded populations fled before the tides
of death. African and Australian coasts were overwhelmed with the
advancing glistening masses. The Panama isthmus had been covered by the
protoplasm, severing the two American continents. Great ships at sea
and in port had been dragged down into the depths by the up-reaching,
towering masses. Doom! For ever, in those dread hours before the dawn,
the calmly advancing waves were sweeping inland from every coast to
cover all the world, and ever absorbing into their glistening masses,
as a jelly-fish might absorb infusoria, thousands upon hundreds of
thousands of fugitives, drawing them within its mindless living masses
and rolling remorselessly on. Dawn of day found all the organizations
of man crumbled before the doom closing upon them, all the world's
millions in blind, horror-stricken flight before the protoplasmic tides
of death. The thing was eating up humanity!
3
It had been late on the afternoon of the 27th, less than a half-score
hours before the breaking of that great terror upon the world, that
young Ernest Ralton had sped away to the northeast in his plane, toward
the barren little island retreat of Dr. Munson and his associates.
It was not primarily to see Munson, of whom he stood in some awe,
that Ralton had offered to make the trip, but to visit young Dr.
Richard Mallett, his particular friend, whom he had not seen since the
departure of the Munson party for the island some months before. The
request of the Association had given him a valid excuse for making
the trip, however, and so, slanting up above Manhattan's massed and
sky-flung towers Ralton had circled once and then headed away into the
gray haze northward.
Hour followed hour while the gray New England coast slid back like a
great map beneath him, the sun sinking ever to the horizon westward as
he roared on. Hardly conscious of more than the steady, even song of
the motor and the rush of wind about him, Ralton checked his progress
automatically by the natural features of the coast below him, and at
last was flying northward over the tangle of deeply indented bays and
islands that forms the Maine coast, veering outward from it over the
gray waters to the east, and peering intently for Cone Island. The sun
had dipped to the horizon, by then, but he knew from Mallett's account
that the island should be clearly discernible by reason of the gigantic
squat cone of rock that rose from its level sands.
Dusk was dropping upon the world, though, and Ralton had become
slightly anxious before he glimpsed it at last, a huge, dark, squat
cone, its broad summit flattened as though by some giant hand, that
seemed to rise directly out of the gray waters miles from the coast.
It was with a feeling of some relief that he sent his plane circling
down toward the place, and as it loomed larger beneath him in the
failing light he scanned it closely. The island itself, he saw, was
roughly circular, perhaps a dozen miles across, a barren, level
stretch of sands from whose center the great squat cone of rock arose,
a curious formation frequent on such islands and carved out by the
wind-driven sands. The cone's steep sides of rock, almost vertical,
could not be more than a few hundred feet in height, Ralton estimated,
but its broad, flat summit was several times that in diameter. And
now, as he wheeled down toward that summit, he saw that upon it were
the laboratories of the men he sought, long, low buildings of white
concrete grouped in a rough circle about the summit.
The circle enclosed by the buildings, though, save for some great
looming object at the center which he could but vaguely make out, was
clear and flat, and seemed to Ralton of sufficient extent to permit the
landing of his little plane. Carefully wheeling again over the place,
he spiraled slowly down toward it. Even through the dusk he could see
that no human figures were visible beneath, though from one of the
buildings came a white spark of light. Downward still he circled,
therefore, until at last he was dipping gently into the open clearing
at the summit's center, running along over its smooth rock surface
for a few seconds and then coming to a stop just before one of the
encircling buildings. A moment more and Ralton had clambered forth and
stood gazing into the dusk about him.
It was apparent that his coming had not yet been noticed, since he
had cut off the plane's motor high above, and no one had yet emerged
from the buildings about him. He glanced around them uncertainly, then
started across the open clearing toward one at the opposite side,
from whose door and windows came the white light he had glimpsed from
above. Half-way across the clearing, though, he slowed, came to a stop.
He had halted before the great object at its center which he had but
vaguely glimpsed from above, but which now, looming a few feet before
him, was so extraordinary in appearance as to turn all his interest and
attention upon it for the moment.
It was a great globe, a giant sphere of burnished metal fully fifty
feet in diameter, resting upon a massive metal pedestal that had been
sunk into the rock. From the top of the great globe a thin, needle-like
rod of metal, tapering to a point, projected perpendicularly upward,
while from the pedestal-base a network of connections ran to some
two or three of the long, low buildings about the summit. From these
buildings came the throbbing of unceasing mechanisms of some sort, but
from the globe itself arose only a fine, incessant hum, hardly to be
heard, though giving to Ralton in some way an impression of terrific
power. At the point where the myriad black-covered connections ran into
the globe's base there rose beside it, on a tripod of metal standards,
a box-like black-gleaming object upon whose face were set a dozen or
more glass-fronted dials, their needles trembling with the power racing
through them; a series of switches and automatic circuit-breakers; and
a single bulbous black knob which moved up and down a vertical slot in
the switch-board, apparently.
The sides of that slot, Ralton saw, were finely graduated, the
knob-lever resting almost at its bottom. Near the slot's top small
white letters inset beside it spelled "Ultra-Hertzian Vibrations." An
inch or so beneath, beside the slot in similar lettering, was "Hertzian
Vibrations." Beneath that, in turn, "Light Vibrations," "Heat Radiation
Vibrations," "Radio-active (Gamma) Vibrations," then "Cosmic Ray
Vibrations," at which the black switch-knob rested, and lowest of all
a simple zero. Ralton stared at the thing in astonishment. It was the
entire range of etheric vibrations that was lettered in order there
before him, he knew, from highest to lowest, but for what reason? This
great globe-mechanism, what could biologists be doing----
A cry from behind whirled him about, a cry of fierce rage from the
door of the white-lit laboratory building beyond him. Framed in that
doorway stood a massive-figured, gray-haired man, eyes burning and face
contorted as he saw Ralton, while from the white-lit room behind him
other figures were surging forward.
Ralton took a quick step toward them. "Dr. Munson!" he said, eagerly,
advancing toward that massive figure, then stopped. For Munson and the
others, with inarticulate cries of rage, had leapt forward toward him!
He shrank instinctively back, heard the massive leader of the group
crying, "Get him back--back from that condenser!" Then before his dazed
understanding could credit what was happening the others were upon him,
and flung him sidewise to the ground. Ralton, uncomprehending still
but in an instinctive revulsion of antagonism, struck fiercely out at
them, felt one or two give back before his blows, strove to struggle
up to his feet. Then he heard another commanding shout from Munson, in
the background; something hard crashed down upon his head and sent
blinding light through his brain, and he knew no more.
* * * * *
Consciousness, when it finally came back to him, informed him first of
two things, that his head was aching violently, and that he was lying
on some hard surface in a dark and quiet place. He stirred a little,
opened his eyes. It was a corner of a bare and empty concrete-walled
room that he lay in, a dim radiance of starlight coming in through
two barred windows in its walls. Then, as he strove to sit erect, he
glimpsed a dark figure gazing outward through one of those windows, a
figure that turned at his sound of movement and came swiftly across the
room toward him, crouching down beside him and supporting him. Even in
the dimness of the room and through his dazed senses Ralton recognized
the other, and he gasped at sight of him.
"Mallett!" he whispered. "Good God, Mallett--what has happened here?"
The other's voice was high and strange. "Steady, Ralton," he told him.
"You've come into the heart of a hell, here--and Munson and the rest
the fiends."
"But what are they doing--Munson and the others?" Ralton asked dazedly.
"I came up here in my plane--hours ago, it seems--to bring a message to
Munson----"
And briefly he told Mallett of the phenomenon of the protoplasm
deposits that had brought him north to the island.
Mallett listened, silently, broodingly. "That protoplasmic slime," he
said, finally, "you knew of it, the world knew of it, but who knew what
lay behind it, what was to come of it, what has already come of it?"
The face of Ralton expressed his bewilderment, and the other lifted him
suddenly to his feet, toward one of the metal-barred little windows at
the room's corner.
"Down there, Ralton," he said, pointing downward and outward into the
starlit night. "That is what has come--what is coming--out of the
thing, in these last hours that you've lain here unconscious. That is
what is coming now over all the world."
Ralton stared downward, uncomprehendingly. The building of which the
room was a part was located at the very edge of the great cone's
summit, and from that window he could look far across the level sands
of the little island, lying pale beneath the dim starlight, away to the
foam-fringed line of the shore. Up and out from the shore now, though,
he discerned what seemed a mighty glistening gray wave creeping in over
the level sands, a thick, gleaming, jelly-like mass rolling in toward
the central cone. He turned toward Mallett, deeper bewilderment on his
countenance.
"That great gray wave, Mallett!" he exclaimed. "It can't be----"
"Protoplasm?" the other said. "Protoplasm like that found on the
world's beaches? But it is, Ralton, a great wave of living protoplasm,
rolling out of all earth's seas in a great tide of death across the
earth! _And Munson and the others outside are the ones who have loosed
it on the world!_"
Ralton felt his already dazed brain turning at the other's words,
but before his stunned astonishment could find expression Mallett
had gripped his shoulder, was crouching again with him in the room's
corner, speaking on.
"You know, Ralton, how Dr. Munson and the other four of us came up here
to Cone Island, hardly more than a half-dozen months ago. Surely a
strangely variegated assortment of scientists we must have seemed for
a biologist to take with him. Labreau, the bio-chemist; Kingsford, the
electrical expert; Krauner, the bio-physicist; and I, the cytologist,
the cell-specialist; a strange enough quintet we were, but one whose
combined knowledge one would think could solve any scientific problem.
And it was for that purpose that Dr. Munson had assembled us. He wished
to solve a problem, one that is indeed and always has been the greatest
of all scientific problems. And that problem was the origin of life
itself.
"How did life first originate upon this earth? That is a question to
which biology, the science of life, can answer nothing. We know that
once the earth was a fiery furnace in which no life could exist, and
that somehow after its cooling there rose in its primeval seas the
first life, protoplasm, the basic life-stuff of which all earth's
living creatures are built, from which all have come on the road of
evolution. Protoplasm arose, somehow, from the elements of sea-silt,
its complex compounds formed by some strange force out of those
elements. What force it was that had driven the process on, that
had caused the formation of those first great masses of protoplasm
in earth's seas, no biologist has ever been able to say. But Munson
believed that he could discover that force and prove his discovery, and
when he outlined his plan to us we leapt at the chance. He had fixed
upon this island, Cone Island, as the place for our researches, both
because of the seclusion we desired and for another reason he disclosed
later; so gathering all the equipment and supplies we would need we
came here.
"It was in a tug chartered at Boston that we came, bringing with us
workmen and supplies for the erection of these laboratory buildings.
At Dr. Munson's direction they were built here upon the great cone's
summit, though so steep are the rock sides that only by means of metal
ladders set in the rock could we ascend and descend from the sands
below. The greater part of our time, however, we planned to spend up
here, and so the buildings were run up here and all of our great cases
of equipment, and supplies swung up. Then, with the leaving of the
tug, we put our equipment in order and began our work, on the plan that
Dr. Munson had outlined to us.
"It was Dr. Munson's belief that the change from the inorganic element
of sea-silt into the organic, living compounds of protoplasm had been
accomplished by the driving force of certain etheric vibrations.
You know, of course, that the chemical combinations of elements are
profoundly affected in myriad ways by such vibrations. The vibrations
of radiant heat, for instance, will break many compounds down into
their original elements, or build up new ones. Those of light will
affect others in the same way, and as Professor Baly of Liverpool
showed in his famous experiments, are responsible more or less for the
change from inorganic to organic living matter in the case of plants.
Electro-magnetic, that is Hertzian or radio vibrations, can affect
the very atomic structure of certain metals. Radio-active or gamma
vibrations have a profound power of disintegrating or breaking down the
great majority of chemical compounds. All these we tested, but in none
of them did we find the vibration whose force would cause the building
up of protoplasm's organic compounds from the sea-silt inorganic
elements. It was only when we tried the last remaining etheric
vibration known, the most recently discovered of all, the cosmic ray
vibrations, that we succeeded at last.
"You know, Ralton, that the cosmic ray vibrations are the shortest
in wave-length of all the etheric vibrations, ranking just below the
radio-active waves. First comprehensively studied but a few years
ago by Dr. Millikan, the cosmic rays have been found to permeate
all space, shot forth from the white-hot furnaces of stars just as
heat-vibrations and light-vibrations are shot forth. And it was the
cosmic ray vibrations, we found, that had in past ages built up the
organic compounds of living protoplasm from inorganic elements of
sea-silt. To prove that, we had devised a mechanism, or rather it had
been devised by Kingsford and Krauner, which condensed and concentrated
any etheric vibration. It was a small globe-condenser, and when set to
the correct wave-length would attract and concentrate all vibrations
of that wave-length for a great space around it. If we set it to the
wave-length of Hertzian vibrations, for instance, it attracted and
condensed them into a concentrated ray; the same with radio-active
vibrations; the same with cosmic ray vibrations. And it was this we
used to produce a concentrated shaft of the cosmic ray vibrations,
turning it upon a container of sea-silt and sea-water from the island's
beach. In the remote past, we reasoned, the cosmic ray at its natural
intensity had during long ages formed protoplasm out of the sea's
elements. Now, using a cosmic vibration millions of times concentrated
by the condenser, the process should take but a proportionate time,
should require but days instead of ages.
"We succeeded, Ralton! Almost at once the sea-silt in the container
began to change beneath the concentrated vibrations, giving forth
a thin, clear slime that gradually began to show signs of life, of
movement. But a day or two it had taken that slime to form from the
sea-silt, and in another day or two it was no longer slime but living
protoplasm, a mass of it there in the container. And when it had
developed under the concentrated vibrations to a certain stage of life,
of power, it began to flow from the container, moving blindly out of it
in search of food, a mindless thing of protoplasm that we had created
out of inorganic matter! By concentrating the cosmic ray vibrations we
had done within days what had required eons in the past!
* * * * *
"Upon that protoplasm mass we experimented for days. We found that just
as the cosmic ray vibrations could build its complex compounds up from
the sea's elements, so could the radio-active vibrations disintegrate
it, break its compounds down again into those elements. When we turned
with our condenser a concentrated radio-active vibration upon the mass
of protoplasm it crumbled and shriveled away almost instantly into
gray powder, its original elements lying before us in the form of that
powder. The radio-active vibrations, indeed, when concentrated, could
disintegrate the protoplasm in a moment, whereas it required days for
the cosmic ray vibrations to build it up, and this greater power we
held to be due to the greater wave-length of the radio-active impulses.
We saw, too, that that accounted for the fact that during the ages no
great masses of protoplasm had been built up by the cosmic rays, since
the radio-active vibrations counteracted them enough to prevent the
forming of such masses.
"We had succeeded, and I was eager to return to the world with our
success, but Dr. Munson refused! The long, intense work of years that
he had gone through, the super-human eagerness with which he had sought
this success, the killing strain of our toil for it--all these I think
had unhinged his brain, had changed him into a monomaniac, and the
other three with him. 'We five are the masters of life!' he told us.
'We have done what only gods were ever thought to do, have created
life from the non-living! We can, by building a greater condenser,
concentrate the cosmic ray vibrations from a vast part of space on
earth, and cause protoplasm floods to form in all earth's seas in
giant masses, protoplasm masses that will inevitably, when they reach
a certain development of life and power, sweep out over earth in blind
movement and search of food, wiping out forever all the blotches of
flesh that make up humanity! Then we can destroy all those protoplasm
floods in a moment by switching the condenser to the radio-active
vibrations, and can people the world with the forms of life that
we think best, can people it with beings over whom we shall reign
supreme--the life-masters--the creators--the gods!'
"The thing was madness, madness the more terrible because we could
actually do the thing, and I recoiled in horror. The other three,
though, driven on by the strange craziness of soul, the monomania, that
filled Munson, like him regarded themselves as gods, as life-masters,
and agreed to his mad plan. Before I could more than protest, before
I could even attempt escape from the island, they had seized me, had
prisoned me in this empty storeroom, guarding its windows with metal
bars and assuring me that I was only preserved until they might need me
for further experimentation. They were mad, Munson and the others, yet
it was even to me an explicable madness, for I too had felt the same
terrific pride as they at the thought that we had actually created life
from the non-living, and that terrific pride it was that had driven
them now on their evil plan to become life-masters of all the world.
"Swiftly then they went about their work, building up a great condenser
many times larger than our small one but similar in design, a great
globe-condenser that stands in the center of the clearing there and
that took them weeks to complete. Through one of my windows here I
watched it growing beneath their hands, while night and day, four
burning-eyed madmen, they labored upon it, driven on by Munson's mad
purpose of soul. At last, days ago, it was completed, and at once they
put it into operation. The great knob-switch, on its switch-board,
regulated the wave-length of the etheric vibration it attracted and
condensed, I could see. While at the bottom, or at zero, it attracted
no vibration, was not in operation. Moved up to the wave-length of
the cosmic ray vibrations it attracted those vibrations, drawing them
inward from a tremendous region of space to concentrate them in a
great sheath of intensified vibrations upon all the earth, penetrating
through all its seas.
"Already in those seas, I knew, the cosmic ray vibrations, millions
of times intensified, would be beginning their work, would be forming
great masses of protoplasm in inconceivable quantities out of the
inorganic sea-silt's elements. Days more would loose those gigantic
tides of death upon the earth, I knew, when they had been developed
by the rays to a certain stage, and I raged with despair in my prison
while outside the four exultantly watched their work. Striving to
escape from my prison, knowing that if I could but smash or turn off
the great condenser I might yet prevent the loosing of those protoplasm
floods, I worked desperately with the bars of one of my windows. They
had been hastily set into the concrete wall with cement, and now with
odd bits of metal left to me I chipped and scratched at that cement,
endeavoring to loosen one of the bars. But I could do little with it,
and one by one the days passed, until I knew that today would see the
protoplasm tides rolling out upon earth, knew that by then they would
have reached a stage of development and life to enable them to do so.
"The four outside--Munson and the others--knew, too, for I saw them
exultant, and so, hours ago, I gave up in utter despair my work at
the bar, lapsing into sleep from which I was aroused by an uproar in
the clearing. I saw then that you had come to this island of hell
unheeding, and that the four madmen outside had seen you at the
condenser, had with mad fury at the thought of harm to their work
knocked you senseless, thrusting you in here with me. And now, in
these hours that you have lain unconscious, I could see the work of
Munson and the others coming at last to its completion, could see in
the starlight, as you have seen, the first protoplasm floods rolling
out from the sea onto the island's sands. They can not reach the great
cone's summit, of course, since Munson had our laboratories built upon
the summit so that any work we desired could be carried out unhampered
on the sands below. But they are not only pouring out over this island,
they are pouring out over the shores of all earth's seas, while we
talk here, through the great cities and over all the lands of earth.
They will roll on, new gigantic tides of protoplasm formed unceasingly
by that great condenser outside and loosed upon earth, until Munson
and the others have swept man and all the races of men from earth,
until the protoplasm tides themselves have been destroyed by them and
there is left a lifeless world over which the life-masters shall rule
supreme!"
4
Ralton sat unmoving, unspeaking, when the whisper of Mallett's voice
had ceased. The other had risen, and he felt himself swaying to his
feet, looking strangely about the little room, and then into his
friend's tense eyes. No sound save the fine, half-heard hum of the
great globe in the clearing broke the stillness of the great cone's
summit, and as the two stood there it seemed to Ralton that that
stillness, that silence, had suddenly become thunderous in his ears.
"Protoplasm," he heard himself saying. "The whole world----"
And then as swift pictures rose in his whirling brain the reality of it
all came sharply and abruptly to him. "Mallett!" he cried, in a half
whisper. "If I had known when I stood at that condenser-control!"
Mallett's eyes were suddenly eager. "But if there's still a chance!"
he was muttering. "Even now--if the two of us could get out of
here----"
He turned swiftly toward the windows, Ralton beside him. Through the
narrow, barred opening of one of them, gazing downward they could see
vast masses of the gray, glistening protoplasm towering upward against
the great cone's steep, smooth sides of rock, rolling upward and
falling back in vain endeavor to flow up over the sides and summit of
the cone as they had done over the rest of the island, in their blind,
mindless search for food.
Mallett gestured swiftly toward those upward-striving masses.
"They can't flow up the cone's steep sides," he said. "Munson knew it
when he loosed them on the world. But turning off the condenser now
will not destroy those protoplasm masses, nor those over all the world."
"But how----?" Ralton began, to be interrupted by the other.
"Our only chance is to switch the condenser's control," he told him
swiftly, "to turn it from the cosmic ray vibration wave-length to the
radio-active vibration wave-length. Then instead of attracting and
concentrating the cosmic ray vibrations on all earth it would do so
with radio-active vibrations and would disintegrate and destroy the
protoplasm instantly."
They had turned toward the other window, the one that gave upon the
clearing, and gazing through it into the open space they could see that
no one moved in it, could hear faintly the voices of Munson and the
others, and the occasional tap of tools, from the white-lit laboratory
building to the right, which was out of their line of vision. Open
and unprotected lay the great condenser at the clearing's center,
its vast globe gleaming dully, its glass-faced dials on the black
switch-box reflecting the starlight faintly. As they watched, one of
those from the laboratory, a dark, intent figure that Ralton recognized
as Kingsford, the electrical expert, approached the box, inspected
the dials, and then as though satisfied turned back to the laboratory
building from which he had come, and from which in another moment they
could make out his voice again. Mallett turned swiftly toward his
friend.
"They're busy on something," he said, excitedly, "and if ever we're to
try for a break now is the time."
Swiftly he produced from his pockets a few odd bits of metal that he
had rudely sharpened upon the room's concrete sides, and with these the
two began the slow digging and scratching at the cement at the base of
one of the bars which was their single chance for freedom. It seemed
to Ralton that though they worked madly at the painful task they were
making no impression upon the hard cement, in which Mallett had during
the past days made some shallow cuts, but still they toiled on at it,
hands bruised and bleeding, while the great condenser in the clearing
hummed on, and the star-groups above wheeled slowly down toward the
west with the near approach of dawn.
In the time that followed, a time that seemed unending to Ralton's
dulled senses, they were mocked by the unyieldingness of the cement
upon which they worked, and only by continued toil could they make
even shallow scratches upon the rough cement. Around the bar's base,
silently and unceasingly, though, they worked, hands bloody now, while
there came still the occasional murmur of voices from the laboratory
building to the right which they could not see. In the clearing the
great condenser lay unprotected as ever, but as they worked on it
seemed that they were no nearer freedom, and now a gray tinge of light
in the dark skies above was bespeaking the coming of dawn. Once, from
the window, Ralton glimpsed the gleaming masses at the great cone's
base, still surging upward, and saw that they had managed to gain a
hold half-way up its steep sides and were vainly and blindly striving
to pour still farther upward.
It was not those glistening floods on the barren island below, however,
that were central in the thoughts of Mallett and Ralton as they worked
on at the bar, bloody and blind with sweat, all but exhausted; it was
those other gigantic floods that both knew were even then sweeping over
coasts and islands, engulfing the peoples of earth as they rolled on.
Neither spoke of that; neither spoke at all as they labored on with all
their waning force at the stubborn bar, but the thought was as though
visible between them, spurring all their strength into their efforts.
And at last, when the dawn-light was strengthening swiftly eastward,
they had scratched away the cement from one side of the bar's base, and
straightened up, all but exhausted.
"It's all we can do!" panted Mallett. "Our only chance is to get the
bar out now--if we wait longer it'll be broad day."
The two paused a moment, then gripped the bar, braced themselves
against the concrete wall, and put all the strength of their muscles
into a great pull inward. Ralton heard the muscles of himself and his
friend cracking beneath the strain, and closing his eyes with the
agony of that effort, felt the bar stir a little in their grip. But
when they straightened, inspected it quickly, they found that hardly
had they loosened it. Again they gripped it, again threw all their
strength into a mighty pull, and this time felt it give perceptibly in
its socket. Neither could speak, for the moment, and Ralton saw his
friend breathing in great gasps, as he was also; but only for a moment
they paused, then gripped the bar again. Another tremendous effort--a
giving of the bar--and then, with a harsh, shrill squealing of the iron
against the cement, it had come out completely from its socket.
* * * * *
For the moment the two leaned motionless against the wall, breathless
and exhausted but listening with pounding hearts to ascertain whether
that last shrill squeal of the bar had given the alarm to Munson and
the others. The faint voices from the laboratory, they noted, had
apparently ceased, but there was no sound of alarm, and no one appeared
in the clearing or within sight of their prison-room. Then, after
that moment's pause, Mallett had pulled himself upward, was squeezing
through the window between bar and wall, and in a moment Ralton had
followed him. Crouched on the ground beneath the window, the gray light
of dawn growing over the cone's summit, Mallett pointed across the open
clearing to where stood the mighty globe-condenser and its unprotected
switch control.
"The control!" Mallett was whispering thickly. "If we can get to
it----!"
They stepped forward, stealthily, silently. No sound came from any
part of the cone's summit, save for the great condenser's half-heard
hum. Another step--another. Slowly, carefully they crept on, out from
the shelter of their prison and the long building beside it, into
the great circular clearing. Ralton's blood was pounding through his
veins, for now the gleaming condenser lay but a few hundred feet ahead,
at the clearing's center. Should he make a rush for it and trust to
chance to get him to the condenser's control in time? He discarded the
idea, even as Mallett and he crept forward; for within moments more
their stealthy, silent progress would bring them to their goal. Within
moments more----
"Your strategy, Mallett, is somewhat infantile, I fear!"
_Munson's voice!_ Cool and mocking, it cut like a sword through their
whirling thoughts and the two spun about, then recoiled. Out from
the open door of one of the buildings behind them had stepped the
massive, coldly smiling scientist, a heavy automatic in his grasp
turned upon them. From between the other buildings, to right and to
left of the clearing, had stepped the other three--Labreau, Kingsford,
Krauner--their own pistols trained upon the two. Still hundreds of
feet from the condenser, Ralton knew, with finality, in that moment,
that never could they make it, never could they reach it with the
steel-nosed bullets of four guns tearing through their bodies. That
noise the bar had made had roused the four, had brought them pistols
in hand to watch mockingly the two before them. The gray-haired,
mocking-eyed Munson, the dark face of Labreau, contorted with insane
rage; the gloating Kingsford, his strong, intellectual face twisted
now as though by some devil's hand; the coldly indifferent countenance
of the blond-haired Krauner, whose eyes yet burned madly behind his
gleaming glasses--all these faces appeared to be slowly turning about
Ralton in that seemingly eternal moment.
Munson's voice came to his ears again. "It has been something of
a comedy to watch your clumsy progress," he mocked them, "though
unfortunately we can not allow you, of course, to proceed any farther."
His voice rose suddenly, the cords of his neck swelling with fury as
all amusement left him. "You fools! You try to wreck the greatest
scientific experiment ever conducted on this earth; try to save a
humanity, a race, as trivial as yourselves from the doom which we, the
masters of life, have decreed for them; try to make impossible the new
races which we life-masters shall give earth when the protoplasm floods
have swept all other life away!"
Then, as abruptly as that burst of insane fury had blazed up it calmed,
and the mocking gleam returned to his eyes. "Humanity is passing, even
now," he told them, "and as for you two--I think it best that you pass
with it----"
Ralton saw his pistol raised a little to bear full upon them, saw in
that infinitesimal instant the guns of the others upon them as their
hands tensed about their grips, their fingers about the triggers. In
that flashing instant it seemed to him that those black muzzles had
become, somehow, mighty round dark doorways down which he and all the
world were thundering to their doom. It was the end, for him as for the
world. The whole scene seemed withdrawn suddenly to a great distance,
made suddenly remote, in that instant before death leapt upon them. It
was the----
There was a sudden wild scream from Munson, wild shrieks from the
others, and Ralton came back to complete reality to see that the madmen
were rushing wildly toward great gray glistening masses of jelly-like
stuff that had flowed suddenly up over those edges, and were gliding
swiftly over it!
_The protoplasm masses below were pouring up onto the summit!_
* * * * *
Ralton and Mallett swayed there, stunned, transfixed; saw Munson and
the others fling themselves insanely upon the forward-gliding masses;
saw those masses tower up suddenly beneath that mad, fierce attack
and then crash down upon the struggling men, burying them in their
glistening folds; saw the insane struggle of the four ceasing abruptly
in swift suffocation, saw those masses leaping glidingly forward toward
themselves, great glistening arms forming and looping out toward them!
It was that which broke the spell for the two, and they flung
themselves toward the great condenser, still yards away, hurled
themselves toward the control, the great arms looping toward the
staggering two. Ralton heard a cry from Mallett, felt him jerked back
from his side by one of those arms, but did not look back even in that
instant, flinging himself madly on toward the control. He was within a
dozen feet of it, a half-dozen--was almost within reach of it--and then
another great glistening arm had looped lightning-like from the masses
behind and had caught and held him in its cold grip, while upon him and
upon Mallett swept the gleaming floods from which those arms had shot
out!
Ralton felt that cold, terrific grip about him, pulling him backward,
the shining masses behind gliding swiftly upon him, and as they did
so he put his last strength into one supreme effort, straining with
a final mad burst of strength toward the control-knob just before
him. Beneath that super-human effort the relentless grip that held
him relaxed a little for an instant, and in that instant Ralton's
forward-straining fingers had just touched the control-knob, had
flicked it sharply upward from the white letters at which it stood
to those just above, from the cosmic ray vibrations to those of the
radio-active vibrations.
The next instant it seemed to him that over all the world there lay a
sudden, tremendous stillness, a complete and utter cessation of all
movement and sound, as the grip that held him, the gray masses that
had been rushing forward upon him and upon Mallett paused, halted,
hesitated. Then, as he swayed there, he felt the grip relax and
disappear, saw dazedly that the translucent arm about him had changed
oddly, had shriveled suddenly, crumbled into a smear of gray powder
that fell to the ground! And the mighty masses behind him, the great
tides of protoplasm on the cone's summit and sides, and those he could
see out over the island's level sands far below, all had crumbled, too,
disintegrated in that same moment, and where they had been was but a
thick coating of fine gray powder! Gray powder in the coating of which
behind them lay the dark, twisted bodies of Munson and the others! Gray
powder that lay, he knew, over all earth where the protoplasm masses
had been but a moment before, that lay in city and on land, the sole
remaining evidence of the gigantic masses which the great condenser
with its concentrated cosmic rays had built up over all earth and
which with its concentrated radio-active rays it had in the same way
destroyed! Gray powder, that alone remained of the greatest and most
terrible menace ever to challenge the existence of man and the world of
man!
Ralton staggered to Mallett's side, half led and half dragged his
friend, still dazed, toward his plane that stood still untouched at the
clearing's other side. Into its front cockpit he helped him, turned
a switch and whirled the propeller. Another moment, and with motor
roaring the little plane was speeding across the clearing, lifting
sharply upward into the growing light of dawn, speeding away from the
giant cone and island, over the gray waters toward the south.
South--south--Ralton, with hands on the controls and with head thrown
weakly back, let the plane find its own track through the upper air as
it roared on. Swaying drunkenly, it flashed southward high above the
clean gray sea, with the clean salt air rushing cold against his face
and that of Mallett before him. And still toward the south he raced,
with the gray light of dawn to his left changing to gold as the rising
sun lifted above the horizon. South--south----
The world ahead of him, which had been saved from doom at the last,
not by Mallett and him but by fate, was not in Ralton's thoughts as he
thundered on. Nor were the explanations of that doom and that escape
which only they could give to rejoicing humanity. He wanted only, in
that moment, to race farther and farther from the island of hell that
was dwindling in the waters far behind them; wanted only to speed
farther and farther from the dark, gigantic cone upon the gray-strewn
summit of which there lay the twisted bodies of the men who had
planned to be the life-masters of the world, and whose plans had reaped
but death.
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