A brand new world

By Ray Cummings

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Title: A brand new world

Author: Ray Cummings

Release date: January 2, 2026 [eBook #77608]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: The Frank A. Munsey Company, 1928

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BRAND NEW WORLD ***




                           A Brand New World

                            By Ray Cummings

             Copyright 1928 by The Frank A. Munsey Company

          _A new planet in the solar system! And in its wake
         come mystery, danger--and a most amazing confusion._

    This story appeared originally in The Argosy All-Story Weekly,
              beginning serialization September 22, 1928.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Famous Fantastic Mysteries September 1942.]




                               CONTENTS


                      I. THE COMING OF THE WORLD
                     II. THE WHITE GIRL IN THE MOONLIGHT
                    III. THE CROWNING TERROR
                     IV. ZETTA
                      V. CRIMSON SOUND!
                     VI. "IF I HAD BUT KNOWN!"
                    VII. MYSTERIOUS STAR, IMPERTURBABLY SHINING!
                   VIII. FROM ACROSS THE VOID
                     IX. PIONEERS INTO SPACE
                      X. LANDING TO FACE THE UNKNOWN
                     XI. "UNDER GARDENS"
                    XII. AT DAWN
                   XIII. "EMPEROR OF THE EARTH!"
                    XIV. BRAVE, FOOLISH LITTLE ZETTA!
                     XV. GRAFF'S TREACHERY
                    XVI. ON OUR WAY TO CONQUER THE EARTH!
                   XVII. PLANNING THE CONQUEST
                  XVIII. THE EARTH AT BAY!
                    XIX. RED MADNESS STALKING THE EARTH
                     XX. THE NIGHT PROWLERS
                    XXI. A NEST OF VERMIN
                   XXII. PEACE ON EARTH




[Illustration: As if affected by laughing gas, thousands of people were
seized with an insane mirth, following a period of strange depression.
A world gone mad! Actions were aimless, horror and suicides were
spreading everywhere! And always that terrible laughter. . . . What
would happen to the human race?]]




                               CHAPTER I

                        THE COMING OF THE WORLD


The new Star was first observed on the night of October 4, 1952,
reported by the Clarkson Observatory, near London. A few hours later
the observers at Washington saw it also; and still later, it was found
and identified as unknown upon one of the photographic plates of the
great refracting telescope of Flagstaff, Arizona. By observers at Table
Mountain, Cape Town, and the observatory near Buenos Aires, it was not
seen, for it was in the northern heavens.

The affair brought a brief mention in the Amalgamated Broadcasters'
report the next day; and the newspapers carried a few lines of it on
their back pages. Nothing more.

I handled the item. My name is Peter Vanderstuyft. I was twenty-three
years old, that autumn of 1952, a newsgatherer for the Amalgamated
Broadcasters, attached to the New York City headquarters. The item
meant nothing to me. It was the forerunner--the significant, tiny
beginning--of the most terrible period of the history of the earth;
but I did not know that. I tossed it over to Freddie Smith, who was
with me in the office that night.

"Father's staff has found a new star--wonderful!"

But Freddie's freckled face did not answer my grin. For once his
pale blue eyes were solemn. "Professor Vanderstuyft phoned me from
Washington awhile ago. It sure seems queer."

"What's queer?" I demanded.

Then he grinned. "Nope. Your father says you'd sell your soul for a
news item. When we've got anything important to tell the world--we'll
tell you."

"Go wrap up an electric spark," I informed him.

He grinned again and went back to studying his interminable blue
prints--his "thermodyne principle," as he called it, for a new heat-ray
motor. Father was financing him for the patents and working model.
Freddie was father's assistant in the Washington Observatory. But he
was off duty now in New York arranging for the manufacture of his model.

This was in October. I was tremendously busy. A sensational murder
case developed, and I was sent out to Indiana to cover it. A woman
had presumably murdered her husband and a couple of children, but it
looked as though she were going to be acquitted.

She was a handsome woman, and a good talker. She was taking full
advantage of the new law regarding free speech, and every night from
the jail she was broadcasting little talks to the public.

       *       *       *       *       *

October passed; and then November, and still I had not been able to
get back to New York. Freddie occupied my rooms there, busy with his
invention; father was at his post in Washington, and my sister Hulda
was in Porto Rico, visiting our friends the Cains. Our plans--father's
and mine--were to join the Cains and Hulda in Porto Rico for Christmas.

Father was leaving the Washington Observatory to assume charge of
the Royal Dutch Astronomical Bureau, which had just completed an
observatory in extreme Southern Chile, with the largest telescope in
the world soon to be installed there. Freddie Smith was going with him
as his assistant; and the A. B. Association had appointed me their
representative, to live down there also.

None of these plans worked out, however. Christmas approached, and I
was still engaged in Indiana with this accursed broadcasting murderess.
And father wired me that he was too busy in Washington to leave.

During all these weeks there had been continual items in the news
concerning the new star--issued by father's Washington staff, and by
most of the observatories of the northern hemisphere. Father is a queer
character; the Holland blood in us makes us phlegmatic, silent, and
cautious--characteristics which apply more to father than to me. He is
a true scientist, calmly judicial, unwilling to judge anything, or form
any decisive opinion, without every possible fact before him.

Thus it was that during those weeks, neither Hulda in Porto Rico,
nor myself had an intimation from father of the startling things he
was learning. As he said finally, of what use to worry us until he
was sure? Like the public in general, I became aware of conditions
gradually. A news item here and there--items growing more insistent
as the weeks passed, but still all crowded aside to make room for the
sensational murder trial.

I recall some of the items. The new Star was approaching the general
region of our solar system with extraordinary velocity. A star of the
fortieth magnitude. Then they said it was the thirtieth. Soon it was
visible to the naked eye. I remember reading one account, not long
after the star's discovery, in which its spectrum was reported to be
sunlight! Our own solar spectrum! Reflected sunlight! This was no
distant, gigantic, incandescent star blazing with its own light. It was
not large and far away, but small and close. As small as our own earth,
and already it was within the limits of our solar system. A dark globe,
like our earth, or the moon, or Venus and Mars--dark and solid, shining
only by reflected sunlight!

By mid-December, at a convention of astronomers held in London, the new
world was named Xenephrene. Father went over in one of the mail planes
and read his afterward famous paper, suggesting the name, and giving
his calculation of the elements of the orbit of this new heavenly body.
It was the most startling announcement which had yet been made, and for
one newspaper edition it got the first page. And I was ordered to give
nine minutes of broadcasting time to it.

"Xenephrene" was a globe not quite, but very nearly as large as the
earth. It had come whirling in like a comet from the star-filled
regions of outer space; presumably like a comet to encircle our sun and
then, with a hyperbolic orbit, to depart from us forever.

It had come visually into our northern heavens, and crossed the earth's
orbit on the opposite side of the sun from us. It encircled the
sun--this was in December--made its turn between the orbits of Mercury
and Venus, and now was supposedly departing.

       *       *       *       *       *

But according to father's calculation of its new orbital elements,
it was not about to depart! Its orbit had become an ellipse--a very
nearly circular ellipse similar to those of Venus and the earth! A new
planet--a brand new world--had joined our little solar family! A world
only a fraction smaller than Venus and the earth; larger than Mercury,
larger than Mars. An interior planet, its orbit would be within that of
the earth--between the earth and Venus.

On this date, December 20--so ran father's announcement--Xenephrene was
proceeding in its elliptical orbit, and the earth was in advance of it.
We could see Xenephrene in the sky now--any one could see it who cared
to look. It was no more than thirty million miles from us now. A new
morning and evening star, which at times far outshone Venus.

See it indeed! Xenephrene, the magnificent! For weeks it had been
visible throughout its erratic course as from the great unknown realms
of outer space it swam into our ken. During October and November it had
been visually too near the sun--and too far away as yet--to be much
of a spectacle. But I saw it in early December--a morning star it was
then--just before dawn, rising in the eastern sky. A glowing purple
spot of light, blazing like a great sapphire in the pale gray-blue of
the dawn.

Xenephrene, the new world! I stood gazing up at it, and a flood of
romance surged over me. A new world, strange, mysterious, beautiful! I
had occasion several times during those terrible, fearsome days which
so soon were to come to all of us on earth, to recall my fleeting mood
of romance at first sight of Xenephrene. Mysterious globe! Romantic!
How well could I have added--sinister!

What the scientists were thinking and doing during these weeks of
December, 1952, and January, 1953, I did not know until later. Their
fears--gropings--unceasing labor to verify their dawning suspicion of
the truth--they withheld from the public. Until father's culminating
discovery, which on February 10, 1953, he made public.

Christmas that winter was a depressing time for all of us. I think,
everywhere in the world, a sense of ominous depression was gradually
spreading. A great catastrophe impending, even though unheralded, must
inevitably cast its forerunning shadow. I know I felt depressed. Away
from father and Hulda--alone out there in Indiana on my job, with
father inexplicably too busy to let me join him.

Hulda's Christmas letter from Porto Rico was depressing:

    Miserable winter. Peter, it's positively cold. Imagine--we had it
    54 degrees yesterday. In Porto Rico! Mrs. Cain says we wish you'd
    keep your icy blasts of the north to yourself.

Trying to be jocular, but Hulda, too, was depressed that Christmas. It
was indeed a miserable winter. Extraordinarily cold, everywhere. For
a week or two, the papers had been commenting upon it. Zero weather
around New York and all out through Indiana to Chicago. A succession
of gray, snowy days--gray afternoons with the twilight seeming to come
in mid-afternoon. And at nearly eight o'clock in the morning it was
still the twilight of dawn. The newspapers commented on that, jocularly
remarking that the weather man was making our winter days very short
this year.

The weather, in truth, was so abnormal that it occasioned an increasing
newspaper comment. Even by Christmas, Canada was enveloped by constant
sub-zero temperatures, which occasionally swept down as far as Virginia
with heavy snowfalls. Florida, in December, had its greatest freeze
since 1888; damage to the fruit was enormous. In the West Indies, an
unprecedented cool wave was experienced.

Everywhere in the north temperate zone was the same. And from South
America we had the reverse reports. The summer in Rio and in Buenos
Aires was unusually hot. Cape Town reported an abnormal spell;
Australia and New Zealand were sweltering.

       *       *       *       *       *

For every unexplained condition of annoyance something must be blamed.
In the United States some enterprising feature man gathered the
information that authorities considered the radio broadcasters were
responsible for the bad weather. The World Press sent it out, and it
was widely used.

Many persons--so it said--had addressed the Anglo-American Radio
Commission and other governmental radio agencies stating that the
myriads of ether waves--the "electric waves"--sent out by the
broadcasting stations were the cause of the extreme weather conditions.
The "ether" was disturbed, so it was claimed; who could say what
dangerous floods, blizzards, torrid heat, wind storms, and icy blasts
might not be caused if this radio condition were not checked? It was
suggested that the world governments take action to restrict the output
of broadcasters.

Newspaper jealousy of us, of course! It had been growing for years,
ever since those early days when we first engaged in the audible
dissemination of news. Our organization now was prompt in repudiation.
The Amalgamated Broadcasters Association appealed immediately to the
Federated World Weather Bureaus.

Within a week we were enabled to broadcast that the weather bureau
physicists were emphatic in their declaration that the weather could
not be blamed on radio waves. In order to affect the weather, radio
would have to exert an influence on temperature, humidity or barometric
pressure--which emphatically it does not do. Even in radio laboratories
where the waves are most intensely produced, there never has been any
such recorded effect.

We also pointed out that in the past, freaks of weather were always
complained of; the coldest day in the history of Washington, D.C.,
which this December of 1952 had almost but not quite equaled, was
February 11th, 1899--which was long before there were any broadcasting
stations.

Nor did any of this take into account the obvious fact that radio could
scarcely be blamed for what seemed our abnormally short winter days.
It was not fancy; it seemed an actual fact. And from the southern
hemisphere reports gave reverse conditions. The days were growing
unnaturally long; sunset and twilight extended abnormally far into the
evening.

It occurred to me as strange that our A.B.A. never broadcasted a
mention of this; that there were never any scientific, authoritative
reports concerning it. Surely the scientists could determine with
exactitude whether our sun were rising and setting at the times it
should! They could, indeed! They could--and they were calculating
it only too exactly! But, as I learned afterward, there was a world
government censorship upon the whole subject.

This censorship was lifted on that memorable February 10, 1953, when
father made his startling statement to the world.

On February 9th, my job in Indiana ended; the murderess was acquitted
amid applause and public rejoicing. But the verdict only held a divided
first-page place now with the planet Xenephrene. The new world had
steadily been nearing the earth; it was now only twenty-odd million
miles away--a magnificent, startling spectacle, a purple point of light
blazing near the sun; with the naked eye it appeared twice the size of
any star.

In the afternoon of February 9th, Freddie phoned me from New York. I
had never heard his voice so oddly solemn.

"Peter, your father wants you to come to Washington at once."

"What's up?" I demanded.

"Nothing. He wants to see you and me. You come to New York--join me
here--leave to-day. Will you?"

"Yes," I agreed. "I'm through out here, fortunately."

"I'll wait for you here at your place. I wouldn't try the planes, if I
were you--not with storms like this--"

"No," I said. "Besides, they're jammed since the railroads are hung up."

"Wait your chance--come by train, it's--safer."

He was so oddly solemn! It wasn't like Freddie Smith to bother about
safety--a dare-devil, if there ever was one. But he was right about the
planes; the surest way to get to New York at the moment was to take it
slowly.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a week the whole northeastern United States had been locked in the
grip of a blizzard. The railroads were hung up; the strain of traffic,
and the fearful weather had been too much for the passenger planes.
Every one was jammed; and several failed to get through and were
stalled in the storm along the way. But the railroads now were getting
their tracks cleared; service was improving.

"I'll see you to-morrow," I told Freddie.

"Yes," he said. "I've got our accommodations on board the
Congressional. Get here if you can."

I got through, and we took the Congressional Limited that February 10th
for Washington. New York City was an almost unprecedented sight that
dark-gray afternoon we left. A snowbound Canadian city it might have
been by its appearance. A heavy, silent fall of snow; thick, soft,
pure-white flakes.

The north wind of the past few days had died away. The snow sifted
almost vertically down between the canyons of buildings. Without a
wind, the afternoon seemed only moderately cold. Freddie and I passed
a street thermometer at the corner where we had gone to join our taxi,
which could not get into the cross-street. The temperature was five
below zero.

Freddie caught my expression. He said, "This isn't New York cold. Can't
you tell the difference? This is the cold of the north," still with
that oddly solemn voice.

Our taxi with its clanking chains rumbled its way down Broadway and
across Thirty-Fourth Street to the Pennsylvania Station. I had never
seen Broadway like this. A white street, piled with soft, white snow
which covered up its familiar configurations, buried its curbs, leveled
street and pedestrian walks into one flat white surface. A strange
Broadway; featureless, blankly expressionless, like a man's face
without hair or eyebrows.

There was little traffic. Pedestrians in a crowd tramped the street's
center. In the still cold the snow creaked and crunched under their
tread. A few enterprising sleighs, brought down these past weeks
from upstate, went by us loaded with people. The crowd was laughing,
shouting.

At the shop windows, almost closed in by huge piles of snow left over
from the storm of the week before, disconsolate proprietors gazed out
from under the shadow of the overhead pedestrian levels. Three o'clock
in the afternoon; the street lights were all winking on, turning the
pure white of the snow a pale lurid green with their glare.

The crowd seemed taking it like a holiday, gay with shouts of laughter
as it romped and shoved its way through the drifts. But there was no
laughter within me. "The cold of the north," Freddie had said. It
brought me a vague shudder.

"Look there." Freddie pointed to the second level at Forty-Second
Street. At a department store entrance crowds were coming out and going
in. A huge sign in moving electric lights gave the information that
here Canadian winter equipment could be purchased. And as I gazed, a
man in gaudy flannel costume of brilliant colors came from the store
entrance. An advertisement, no doubt. He swung out to the pedestrian
level on skiis; poised, and came sliding gracefully down the incline to
the main street level, amid shouts and applause from the crowd.

We humans adjust ourselves very quickly to new conditions. And, for all
the pessimists to the contrary, the human instinct is to laugh. . . .
I saw a canvas sign over a small store, on a cross-street impassable
at the moment with snowdrifts. It bore the ancient quip, "_Whether the
weather be cold or hot, we've got to have weather, whether or not. Buy
your Arctic overshoes here._"

New York City, that February 10th, thought it was all a good joke. . . .

       *       *       *       *       *

Freddie and I had a compartment on the Congressional. We anticipated
it would be nearly midnight by the time we got to Washington; Freddie
flung himself moodily on the lounge as though he were prepared to sleep
all the way, except when we might perhaps order in dinner.

Freddie at this time was twenty-seven. I had always liked him, though
physically and temperamentally we were quite opposite types. I am
typically Dutch, short and wide, heavy-set and stocky. But not fat.
Built, as Freddie once told me, along the general lines of a young
cart horse. And, as he has also remarked, I have the Dutch phlegmatic
sparseness of speech, which in my case, he insists, often turns surly.

Freddie, not much taller than I, was slender almost to thinness.
But wiry; I have wrestled with him, and he twists like an eel, with
surprising strength. A sandy-haired, pale-blue-eyed, freckle-faced
fellow, usually grinning, and with a swift, ready flow of speech.

His mind not only was alert, but keen. Scientifically inclined; and an
extremely good mathematician. He had made good at astronomical work
from the start. As a clocker of delicate star-transits, in father's
opinion he had no equal; and he could sit all day over tedious routine
mathematics and never tire.

I eyed him now as he lay on the lounge in our train compartment. It was
wholly abnormal for Freddie to be so morose.

"Whatever it is father's got to tell me," I commented, "it sits like
lead on you, doesn't it?"

"Yes," he said abruptly. And he added, "He ordered me to say nothing,
so I'm doing it."

I found father equally solemn. It was eleven o'clock when, after
crossing the snow-filled Washington streets, we reached my home. Father
greeted us at the door with what was a very sick attempt at a smile.

"Come in, boys. You're lucky to get here at all. Hello, Frederick.
Brought your model? That's good--we'll look at it presently. . . .
Hello, son--I understand you've been pampering a murderess."

In the study, when we had discarded our overclothes, his manner
abruptly changed. We sat down, and he stood facing us, and then began
restlessly pacing the little circular room, as though undecided how to
begin telling me.

"Peter," he said at last, "you'll think it's queer that I've said
nothing to you--my son--of this--this thing that is upon us now--this
catastrophe to the world--"

My heart leaped. Yet it was hardly a surprise. Knowledge of it all
had been coming to me little by little for weeks; fragments here and
there, like the meaningless parts of a puzzle which now his words,
adding nothing new, pieced together to make my premonitions a complete
realization. He spoke swiftly, fronting me with his squared, heavy
shoulders; his dark eyes holding me with his somber gaze.

"No use to worry you, son, or to frighten Hulda--you could be of no
help--and we're all in it together--the whole world. . . . They've
lifted the censorship. The time has come when it is best for everyone
to know it--this inevitable thing. Peter, you can give it to your
organization to-night, and to the world. The widest publicity--this
statement from me and my organization--"

He stopped abruptly, seeming to realize the incoherence of his words,
striving to master his emotions and tell me calmly. He seized a chair
and sat facing me, smiling at Freddie; and he lighted a cigar.

But his fingers trembled. He was a man of sixty at this time; a
squarely solid, commanding figure; a smooth-shaved face, square-jawed,
dark, restless eyes, with gray-black, bushy brows and a shock of
iron-gray hair. A crisp, forceful speaker. But he had not been so
to-night. I have never seen him look so old, almost haggard. And the
usual clear-white of his eyes was shot with blood.

I understood it as he talked; past weeks of anxiety, nights of
sleepless observation at the telescope, watching Xenephrene, the new
world; watching it come in to join our little solar family; observing
by night--and all day busy with unending calculations of Xenephrene's
changing orbit as it rounded the sun and took its place among us.

Watching. At first with interest, surprise, awe; then with a dawning
fear. Then, his hurried conferences with other scientists. He had been
three times to London, I now learned--and once, a consultation of
astronomers was held at the Chan observatory, in Tibet.

And then, conferences of the scientists with the world governments,
at which time the censorship was ordered. And father went back to
his post, to observe and calculate the daily abnormal changes in our
sunrise and sunset. Until at last the truth could no longer be escaped.
The future could be prognosticated, to a mathematical certainty; the
censorship must be lifted and the world told.

Father's voice, with its old dominating ring now, boomed at me.

"The world must be told, Peter. We cannot, dare not, hide it any
longer. This new planet Xenephrene--I'll give you all the technical
details; I have them here." He waved a sheaf of typewritten papers at
me. "Your office can prepare it in any form you like. The coming of
Xenephrene--its new bulk so near us--has disturbed, is now disturbing,
our earth. You know it--everybody knows it instinctively, though they
do not realize it or understand it."

"The weather--" I began; and my pounding heart seemed nearly smothering
me.

"Yes--the weather. And our queerly shortened winter days. All these
abnormal conditions which have come upon us this winter. Xenephrene has
affected us astronomically--in just one way. The inclination of the
axis of our earth is altering! Do you know what that really means? Can
you explain it to the public?"

"He can," Freddie burst out. "He will."

       *       *       *       *       *

The axis of the earth! Our seasons--our winter and summer--our
climate--our days and nights--changing, permanently changing? It seemed
for an instant, nothing. And then it seemed a thought too amazing,
too unnatural to encompass. The basic order of everything from time
immemorial now to be changed? And as I listened to his swift, brusque
words my head reeled with it.

The axis of the earth was slowly swinging so that eventually our South
Pole would point directly to the sun and there become stabilized. This
would occur on April 5 next. Our new seasons, our new astronomical
year, would begin on that date.

"Can you realize what that will mean, Peter? When our South Pole points
to the sun there will be a torrid zone in the southern hemisphere.
The great Antarctic polar continent will blaze into a tropical glory.
Patagonia, the Magellan Straits, Australia, the Federated Cape
Provinces, far southern Chile and the Argentine--all in the blazing
tropics. Six months of that, with days months long in which the sun
never sets! Then swinging back to winter.

"The new temperate zone will be at our equator. Not very temperate.
Snow and ice alternating with months of blazing heat. And all our
northern hemisphere--it will have six months, beginning next April, of
total darkness and frightful cold."

His voice rose to a grim power. "Ah, you're just beginning to realize
what it will mean to us! New seasons, and new periods of day and night!
Blazing noon at the South Pole! Dark, silent, congealed midnight in
the north. Darkness like a cold black shroud over most of our northern
hemisphere. Our greatest cities are here, Peter. London, New York,
Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Peking--from forty to fifty North Latitude. All
will be buried for months in the darkness of arctic night!"

He laughed just a little wildly. "They think it is a joke now, this
strange new winter which has descended upon us. They're beginning, in
New York, to treat it like a Canadian winter carnival. Fun while it
lasts, and then spring and summer will come soon again--because they
always have before. But this time, Peter, spring and summer won't come
soon again.

"The winter will grow colder. They have only seen its carnival aspect
so far. But the cold of the north has fangs. It's a monster--a
hideous monster whose congealing breath is death. It's lurking up
there, ready to creep upon us. It's in Canada now--in north Asia, in
northern Europe. You don't know that because our government has been so
carefully suppressing the news.

"They're laughing in New York because it gets dark so early in the
afternoon. It's fun to tumble in the snow in the early afternoon
twilight. But they won't laugh in another week or two. The
blessed sunlight for New York is almost gone. Shorter days--still
shorter--until soon there will be no day at all!

"Our huge cities here in the north, all buried in the snow and ice and
darkness of a polar winter! The greatest catastrophe in the history of
the world--we're facing it now! No power on earth can help us to escape
it, for it's inevitable!"




                              CHAPTER II

                    THE WHITE GIRL IN THE MOONLIGHT


The plantations of the Cains in Porto Rico lay back from the north
coast, some thirty kilometers from San Juan. Bisected by the railroad
and by the main auto road, they spread green and fragrant in the vivid
sunlight. Rows of orange and grapefruit trees, stretching over the
undulating sand, with pineapples between the rows of trees.

Here and there, thickets of banana trees, encouraged to grow and break
the force of the trade wind from the sea; a tall spreading mango--a
sapling perhaps back in the almost forgotten days when Spain ruled
this island; clumps, occasionally, of giant coconuts rising on the low
hillsides; trees with smooth brown trunks and feather-duster tops, the
trunks all bent backward from the coast by the wind.

The main auto road, lined with its majestic royal palms, was oily black
and sometimes very noisy; the railroad with its metal ties was a dark
streak like a double pencil line amid the green of the trees. But the
plantation crossroads were white ribbons of sand in the sunlight, and
whiter still at night, under the white glory of the moon.

It was then--at night--that the magic romance of the tropics was to
me always most poignant. At sundown the brisk trades were stilled. A
quiet, brooding somnolence fell upon everything. The native shacks,
palm-thatched, burned brown by the sun, turned darkly mysterious. Off
beyond the distant coast, as it showed from the commanding height
of the Cains' veranda, the sea at night was dimly purple under a
gem-studded purple sky; and sometimes the moon-beams shimmered off
there in the silent magic darkness. The scent of the orange blossoms
hung heavy in the still air, exotic, stirring the fancy to a million
half formed dreams that one may tell but never express.

Upon the highest knoll--an eminence of perhaps a hundred feet--stood
the Cains' plantation house. A white road led up the slope to it. A
broad, spreading frame bungalow, with a peaked tin roof, and a wide
flat veranda around three of its sides, with coconut posts set at
intervals. A bunch of bananas always hung there, ripening; a box, lying
against the house wall, was filled with oranges at intervals by a
native boy.

Beyond the house, at the edge of the knoll-top, a corral with open
sides and a heavy-thatched roof housed the saddle and workhorses. The
Cains' one concession to modernity--the garage, and a small hangar for
Dan's sport plane--stood well beyond the foot of the knoll. In the
evening, lolling in the wicker chairs of the veranda, one could not see
the garage, and if the traffic on the main road chanced to be dull, one
might go back in fancy half a century, to when this magic land must
have been at its best. It was still very beautiful. Sunlight and color
and warmth.

But the blight, here as everywhere else in the northern hemisphere, was
already at hand.

"To-morrow," said Dan, "we'll ride over to Arecibo. Want to, Hulda?"

"On horseback?"

"Yes," he said. "Of course. You don't think, knowing you as I do, I'd
insult you with a car or a plane?"

Hulda can drive a car or handle a plane as well as any one. But for
all our Dutch stolidity, there is a strain of romance in us. Hulda's
greatest pleasure was riding astride the little Porto Rican horses;
and though there seems nothing hotter on earth than a white sand road
at noon in the cane fields, Hulda would always ride through them with
delight.

"Good," she said, and laughed. "Señor Dan, that will please me much."

But her mocking laugh was forced, for this was February 10th of that
fateful winter. An unknown fear lay upon Hulda, as on us all; and the
cane fields on the way to Arecibo might have been hot other years, but
they certainly were not hot now.

This evening, for instance, as Mr. and Mrs. Cain and their son Dan, and
Hulda, sat in the living room of the bungalow, the shutters were all
closed and a huge brazier of charcoal burned beside them for warmth.
Already it had smoked up the ceiling; and Mr. Cain, despairing that the
cool spell would soon moderate, promised his wife for the tenth time
that he would get a stove from San Juan and rig it up all shipshape
with a pipe--"Like in Vermont, eh, Ellen? Hulda, I'm going to radio
your father to-morrow. This local weather bureau's too dumb to tell me
anything. Your father ought to know--he's a scientist; they're supposed
to know everything."

The Cains were what, a decade or so ago, were called plain folks. New
Englanders, Cain had made his money on a Vermont farm. Their only son
Dan had grown to manhood; graduated from college with one of the new
agricultural degrees; and partly because of Mrs. Cain's frail health
they had taken Dan and established themselves in Porto Rico.

Dan now was the brains and the energy of the business. I had gone to
school with Dan Cain. A big, rangy, husky six-footer, with crisp, curly
brown hair, blue eyes and a laughing boyish sun-tanned face.

A handsome young giant, I should imagine any girl would love him at
sight. Demure little Hulda--a brown sparrow of a girl--loved him, I
felt certain, though nothing as yet had been said of any engagement
between them. I rather hoped it would come to pass; and I think Dan's
parents did also, for Hulda was very lovable.

       *       *       *       *       *

Life often holds odd coincidences. At eleven o'clock, this night of
February 10, I was in Washington with father and Freddie. What father
was telling me I thought then the most important event of the world's
welfare.

But at almost the same time, Hulda, in Porto Rico, was sitting in the
living room with Dan Cain. And another event, wholly different in
significance yet of equal importance to the world, was impending. The
elder Cains had retired. Dan and Hulda, characteristic of them of late
when alone, had fallen into sober discussion.

Dan was really perturbed over the weather. The temperature had gone far
into the forties the night before. Florida citrus trees might stand
that for a limited period, but it certainly was not good for Porto
Rican trees. And the Florida citrus industry was wiped out this winter.
It had snowed last week all over the peninsula; a fall of snow with a
following freeze that had killed everything which the December freeze
had spared. And now--into the forties in Porto Rico! Ten degrees lower
would be freezing. If this kept on--

The sound of a pony thudding up the knoll at a gallop broke in upon
Hulda's and Dan's gloomy reflections. They stared at each other.

"What could that be?" Dan was on his feet.

The pony came up to the front porch entrance, stopped, and on the
wooden steps bare feet sounded. Dan flung open the door. The pale-blue
vacuum light newly established in the Porto Rican rural districts was
behind him; the doorway was a dark rectangle of brilliant stars and
cold moonlight, and a rush of chill air swept in.

A peon was on the porch, dirty white trousers and white shirt, ghostly
in the moonlight. He was barefooted and bareheaded. His little white
pony stood at the foot of the steps in a lather of sweat, drooping and
panting.

"Ramon!" Dan exclaimed. "What the devil! Come in here!"

It was one of the Cain's house boys. He came in, chattering, but not
from cold. His coffee-colored face had a green cast with its pallor. He
was frightened almost beyond speech.

"What the devil!"

Dan shook the boy with annoyance. Hulda stood apart, staring, and
a nameless fear was on her; an unreasonable shudder as though this
thing--in its outward aspect the mere fright of a native boy, which
probably meant nothing important--were something gruesome, horrible,
unutterably frightening.

"Ramon--" Dan shook him again, and the boy suddenly poured out a flood
of Spanish; broken, incoherent--Hulda could not understand it. She saw
Dan's face grow grave, and then he laughed. But it struck Hulda then
that the incredulous laugh had a note of fear in it.

"Ramon, _que dice_?" The boy understood English. Dan added, "Don't be a
fool, Ramon! Tell me--"

Hulda gasped, "What--what is it, Dan?"

He swung on her, and as he saw her face, the solemn fear in her dark
eyes, his laugh faded.

"Hulda, he says he was riding home from a fiesta over at the Rolf
plantation in Factor. Coming back--you know the hills back there where
the bat caves are--what we call our Eden tract? He saw something--a
woman like a ghost, he says--a woman's figure that jumped--it's out
there now!"

Ramon had shrunk against the wall, shuddering; the whites of his black
eyes glistened in the blue glare of the vacuum tube.

"Ramon, you been drinking?"

"No! Oh, no--no, señor!"

"What--else, Dan?"

Hulda wanted to laugh. It was funny, taking seriously, paying attention
to a native's devil story. Other years, an Americano señor would
laugh derisively at any peon who talked of a ghost he had seen in
the moonlight. But not now; there was an uncanniness in the very air
everywhere in the world this winter.

The boy was quieter. He told Dan more and Dan soberly translated it. A
thing like a great round silver ball--big as a native shack--glistening
with the moonlight on it as it lay in a coconut grove, a mile from the
Cains' plantation house, near the hills where the bat caves are.

Ramon's pony had suddenly shied, and then Ramon had seen the gleaming
white thing lying there. And then he had seen a figure--like the white
figure of a woman or a girl--a white girl, with flowing white hair.

It was quite near him. Standing beside the sloping trunk of a big palm
tree that grew on the hillside. Twenty feet away, perhaps, and ten feet
higher than the trail along which he was riding.

Ramon was stiff with fear. His pony had halted; it stood with upraised
head and pointing ears. It saw the white woman's motionless figure
and suddenly raised its head with a long shuddering neigh of fear.
The sound must have startled the white woman up there. Ramon saw her
crouch; then she leaped from the hillside.

His pony bolted. And then he lashed it for home, fearing the thing was
chasing him.

Dan was very solemn. "That doesn't sound like a ghost tale, Hulda.
Ramon, saddle our ponies. Mine--_Parti-blanco_--and the señorita's. Not
with the _aparejo_--with the man's saddle."

He glanced at Hulda, her trim figure in leather puttees and brown
riding trousers; and her face was now almost as white as her white
blouse.

She stammered. "You want to go out there--go and see--"

Ramon whimpered, "Señor, I'm afraid, here at the corral--if it followed
after me."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dan strode to the porch. The broad spread of the plantations lay solemn
and still under the cold white moon. The thatched roof of the corral
was dark, with inky black shadows beside the building. The banana trees
arching up over the house waved gently in the night breeze. Everything
was sharply white and black. But there was no sign of any intruder,
human or otherwise.

"I'll go with you to saddle the ponies, Ramon. We'll go--you want to
go, Hulda?"

"Yes," she said. She felt at that moment too frightened to stay in
the house without Dan, and thought of the elder Cains asleep in the
adjoining room never occurred to either of them.

With sweaters donned against the midnight cold, they saddled the ponies
and started.

Dan rode ahead, with Hulda almost beside him, and Ramon, his pony
reluctant as himself, following after them. It was a brief ride, during
which they hardly spoke. Down the knoll, past the silent garage; past
the somnolent group of shacks of the plantation workers.

The road was narrow--white sand like a trail; coconut trees arched it
in places, and beside it spread the tracts of fruit trees. It wound
back toward a low-lying range of hills and up a steep declivity, where
it turned stony from the rain water which daily washed down it.

Dan was flinging watchful glances around them. "Don't see anything yet,
Hulda. Do you?" His voice was a cautious half whisper.

The sure-footed ponies picked their way carefully up the stony trail.
They went through a little ravine and emerged into a small valley, a
plateau almost flat on this higher land. Hills a hundred feet high
fenced it in; its table-like surface of white sand was ruled off with
the dark green lines of fruit trees. It was the Cains' two-hundred acre
"Eden tract." It lay brooding and drowsy under the moon, without a sign
of human movement.

Dan halted; Ramon's pony came beside him.

"Where were you when you saw it, Ramon?"

The boy gestured. He was trembling again. He held his pony forcibly
from wheeling to run back. The other ponies seemed to sense the terror;
they raised their heads; one whimpered; and they were all quivering.
But Dan forced them slowly forward.

The trail skirted the hills to the left. Above it, halfway up a steep
ascent, three black yawning mouths of the bat-caves showed. Hulda
had often been in them with Dan; a guano deposit in them was used as
fertilizer for the trees. Hulda saw them now, round and black, with the
moonlight on the rocks beside them, fifty feet above the valley.

Ramon suddenly chattered: "There! You see it? _Ave Maria_--"

Off at the edge of the fruit trees, in the shadows of a clump of
coconut palms, a great round thing gleamed. A silver sphere, like a
white ball some twenty feet high, lying there. A broken ball! It was
several hundred feet away, but Hulda could see a black rift in it. A
crack? A doorway!

She knew it then. Not with conscious reasoning, but she knew then what
all this was to mean. A silver sphere lying there, with a black rift in
it like a doorway. And a small black patch on its side--like a window!

"Hulda! Look!" Dan's hand went to her arm with a grip that both hurt
and steadied her. The three ponies were standing with braced feet in
the sand. Dan's flung up its head to neigh; but his fist thumped its
head and stilled it.

And then Hulda saw the figure, as the native boy had seen it half
an hour before. It was standing now near the trail, ahead of them;
standing there between two orange trees; and just as Hulda saw it, the
thing moved over, and stopped in the moonlight on the white trail,
as though to bar their passage. It was not far ahead of them. Hulda
could see it plainly. A white figure. But it did not shimmer; not
ghostly--white only because of the moonlight on it. Uncanny, weird, yet
not gruesome.

It was the figure of a girl; small, as small as Hulda. A slim,
pink-white girl's body, with flowing draperies which in daylight might
have been sky-blue. Long white hair flowing over pink shoulders.

Dan's grip on Hulda tightened; then he cast her off and his hand caught
her bridle reins and held her pony firmly. Behind them Ramon and his
pony were thudding away in a panic.

Dan breathed: "It--she sees us!"

The girl's arms went slowly up as though with a gesture. It seemed a
gesture not menacing; a gesture of fear perhaps. Pale-white arms, of
delicate human shape. They were bare, but as they slowly raised, the
folds of the drapery clung to them.

Abruptly Dan called: "Hello, there--"

The figure did not move further. But the ponies were becoming
unmanageable, Dan exclaimed hastily: "Dismount, Hulda! You'll be thrown
off--I can hold them."

Hulda and Dan dismounted. But Dan could not hold the ponies. They
jerked away from him. He and Hulda were left standing in the sand of
the trail, gazing after the two terror-stricken little animals as they
galloped away toward home.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dan remembered later that there came to him then a fleeting wonderment.
Why were these ponies so afraid of this white figure of a girl in the
moonlight? From this distance there seemed nothing about the figure
unduly to frighten an animal. The question was not answered until long
afterward. But there were indeed things about this white shape which
the ponies evidently saw and felt--things which were denied to Hulda's
and Dan's human senses.

Hulda gasped: "Oh, they've gone!" She stood by Dan, clinging to him.
The white figure in the road was gone also. But in a moment more they
saw it again. Near to them now--not more than thirty feet away. It was
standing off the trail among the fruit trees.

Dan murmured: "It's human, Hulda. Nothing to be afraid of--see, it's
only a girl. You call to her."

Hulda's quavering voice floated out: "We see you. Who are you? We're
friends."

The figure moved again; backward, floating or walking soundlessly but
swiftly, as though with sudden fear.

"Come on," said Dan. He started briskly forward along the trail, with
Hulda close after him. But within a dozen steps, he stopped. And then,
to both Dan and Hulda came amazement, and the thrill of real fear.

The figure had been retreating. But the hill was close behind it.
Suddenly it stopped; seemed to gather itself; to crouch; to spring. It
left the ground, and came sailing up into the unobstructed moonlight
above the orange trees. Sailing up in an arc it passed almost directly
over their heads and landed soundlessly in the road behind them!

As it passed overhead, outlined against the stars, they saw it more
plainly. It seemed a girl of human form, cast in a fashion which might
well have been called beautiful. She poised, not as though flying, but
sailing. Face toward the ground, white hair waving behind her, arms
outstretched, with the folds of her drapery robe opened fan-shape,
fluttering like wings. There was a brief glimpse of her lower limbs,
human of mold with the robe wound by the wind close around them.

A thing of beauty, had it not been so uncanny. She floated in a sailing
arc as though almost weightless; and with a flip, dropped to the ground
upright upon her feet. A fairy's leap! Soundless, graceful! Romantic,
yet uncanny. A figure of enchantment from the dream of a child.

[Illustration: A thing of beauty, she floated in a sailing arc against
the star-studded heavens, directly over the heads of the astonished
couple.]

Dan tried to laugh. Fear seemed incongruous. As he and Hulda turned,
the figure stood again in the trail facing them. And they could see it
was a slim young girl, strangely beautiful, fearful as a fawn at their
approach; yet she lingered, seeming--Dan wondered if his fancy were
playing him tricks--desirous of conquering her fear and encountering
them.

"Hulda--nothing to be afraid of. Don't move--you'll frighten her!"

They stood motionless. The white girl in the moonlight down the road
took a step forward. They did not move. She came a little further.
Paused. Then another step. Not floating. Walking--they could see the
outlines of her limbs moving beneath the drapery.

And now they could see her face. Queer, strange of feature, yet in what
way they could not have said. And certainly beautiful; gentle; anxious,
and afraid. Youthful, a mere girl; and with those flowing waves of
snow-white hair framing her face and falling thick over her pink-white
shoulders.

She stood, twenty feet away. Dan and Hulda were almost holding their
breaths. Dan murmured: "Speak to her again. Softly--don't frighten her!"

Hulda said gently: "Can you understand me? We're friends."

The strange girl stood birdlike, trembling. Hulda repeated: "We're
friends--won't hurt you. Shall we come nearer? Who are you?"

There was a moment of silence. And then the girl spoke. A soft whisper
of a voice, ethereal as the fairy voice of a child's enchanted fancy;
a wraith of sound, but it carried, and Hulda and Dan heard it plainly.

"_Zetta! Zetta! Zetta!_"




                              CHAPTER III

                          THE CROWNING TERROR


There was so much happening everywhere in the world during those
fateful weeks that followed February 10, 1953--events so startling,
amazing, so stupendous of import, and of such diversity that I scarce
know how to recount them. Of necessity my mention of many must be
brief; and my picture of the whole, I fear, will be at best incoherent.

Yet in that quality, at least, it will be a true picture; the world
was incoherent, chaotic--everywhere a chaos of events unprecedented,
uncontrollable. And in the chaos which swept Freddie and me away, the
news from Dan Cain in Porto Rico, important though it was, at the time
concerned us little.

Father was in constant communication with the Cains; and later, after
father had gone to Miami when the Federal capital was moved there in
flight from Washington, he went to Porto Rico.

The announcement that our world was to have such different days and
nights, and a climate so utterly changed, struck the public with horror.

It is not my purpose to try to detail or to picture it. The chaos
everywhere; the paralyzation of industry throughout the northern
hemisphere which so far had been proceeding by man's will against all
the invading efforts of nature to wreck it; the panics that took place
in all the northern cities--crowds of refugees struggling to get south;
inadequate transportation; accidents; and a horrible crime-wave that
swept unchecked over every one of the large population centers.

Human activities in our modern world are very widely diversified; more
widely varied--and yet more intermingled, more interdependent--than any
one realizes until there comes an upset from the normal.

There is, in these modern times, nothing that anyone does which does
not almost immediately affect what some one else is doing. Had the
change come slowly, spread over a hundred, or a thousand or a hundred
thousand years as other great world changes have come and passed,
conditions would have adjusted themselves. No one would even have
noticed the change.

But this was happening in minutes where others had taken centuries.
New York, London, Paris and all the cities of the north were doomed
to six months of twilight and night and blighting cold. Snow now was
upon land, millions of acres of land, where crops soon would have been
growing if millions of people were to have food. Yet now we know those
millions of acres would be for months snow-buried.

Millions of homes soon would be without adequate heat or light; and the
people without adequate clothing. Rivers upon which the great power
plants depended were congealing into ice.

This for the north, with business, industry and nearly every human
activity paralyzed by the sudden public horror. But in the south, from
the Equator to the South Pole, lay the land of promise. Or at least the
public thought so.

Life lay there; life and the promise of food and warmth and the blessed
sunlight. For in the far Antarctic south, with the new light and heat
coming, millions upon millions of acres of land would be springing into
a new fertility to replace what the north had lost. But this, too, was
a fallacy; for after a few months, the pendulum would swing back; the
far south would go into night and cold.

Many hundred million people, suddenly giving up all their accustomed
work in the world's activities and trying to move to another region!
A migration greater than the sum total of all others in the world's
history. In a hundred years of systematic, careful planning and
execution it might have been accomplished without disaster. But now it
was a panic, a chaos, a flight, with distracted governments trying to
cope with it, impotent to bring even a semblance of order.

Our office of the Amalgamated Broadcasters was maintained in New
York City until well along in February. With government affiliation,
we broadcasted only what might be of help to the public; news of
conditions, generally censored to allay too great a fear; advice as to
what to do; information concerning transportation, and news from the
south. In this work, Freddie now joined me. There were days--almost
dark now except for a brief time before and after midday--when he and
I were in our cold office, one or the other of us at the microphone
throughout the twenty-four hours.

It was an office of incoherent men and disorganized service; without
light, some of the time; with frozen and burst heating pipes and no
one to repair them. We sat bundled in our overcoats, with snow piling
against the windows.

News came of crowds surging in the dark, snow-piled streets; food
giving out, with paralyzed transportation; news of raids by the public
upon all the markets; news of people trampled to death hourly at every
steamship dock, every bridge leading out of the city; uncontrollable
crowds at the tunnels, the railroad and plane terminals.

State troopers vainly patrolled streets made almost impassable by
snow which now could not be cleared away; people froze in the cold
with which they were not equipped to cope; crime was everywhere, with
criminals, like ghouls, battening on the tragedy.

       *       *       *       *       *

In those terrible days there were few concerned with astronomy. Yet I
recall that one of my orders was to detail--for such as might still be
listening--a simple version of how, astronomically, all this was coming
to pass.

"Perhaps," I broadcasted, "when we know the fundamentals of this
change--the scientific reasons for it--the thing may hold less terror
for us."

Useless words! Nothing could mitigate the terror!

"You all know in a general way," I went on, "the astronomical reasons
for our alternating day and night--our succession of seasons, spring,
summer, autumn and winter. Yet if you follow me closely now, and
picture what I tell you, the subject will be clearer to your mind, and
you will understand the change which is now upon us. Some of you, our
government has advised, should remain in the north and withstand the
rigors of the new climate. New York City will not be abandoned! That
is absurd! It is the sudden change, the upset to our normal routine,
which has now caused suffering.

"When we are equipped for the new conditions, New York and other cities
in its latitude will be perfectly habitable. We will have winter nights
several months long, and an arctic cold. Then spring, and a summer
with the sun giving us months of unending daylight. Those must be our
productive months--we must grow food then, to supply the southern
hemisphere, just as in the other months they must grow food down there.

"Do not be too hasty! We cannot all--every one on earth--rush at
once to the Equator! Even there at times it will be too hot, and a
twilight winter fairly cold. Cold enough, a month or two from now, to
disorganize everything.

"It is your panic--your haste--which is our greatest danger. Be calm!
Meet the conditions as they are. Help our government to maintain order,
here in the north. The world's work must be done--the new conditions
must be coped with sanely. We are not in desperate distress; only
through panic can real disaster come!"

       *       *       *       *       *

These were our broadcasted words of government appeal. And then I
went on: "There is no need for panic. We want you to understand the
astronomical reasons for our new climate. I want you to imagine
yourself standing before your round, empty dining room table. Conceive
that the room is dark and that you have placed, almost in the center of
the table, a circular vacuum globe of yellow light. That represents the
sun.

"Take now an orange, and through its center put a lead pencil. The
orange is the earth. By holding in your fingers the ends of the lead
pencil, you can rotate the orange. The lead pencil then represents the
axis of the earth.

"Can you picture yourself in your darkened room under these conditions?
As you stand facing the round table with the light near its center, you
hold the orange on its lead pencil to the right of you near the edge
of the table. You hold the lead pencil vertical; its point, standing
directly up to the ceiling would be then our North Pole; its eraser,
pressed against the table edge, would be our South Pole.

"You will find now that the light from your 'sun' illuminates about
half the orange--the half which faces toward the sun. The orange is
lighted from the North Pole to the South Pole--on the sunward side. The
other side is in shadow.

"Now, rotate the orange, holding the pencil exactly upright. You will
see that the moving surface brings its shadowed side into the sunlight.
This rotation gives us our alternating night and day.

"Still holding the pencil upright, begin now slowly carrying it with
the orange around the edge of the table. You will realize, if you
think for a moment, that, _with the pencil held exactly vertical_, it
makes no difference whether the orange is on one side of the table or
the other. The sunlight on its surface is exactly the same in every
position around the table. Under this condition, therefore, we would
have uniformly alternating days and nights of equal length; and _no
change of season_. You can see the most intense light would always be
at the equator, and the least intense, down to perpetual twilight, at
the Poles. Thus it would always be midsummer at the equator, temperate
to the north and south equally, and winter equally and always at both
Poles.

"But this, of course, was not our condition. The axis of our earth
was not vertically upright, as I have asked you first to picture it.
Conceive now that you hold the orange and pencil again to your right at
the table edge. Instead now of having the pencil point directly upward,
slant it off _to the right_--_away from the sun_--toward the edge of
your ceiling where it joins the wall, for instance. To be more exact,
you are to tilt it over until it is about one-quarter of the way to a
horizontal position. Mathematically, this is twenty-three and a half
degrees from the vertical.

"The top of the pencil--the North Pole--is now tilted away from the
sun--the bottom is tilted toward the sun. You will realize now that the
sunlit half of the orange is not from Pole to Pole. The light extends
beyond and around the South Pole to the other side--and the light _does
not reach the North Pole at all_.

"Rotate the orange with the pencil held at that tilted angle. There are
points at and near the South Pole which do not leave the light; and
points at and near the North Pole are always dark. That is our _normal_
condition in December. In the northern hemisphere we call it winter; in
the southern hemisphere they call it summer.

"Now move your orange around the edge of the table, halfway around
until you are on the other side. If you have kept the pencil tilted at
that same angle toward your ceiling corner, you will find now that its
top is pointing _toward the sun_. All the conditions on the orange's
surface are reversed. That is June; summer in the North, winter in the
South.

"Those days are gone. We are now faced with an axis change--disastrous
only because it is changing so quickly. And I want you to know just
exactly what the change is. Conceive again your orange at the right
hand of the table, with the pencil point tilted away from the sun at
that twenty-three and one-half degree angle. We were like that last
December. But since then a new world has come into the solar system.
Its coming has disturbed the old order of things with us. The eraser of
that lead pencil--our South Pole--is moving up further toward the sun!

"Take the orange a short distance along the table edge, and tilt the
pencil still further. That is where we are now, in February! Don't you
realize that more of our southern hemisphere is now in the constant
light, and more of the northern in the constant darkness? And now, tilt
the lead pencil further until it is horizontal to the table.

"The eraser--the South Pole--points directly to the sun! That is the
position we will reach next April. Rotate the orange, holding the
pencil level. You will see that the light remains on the southern half
of the orange, and the northern half remains dark! On April 5, we will
have no day and night!

"Six months later the earth will be halfway around its orbit. The axis
will remain in that new fixed position. The reverse condition then will
exist. Our North Pole will point to the sun! Light and heat in the
North! Darkness and cold in the South! So do not be too hasty in trying
to get away! These next few months will be bad, but after that we will
learn how to weather them. We cannot all live on the equator! Stay
where you are and help us fight it through!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Futile words! But it was the panic of flight--the attempted rush of
so many millions of people--the disorganization of all those myriad
activities upon which life depends--which was our greatest danger.

Futile words! Impotent governments, themselves disingenuous, for they
were all preparing for hasty flight to warmer, more equable regions!
On February 22 the National Capital of the United States was moved
from Washington, District of Columbia, to temporary housing in Miami,
Florida. And even there, the great Florida city was disorganized,
snow-covered, with very nearly zero temperature.

The deaths throughout the northern hemisphere that February of 1953
will never be counted. A million? Many millions--I would hesitate to
guess.

There were some nine million people within the limits of Greater New
York on Christmas. By mid-February I suppose there were no more than a
scant fifty thousand left--and these, most of them, were trying to get
away. A dark, almost deserted, buried city--buried in a white shroud
which mercifully hid its tragedy.

I caught one last glimpse of the sun--the one clear day; the sun at
noon just creeping above the southern horizon and then plunging back.
The Arctic night was on us.

I saw the roads between New York and Washington--the great highways for
the through auto traffic. Refugees were trudging along them on foot,
carrying lights in the darkness. Plunging through the snow; walking
blindly southward when they could go no other way. Falling by the
roadside; all the traffic lines were littered with frozen bodies, soon
hidden by the snow.

We were not in Washington long; soon we were ordered to Miami. There
was a gray twilight there, which, with the buildings arranged for
temporary heating, were at least tolerable. And here we set up our
headquarters. The first of March came. Father was in Porto Rico. I
knew, by then, what strange things were transpiring there in the Cains'
plantation house.

I knew, too, what the astronomers--gathered now at Quito, Ecuador,
as the best place in the Western World for twilight observation--had
discovered.

Xenephrene was inhabited!

Father was convinced of it the day after that momentous February 10.
But the news--and the news from the secluded little plantation house
of the Cains--was withheld from the public. But on March 2, everything
was disclosed. For our distracted world one culminating blow remained.
As though all that had gone before were not enough, fate held one
crowning terror.

On March 2 it was broadcast that a hostile race of people in human form
had come from Xenephrene and landed on the earth! Invaders from this
brand new world! Landed two days before, north of New York; and now
were moving south upon the city!




                              CHAPTER IV

                                 ZETTA


That midnight of February 10th, Hulda and Dan stood on the small
Porto Rican trail, facing at a brief distance the white girl in the
moonlight. She answered Hulda's call; in a queerly small voice her
words came to them:

"_Zetta! Zetta! Zetta!_"

There was a brief silence. Dan murmured, "Let's go nearer."

Slowly, carefully, they advanced; fearful of again frightening her. But
this time she did not move. She stood watchful, trembling slightly,
but held her ground. And presently they were confronting her. She
was shorter even than Hulda; very slim and frail. A young girl just
reaching maturity. A rose, not yet full-blown. The thought occurred to
Dan. But the comparison was wrong. Not a rose, for this was a flower of
young womanhood of a species no one of earth could name.

She seemed, aside from her snow-white hair, no more than a strangely
beautiful girl of earth. But to both Dan and Hulda came again, more
strongly than before, the feeling of her strangeness. There was
something singularly unusual in her aspect. And this they both recall
clearly; as they stood there for a silent instant confronting her, both
were conscious of sensations indescribable, as though they were feeling
something within themselves--something vague, elusive--something
no mortal of Earth had ever felt before. And, perhaps, hearing
something--so faint, so ethereal they could not define it--faint as
though it were sound heard not by their ears, but by their minds.

And they saw something, too, which perhaps no mortal eyes had ever seen
before. An aura, a dim, very faint red radiance shone around the three
of them as they stood there together in the moonlight. Hulda and Dan
remembered it was something like that.

They stood for a moment, stricken with wonder at their sensations; and
perhaps the strange girl was less timorous as she saw their attitude
of awe. She stared up into Dan's face, and smiled. Queerly wistful;
trusting. A gentle little creature! And he stared down into her dark
eyes and found them shimmering pools of iridescence. Then again she
spoke, other words in a strange, liquid tongue, soft, with curiously
clipped, intoned syllables.

Dan shook his head. "We can't understand you. Can you understand us?"
He smiled; and Hulda smiled.

"She's not afraid of us," said Dan. The girl was waving a hand with
what they knew was a gesture of negation. She could not understand
their language; and when Dan tried Spanish--realizing it was futile;
and tried his imperfect French--her gesture continued.

He tried again. "Dan! Dan! Dan!" he said, and struck his chest. And
Hulda indicated herself with "Hulda! Hulda!"

The girl's eager face brightened. They had established communication;
the first communication between Xenephrene and our earth!

The girl cried, "Zetta, Zetta," and laid her hand on her breast.

It was the first communication between the worlds. What dire events,
tragedies, amazing things to transpire before the last communication
was over!

       *       *       *       *       *

It is not my purpose, and again, I have no space in which to narrate
all the details of these days. The girl was persuaded to follow Dan
and Hulda, and through all that February she lived with the Cains in
the plantation house, guarded and kept hidden, though the news of her
presence could not be entirely concealed.

The silver ball in the coconut grove was a vehicle in which, by
some method unknown to earth, this girl--this Zetta, as she called
herself--had come from her world, to ours. And she had not come alone.
A man had come with her--he seemed to be of middle age. He lay dead
near the vehicle. Perhaps the victim of an accident; or perhaps the
girl had killed him.

There was no one, as yet, to say. Zetta could not, apparently,
understand any earth language; and her language sounded hopeless to
fathom. She seemed intelligent, docile, willing and anxious to be kept
with the Cains; eager, it seemed at first, to be in the room with
them--to hear them talk. But after that first night, she did not speak
again; and they thought she had fallen into a sullen silence.

There is so much I have to tell! Astronomers at Quito had seen this
silver vehicle enter the earth's atmosphere that night of February
10th; and had seen another, infinitely larger, which they believed had
started from the surface of Xenephrene.

Dan notified father of his strange visitor, of course. Father sent
instructions. The authorities of Porto Rico buried the man's body,
and set a guard to watch constantly over the vehicle as it lay in the
grove. Scientists came to inspect it, and could understand but vaguely
its mechanism.

Two weeks passed. Father was in Miami then; and near the end of
February he started by government plane for Porto Rico.

Conditions all over the world were far worse now. We only had a vague
picture; the radio and television were operating intermittently--but
all the regular channels for the dissemination of news were paralyzed.
And, too, the governments withheld, or distorted to a less terrible
aspect such reports as were available.

Europe was enveloped in snow to the Mediterranean; the Barbary coast
was jammed with refugees. London and Paris, like New York, were
threatened with complete abandonment.

In Canada, they said--like Scandinavia, north Interior Europe and Asia
of the far north--there was less panic, less disaster. These people
were accustomed to intense cold and equipped to withstand it.

In the Canadian rural district, the farmers shut themselves up with
their winter fundamentals of food as had been their custom, and were
said to be making out fairly well. But the big centers of population,
dependent upon transportation and industry, were devastated. Greater
Montreal was abandoned in February.

Transportation everywhere in the United States was kept partially open,
but only by efforts born of the frantic desperation of necessity.
The new Arctic airplanes, recently developed, were being hastily
manufactured in quantity, in government plants established in Florida
and Southern California, and were as hastily put into service to bear
the people southward. The railroads of our northern States kept open
for a while with snow plows loaned by the great Canadian trunk lines
which had long since succumbed.

Steamship service along the Atlantic Coast ventured no farther north
than Charleston, South Carolina. The North Atlantic was filled with
ice floes driven south by the constant storms; the Polar ice field was
reported now as extending nearly down to the former New York-Liverpool
steamship lanes.

The St. Lawrence River was frozen solid, from Montreal past Quebec and
down to its mouth, before Christmas. In January the middle Mississippi
was solid with an ice bridge which one day broke and swept away three
railroad bridges. The Hudson, from Troy to New York harbor, was solid
by mid-February. Within a week after that even the Savannah River
became impassable, and the port closed.

Yet, for all that, by whatever desperate expedient possible, the
people were being transported south, and were cared for in their new
locations, in the best fashion that could be managed.

       *       *       *       *       *

What formerly had been our tropic zone was thronged with new arrivals.
Daily they poured in from the north. And from the far south, as
well--in spite of government's pleadings and commands to the contrary;
from Buenos Aires, Rio, Santiago, people were striving to get north,
nearer the equator, fearful of this new heat and blazing daylight which
was coming upon them.

Nor was it only a disturbance of the world's normal temperatures. With
the abnormal climate came other inevitable disturbances. From widely
divergent localities, devastating windstorms were reported. A typhoon,
wholly out of season, swept the China Sea. A hurricane in Central
America. From Peru and Chile they told of heavy rains flooding the arid
coast. Rain fell at Biskra with torrential rainstorms sweeping up and
across the Sahara.

I had been saying that father, near the end of February, went to
Porto Rico. The two weeks previous to his arrival there were weeks of
amazement growing daily into awe as Dan and Hulda were brought into
closer contact with their beautiful, unearthly visitor.

It came upon them gradually, the strangeness, weirdness of this girl
so like themselves at first glance, yet obviously a being wholly
different. They treated her as a visiting guest, though in reality
she was a captive. Upon father's advice--for he guessed, at least
partially, what the outcome was to be--the Cains were content to do
nothing with Zetta save to have her live with them in seclusion; and to
make her comfortable.

That she was extremely intelligent, Dan saw at once. She evidently
realized that they were wholly friendly. Whatever her purpose, living
there with them seemed all she desired.

She had her own room, next to Hulda's. She seemed to appreciate Hulda's
efforts for her comfort. She ate with the family, making whimsical
faces at the food which she obviously disliked at first. For the rest,
she seemed content to sit in the living room, watching them, listening
to them talk.

To Dan, her constant presence was at once fascinating and disturbing.
Fascinating, for Zetta's beauty was queerly magnetic, but disturbing,
too, for there was about this girl always that uncanniness indefinable.
For hours she would sit in the living room, apart from the family
group. She did not like the chairs, preferring to sit crosslegged on
the floor, on a cushion. She was very silent, although she would answer
when spoken to, with a smile or a strange, friendly gesture, and with
her eyes following each person who spoke.

Her complexion was the creamy, pink white which we of earth call
beauty. She blushed, or flushed, readily. For no apparent reason a
wave of rose color would suffuse her face, throat and neck. It even
extended sometimes to her arms, and to her legs as they showed amid
her half-revealing drapery--the smooth white of her skin flushing with
deep rose color. For no reason; and then Dan noticed that it generally
happened when the outer door was opened and a rush of cold air swept
in. Nature automatically protecting against the cold!

Dan often would furtively watch her. He was sitting in a far corner of
the room one evening; the elder Cains and Hulda were gathered about the
radio.

The small, clear voice of the announcer was giving a summary of the
world's tragic news, this middle of February; on the small television
screen which the Miami Central Office was connecting with various
localities to illustrate his words, vague, fleeting pictures were
mirrored.

Zetta was seated on the floor, in an opposite corner from Dan. He saw
that she was not listening to the radio. But she was listening to
something! Her head was tilted alert; across her face a succession of
her emotions was mirrored--a frown; whimsical pleasure; a smile.

She was listening; and Dan realized suddenly that she was hearing
things he could not hear! A world of things, perhaps; something
displeased her, she gestured disapprovingly; and then smiled again.

Uncanny! She was wholly absorbed, unaware that Dan was watching.
Hearing things no mortal of earth could hear! Like a dog, Dan thought,
which hears faint sounds denied its master. But Dan knew it was more
than that.

And then his heart leaped. Zetta was seeing something he could not see!
Something in the room. Her eyes followed it, as evidently it moved. She
turned her head to gaze after it; she smiled, with breathless parted
lips, then laughed.

Was she, perhaps, irrational? Conjuring visions in an unbalanced mind?
The explanation occurred to Dan, but he did not believe it was so.
Rather, it seemed to him, this girl's perceptions were more acute than
ours.

She saw and heard things beyond the range of our human senses. Here on
earth they were things strange to her. She was listening and watching
them; surprised, often pleased, as one with normal senses gazes upon
new sights and finds them interesting.

Dan found opportunity to regard the girl more closely. Her eyes, when
she looked at him, seemed normal. But at other times he saw that her
pupils became suddenly abnormally large; or again, contracted to
pin points, even in the dimness of indoors. At once, a dark veil--a
film--seemed to creep over the eyeball; but she became aware of the
scrutiny, and it was gone before Dan could make sure.

Her ears, in outward shape a trifle rounder than ours, were generally
hidden--pink shells in the waving mass of her white hair. Dan fancied
that they moved at her will--that sometimes they expanded.

Her fingers, and her toes, were long, slim and tapering, with
pink-white, pointed nails. The joints were more numerous than with us;
it gave them a prehensile aspect; and Dan fancied, too, that the arch
of the bottom of her foot was cup-shaped as though it might serve as a
vacuum for walking upon inclined surfaces.

Father had told Dan that Zetta probably was from Xenephrene. But no
one could be sure. An idea occurred to Dan, and a few days later, just
before dawn, he and Hulda tried it. Xenephrene, on clear days, was
visible just before sunrise. The weather, here in Porto Rico now, was
generally below freezing. Once it had snowed. The Cains' fruit groves
were killed; but with all the world's catastrophe for comparison, Dan
and his father thought little of it. The Porto Rican day now was but
two hours long. The sun made a low arc in the south, descending within
two hours, not very much to the west of where it had risen.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was mid morning when in the darkness before dawn, Hulda and Dan with
Zetta stood outside the plantation house. To the south Xenephrene would
soon rise.

"Do you think she'll recognize it?" Hulda asked.

Dan smiled; how could one guess? Zetta stood between them, puzzled,
looking first at one, then the other. She had walked out with them
quietly. She always walked quietly, carefully, as though trying to
imitate their own slow steps. And though Dan, with gestures, had often
tried to make her leap into the air, she never would.

It was cold, this mid morning before dawn; Dan and Hulda were dressed
in heavy, northern garments. Zetta wore the filmy robe in which they
had first seen her. She seemed to prefer her own garments, a number of
which had been brought from the vehicle, and installed with her at the
Cains'. To the cold she was utterly oblivious; the cold of outdoors, or
the warmth inside--she seemed not aware of the difference.

They stood on the knoll. The sky to the southward was brightening.
The stars there moved in a low arc. Then Xenephrene came up. Blazing,
purple-white star.

"Look!" said Dan. "Zetta, look! We call that Xenephrene. Can't you
understand me? Do you recognize that star? Your world? Did you come
from there?"

At sight of the great purple star, a queer emotion swept her face. Dan
pleaded: "Zetta, haven't you learned anything of our language? We call
that Xenephrene. Your world? You came from there? Speak, Zetta!"

She said slowly in English, with an accent quaint and indescribable:
"Yes. My worl'--I came from there."

       *       *       *       *       *

"But what's the matter with you, Hulda?"

"Nothing."

"But there is!"

"Not at all, Dan. Why do you say that?"

"But there is! You're angry, or hurt. At me? What have I done?"

"Nonsense. You haven't done--" She stopped; and he saw that her eyes
were filled with sudden tears; she tried to protest, but the words
would not come.

They were sitting alone late one evening in the Cains' living room. Dan
had noticed that for some days Hulda was abnormally quiet, and she no
longer treated him with her usual comradeship. A reserve had come to
her. And now, when he asked her why, she burst into tears!

She sobbed openly; he tried to put his arm around her, but she pushed
him away.

"Hulda!" A light broke on Dan. "It's Zetta--why, you silly little
girl--"

"You were--were kissing her this morning!"

"I was _not_! Nonsense!"

"Well, I s-saw you, with her in your arms, l-lifting her up--"

"Yes. Lifting her up. But not kissing her. But I'm kissing _you_!
Now--like that! And _that_--Hulda, darling--"

It is not my part to reconstruct the scene that followed between them,
although both have described the wonder of it all to all of the family
who would listen--wonder and awe at the voicing of love which all of
us knew they had felt for a year or two. They were engaged when ten
minutes later they thumped on the elder Cains' door to tell them the
wonderful news.

Dan maintained that to Zetta he owed a great debt of gratitude; for
without Hulda's jealousy of Zetta, Dan says he might have been too
stupid ever to propose. The episode with Zetta was simple enough; Dan
explained it readily to Hulda's entire satisfaction.

He had been alone with Zetta that morning, trying to make her talk more
of our language, which now he knew that she was learning. With a mind
wholly different from ours--this Dan now realized--she undoubtedly was
learning with extraordinary rapidity. But, quite evidently, she had her
own method. She would not speak again; but when he began naming objects
in the room, trying to aid her by systematic teaching, she showed
approval and listened attentively.

During the course of this lesson, Dan had touched her. He laid his hand
on her arm. Curious sensation! He felt at once, not a lack of solidity,
but a seeming lack of weight. She had risen to her feet as though
startled by his touch. He stood, from his much greater height looking
down at her. Still holding her arm.

And this Dan confessed to me, but most assuredly he did not confess it
to Hulda. As he stood here, staring into the glowing dark depths of
Zetta's eyes, it occurred to him that he should release her. But he
did not. Instead, he caught her in his arms. Lifted her up. Not, to be
wholly truthful, because scientifically he wanted to test her weight.
Rather was it because, at touching her, an instant of madness swept him.

It passed. She was pushing him away, smiling, startled, but unafraid.
And, with the madness gone, he tossed her into the air as one would
toss a child. Caught her; tossed her again to the ceiling and let her
fall, to land lightly on tiptoe as her feet came down to the straw
matting of the floor. And in the doorway, he became aware that Hulda
was standing, silently watching them.

When father arrived at the Cains' he weighed Zetta. Had she been a
normal girl of earth, by her appearance she would have weighed some
ninety or a hundred pounds. Zetta weighed eighteen pounds!

There were several scientists in Porto Rico who, at father's
invitation, came to see Zetta. They were with her hours each day. Dan
and Hulda were excluded. Father's manner, Dan said, was very solemn,
and he seemed to be laboring under a suppressed excitement. Then came
the news of March 2, that invaders from Xenephrene had landed on the
earth near New York. The scientists at the Cains' house hastened to San
Juan, but father remained.

One afternoon--it was the afternoon of March 4--Hulda and Dan listened
at the door when father was with Zetta. She was talking to him now!
Talking in low, slow tones; haltingly, and often he would question and
prompt her. Abruptly he rose to his feet and came out.

"Hulda! Dan, where are your father and mother?"

Dan called them; they came hustling in. The excitement of these days
was too much for the elder Cains; they lived in a constant confusion
and bewilderment.

"Sit down, all of you," father commanded. "Zetta--come out here, child."

She came at his call, wide-eyed, gentle; but she, too, was trembling
with excitement. Father seated her gently on a cushion. He said:

"Our earth lashed into turmoil by this extraordinary change of climate,
is far worse off than that. These invaders--well, what Zetta has to say
will at least give us information--aid us in doing what we can to repel
them! It is a bad condition--it may prove serious--possibly complete
disaster!"

He regarded Zetta with a gentle tenderness. "This girl has come from
her world to help us. Yes, she has learned our language, with what
strange qualities of mind, and senses so different from ours you will
be amazed to hear. A very gentle little creature. I think all of you
have grown to love her--she says you have been very kind to her, and
she loves you very much, particularly Hulda."

It struck Hulda with a guilty pang, hearing this after her own jealousy
of Zetta; for Hulda was no more than human, and there had been days
when secretly she hotly resented the strange and beautiful girl's
presence in the house with Dan. But that was over. Hulda exclaimed
impulsively, "I do love her!"

The two girls' glances met affectionately. "Yes," Zetta said suddenly.
"We do love ver' much."

Father went on: "She is here--came here to help us. All this time, in
her own way, she has been striving to learn our language that she might
tell us. She has told me everything. Zetta, tell them--just what you
told me--"

Father stopped his nervous pacing and sat down abruptly. And without
preface, quietly, sometimes haltingly, in her strangely small voice and
curiously clipped syllables, Zetta began her amazing narrative.




                               CHAPTER V

                            CRIMSON SOUND!


On the afternoon of March 3, Freddie and I, in Miami, were summoned
by the War Department, which was installed here in temporary quarters
after the flight from Washington. We were greeted by the secretary, who
introduced us to a dozen or more grave-faced officials who were seated
around a large table in a cold, badly illuminated room. They were under
the impression that I had recently been to Porto Rico with my father;
they wanted further details from me, as an eyewitness, to supplement
the information which had been furnished them concerning the captive
girl from Xenephrene.

I had not been to Porto Rico; I could tell them nothing, but I remained
at the conference with Freddie. Of him, they wanted a demonstration of
his invention. The War Secretary laughed, but it was a very hollow,
mirthless laugh.

"You see, young man, we are almost in the position of grasping at
straws."

By the general public, who reads of war conferences and grave official
decisions given with calm dignity in times of national crisis, the
inner workings of a government are never understood. The people
naturally picture men of great intellect, calmly, judicially weighing
problems of international law, and quietly giving their decisions,
as though the whole matter were controlled by some giant, insensate
machine of precision, incapable of error, undisturbed by human feeling.

It is not so. Or, at least, I can vouch for the fact that in the
darkness of this afternoon of March 3, 1953, in the United States War
Department at Miami, it most certainly was not so.

These gray-haired men were very human. Most were unshaved, with rumpled
hair and reddened eyes. Distraught, harassed; undecided; doubtful of
everything; striving to do the best they could, with the welfare of
millions of their people at stake. Conditions of unprecedented disaster
had for weeks assailed them. Under this culminating blow--invaders from
another world landing to attack what was once our greatest city--they
were all but broken.

Very human indeed! The Secretary of the Navy sat savagely chewing on
the stump of an old cigar, blowing on his hands, cursing the cold
intervals. The Air Secretary was pouring hot coffee at the end of the
table, shoving a litter of papers out of his way to make room for the
cups. The stooped, middle-aged, haggard gentleman pacing the floor was
our President.

"Grasping at a straw," said the War Secretary.

In a sudden silence, through an open doorway to the room adjoining, I
could hear the clatter of the southern telegraphs, telephone bells, the
hiss and splutter of the radio and television instruments.

"Close that door," the secretary added querulously. "You've brought
your model, Smith? Put it here on the table--tell us about it."

       *       *       *       *       *

Freddie opened his apparatus and explained it briefly. His so-called
thermodyne principle. Though ultimately he had hoped to adapt it into
a motor of revolutionary design, his present model was merely a small
projector.

"Projector of what?" demanded the President irritably.

"Of heat, sir," Freddie answered. "I'll show you. This is a very small
model, of course, but it demonstrates the principle."

They did not want any technicalities from Freddie. He explained only
that his apparatus, in this present small form, took a tiny electric
spark and built it up into a new form of radiant heat.

"It is," said Freddie, "heat of totally different properties from
the kind with which we commonly deal. It travels--radiates, by the
diffusion of its electrons, more like light than heat. At a great
speed--I think possibly, at over a hundred thousand miles a second."

He opened his apparatus. It consisted of a small, flat, metallic box,
curved to fit a man's chest. A disk, like a small electrode, to be
pressed against the skin. Freddie bared his chest and strapped it on.

"I use," he said, "the tiny electrical impulse which the human body
itself furnishes. This, I amplify, build up and store in a battery."
Wires from the generator led to a small box which he opened to show
his audience--a box of coils, and a tiny row of amplifying tubes. He
put this in his pocket, with wires leading to the battery and the
projector. These were both in one piece--the projector a small metallic
funnel, with a trigger; a grid of wires was across its opened end; it
had a long metallic handle, in the hollow interior of which was the
battery where the charge was concentrated.

"Electrons of heat under pressure," said Freddie.

"Show us," said some one.

Freddie erected a screen across the room--an insulating screen to kill
the heat-beam so that it could not injure the wall. The men moved aside.

Freddie, after a moment to generate and concentrate the charge, raised
the muzzle.

The thing hissed slightly; a dull violet beam sprang like light from
the projector. It struck the screen some twenty feet away, in a large
circle of fluorescence; in the dimness of the room it seemed like
phosphorescent water, landing in a spray and dissipating as it struck,
like a dissolving mist.

Freddie cried, "Peter, hold something in it!"

I took a sheet of paper, held it carefully into the beam. It shriveled,
blackened and burst into flame. Then a lead pencil--it melted off
midway of its length as I held it up.

[Illustration: "I held a piece of paper in the beam. It shriveled
immediately, blackened and burst into flame."]

Freddie snapped off the apparatus. "That's all, gentlemen. With
a large model, I would use a high voltage current for my original
impulse, instead of the tiny impulse of the human body."

"How far will that beam carry?" the President demanded.

"This one?" Freddie asked. "Or a maximum, full-sized projector?"

"This one. Why talk about what you haven't got?"

"About thirty-five feet, sir. Further, perhaps, if I concentrate
it--keep it from spreading. Say fifty feet. But at that distance its
temperature would not be very great."

"How great?"

"Two hundred degrees Fahrenheit."

"How much is it at the muzzle?"

"About twelve hundred."

An effective range of thirty-five or fifty feet! They were all
disappointed. "We can't," said the War Secretary, "figure this thing in
the light of a large model we some time might be able to build. What
good is that?"

The man beside me said abruptly: "This thing is useless to help us now,
gentlemen. But, in the future--do you know, I wouldn't say but what
this young fellow has hit upon something not unlike what our enemies
seem to be using--"

The door from the adjoining room opened. A man said: "Davis has started
his flight. He's almost within sight of them now--shall I bring in the
screen?"

"Bring it in," said the President. "Get these lights down--put that
away, Mr. Smith--we'll discuss that some other time--it's been very
interesting."

Freddie hastily gathered up his apparatus. The lights in the conference
room were turned out; it was illumined only by the blue reflection
through the doorway. Men brought in a tel-vision screen some two feet
square; placed it upright on the table and we all gathered before it.
The instrument room door was closed. We were in the darkness save for
the vague silver radiance that came from the screen.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the whispers around me I soon knew what was transpiring. The
invaders had landed on the east bank of the frozen Hudson, near the
suburb of Tarrytown. Xenephrene was at its closest point to the earth
now, which is what doubtless prompted the invasion. Xenephrene was
passing us; beginning to-day, the distance between the worlds would
grow greater.

Presumably the invaders had landed on the night of February 28. It had
been snowing around New York City steadily for a week; but that night
was clear. Reports said that a great silver ball had been seen floating
down from the sky; later, from the ground, strange beams of colored
light were seen, moving slowly southward. And strange sounds were heard.

But the information was confused and unauthentic. This last blizzard
had cut off all the New York area from the world. There was practically
no transportation; no wires remained standing; no radio-sending
stations were operating within all that region.

How many people remained on Manhattan Island, no one could say. Very
few, probably. A deserted, congealed city, snow-buried, with its huge
buildings nothing now but giant monuments to a greatness which once had
been. The cold was worse than scientists prognosticated. Nothing could
get to New York now, save possibly dog-sleds, and the new type Arctic
planes; and very few of those were available.

War against the invaders from Xenephrene!

Our government bulletins of the day had assured the public that these
invaders would be held in check, attacked, held from moving further
south, and very soon exterminated. What deaths to our people they
had already caused, was not known. But it was evident that they were
hostile; a plane carrying refugees had passed near their lights.
Confused stories were told of melting, vanishing snow under red light;
and stories of another refugee plane attacked and destroyed by red
light and strange sound! Meaningless news! Yet terrible!

The British Empire, from its capital in North Africa, offered us aid.
They were building the Arctic planes. The French government from its
headquarters in Tunis, preparing to move again south to the lower
Sahara, radioed its desire to help. Argentina and Chile, harassed with
their own problems in the new tropic heat, wanted to help if they could.

Magnificent gestures, but they all meant very little. So far, nothing
had been done. A few of our planes had ventured near New York; and none
had so far been heard of since. Now, a huge Arctic plane, commanded
by this Davis, equipped with modern aircraft artillery, with radio
and a tel-vision image-finder, was making an experimental flight. A
companion plane, flown by the famous Robinson, was with it. Robinson
had the longest-range airplane gun of modern times; and he carried
bombs. His purpose was to try and get above the enemy; and Davis, with
his tel-vision and radio would report conditions as best he could.

This attempt, then, was what now we were to witness. I have never been
present at so dramatic a scene as this one which took place on the
tel-vision mirror, and in the room around me.

In the darkness the silver light from the screen vaguely illumined the
tense crowding figures. The highest officials of our government! No
calm judicial conference here! Tired, cold, anxious men, watching and
listening with bated breaths and thumping hearts. There had been a buzz
of whispered comments; the shifting of chairs; shuffling of feet. But
now there was silence.

The screen image blurred for a moment as it was brought in from the
other room; but soon it cleared. I saw the cold, frosty stars in a
field of blue-black; far below, the dim vista of gray-white snow
shining in the starlight--a panorama of snow-laden country at night.
The image-finder was in the front of Davis's plane, pointing diagonally
downward. A swaying scene, diminished by the mirror, and by the two
thousand-foot altitude at which Davis was flying.

Some one said: "Where are we? I don't recognize that landscape."

"Long Island. He's heading for New York City. Hush! We'll throw in his
radio-sound." It was the voice of the War Secretary. "Grant, you said
you had connection."

A man was fumbling with the miniature audiphone beside the mirror. We
heard the drone of Davis's plane; and then heard his voice, with words
indistinguishable as he spoke to the gunner with him.

The President's voice said nervously: "Have you sending connection? If
we want to give him orders--where is the other plane? Isn't Robinson
around here?"

Grant said: "Yes. He was visible awhile ago. Davis is going to fly over
New York--the enemy, he thinks, is still up in the Yonkers district."

       *       *       *       *       *

I sat staring at the screen. Half an hour? Or two hours? I could not
have said. Swaying stars; a dim white swaying landscape. Then the
horizon dropped; stars covered everything; Davis was mounting. He
leveled at last.

Dimly, far down, I could see the white configurations of Long Island
Sound, frozen into solid ice, white with piled snowdrifts, black where
the wind had swept it bare. A blurred, shifting scene, dizzying, but
sometimes steady and very clear. It tilted up--all land for a moment.

I saw, momentarily as the plane swooped down, the great bridges over
the river from Long Island to Manhattan. Small as a child's toys.
Broken toy bridges, with ice piled upon them; cables dangling--the
older Brooklyn Bridge lay askew. A jam of river ice had wrenched at one
of its piers.

It was a motionless world; the river of tangled, motionless ice-floes,
the frozen, motionless bay with hulks of vessels caught in it and
abandoned; and the great city--all congealed, stricken of motion in
every detail.

And then we were over lower New York. The parks were wan, white blobs;
the streets were black canyons; the great buildings with their archways
and pedestrian levels in the crowded lower district stood like frozen
headstones--Davis swooped--I saw a great office building in which, it
seemed, the water system must have burst and flooded it when still
there was warmth inside; its facade was a mass of ice. The plane zoomed
up and only the stars were visible.

[Illustration: Gaunt, ghostly in the moonlight, lay the frost-congealed
city of New York. Like frozen headstones the great buildings stood,
coated with glistening ice. Nowhere, on land or water, was there any
sign of life or motion.]

Above the motor drone from the audiphone, the President's voice said:
"Ask him about Robinson. Where is he?"

Then we saw Robinson's large quadru-plane with its helicopters folded,
its cabin hanging like a silver bullet beneath the lower wing. It
came swinging into our image from one side, and headed north into the
starlight.

Abruptly we heard Davis's voice: "Above Central Park. It's piled level
as an Arctic snow-field. In the lower city there seemed no lights--saw
no sign of any one remaining. The enemy is in the open country up
ahead--northeast of the Yonkers district--Look! There now, you see the
enemy light!"

At the distant northern horizon in the background of the image, a dull
radiance of red was visible. It seemed a crimson glow standing up into
the sky. Not the yellow of a reflected conflagration, but red--crimson
red.

"Blood!" murmured the man beside me. "Crimson stain--"

Davis's voice was saying: "I'll keep in sight of Robinson. He's
mounting. I'm cutting out my connection with you now--except the image
and the continuous one-way sound. You'll hear and see better. Hear and
see all that we do--I can begin to hear it now. Good-by to you all."

His voice broke with the snap that indicated his connection was off.
The War Secretary cried: "Grant! Stop him! We must be able to talk with
him--give him orders! That fool--dare-devil--he's likely to do anything
just so we may see and hear as much as possible!"

But the connection was broken. Davis, with that ominous, significant
"Good-by to you all," had cut out so that we might see and hear in full
volume. We could no longer communicate with him.

The mirror was brighter and clearer with its greater power; the drone
of the motors came louder; and then dimmed suddenly as Davis evidently
threw in his mufflers.

In the silence now, we heard another sound. The sound of the enemy! The
sound of that crimson radiance in the sky ahead! A low whine. It did
not seem electrical. A whine--more like a giant animal in distress.

I listened, with a shudder thrilling me; and I know that every man in
the room must have felt the same. A queer thrilling shudder, as though
the very sound itself were physically affecting me with its vibrations.
It was very soft, now at first; and I was only hearing the faint, radio
echo of it; yet upon my senses it laid a singularly weird, uncanny
feeling of the diabolical.

       *       *       *       *       *

The minutes passed. As the plane flew northward, the crimson stain
in the sky seemed spreading. And the whine increased; grew louder,
resolved itself now into a myriad undertones. Cries, muffled, faint,
aerial, yet somehow clear; screams, checked and then begun again; a
low, tiny throbbing--a myriad unearthly sounds, weirdly abnormal, like
nothing I had ever heard before, all blended as undertones to the one
great whine.

The crimson radiance, screaming into the night! Light and sound
intermingled. Was this some strange weapon of a strange science which
the invaders from Xenephrene had brought to attack us? There was
something deadly in the aspect of that crimson radiance. And something
equally lethal in the gruesome sound which split the night around it.

My thoughts were whirling in this fashion when I heard the muttered
words of the man next to me--murmuring to the man on his other side,
"That's weird! Vanderstuyft says that the girl from Xenephrene can see
and hear below the human scale! This is it--the infra-red made visible,
and its sounds brought up to our human ears! Weird--"

Some one else was asking: "Is that light and that sound their weapon?
Where's the Robinson plane?"

And the War Secretary said: "Hush! He's there--ahead. We're mounting."

Nothing but sky again. A blood-red, night sky. The stars gleamed like
crimson jewels through the radiance. Then again, the Davis plane
leveled. We saw now that the invaders evidently were encamped in a
snowy stretch of what had been comparatively open country. The houses
which once were there, lay now under mounds of snow. A blank rolling
landscape; fences, roads, all gone beneath the billowing blanket of
white; the trees only were left, stark black sticks in patches.

In an oval, perhaps a mile across its greatest diameter, the red beam
stood up into the sky. A barrage of crimson--not light, but sound! It
throbbed and screamed and whined its defiance!

The two planes circled the radiance, some ten thousand feet up, and
several miles away. The Davis plane fired a shell; we heard the
dull muffled report, saw a yellow glare where it struck the red
beam and harmlessly exploded. But it struck low, where perhaps the
sound-vibrations were too intense.

The planes mounted higher. We could see Robinson's ahead and above us!
He was closer to the crimson barrage. Trying to climb over it--to drop
a bomb.

From this greater height, within the oval other lights showed, far down
on the snow. Tiny moving spots of vivid color. The enemy's encampment.
Davis was now at least at the twenty thousand foot level. Robinson was
still higher. In that deadly cold it seemed incredible; but still they
struggled up.

At this height the crimson barrage was thin; once, overhead, I seemed
to see where it ended. The whine of it was fainter, but every gruesome
undertone still sounded clear.

"He's trying it!" The man beside me blurted it aloud. Startled movement
sounded in the room; a chair pushed back with a rasp; tense murmurs;
shuffling feet. We stared. Robinson's plane darted in--

There was just an instant when I thought it was safely through. I could
see it clearly--the black outline of a bird stained crimson. It seemed
to hang motionless; then it fluttered; falling--and as it fell, like
a mist of black vapor it suddenly expanded; a black wraith of a plane
expanding, dissipating. It did not seem to reach the ground. It was
gone, dissolved into nothing visible, with only a howling, mouthing
sound from the crimson monster to mark its passing!

A shiver swept me; I was cold, trembling. I heard some one near me cry
in horror: "Davis, he's--" and check himself. The screen was a blur of
crimson, with lurid spots of light on the ground showing through it.
Davis was heading downward in a swoop through the red beam! It spread
until the whole image before us was a crimson stain.

The lights on the ground seemed coming up, leaping up, growing in size
as the plane dived at them. The room was a chaos of gruesome tiny
screams! We were in the crimson! It snapped with a myriad sparks. It
howled, squealed, screamed! An instant, but it seemed an eternity. Then
the red vanished. We were through it! By Heaven, through it! Safely
through! Diving at the ground!

I saw that one of the spots of light had broadened to a green ghastly
glare on the snow-surface. Figures of men in human form standing there,
fore-shortened by the overhead perspective to huge heads and dwindling
bodies. Human forms; men of almost naked bodies, standing in the snow,
bodies painted green by the glare. Apparatus of war erected in the
snow--a bare spot where the snow was gone, and rock and earth showed
clean--a shimmer that seemed a pool of water lying warm with ice around
it.

A glimpse--no more than a second or two undoubtedly. Then the scene,
rushing upward, was fading. The confusion of sounds and blurred lights
suddenly grew faint--faded--vanished into darkness and silence!

The tel-vision screen was dead--a blank silver surface staring at us
like a corpse. The audiphone was mute.

Davis's plane had vanished like its fellow into nothingness before it
reached the ground!

This was the afternoon of the 3rd of March. That night, while Freddie
and I were at our boarding place, the news reached us that a silver
ball of invaders from Xenephrene had landed in the twilight of the
Venezuelan coast--the heart of the region which in all our western
hemisphere we had come to prize most dearly!




                              CHAPTER VI

                         "IF I HAD BUT KNOWN!"


"Look here, young man," said the War Secretary, "can you operate a
plane of the Arctic A type?"

I could, and so could Freddie, I said. The War Secretary continued his
pacing of the room. It was about nine o'clock of the morning of March
15--black as midnight outdoors; cold, with clouds scudding low over the
Florida keys, clouds which promised snow. The War Secretary had sent
for us.

Conditions were worse everywhere, it seemed now by this morning's
news--as though each day brought its disasters worse than any which
had gone before. The invaders from Xenephrene were obviously almost
impregnable to our attack. The efforts of Robinson and Davis had proved
it, if nothing else. It was obvious also that the invaders at New York
City so far had made no offensive move. Their barrage--the crimson
howling sound, or light, whatever it might be--was merely their defense.

"Heaven knows," the secretary exclaimed, "what weapons they may have
to loose when they begin an attack!"

And now, another huge silver ball had landed in Venezuela--on the
coastal plain near La Guayra. In the deserted frozen wastes of New
York State the invaders were not an immediate, serious menace. But in
Venezuela it was a far different condition.

La Guayra was the main receiving port for all our refugee ships. A
twilight had fallen there, but the temperature still was mild. It was
colder up in Caracas, but the people thronged there, and with heroic
efforts the Government and the citizens were doing their best to
receive them.

It was not a wholly unselfish effort. With the new climate, Colombia,
Venezuela, the former jungles of the Amazon basin of Brazil; Ecuador,
Peru, even the mountain fastnesses of Bolivia, and the arid coast of
north Chile--this was the land of promise. It was the best, the only
tolerable all-year climate left to the Western World. Here the new
great cities would spring up--centers of industry and commerce; here
would be the new great fields of grain; the cattle ranges.

But here, in the midst of the confusion of arriving settlers, the enemy
from Xenephrene had landed! We had no details; we only knew that around
the silver ball a barrage of red howling sound was standing up into the
sky. Within that circular mile of the red barrage, all that had been
evidence of our human life--houses, trees, people--all was vanished!

The War Secretary stopped before me. "I've radioed your father this
morning, Peter. Told him to send that Xenephrene girl up here to us at
once! We've got to do something. We must learn if we can what these
unearthly enemies are like--do scientifically what we can to oppose
them."

He gestured at me vehemently. "You Hollanders are very stubborn, young
Peter. Your father told me he was very busy--he'd have full information
for me in a day or two! That's the scientist for you! Taking it
methodically, with that damn scientific routine, when a day or two is
an eternity just now!"

I regarded Freddie. We did not smile; in these terrible days there was
not a smile left in us. But Freddie nodded.

"That's father's way," I said. "But--"

"Well, I told him I was sending a special plane down there at once to
get him and the girl. The Venezuelan Government is demanding details of
us. Every thirty minutes Caracas calls me up. Makes a fool of us--a
girl of this unknown enemy race right in our hands and we don't produce
her! Your father said, 'Good! Send Peter and young Fred Smith--I want
to see them anyway.'"

There was nothing that could have pleased Freddie and myself better.
The secretary offered us a pilot, but we did not want one. We started
that morning, armed with legal papers, given us jocularly, but with
serious intent, nevertheless, and commanding father's presence with
Zetta in Miami the next day.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was eleven o'clock when we got away in the big Arctic A plane. A
black morning with swift, low clouds, and a wind from the north. Flying
southeast, we had scarcely left the Bahamas behind us when the weather
cleared. Cold starlight shone on a dark, cold ocean. Icebergs had been
seen down this far, but we did not chance to pass any now. But we saw
many scurrying steamships.

In some four hours we raised the Morrow light of San Juan and I turned
southwest, to strike the coast beyond Arecibo. Flying low, we headed
in, over the line of breakers on the white beach. Columbus landed near
here, not so many lifetimes ago. Yet how different was the world then!

The tumbled mountains rising behind the sea which Columbus had
described to Isabella rose before us now. The same shape; every tiny
peak undoubtedly the same. But they were not the vivid warm green which
had so enchanted the mariner. These were cold and blue gray, and the
tops of them were white with snow.

It was mid-afternoon when, in the darkness, we dropped with a roar upon
Dan's landing stage at the foot of the knoll. We leaped from the plane
and hurried up the hill, to see Dan and father, and Hulda and the Cains
waving at us from the veranda, and a small, strange white figure of a
girl standing among them.

If one could only glimpse the future, even for a brief moment! It makes
me shudder sometimes to think how blindly we are forced to tread our
way through life, raising each foot without the knowledge of what will
happen before it reaches the ground! That afternoon, for instance, I
was very happy to burst in upon father and Dan. If Freddie and I had
known what was impending, we would have done anything rather than
arrive at that moment. If we had delayed our arrival even an hour!
Yet, even in a seeming tragedy, there is evidence of some all-guiding
purpose. We may not see it, we may deny it, but I think that always it
is there.

We came upon the plantation house within a moment after Zetta had begun
her narration. She had told it to father; she was beginning it for Dan
and the others, when the sound of our arriving plane checked her.

The few remaining hours of that afternoon and evening were crowded
with the confusion of our arrival, our exchange of news and ideas, and
listening to the world news from the radio. Zetta did not tell her
story that afternoon or that evening. Father, with a quizzical smile,
looked over the legal papers with which we served him.

"Good enough, boys! I'll obey. We'll take Zetta and go up to Miami
to-morrow morning." He turned to Dan. "You come with us. Zetta will
tell her story to the authorities in Miami, just as she's told it to
me. And I'll have some interesting scientific data for them, I promise
you."

He gestured with a voluminous sheaf of papers--his scientific notes
on Zetta's narrative and on the girl's mental and physical being. He
gestured with the papers and then stuck them back in his pocket. Fate!
Providence! Call it what you will. He did not hand them to Dan or to
Freddie or to me--he stuck them back in his pocket!

The news of Hulda's and Dan's engagement brought me pleasure. I shook
Dan's hand warmly and kissed my sister as she flung herself into my
arms. Little Hulda was radiant. Dan's handsome, tanned face was flushed
as he received our congratulations; and when they were over, he stood
towering over Hulda, with his arms around her as she clung to him.

Happy lovers, snatching at their happiness even in the midst of the
world's turmoil! Happy that afternoon and evening.

       *       *       *       *       *

I shall never forget my meeting with Zetta as they introduced me to
her that afternoon. She stood in the center of the room, and something
momentarily diverted the rest of them from us; for an instant we were
alone. I stared at her.

What futile words of greeting I may have uttered I do not know, and I
think that she said nothing. I saw a quaintly beautiful young girl,
curiously different in a way not to be defined from any girl I had ever
before beheld. A strange, weird beauty. I took her hand as she held it
out in the gesture they had taught her.

I have mentioned Dan's feelings under similar circumstances. Dan was in
love with Hulda; the instinct of all that was upright and true within
him rose to cast out this surge of alien emotion. Not so with me--I was
wholly fancy free.

I took Zetta's hand. It seemed then as though the contact might
suddenly become beyond my power to break. Her gaze held mine. I saw
a sudden startled look in her eyes, and then saw something else--the
mirrored play of emotions like my own.

Her body seemed to sway toward me; I could see and feel her
withstanding its sway. An attraction between us. Do I mean that
literally? Scientifically? I do not know. There is, perhaps, between
the sexes on earth such an attraction. Or it may perchance be
psychological, emotional, nothing more.

I felt it with Zetta, and I could see that she felt it and was
startled. But in her eyes there was more than surprise--a swift melting
look of tenderness.

Mrs. Cain bustled up to us. "Isn't she a darling little thing, Peter?
We all love her. Oh, dear me, these terrible, strange times!"

Our hands broke apart. Was it love we had felt in that instant? Could
love be possible, could it be right between a man and a woman so
different? Does the Creator intend the worlds thus to be joined, or is
the isolation He has imposed upon each of them an evidence that such
cannot be?

Love between Zetta and me? I do not know. But all that afternoon and
evening, I found my eyes turning to her, and found her somber gaze upon
me.

We chanced to approach each other several times, and always I was
conscious of the attraction of her nearness. Not so strong as at
first. All my instinct, my reason, was prepared for it now; a thousand
barriers of conventionality and time and place and circumstance
contributed subconsciously to resist it. But it was there, invisibly,
intangibly holding us.

       *       *       *       *       *

The evening's radio news brought a measure of relief to the world.
From New York came the report that the invaders had vanished. Moved
somewhere else, perhaps--but where it was not known.

Father made one comment; his words, which proved to be true
enough, linger clear in my memory. "They left New York yesterday
afternoon, after the attack by Robinson and Davis. There are not
two vehicles--only one! It left New York and landed last night in
Venezuela! It may leave there presently." His glance turned to Zetta.
"I have reason to think that the invaders will voluntarily withdraw
from the earth. Very soon, I imagine--while Xenephrene is still
comparatively near us."

True enough! At midnight that night the radio told us that the
Xenephrene vehicle, with all its people, had left Venezuela. The night
was heavily overcast, with a rain and wind storm all up through Central
America and the lower Caribbean; and north of sixteen degrees there was
snow. Where the invaders had gone, no one knew. The world was anxiously
awaiting news of their next landing place.

We sat up for perhaps an hour. It was snowing outside, with a howling
wind that swirled the snow about the eaves of the little plantation
house. At about one o'clock we all bade each other good night and went
to bed.

Ah, if we had but known!

I awoke to find Freddie shaking me. He and I had slept together. It was
four in the morning, and the house was noisy with the storm outside.
Freddie was alarmed--he did not know why. Something had awakened
him--we decided it was a thumping which we now heard in the living
room, a door banging in the wind, with a queer, broken rattle to it.

There is a sense of evil which comes to any one awakened unexpectedly
in the night. I felt it very strongly now. And Freddie's face was very
white and solemn in the glow of the night light which he had switched
on.

"The door to the porch," I said. "It's blown open--it's banging."

We went out to close it. The living room was very cold; snow was
blowing in through the outer doorway. We turned on the light. The
door was not only open, it was hanging askew, half torn from its
hinges. More than that, part of its wooden framework was gone. Not
broken--vanished--as if melted off. A leprous wreck of a door, hanging
there, banging with a thump and rattle in the wind!

No need to tell us what had happened--I think we both knew then. The
door to father's bedroom stood open. He was not there. The bed had
been occupied; there was no sign of a struggle, no abnormal disorder
anywhere about the house, except for that dismembered front door, which
had been locked.

Our light and our voices awakened Dan and his parents. They came out
from their rooms. But Hulda did not come, nor Zetta! Their bedroom
doors, like father's stood open; but the occupants were gone.

Horrified moments followed, during which we searched the house and the
buildings near it. There was no evidence of any kind of how, in the
noisy night, while the rest of us slept, father, Hulda and Zetta had
been spirited away.

The terrified elder Cains remained in the house. Hastily dressing, Dan,
Freddie and I rushed to the corral. The chilled little ponies welcomed
us. We saddled, and in single file, slowly against the wind and driving
snow, we rode out into the night.

There was no surprise left for us when we reached the "Eden tract" in
the valley by the caves where once the Cains' treasured fruit trees had
grown so luxuriantly. It was all a dim gray expanse of snow, with the
naked tree branches showing in black, forlorn rows.

The trunks of the coconut trees stood like huge black sticks in a
patch of white. But among them there was no small silver vehicle. The
guards had been withdrawn a week before. There was no evidence here of
anything.

The heavy falling snowflakes would have covered up even recent
footprints; there was only the depression in the sand and snow to mark
where the vehicle had been.

The last communication was broken. The last remaining evidence of
Xenephrene upon our earth was gone!




                              CHAPTER VII

                MYSTERIOUS STAR, IMPERTURBABLY SHINING!


More than twice seventeen months went by. For me and for Dan the
progress of the world, it seemed then, must always be in cycles of
seventeen months. That is the length of time which Xenephrene took
periodically to overtake and pass us in our orbit. Almost between us
and the sun, every seventeen months; and at such times she was at her
closest points to us, some sixteen to nineteen million miles away. Not
very far, in terms of astronomical measurement, but to Dan and me very
far indeed.

Two of these passings came and went. We had hoped there might be some
sign from Xenephrene; even something hostile would had seemed to us
better than nothing. Dan and I often sat in the night, gazing at the
great purple-white star.

Romantic, mysterious world, imperturbably blazing up there! It held
captive for Dan the woman he loved; for me, a beloved sister and my
dear father. Held them captive--if indeed they were alive, which is
the best we could hope--held them, and it gave no sign! Beautiful,
mysterious world--and sinister! Gazing up at it, my fancy roamed.

What strange sights and sounds and beings were there! We had had but a
little glimpse, no more--and then it was snatched away.

It is not important now for me to recount what these months brought
on earth. The adjustment to new conditions, new climate, new night
and day. Volumes of history describe it fully--the myriad shifting
events over the world's great surface, the new nations, new mingling
of races--everything new, it would seem. Everything but human nature,
the old characteristics, love, hate, jealousy, friendship, greed,
envy--nothing on earth has ever changed them, and nothing will.

We did not know why father, Hulda and Zetta were abducted; but
that they were captured by the invaders and with them returned to
Xenephrene we felt sure. Why the invaders came at all, and then so
hastily withdrew, we could not guess. Zetta knew, and she had told
father. But the secret went with them. Perhaps, we decided, the Creator
intends this veil of mystery between the worlds. If that thought could
be spiritual consolation to Dan and me, we tried to make the most of it.

Dan was distracted. Vainly he and I sought some way by which we might
get to Xenephrene. It seemed impossible. Before that terrible winter
when what they now call the "Great Change" began, any serious talk of
going to a neighbor planet was always laughed at. But no one laughed
now.

Scientists told Dan and me that at present, for us of earth, the thing
was impossible. If father had left his notes, perhaps, instead of
putting them in his pocket that fatal afternoon; if some vestige of
apparatus had been left behind by the invaders; if only we still had
even a portion of the mechanism of Zetta's small vehicle, that our
scientists might study it, try to learn its secret--Ah, those ifs! They
are all encompassed in the one phrase, which each of us mortals at one
time or another in life has murmured sadly: "If only I had known!"

I was far older now in spirit than that winter thirty-five months
before. We do not age in regular progression, but in spurts of stressed
mental and physical suffering. I aged, for though I lost a sister and
father, something else I lost, less tangible but unforgettable. The
girl Zetta--the loss of what might have been, for me and for her.

Love born of a glance, now to stay with me always? It was not that. I
was not so youthful that I could cherish such romantic illusion.

But this I knew. Something, that memorable afternoon when she and I
first joined glances, sprang into being. As though over the gap from
one world to another, from a man to a woman and back again, it sprang
and clung reluctant to be broken. And it left its mark upon my mind
and spirit. It was not to be; I believed that fully. But, it had been,
the consciousness was within me that it would have been a thing very
beautiful.

And I was older; and, I think, a better man, just for the memory.

Thirty-five months! A dreary, hopeless interval to Dan and me. Dreary,
for in the midst of all the world's turmoil we seemed to stand apart;
not actors, spectators merely, with our minds and spirits up there
where the great purple star was shining. Thirty-five hopeless months,
for it seemed that what we had lost was forever gone.

On February 4, 1956, Dan and I were living in Porto Rico. Freddie
was in Miami. Father's post in Southern Chile was taken by one of
his fellow scientists. The world rolls on! Father was lost, his post
filled, and himself almost forgotten. How fatuously we mortals attach
importance to ourselves! We strut our little moment upon the stage,
some in the spotlight, some shrinking in the shadows by the back drop.
We miss our cues, fumble, and are abashed or terrified. But in a moment
no one cares. The curtain rings down; up again, with the old play, but
new scenes and other actors; and the changing audience forgets we ever
were on the stage at all.

Father's post was filled. Freddie and I had been down there in Chile
one summer, but we did not like it and we came back. Summer! The very
word had lost its meaning. They were beginning now to call it the Day.

       *       *       *       *       *

We came back in June, chasing the daylight, and located in Porto Rico.
Dan and his father were engaging in the new agriculture. The daylight
and twilight months in the West Indies were found favorable for the
raising of vegetables. Every one was groping. What could or could not
be done was as yet scarcely known. But it promised to be a profitable
business. Food of any kind, anywhere in the world, at any time, found a
ready market. All the world governments were engaged in its purchase,
its storage, and its distribution.

A new era was beginning; and in it some saw a more rational order than
in the old. I am no economist; yet now I could see quite clearly the
fallacy of much that the world had previously thought was best. Tariff
walls between the nations were gone now. The world in its necessity
became one big family, working to maintain itself as best it could.

In the daylight in Porto Rico, we were raising vegetables to feed the
people who were living in the darkness and cold of the south. Six
months later, they would be doing the same for us.

It is not my purpose to indulge in economic theories here, though Dan
and I often discussed them. Freddie was not interested. We wanted him
with us; but though he came to Porto Rico, he stayed in San Juan,
often going up to Miami. The National Capital was still there; and
Freddie had interested the government in his invention.

The world catastrophe had brought a great stimulus to scientific
invention. New devices, born of the necessity of totally new world
conditions, were being developed. Every government was ready to help
with funds. Freddie had perfected his motor, financed by our government.

More important than that, however, they were interested in producing
his heat-ray projector in more powerful form. His new projector, he
told us, was very nearly ready. Not for war purposes, of course. With
characteristic thoughtlessness, the world had already almost forgotten
the brief invasion from Xenephrene. Such a thing as that naturally
could never happen again. And after what the world had been through,
war between our own races was unthinkable.

Freddie's heat-ray, he said, would be used in the six months' Night
against the cold. It had a myriad uses. With it, a ship might blaze a
path down a frozen river. Water power might be utilized further into
the long Night; why, a city might even be sprayed with its beams and be
kept spring-like despite the cold! Visions! But by such visions science
moves ahead into the realism of achievement!

That long Night of '55 and '56 Dan and I spent housed in, with the
comparative comfort of our newly rebuilt and heated plantation house.
Throughout January and February it snowed heavily; the tumbled little
mountains of Porto Rico were solid white.

Sometimes the leaden sky would clear; the stars and moon would glitter
on the snow, so bright one could almost read outdoors. Our winter moon
was magnificent. The moon's orbit about the earth was very little
changed from before; its plane had shifted with us, scientists said,
and the moon was pursuing very nearly its old path relative to us.

Dan and I had a small Arctic A flyer, and sleighs. We did not use
the plane much. The indolence of the long night of enforced idleness
was upon us. Most of the world was learning how to work hard in the
daylight months, and to do nothing gracefully through the months of
darkness. We read our books; listened to the radio; studied, planned
and talked.

It would have been very pleasant, had there not been that constant
sense of what we had lost. Father, Hulda--and Zetta. I had spoken very
little of Zetta to Dan. The dreams of what might have been, were my
own; even with him, I could not share them.

And then came February 4, 1956. The long night was fully upon us, the
twilight days were passed--midwinter was in early April. Dan and I had
been out after breakfast for a drive in the sleigh. We had returned for
luncheon with Dan's parents; and I was on the veranda, enveloped in
furs, pacing up and down in the snow. Dan, with his cigar, came out and
joined me.

There is sometimes a very queer directness to the fate which governs
our lives--and a very great unexpectedness. We walk in the dark, with
an open road or a chasm yawning before us, all unaware of which it may
be. Or we may be standing at the threshold of a shining garden of hope
and happiness, walking in the dark toward its gate, with heavy heart
because we do not see it, or realize it is there.

Dan and I were like that now. January, 1956, had been the second time
that Xenephrene passed at its closest point to earth. We had hoped that
something might happen to give us news of father. But nothing did.

Gradually our hope had been dying. The January days dragged through
their brief twilights into the solid winter night. We gave up hope.
Xenephrene was drawing ahead of the earth again, with millions of miles
of lengthening distance between the worlds. No sign from the great
purple star; and we both felt that now all hope of hearing from father
was gone.

Thoughts like these possessed me as I paced the veranda that afternoon.
They were in Dan's mind too, I am sure; but when he joined me we
neither of us spoke of them.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was clear and cold. The snow on the veranda crunched and creaked
under our tread. Beyond the incongruous coconut railing the knoll-top
showed white, with a blue-white beam of light from one of the side
windows slanting out on it. There was no moon; a deep purple sky, with
the sharply glittering silver stars. To the south, below the horizon,
we knew that the sun at this hour was hovering. But it was too far
down even to pale the stars now. Xenephrene was down there near it,
invisible to us of the north--

Dan and I paced in silence; or talked idly of the now commonplace
things of the new era of our world.

"They claim they can keep the falls of the Iguazu open all year," said
Dan. "And send the power by radio--even up as far as here."

The distribution of electric current by wireless had been greatly
improved recently. It seemed really practical now. In a few years
Niagara, in the Day, might supply power and light to the dark, frozen
cities of the south throughout their Night.

There had been most disastrous floods throughout the world when, with
the coming daylight, the snow and ice had melted. Watercourses were
unable to handle the sudden, abnormal flow.

But new channels were forming; nature and man alike were making
adjustments to the new conditions.

"If they could send us heat from the south," said Dan. "I mean direct,
natural heat. These new transformers of the power-waves may be all
right, but--"

"Freddie can--I don't mean send it, but produce it, at any rate--"

"Some day," said Dan, "we'll be able to spray all our land here with
that contrivance of his. Hah! That would be a great idea, wouldn't it?"
He chuckled with an ironical gibe at the absent Freddie; but still he
was more than half serious.

"Imagine us, Peter, getting out in the June twilight, helping the snow
to melt by spraying it with heat--warming up the frozen soil, getting
it plowed and planted a month earlier. If we could get our perishable
vegetables down to the Argentine ahead of the others, they would bring
mighty big prices--I was reading what might be done with tomatoes,
Peter--"

He checked himself abruptly, gripped my arm with a force that whirled
me around. We stood at the veranda rail.

"Heavens, Peter, look at that!"

From overhead near the zenith, a shooting star came blazing down. I had
never seen one so brilliant. A great yellow-red ball of fire, with a
flame of tail. It seemed to take long seconds as it soundlessly fell
across the sky before us--down with a blaze to the northern horizon
where the Caribbean lay, a dim, dark purple in the starlight.

We breathed again. "That didn't burn itself out," said Dan. "I'll wager
that was a meteorite--actually came down somewhere--"

"Northwest," I said. "Florida way. It certainly seemed close to us,
didn't it?"

We went back to our pacing. There was nothing particularly unusual
in seeing a meteor fall across the sky. But we were both silent,
wondering. We had caught just a glimpse of the gateway to our renewed
hope; we did not know it, but we both sensed it.

An hour passed. From within the house, old man Cain called, "Oh,
Dan--come here, listen to this."

The radio announcer was relaying an item from Curaçao. In the twilight
at Willamstadt they had seen what seemed to be a meteorite fall into
the sea near the Venezuelan coast.

"Another!" exclaimed Dan.

An hour later, still another meteorite was reported. It had fallen
somewhere in the region of Victoria Nyanza--in the lake, perhaps, or
along its shores.

Still, this seemed nothing remarkable. But about five o'clock the
radio-phone rang with our private call. It was Freddie, in Miami. The
gateway to our hopes swung wide to receive us. Dan answered the call;
I stood at his elbow, trembling with excitement--at first premonitory,
then justified.

In the silence I could hear the tiny sound of Freddie's voice.

"Oh, Dan? Dan Cain?"

"Yes. That you, Freddie?"

"Yes. Listen--I'm in Miami. A meteorite fell--they've got it--Okechobee
region. Listen--it cracked open. Was pretty well burned--but a big one.
Hollow inside! They cracked into it--they found--Oh, Dan, they phoned
me from Moorehaven just a little while ago. They"--Freddie's voice
broke with his excitement.

"They--what, Freddie? Take it easy--can't understand you."

"I'm coming, Dan. By plane--I'll get away about eight o'clock. Peter
there? Good! See you about midnight--soon as they bring it here to me,
I'll bring it to you."

"Bring what? What, Freddie?"

"The cylinder. Whatever it is--haven't seen it. They're bringing
it--they've got it. Heat-proof, insulated metal cylinder--they say it's
engraved 'Peter Vanderstuyft, Porto Rico--Rush.' I'm bringing it, Dan.
Tell Peter. It's a message from Xenephrene! It must be! A message from
Peter's father!"




                             CHAPTER VIII

                         FROM ACROSS THE VOID


We helped Freddie unload the cylinder from his plane. He arrived about
midnight, flying alone with his precious burden. It was a cylindrical
metal container, some ten feet long by three feet in diameter--a
strange looking, purple-brown metal, smooth and shining like burnished
copper. White metal handles were on the cylinder--and down one of its
bulging sides was crudely engraved the inscription "Peter Vanderstuyft,
Porto Rico. Rush."

The thing weighed perhaps two hundred pounds. It was warm, yet clammy
to the touch, as though sweating. And though it appeared smooth, under
my finger tips I could feel that it was pitted and scarred--blistered
as though by tremendous heat.

We labored up the hill with it, and deposited it on the floor in the
Cain's living room, gathering over it, wondering how it might be
opened. The message from Xenephrene! It had come at last; and abruptly
I seemed to feel that this was not remarkable. We had been waiting for
it; and here it was, at our feet here, strangely fashioned--mute, but
waiting passively to give up its secret.

We were all trembling. Freddie had discarded his furs and helmet, but
his hands were stiff with the cold.

"How do we get into it? They didn't want to open it--I didn't try
either. It's the message, Peter."

Dan was on the floor beside the cylinder, running his hands over its
surface. His father and mother crowded upon him. Old man Cain's jaw was
dropped with his awe; Mrs. Cain chattered, "Land sakes! What next! Dan,
what is it? Is it from Professor Vanderstuyft? Is he all right? And
dear little Hulda? She's all right, isn't she, Dan? That's what this
means, doesn't it? My heavens, these queer times that have come to the
world--"

Dan jumped to his feet. "Yes, mother, that's what we hope it means."
He kissed her; pushed her away; firm, but very gentle. "You go to bed,
mother. Father, you go too. We'll be working here some hours--in the
morning we'll tell you all about it."

Freddie, Dan and I were left alone. The double doors and double windows
were closed against the cold; a broad coal fire burned in the grate;
the room was warm and silent; and blue with the light-tube, which cast
its beam down upon the cylinder. Freddie said, with a hush in his
voice: "We'd have been afraid to try and open it anyway, in Miami.
You--you don't suppose it would explode if we pound at it, do you?"

The sweating thing was strangely sinister, for all its friendly
inscription. Dan was again bending over it. Freddie added:

"It was in a meteorite--some strange rock, or metal. Evidently not
natural--artificially made. It was burned, fused and shapeless by the
heat of its fall through our atmosphere. You can see where the heat has
burned into the cylinder--"

"Hush!" said Dan abruptly. "Listen!"

With our ears close to the metal a tiny hum was audible. The thing
was humming inside. Alive! Vibrant! Humming with that strange, almost
gruesome whine which brought to my memory the crimson sound of the
Xenephrene invaders when Robinson and Davis had attacked them.

It was half an hour before, with the utmost caution, we got the
cylinder open. Upon one of its sides we found four slightly raised
circles and four small depressions, numbered from one to eight. And the
words, crudely scratched on the metal, "Peter, press one, three, five
and eight."

A lid came off. We had not seen the cracks where it fitted. It stuck,
fused by heat; but we carefully forced it, and at length it came away.

The human mind is subject to queer vagaries. There was just an instant,
as we lifted the metal panel, that there flashed to me the vague horror
that this was a coffin; that we were about to behold a corpse--wrapped
and sent to us like a mummy. Hulda! Zetta! A ghastly gibe, sent to mock
us from this sinister unknown world!

"Ah!" breathed Dan. My leaping heart quieted; but the cold sweat stood
in beads on my forehead from those fleeting, horrible fancies.

       *       *       *       *       *

The interior of the cylinder was divided into orderly compartments.
Metal boxes; cones; cubes of metal; diaphragms; coils of white
wire--packed, wrapped and lashed in orderly array; each piece seemingly
set in springs to absorb the landing shock. A white lining was inside
the cylinder, smooth as mica--insulation against the heat, perhaps.
A strange, vague odor arose; and we could hear the humming now more
plainly. It seemed to come from several metal globes the size of a
man's head. Dead black metal; four or five of them were packed near the
center of the cylinder. Around them a dim radiance was hovering.

"Wait!" admonished Dan. "Take it easy!" Freddie, in his excitement,
would have begun rummaging. "Wait! There must be some instructions
somewhere. Don't touch anything until you know what you're doing."

We found the box of instructions; it was, indeed, the most prominent
thing before us, though we had overlooked it--a flat metal case some
twelve inches square and half as thick, packed edge-wise. Clipped to
its top was a white roll of what seemed paper.

Dan gingerly removed it; unrolled it--a translucent white animal skin,
possibly. And with writing on it! Ah! At last the doubts and fears that
were within us all were dispelled. Father's handwriting--his firm,
smooth unhurried script.

"To my son, Peter Vanderstuyft. In Porto Rico care of Ezra John Cain,
or the Amalgamated Broadcasters' Association, United States of America.
Please forward at once."

And then the words: "Peter, detailed instructions inside. We are
safe--your father, Hulda and Zetta."

Ah! Zetta! The gates to the shining garden were swung wide for me then!
Zetta!

We sat around the table under the blue light-tube with father's
communication, which we found inside the flat metal case, spread before
us. A voluminous manuscript--nearly a hundred hand-written pages.
Part of it was an all too brief letter; then there were pages of
instructions, scientific data, notes and diagrams. We glanced at them
hurriedly, and in a voice which in spite of me I could not hold steady,
I read the letter aloud to Dan and Freddie.

                                             Under Gardens, Xenephrene,
                                             Earth-date, January, 1956.

    Peter, I trust and pray that this, or one of its duplicates which
    I am dispatching, may reach you. I am launching five cylinders.
    Any one of them will answer the purpose, but if you can possess
    yourself of more than one, so much the better. I suggest, before
    you read further, that you guard against taking any stranger into
    the confidence of this communication. I ex-Smith and Dan Cain. I
    want them with you to read this; I know that I can depend upon them
    both, as I can upon you, my son.

I glanced up from the page to the solemn, intent faces of Freddie and
Dan. Neither spoke. Freddie's face was flushed with excitement; his
breath came fast between parted lips. But Dan was pale and grim; his
lean brown fingers gripped the table edge with whitened knuckles. There
was a brief silence.

"Go on," said Dan tensely.

I went back to the page. "He wants secrecy." Unconsciously I lowered my
voice. Freddie swung to the radio table to verify that the lever of the
outgoing audiphone was well off.

I went on reading:

    If this should fall into other hands than those of my son, I beg
    that you who read it will read no further than this paragraph.
    Or, if you do, that loyalty to your nation--to your world--will
    bid you hold it secret. And if you value your own welfare--the
    very lives of all those who are most dear to you--at once you will
    deliver this cylinder and its contents intact to the government
    of the United States of America, with instructions that my son,
    Peter Vanderstuyft, of the Amalgamated Broadcasters Association be
    located, and the cylinder delivered to him. Or to Frederick Smith,
    Royal Dutch Astronomical Bureau, Anco, Chile; or to Daniel J. Cain,
    Factor, Porto Rico.

    Peter, there is much that I would tell you--but I have no time now.
    We are safe. Hulda and Zetta are with me, and well. I have been
    ill, but am better now. The things, Peter, that I have seen and
    done! To name them, even if I could find the words, would be to no
    purpose.

    I am trying to communicate with you--and Dan and Frederick--to
    allay your immediate fears for our safety. But more than that,
    Peter! The threat against our earth--as we saw it thirty-four
    months ago--is far greater now! For that, I would caution you--or
    any one loyal to earth who may read this--of the necessity for
    secrecy.

    Enemies of earth--of a character, a plane of being, oh, Peter, you
    could not guess--may be on earth now. I do not know. I fear they
    are. Some may have made the trip at the conjunction of seventeen
    months ago. We suspect they did. Or if not, we fear some may be
    embarking from here now.

    Guard yourself from them with secrecy of your actions and a
    constant watchfulness. I can suggest no other ways. If I could come
    to you--if I could bring Hulda back to you--I would make the trip
    instead of sending this message. But we cannot, or at least I think
    it would not be advisable.

    I am needed here. Needed by this world--by all in it which stands
    for right and justice and adherence to the laws of the Almighty
    God who rules all of us of every world. And I think also that
    the welfare of our beloved earth can best be safeguarded by my
    remaining here for the present.

    I will come to the point, Peter. There is so much for me to set
    down beyond a mere letter to you with explanations which well may
    wait until later. I want you here, Peter! And--if they think it
    advisable to trust their lives to such an adventure--I want Dan and
    Frederick to come with you. Will you come?

    I ask you as though I were inviting you across one of our little
    oceans at home! Yet I--so much more fully than yourselves--realize
    what this is that I so casually ask! You are young--all three of
    you--and the spirit of adventure and recklessness runs high in
    healthy youth. I am playing upon it. I need not ask. I know you
    will come, if--as I pray may be the case--I have now provided you
    with the means--

My hand holding his written page was shaking. Freddie burst out, with a
return of his old boyish enthusiasm, "I should say we would come. What
a question!" I heard Dan murmur: "At last!"

Within me was a surge of emotion. A thrill of exaltation, mingled
perhaps with a thrill of fear at the unknown crowding now so close upon
me. And the thought of Zetta, mentioned so briefly in these written
words from across the void! Yet from every line her name leaped at me,
sang soundlessly in my head.

The image of her was never more clear in my memory--here in this very
room where we had clasped hands and stood and swayed and wondered
what Nature might be doing to us who, an instant before, had been
strangers--an image of her seemed here now hovering in the shadows
of the room corner behind the tense, bent figure of Dan. So clear
that I almost felt something of her which had come with this letter;
some unspoken longing of hers which she had sent to me as, perhaps in
silence, she had watched father writing.

I think there _was_ something. I felt it; and within me, my spirit was
murmuring a welcome and an answer.

"Go on," said Dan gruffly. "Read it, Peter."

I shuffled the papers. "There isn't much more. He's evidently--"

"He's sent us the materials--the mechanisms out of which to build a
vehicle," exclaimed Freddie. "It's evident that--"

Dan murmured. "Too late this time! Seventeen months--seventeen months
more to wait--"

I laughed; an intoxication was upon me at the thought of it. "Wait,
nothing! We'll be busy, don't worry about that! If we can--Freddie,
what the devil?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Freddie had leaped to his feet; he was standing with his head cocked,
listening. There was no sound, save the vague humming from the opened
cylinder stretched on the floor at our feet.

"Thought I heard something."

"You didn't," I said.

"Where?" demanded Dan. "The audiphone? It's off--dead."

"Where? Outside!" I suggested. I half rose from my seat and sank back.
Freddie looked puzzled; he went to the door, listened and returned. He
asked, "You don't hear anything?"

"No," I said. "Where?"

"I don't know. Here--I mean here, right here with us. I--I guess I
imagined it."

"I guess you did," said Dan. But his gaze swept the room with a tense
expectancy.

My heart was pounding. We all three drew nearer together, as though for
instinctive protection against something we could almost but not quite
hear.

"We're nervous," said Dan. "Imagining things. It's that damned weird
humming. Go on, Peter."

I resumed the letter:

    You will find in this cylinder the vital element necessary to the
    conquering of gravity. Reet, which a bountiful nature provides
    here, is a very wonderful thing, Peter. With it, and with such
    materials available on earth which my notes herewith describe
    fully, I believe you will have no great difficulty in constructing
    your vehicle. I have sent you the basic mechanisms already fully
    assembled in each of their integral parts--

Freddie again interrupted me. "Where's that draft coming from? It's
cold. You got some window open, Dan?"

I was conscious of cold air in the room. The door to the adjoining
bedroom--the room father had once occupied, but which now was
unused--stood half open. The draft of chill air seemed coming from
there. And then we all three heard a bump in there; it brought us to
our feet.

"Shutter banging," said Dan. "Mother must have left the window partly
up--shutter banging, there's a wind starting."

We followed him into the room with a precipitous haste. It was in
semi-darkness. The window was partly raised from the bottom. Cold air
was sweeping in. But the shutter was fastened tightly back against the
outside wall; it could not bang. Dan closed the window. We none of us
made any comment. Back at the living room table I began the letter
again.

    There is very little I need say further, Peter. My notes, diagrams
    and instructions explain everything fully. Attached to several of
    the mechanisms, you will find individual instruction sheets.

    You will need funds. I would like your enterprise conducted with
    the help and resources of our government behind you, if possible.
    You will have less difficulty in that event. But, without such aid,
    you will have to proceed on your own.

    No doubt, Peter, by now you will have been able to possess yourself
    legally of my money. Perhaps you have been able to realize upon the
    Washington property--though this I doubt, in view of the chaotic
    world conditions. Use what you have freely, Peter. Take from Dan as
    little as possible--Heaven knows what financial stress you all must
    have been laboring under--

The light over my head suddenly dimmed to half its volume. Freddie gave
a startled exclamation. Dan cursed.

"Something seems determined to interrupt us," I said. I held the letter
up to the light. "I can read it."

"What--" Freddie began.

"Two o'clock," said Dan. "They only give us half strength light after 2
A.M. New ruling in Porto Rico for the night months."

Freddie sank back. I read:

    Financial stress you all must have been laboring under. Do your
    best. You ought to be able to start at the next conjunction. Your
    start--your navigation--all that you will find in my instruction
    sheets. Before you arrive here, open the special sealed envelope
    marked "Landing instructions." Follow them implicitly.

    I will meet you. I have had fairly good facilities for scientific
    work here, Peter. You will find my instructions accurate--all
    my data fully explicit. You should have no trouble. Hulda sends
    love. She says, love to Dan especially. Good old Dan! We feel
    very close to you all in spirit, Peter--in spite, or perhaps even
    because of the void between us. You will cross it--oh, my son, be
    very careful! Follow every detail of my instructions. We will be
    waiting, impatiently. Zetta is here, watching me as I write--

Ah, that I had divined!

    Strange, dear little Zetta. So remarkable a friend--

A cry from Dan interrupted me. I had been standing awkwardly holding
the letter up to the light. The room was dim, with shadows crowding
close upon us. At our feet the opened cylinder lay under the half
strength blue light. It was partly in shadow. At Dan's startled cry I
looked down. A red radiance hovered across the cylinder in the gloom
there! A faint glow of crimson! And there sounded a low guttural whine.
The crimson sound! In the room here with us!

Dan leaped. From within the cylinder one of its metal boxes was coming
out! It came up with a jerk, as though raised by some invisible hand. A
small, dead-white metal cube. Enveloped in a vague red glow, it came up
to the level of my waist and moved away through the air.

[Illustration: From within the cylinder one of the metal boxes was
coming out! Enveloped in a vague red glow, it began moving through the
air.]

Dan went leaping over the cylinder; struck something solid; fell prone
on the floor with the metal cube clattering beside him.

There was a confusion of sounds. A sudden unearthly scream. Dan's voice
shouting: "I've got it. Freddie! Oh, Peter--"

Dan was struggling on the floor with something. I could see his arms
encircling it--something large. He rolled, fought. Freddie jumped for
him. I dropped the letter, dashed to where both Freddie and Dan were
rolling on the floor, gripping something in a glow of humming red sound.

They both shouted: "Peter, watch out! Keep away! Watch him--grab him if
he slips loose--"

I was standing over them. From the red confusion a naked arm emerged
for an instant. I seized it--a queerly light but solid arm of bone and
flesh and muscle. But it jerked away. There was a crash as the table
overturned.

"Peter! Hold him! Peter--Freddie, let go of me--don't be a fool! Let go
of me, I tell you!"

Something caught me in the face with a burning blow like a fire-brand.
I staggered back; my flailing arms hit nothing. The room was whining
with sound. On the floor Dan and Freddie in a fog of red glow, now
dissipating, were shouting and struggling to disentangle themselves
from each other. I heard a thump; the sound of running, padding
footsteps. Before I could recover my balance from the blow in the face
the sound was gone. A clatter in the adjoining bedroom, then silence.

Dan and Freddie stood erect. Panting, shaking and confused. In the
bedroom, the window was again open. The intruder had gone. On the
floor by the cylinder lay the white metal cube which had so nearly
been stolen from us. We lifted it up. It seemed uninjured. On it was
a tag, with father's inscription: "Reet catalyst concentrated--B
Formula. Guard this well, Peter! Without it, your enterprise would be
impossible!"




                              CHAPTER IX

                          PIONEERS INTO SPACE


June 14, 1957, I set down the date with my recollection that it was for
me the most momentous day of my life to that time. And I think, for Dan
and Freddie also--the day upon which, after more than sixteen months
of activity, we three were ready at last for the trip to Xenephrene.
The events of those sixteen months were to me the mere bridging of an
interval unimportant save in its consummation.

There were times when we all thought we would fail. I am not of a
scientific trend of mind; nor is Dan. Upon Freddie both he and I
depended for a complete understanding of father's scientific data.

Even so, there seemed to Dan and me in our impatience and futility
at our own lack of scientific training a great deal about father's
instructions that Freddie himself but half understood. And this Freddie
admitted. We would have failed, I have no doubt, had our government
disdained us. But it did not. From the first we had back of us not
only government funds, but the full resources of the government's
laboratories and technical staff.

The whole enterprise was conducted quietly; and though some inkling of
it leaked out, the thing was kept fairly close. During most of this
period--these seemingly interminable months--Dan, Freddie and I were
in Miami, where in the government shops our vehicle was being built.
The government laboratories were there also. In them our mechanisms
were assembled; a thousand abstruse chemical and physical problems were
solved.

The work progressed steadily, though with occasional maddening
holdups. Father had suggested that the outer shell of the vehicle be
constructed of alexite--that strange alloy, largely aluminium, after
the process perfected in 1943 by the Russ, Alexia. World conditions
made it difficult for some of the materials to be quickly obtained in
sufficient quantity. But they were obtained, and the shell was cast
almost on the date set for it in Freddie's schedule.

The daylight months of 1956, in Miami, brought heat almost intolerable.
It is not my plan to describe that now. Weird change from what had
always before been the normal! The spring twilight thaws; the brief
period of lengthening days until soon the day and night were equal;
then, each twenty-four hours, a longer day, a lesser night. Swiftly
changing, until soon the sun never set. Blistering summer. Then again
the sun touched the horizon; rose; in twenty-four hours dipped a
trifle. Night a minute long! Queer cycle! But we were growing used
to it already, for human life springs swiftly to adjust itself to
environment.

The summer of 1956 dragged itself past. In January, 1957, with the
fall twilight days passing and night again upon us, the vehicle shell
was cast. Assembling of the mechanism began in February. By April, in
the frigid darkness of midwinter, I think we could have been ready to
start. But Xenephrene was too far away. Daily now she was overtaking
the earth.

We had to await the June conjunction when at her closest point for the
year, father's data told us the intervening distance would be some
seventeen and a half million miles. His notes named twelve o'clock
noon, June 14, as our best starting time. And in this, as in every
other detail, we were determined to follow his instructions to the
letter.

We had been worried all these months over father's warning concerning
the presence on earth of enemies from Xenephrene. Indeed, that first
evening in the Cain plantation house when the storage battery of the
Reet Catalyst had so nearly been stolen from us, proved that father's
fears were fully justified. The precious white metal cube was unharmed;
and there was nothing else missing from the cylinder, as we had at
first feared.

The intruder had left no trace of himself; but he was a man, human like
ourselves, undoubtedly. Dan and Freddie had come to grips with him; I
had felt his burning blow upon my face. There was a red, blistered welt
there for many days. Dan and Freddie were burned about the hands and
face.

Curious marks! I say burned, for perhaps that best describes it. But it
was not that. A queer irritation of the skin and flesh where they had
been exposed to contact with the crimson radiance. It departed within a
week; and the ringing in our ears, which for a day we all feared might
presage deafness, was gone in a like period. Our eyes, too, were left
smarting and burning. For a day afterward I found my sight queerly
blurring at intervals; and any sudden light blinded me momentarily, as
one is blinded who steps abruptly from darkness into daylight. But all
these unpleasant sensations passed in a few days.

This crimson radiance had been undoubtedly of a very weak intensity. It
had not been used as a weapon, but merely as a cloak of invisibility,
behind which the intruder had evidently felt he could steal the
cylinder and escape. This we realized, though of the nature of the
radiance we knew not much more than before; nor was there anything in
father's data to enlighten us.

We feared a repetition of this encounter; but none was attempted. All
our work was done under guard in Miami; and everywhere in the world the
secret service of every government was alert. It was incredible, of
course, that upon earth there would be one man of Xenephrene--and no
more. We learned afterward that there were many, but at this time no
trace of them was found.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the 4th of June when at last our vehicle was completely
ready--save its provisioning, some earth scientific apparatus which
father had bade us bring, and our personal effects. The assembling was
complete; the navigating mechanism was installed, tested and in working
order.

It was then, but not until then, that success seemed assured. And with
the relief of it, we all realized what a strain we had been under. By
comparison, what lay ahead seemed simple. But that fancy passed; and,
though we never said so, apprehension soon descended upon us again.

For myself a thousand doubts and fears assailed me. Could Freddie
successfully navigate us from one whirling world to another? By
mathematical formula which to me seemed incredibly abstruse, and
mechanisms in our vehicle which even he only half understood? Alone,
unaided, a pioneer into trackless space, with only father's complicated
notes to guide him!

Freddie, during these last days, was very pale and silent. Not for
anything would Dan or I have voiced our fears; but Freddie was aware of
them, for they matched his own. Thin-lipped and solemn he sat for hours
each day within the vehicle; and sometimes he would slip away from Dan
and me during the hours of sleep, and we would find him there, poring
over father's data, or working at seemingly endless calculations.

Spring twilight was mounting during the first two weeks of June. The
spring thaws were at hand. On June 13 we made our final inspection
of the vehicle to be sure its equipment was complete. It was a small
affair--as small as the one in which Zetta had arrived. And similar
in shape--a flattened globe twenty-one feet in vertical diameter and
thirty feet across its middle width.

The thin shell of alexite gave it a dull gleaming white color. The
exterior was reinforced with a thick, rolled belt of alexite like an
equator around the globe's bulging middle.

There were two vertical reinforcing circular bands; passing through
its poles they divided its surface into four equal segments. Into each
of these segments two small bull's-eye windows were set, one directly
above the other. And in one segment, near the bottom, was a small,
narrow door. The top and bottom of the globe were flattened to a level
area some six feet square, as though a section had been neatly sliced
off, to form a small lower floor and a small roof. Each was set with a
bull's-eye glass windowpane.

Such was the exterior aspect of our vehicle. I chanced to stand alone
for a moment a few hours before our start, regarding it as it lay in
the small stone room which had been built to house it. A tiny little
world! Little white globe, so soon to be whirling through space with
its three human inhabitants! And I was to be one of the three!

The globe's interior was reinforced with a lining of alexite ribs,
and a brittle wire mesh cast into the alexite shell. It was tested
for pressure; in the vacuum of space the outward pressure of our air
content would have exploded a shell less strongly built. Father had
calculated all this; his calculations proved correct; we had a wide
margin of safety.

The globe inside was divided by two horizontal floorings into three
compartments. The lowest one, to which the narrow doorway gave
entrance, had a floor six feet square, bulging concave walls, and a
ceiling some seven feet above the floor.

This compartment was our instrument room, and observatory. It had four
side windows, and the lower window which comprised its floor. Between
the side windows, the instruments were fitted in racks. The control
table was here, and a portion of the navigating mechanism.

The middle story--much the largest of the three--contained our sleeping
cots, our meager cooking arrangements, our food stock, and most of
the mechanical apparatus for the navigating of the globe. The upper
compartment, in size and shape like the lower, held our personal
effects, our water supply, heating instruments, and the Regnalt-Dillon
air purifiers, with the pumps, fans and distributors. In flight, this
would always remain the upper segment of the globe; we would turn over
after leaving the earth and fall toward Xenephrene.

I fear I give too much space to this pedantic description. The means to
which an end is attained are always less important than the attainment
itself. Certainly Dan and I, with our unscientific trend of thought,
were only interested in this little globe that it might transport us
safely to our destination.

       *       *       *       *       *

The last day came. June 14, with its raw, thawing chill in the air;
its twilight at noon which almost promised a sunrise. Dan and I had
not slept for twenty-four hours, in the fever of our excitement. Nor
had Freddie. He had not left the globe; just sat there in the lower
compartment with the control buttons on his little table and a sheaf
of father's instructions, which over and over, he was studying. Once,
when I bade him sleep, he turned upon me so sharply that I retreated in
haste. I brought him a cup of coffee later.

"Here, Freddie." I held it out, a peace offering. He glanced up with
his white face and tired eyes.

"Oh, thanks, Peter--very much."

An emotion swept me--between man and woman comes the human emotion most
strongly tempestuous, undoubtedly; but there can be between a man and
his friend an emotion wholly dissimilar, but of equally powerful bond.
I felt it then as I laid my hand upon Freddie's shoulder.

"Thanks," he repeated. "Sorry I snapped at you, Peter."

Men are most inarticulate with each other when deeply stirred. I nodded.

Three hours later we left the earth. There was a pathos to our leaving,
mingled with the excitement of it. Any unusual adventure in life seems
to bring into play the whole gamut of human emotions.

There stood Dan's old father and mother! Not for them did Xenephrene
hold any lure! They were giving their only son to what must have seemed
a mad tempting of fate. They had said little.

What passed between them and Dan, I never knew. Indeed, with the
preoccupation of my own thoughts, I scarcely considered it. But they
came to the little stone house to see us start. They stood in a far
corner of the room, apart from the few government officials who were
there to speed us.

A brief, strangely dramatic scene, our leaving!

We stood there at the small doorway to our tiny world. Attendants
rolled back the roof of the room; the stars gleamed down upon us. The
room was dim. With my pounding heart, it seemed full of vague, moving
shadows--people I must hastily bid good-by now and leave--perhaps
forever.

Some one called out: "Eleven fifty-four! Better get inside, Smith."

Freddie glanced at his watch. "Yes. Well--good-by. Good-by,
everybody--wish us luck." His tone was queerly stilted.

Abruptly men's hands were shaking mine; men were clapping me on the
back. And then I found myself with Dan before his parents. Trembling
old man and woman; a pity for them swept me.

"Good-by, Peter."

"Good-by," I said. Mrs. Cain kissed me. I added: "We'll be back soon.
Good-by."

Freddie's voice was calling: "Hurry up, there!" I turned away. But Dan
lingered. From the doorway I had a glimpse of him as with his big arms
he caught his mother up to kiss her good-by, while his father clung to
him. Then Dan was with us. The small heavy door swung closed and locked
upon us.

Eleven fifty-nine! Freddie sat at his table, his fingers on the row of
buttons. In the gloom, the only light was a glow upon the chronometer
face with its second-hand making the last circle. Noon! There was
a vague hum as the Reet current went on. The floor beneath my feet
stirred slightly, then steadied. Through the windows I caught a glimpse
of the room outside. It was silently slipping downward!

We had started!

       *       *       *       *       *

Had our voyage been an adventure unique in modern history, I should be
constrained to describe it here in detail. But since these few stirring
years which I am describing, Interplanetary voyaging has become a
common thing. Father and Hulda were the first to leave the earth;
Freddie, Dan and I were next. Pioneers!

We afterward gave the secret to our world; the history of
Interplanetary travel will make that plain. Space-voyaging soon will no
longer seem an extraordinary thing; already, the mere account of an
uneventful trip is not worth the reading. But an account of Xenephrene?
Ah! That is a different matter. I doubt if any world will ever be found
comparable to Xenephrene.

As every one knows now, Mars is nothing like it; nor Venus; nor
Mercury. They talk already of going to Jupiter; to Uranus; to Neptune.
It is possible, of course. And in a few lifetimes beyond my own,
they will be striving to reach the distant stars, for the spirit of
adventure in man is insatiable.

Our voyage to Xenephrene was remarkable only that we were pioneers in
Space-travel. To lay stress upon it here would be out of place. Those
days upon earth when the climate changed were more extraordinary. And
Xenephrene herself! The Wanderer unique! And those other terrible days
when we returned to earth--our world harried, wounded, bleeding, all
but beaten! But with spirit unbroken, fighting--

So I hasten on.

Our voyage was unmarked by any untoward incident. Our sensations at
first, the novelty of it, stirred us all as we had never been stirred
before. The first plunge into the dead blackness of space with the
stars and the sun and all the worlds blazing like torches, is an
experience never to be forgotten.

The first look backward upon a dull-red crescent earth!

Ah, the man or the woman who has had that look will feel very
differently ever afterward! A humbleness of spirit; a sense of our own
infinite unimportance in the great plan of the Universe! The traveler
broadens; it is only the man who revolves his mind in its own humdrum
little rut who thinks that he and what he stands for is the sum-total
of real importance and goodness in the Universe! What differs from
himself, from his own standards of thought and living, he thinks must
of necessity be inferior. The traveler knows it is not so. Distant
places, distant worlds, distant people--are different. Not necessarily
worse. Other races have different standards, different modes of thought
from our own; not better perhaps; not worse--just different. Our earth
poet once wrote: "Though patriotism flatter, still shall wisdom find an
equal portion dealt to all mankind." The traveler knows that it is true.

I come now to that time when in our tiny voyaging world we found
ourselves, according to Freddie's calculations, at a distance of no
more than two hundred and fifty thousand miles from Xenephrene. As
close as our own moon is to the earth.

Our vehicle had turned over soon after starting. The earth lay in the
star-field above us--a glittering red-white point, not very different
from a million others! Beneath us, seen through the lower window, we
were falling toward Xenephrene. It hung there amid the stars; to the
naked eye now it was a tremendous, moon-like crescent. Purple-red on
its lighted area. The shadowed part of its circle could be faintly
seen--a dull-red shadow.

We sat in the lower compartment, Freddie, as usual, by his table, with
Dan and me beside him. Freddie was thoroughly rested now. At the start
he had worn himself to the verge of exhaustion. But once we were well
away from earth he found confidence in the verified correctness of his
calculations.

We were upon our course. All was going well; and to our voyage,
with the novelty dulling, came that monotony which is the chief
characteristic of Space-travel. There was little to do, save sleep,
prepare our meals, and keep watch that no asteroid or meteor crossed
our path with dangerous nearness. Freddie's calculations were, from
then on, his only labor. Dan and I did the rest.

We sat now with Freddie, who had called to us. The quarter of a million
mile point from Xenephrene was an objective to which we all three had
looked forward with keenest interest.

"We're there," called Freddie. We came down to find him with sparkling
eyes and flushed face. "Two hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred
odd miles." He shoved his papers away from him. "I brought us, didn't
I? I did it!"

We clapped him on the back. We all felt as though the Rubicon were
crossed. "Now," said Freddie, "we can open Professor Vanderstuyft's
last instruction sheet."

Father had sent us in the cylinder one bulky envelope which expressly
he had stated was not to be opened until we were within two hundred and
fifty thousand miles of our destination.

He called it "Landing Instructions." He had mentioned it several times
in a way almost ominously mysterious. Everything concerning Xenephrene
itself father had omitted from his other notes, as though not to
confuse our minds with details not then necessary. But now, we felt, as
we neared the other world, the mystery that clung to it would have to
be unfolded.

The prospect made our hearts pound; for there clung always to our
thoughts of this other world a sense of the uncanny--we were plunging,
very soon now, into something weird, gruesome perhaps. But I thought
of little Zetta and I knew it would be a strange world; weird, perhaps
bizarre, but hardly gruesome.

Freddie was holding father's envelope. "Here it is--we're entitled to
open it now. It's addressed to you, Peter--you read it to us."

I took the envelope, broke its seal with fingers that were trembling in
spite of all my efforts to steady them.




                               CHAPTER X

                      LANDING TO FACE THE UNKNOWN


To one of omniscience who could have observed us three as we sat there,
it must have been a very strange scene indeed.

The tiny white globe which was our world, rotated slowly on its
vertical axis, a mere white speck hanging in the black intensity of
space. With its concave, encircling shell, that lower compartment, with
the iron ladder leading above; the three of us sitting there at the
table; Freddie alert, with keenly roving eyes, his hand out of habit
resting idly beside the control buttons; Dan's great length sprawled in
his low chair, his shirt open at the throat, a growth of blond stubble
on his face, his hair tousled--he lounged in an attitude of ease,
yet the tenseness of him was obvious; myself, sitting upright, with
father's papers in my trembling hands; shadows around us; one small
light casting its glow upon me; and through the window beneath our
feet, the upflung glare of Xenephrene, like a tremendous crescent moon
bathing us in its purple light.

The silence! There is no silence like that of Space! Upon earth we hear
always a myriad tiny sounds and are unaware of them; without them, in
Space, the silence seems to scream its emptiness.

Dan cleared his throat nervously. "Go ahead, Peter--what does it say?"

I rustled the papers. Father's script began with characteristic
abruptness.

    "If you have done as I requested you are now within a quarter of
    a million miles of this world. Comparatively so close to us--oh,
    my son, I do hope that you are there! Soon, then, I shall see
    you--have you with me. I am growing old, Peter. The ties of blood
    seem to strengthen as we grow older. It has been lonely without
    you, my son, even though I have had dear Hulda--and little Zetta,
    of whom we grow more fond every day.

    "But this is no time for sentiment. I assume that Frederick and Dan
    are with you, I must be brief, succinct. There are several things
    which now I must make plain to you three. If there is anything
    here, Peter, which Dan and you do not understand, Frederick will
    make it clear."

"Hah!" I exclaimed, "a little gibe at us, Dan!"

Freddie smiled as Dan gestured. "Go on. Let's hear it."

Good old dad! My heart warmed to him. I resumed:

    "The few astronomical facts concerning Xenephrene which now
    you should know, are these: It is a globe flattened at the
    poles, expanded at the equator. Rather more so than the earth.
    Polar diameter, sixty-five hundred miles. Equatorial diameter,
    seventy-eight hundred miles. Thus it is similar in size, though
    slightly smaller than our earth. Its average density, I believe
    is about that of earth. Its mass, hence, is but little less than
    earth. Gravitation, about the same. You will notice, in this
    respect, hardly any difference.

    "Xenephrene's present orbit about our sun is an ellipse rather
    more eccentric than earth's--more comparable to that of Mercury.
    I believe it is not yet stabilized. There may even be a tendency
    toward a breaking of the ellipse at its aphelion--I sometimes
    shudder at the thought--if we should all be here on Xenephrene.
    Frederick will understand--"

I glanced at Dan. "Well, if he does, we don't."

"Never mind," said Freddie. But he did not smile.

I read on:

    "Xenephrene rotates on its axis once in twenty-two hours,
    thirty-seven minutes, ten seconds, as we measure time on earth.
    This is very similar to our earth. This axis is not inclined to the
    plane of its orbit, but is almost exactly vertical. Hence we have
    here no change of seasons. And throughout the year, the periods of
    day and night alternate in exact and unchanging relative lengths.

    "Here in the country of the Garlands, we are situated at about
    eight degrees south latitude. Thus, near the equator, our days are
    always some eleven hours and nineteen minutes long; and our night
    but a few seconds shorter.

    "Xenephrene has one moon. Pyrena, we call it. You will already
    have seen it, even with your small telescope, no doubt. I will
    not go into the elements of its orbit now, or describe its phases
    as we nightly see them. A beautiful sight, Peter. It is really
    the sun for Xenephrene--or at least it was, before Xenephrene
    came to bathe in our own greater sunlight. It is a small world of
    incandescent gas--blazing purple. You should see our dim purple
    nights--strangely beautiful.

    "You are now to proceed as follows:

    "I attach herewith a rough map of my own, giving the general
    conformation of Xenephrene's surface. I drew it from my own
    sketches made as I came down from outer Space. It is of necessity
    vague, and inexact.

    "These people are not explorers. They know little about their
    own world. And only a fraction--a very small fraction of the
    globe's surface seems habitable. Much of it is fluid--not water,
    not air--you shall see! The vast fluid areas, I have marked so
    on the map. And there are areas of tumbled, jagged mountains of
    metal--naked metal. And metal plains, smooth and barren as glass.

    "The country of the Garlands I have plainly marked. As you descend,
    you will have no difficulty in recognizing the globe's larger fluid
    areas, the larger configurations--and thus in locating, as you come
    closer, our little land. It is very small--on earth we would call
    it some three hundred miles, roughly oval.

    "We are only a million and a half people here--we of the Garlands.
    The Brauns are scarce a hundred thousand. I have marked their one
    city on the map, where it lies at the northern edge of our domain,
    with the equatorial mountains and the fluid lake of Tyre and the
    Tyre plain near it.

    "Beware this region, Frederick! Come up from the south! I suggest
    now that you head for our south pole. If you have made the voyage
    in my calculated time, you will find Pyrena ascending from her
    southern swing. She rotates in retrograde, Frederick, this moon of
    ours--at an average distance of eighty-nine thousand miles.

    "Head for the south pole, within Pyrena's orbital distance. Then
    come up toward the equator, between our moon and Xenephrene. If you
    are on time, you will find our moon at the full.

    "As you descend, you will go into Xenephrene's shadow, with her
    between you and the sun. It is what I desire--there will be less
    chance then of your being seen. In the area of our night, with
    Pyrena shining full upon you, descend into our atmosphere. You
    will find it extends outward some four hundred miles. Take it very
    slowly, Frederick--be careful of the heat of your descent through
    it--judge nothing from now on by earthly standards! Remember that!

    "You should be about over our ten degrees south latitude when you
    descend into the atmosphere. Keep between us and Pyrena--and come
    north to eight degrees S.

    "You will be in the night, with Xenephrene rotating under you
    as you hover. Your altitude now should be about forty miles. If
    the clouds bother you, descend to keep under them. If the night
    is too overcast, so that from beneath the clouds Pyrena is lost
    to you, and the darkness is too great for you to see our surface
    readily--wait until it clears. Take no chances! Haste of that sort
    is too dangerous! Let Xenephrene rotate for another day and night.
    I will see the weather and understand.

    "When the country of the Garlands comes into view, watch for my
    light. You will see it--a thin, steady white beam, pointing at the
    moon. Occasionally I shall send a red flash along its length--at
    alternating intervals according to the inclosed code. Thus there
    can be no mistake--I fear treachery--one fears everything in such
    times as these we are undergoing here!

    "When you are convinced that it is my light you see, descend toward
    its source. At an altitude of ten thousand feet, cross into my beam
    and hold there for a time, that I may see and recognize you. I will
    send two swift red flashes. Leave the beam at once, and come back
    into it. I will know then for certain that it is you.

    "Descend now, down the beam to its source. When I extinguish it,
    you will see my glow of lights at your landing field. Descend
    there, and land.

    "I caution you again. Take everything very slowly! You will be
    seated, you three, in the lower compartment. When you land--when
    once you are upon solid ground--extinguish all but one very small
    light. Then begin to open your door.

    "I say, _begin_ to open it! It is to be opened very, very slowly.
    You, Frederick, understood, no doubt, that its queer construction
    was to some purpose. I was very specific about that!

    "You are to undo its inner fastenings, and revolve its main
    circular knob, a few turns at intervals of no less than five
    minutes each. I want you to take fully thirty minutes to open the
    door.

    "Let the new air of Xenephrene in slowly, that you may grow
    accustomed to it gradually as it comes upon you. This, of course,
    you have guessed as my reason for such caution. But it is not only
    the changed air you will be admitting! Other things will come in as
    well! To them also, you must become accustomed gradually.

    "When the door is nearly ready to open wide, extinguish your
    remaining light. Sit quiet! Do not attempt to move about! Let
    Frederick then join you, when he has flung wide the door. Sit
    quiet, all three of you. Do not be afraid! There is nothing to
    fear! It will be strange at first.

    "I will give you a minute or so to gather your composure. Then I
    will come in to you--oh, I pray now as I close, that this may all
    transpire as I have outlined! God grant that you will come safely
    to me at last, over such a distance! I will be waiting so anxiously
    for that first sight of you in my beacon beam!

                                            "Your affectionate father."

       *       *       *       *       *

My voice trembled and broke as I ended. Emotion swept me; not only an
answering love for my father which sprang to meet his dear affection as
it came from the written words, but a fear as well. And an awe--what
was this into which we were plunging that he should be constrained to
caution us in such a fashion?

I laid down the letter. Dan did not speak; his questioning eyes were on
my face. Freddie said huskily, "Well--" and stopped.

"Well," I said, "that's all."

We stared at one another. As though by consent, with a common dread we
avoided discussion of what now lay before us--the landing, the opening
of our door to admit this strange new world. Its air, different from
that to which we were accustomed, would come in. _And other things!_

What other things?

The three words abruptly held for me an uncanniness almost intolerable.
Something not to be faced--yet we would have to face it. "Absurd!" I
thought. "Why, father is there--and Hulda. And Zetta--" In truth, it
was more an unreasoning dread than fear; for, as I examined it, I found
that, more than anything in life, I desired now to reach Xenephrene and
my loved ones; and all the vague, mysteriously uncanny things in the
Universe could not have served to keep me from them.

"Hey!" said Freddie. "You seeing ghosts already, Peter?"

"Where's the map?" said Dan. "Let's look it over."

We examined it. A crude drawing upon animal skin the same as served
for father's letter paper. It seemed plain enough. We discussed it,
and many of the other phases of father's letter. It all seemed very
explicit. We were, according to father's calculated time, exactly where
in imagination his hopes would now be placing us.

If all went well--as, indeed, why should it not?--we would arrive upon
one of those nights in the full of the moon during which he would
expect us. As he surmised, our small telescope had long since showed us
Xenephrene's moon. A tiny blazing point--purple like the planet itself.
It showed now, just plunging behind its parent disk; a purple point of
light, with its leaping tongues of flame even to the naked eye a quite
visible corona.

Our approach to Xenephrene! I might write for hours and barely touch
upon the beauty, the splendor, the wonder of it. A purple disk, a
tinging with red as we neared it. Convex now--a full, round, glowing
world, banked and mottled with clouds, beneath which the faint
configurations of its surface-marking gradually became visible.

We headed for its south pole; rounded over it at some fifty thousand
miles' distance. We saw over us, hanging to the left, the blazing
purple moon. It was night, as father said, on this moonlit side of
the planet. For what would have been an earth-day of twelve hours or
more, we dropped downward into the shadow. The sun was hidden behind
Xenephrene now; the moon blazed on us in all its purple glory.

[Illustration: It was night on this moonlit side of Xenephrene as we
dropped down toward it. The sun was hidden behind the planet and the
moon blazed up through the glass floor of our space ship in all its
purple glory.]

Freddie, during these hours, was busy with constant observations and
calculations; Dan and I sat enthralled with the magic of the coloring.
As we slid upward toward Xenephrene's equator and gradually descended,
the planet's rotation showed quite visibly under us. I could see the
cone of Xenephrene's shadow as it swung off into space. It barely
missed the moon; a few more of her inclined swings and doubtless she
would pass into eclipse.

       *       *       *       *       *

The time came when all the visual heavens beneath us were encompassed
by Xenephrene's bulk. There were at the moment but few clouds to hide
its moonlit surface.

"Here," said Freddie, "take a look."

He had been gazing through the floor window with our telescope. I
took it; gazed upon a purple area of what seemed a liquid haze; to
the left, a jagged mountain range--naked crags of gleaming metal
in the moonlight; to the right, and extending far up to the rim of
the northern horizon, a vast glassy plain, smooth, barely wrinkled,
motionless as a frozen sea congealed, while only a breath of air had
been scratching its polished top. It gleamed like burnished copper in a
purple light. Devoid of even a grain of sand, a twig, a blade of grass.
But there was one place where, in a depression, water seemed to have
gathered--an irregular crescent sea a hundred miles perhaps in length.
I mentioned it to Freddie.

"Yes," he said. "I've identified it on the map. We're on the other side
now from the Garland country, as your father calls it. He's in the
daylight now--"

"Then to-night," Dan began.

"Yes. To-night--eleven hours from now, approximately--our landing
place should be under us. We're eighteen degrees S now, I'll swing us
up to ten degrees S, and we'll wait."

The full moon held level above us. As the hours passed, while we gently
dropped downward, cloud areas began forming beneath us. Freddie set his
jaw. "I'm going down--this is the night he'll expect us. If the clouds
will break away--"

They did. We descended into Xenephrene's atmosphere. Our tiny globe
grew intolerably hot; then Freddie slowed us, and we kept the cold air
circulating. We went through the clouds. A dead purple mist, and then
they broke above us. A rift of moonlight came through. Land beneath us!
We could see it! A vague moonlight landscape, far down.

Freddie was at the telescope constantly; Dan and I worked the controls
at his direction. Forty thousand feet, Eight South Latitude. We were
hovering in the dark over a rolling country of what seemed trees
perhaps--all vague and blurred and purple.

"Know where we are?" I demanded anxiously.

"Yes. Over the Garland country. The south middle of it, I should say.
That Braun city he mentioned--I got a glimpse of it, Peter. Up to the
north. We're all right--if only his light would show!"

Then we saw his light! A thin, motionless white beam, standing up into
the clouds, where occasionally the full moon broke through a rift. His
light! We were sure of it presently. A red wave of color started from
its source at the ground and flashed upward. Then another, and others
at intervals. We timed them; compared them to father's notations.

The time-intervals were correct. It was his light undoubtedly. His
welcoming beacon!

Freddie had been keeping us cautiously away. But now at the ten
thousand foot altitude he swung us into the light. Its white glare
bathed us; came up through our floor window. Presently the two red
flashes came. We moved away, then back again. The moment which father
had awaited so anxiously had come. He knew now we had arrived safely,
we had answered his signal, and holding to the light, we slid slowly
down its motionless length.

I do not know how long it took. It seemed an hour, while we sat in our
lower compartment, with the white glare streaming upon us. Then at
last, without warning, the glare vanished.

We had extinguished our interior light; we were left abruptly in
darkness.

I heard Dan's perturbed voice. "Freddie, shall I stop us?"

Freddie was on the floor, peering down. I knelt beside him. He called
to Dan: "No, let us go. We're still pretty well up."

I half whispered, "Can you see anything?"

It seemed, for a moment, all quite dark. As though we were dropping
into a blank, bottomless pit. Then, as our eyes grew accustomed to the
absence of the glare, outlines below began to take form. The moon was
gone behind a cloud. But there was enough light left to show us a dark
ground, with a faint glow suffusing it, a thousand feet, not much more,
below us. It seemed a solid, open, flat area, flanked with small hooded
lights.

Our landing field. There was nothing else to be seen; the purple
darkness crowded everything. The open space was directly under us.
Freddie made sure of that. He lighted our smallest table light, and at
the controls with his instruments before him, he brought us gently down.

A minute; ten minutes. None of us spoke. There was a very slight thump;
our little world trembled, came to rest.

       *       *       *       *       *

We had landed! Xenephrene at last! Freddie stood up. His figure wavered
slightly--perhaps because of his excitement, and the new solidity
beneath his feet which made him momentarily unsteady.

"You sit still--I'll start--I'll start opening the door."

His voice held a quaver; he glanced at the chronometer, crossed the
room swiftly, and took a turn or so at the door wheel. A giant shadow
of him as he moved fell grotesquely misshapen upon our curved wall.

He came back to us and sat down. "Nothing to do now, but wait."

The minutes passed in silence. We did not speak; at intervals of five
minutes, Freddie made his noiseless trip to the door and back. My heart
seemed nearly smothering me; cold beads were dank on my forehead, neck
and chest. Waiting for the Unknown to make itself seen? Heard? Felt?
I wondered which; with every sense alert and straining, I sat waiting.
Fear? It was that, of course. I am not ashamed of it; there is no man
brave enough to front the Unknown with heartbeat undisturbed.

Nothing--as yet. Or perhaps my panting, labored breath was from the
new-world air which now was coming in? The ringing in my head; the
flashes of red in the dimness before my straining eyes--were they
caused only by the tenseness of fear?

Freddie sat down beside me. I heard his whispered words, "Peter! It's
almost open. One more turn will do it--Dan, you all right?--Peter, I'm
frightened--terribly frightened!"

And Dan's gruff answer, "Yes. All right."

Our side windows were black rectangles. What was out there? For a time,
thought of father had left me. He was out there; was he looking in upon
us? I could see nothing; but now the thought of father steadied me. And
Zetta. Was she here--near me at last?

Freddie snapped out our light with a click, thundering, echoing in the
stillness. The darkness leaped upon us. Darkness and silence. But I
could seem to hear my beating heart. Or Dan's. And our breathing.

And then I realized that this was no silence! Around me came thronging
a million tiny noises. Jostling things of sound in the darkness. Things
all alive with sound! I could hear them. Murmuring, whispering like
wraiths of jabbering things alive with sound. Or was it sound I was
hearing? So vague, unreal, it might have been some other sense. But it
was gathering strength; jostling sounds were whirling about my ears,
beating at me, gathering strength and mingling into a hum--

All in the darkness. But there was no darkness! Shapes of color--moving
shapes of sound and color were here, crowding at my elbows. Formless
blobs, impalpable as colored shadows; formless, yet I could imagine
them into any form I chose. Jabbering, impalpable things pushing at
each other as though for a better view of me! Impalpable? Suddenly one
seemed to brush me; I could have sworn I felt it, light as a fairy's
wing, touching my hand.

It may have touched Dan also. I heard his arm lunge; he cursed; an ash
tray on the table crashed to the floor. I jumped to my feet. Panic
seemed surging around us, out of which came Freddie's voice:

"Easy! Sit down, you two! I'll get the door open wide."

His padding footsteps were reassuring--something solid and real for my
confused senses to grip. I could see the moving blob of him, tinged red
with a faint aura that now suffused everything.

The solid hum of him, unbarring the door, was steadying; the sound of
the door grating on its heavy hinges as it swung wide--

"These damned Things." Freddie came back. The poise of him! He
laughed, with an odd, strained break; but still he laughed. "God! It's
queer! But it's nothing. Hold steady, everyone." His laughter seemed
contagious; I heard myself laughing. Was this madness stealing upon me?
A chaos of the undefinable, jostling us. A wild chaos of unreality in
which my confused senses seemed whirling away--

"Peter!" Ah! Reality at last! Father's anxious voice, husky with
emotion! "Peter! Oh, Frederick? Dan? Are you all right?"

Solidity, reality returned; my whirling senses came back. Father was
here! The solid thump of his heavy step sounded; the solid glow of the
purple light he was carrying filled our room. The reality of his voice;
his step; and then his arms were around my shoulders!

And Hulda's happy, welcoming laughter. I kissed her; held the reality
of her dear little body in my arms; and all the red shadows and crimson
whisperings of a moment before were forgotten.

Then came another voice--timorous, gentle, eagerly friendly; and a dear
figure in the doorway. Zetta! Her dear, quaint voice which for all
these months had been ringing in the ears of my memory, was sounding
now in reality at last!




                              CHAPTER XI

                            "UNDER GARDENS"


"Well!" said father. "Well, you did come safely, didn't you? I'm so
glad, Peter. Light your light, Frederick. Well, Dan! I'm mighty glad to
see you. Here's Hulda! Come here, child--here is your Dan, at last!"

Freddie snapped on our light. Even in the confusion of our joyous
greetings I was aware of how strange father and Hulda looked. Father
wore his hair, snow-white now, in a long, thick, shaggy mass about his
ears; a smooth and glossy black animal skin was draped about him, with
a white decoration on his chest; his arms and legs were bare, with skin
sandals on his feet!

And Hulda! Her brown hair was shot now with pure-white strands. It
fell in waves upon her bare white shoulders, where her filmy robe of
light-brown silken fabric was caught with gay red ribbons. The robe
hung in folds nearly to her knees.

I have seen pictures of the maidens of ancient Greece. Hulda looked
like that. Thongs of red crossed her breast, bound her waist and hung
dangling at her knees with tasseled ends. Her legs were bare. Her feet
in sandals like father's, but with pointed toes, the heel cut away, and
thongs of red crossing her instep. Her right arm was bare; but on the
left, her wrist was bound with a red ruching.

Dan had infolded her in his first hungry embrace, kissing her without
thought of the rest of us, until she cried for breath. Then he held her
off.

She was gasping, and laughing. "Do I--look so queer? Dan, don't you
like my looks? Don't you--like me--"

"Like you?" His great arms would have wrapped her up again, but she
fended him off. She was radiant; I can imagine how Dan felt; I had
never seen Hulda half so beautiful. She was blushing; she laughed at
him archly.

"The red, Dan." She indicated her tassels, and the ruching at her left
wrist. "You see, I wear it--for you. The sign that I am spoken for, and
pledged to a man."

"Wonderful, Frederick, that you all got through so safely." Father
turned with Freddie, to me. "Frederick, you must meet Zetta--Peter,
have you seen Zetta? There she is--come in, child."

Zetta was dressed very much as on earth I had last seen her. She stood
lingering in the vehicle doorway, eager to see us, but reluctant to
encroach on our family greetings. At father's words, she now shyly
approached.

I stammered, "Zetta, I'm--very glad to see you again."

"How do you do, Peter." She held out her hand, and I took it. A
confusion was upon me. This moment for which I had longed, came, and
passed. Perhaps, as once before, the barriers of conventionality rose
instinctively to hold my emotion in check.

I think it was so with Zetta, too. Our fingers barely touched; but my
heart pounded harder, for I heard her murmur, "Be--careful, Peter. Be
ver' careful!" A warning against the power between us! Then I met her
glance as she eyed me sidewise. A roguish, impish look. This was a new
Zetta--here upon her own world, her real self. Little imp, mocking my
confusion with glee! She turned away, toward Freddie.

"And this is Fred'rick? I am ver' pleas' to meet so good a frien'."

I saw leaping into Freddie's eyes a swift surprise as he neared her,
took her hand and shook it cordially. Freddie's nature, from mine, or
from Dan's, is wholly different. Whatever surprise he felt, he gave no
further sign; shook her hand heartily, grinned at her, and swung on me.

"Say, she's a little beauty, isn't she, Peter?" The old Freddie,
relieved now of the responsibility of commanding our voyage, his
characteristic breezy boyishness came back to him. I had not seen him
in this way since the first dreadful days of the Great Change came upon
us. He added, "You and I are going to be great friends, Zetta."

Her gaze on him was full of undisguised admiration. "Yes," she agreed.
"I think so, too."

We were ready to start. "Leave everything," said father. "I'll have it
guarded, and we're not going far."

He took his lantern; shook it. It seemed to be a translucent
animal-bladder, possibly, filled with small objects that rattled. The
light from it was a glow of phosphorescence. He held it aloft.

"This light is bad. Zetta, fix this up, will you? Can't they do better
than this?"

Strange thoughts to spring to my mind! As Zetta took the lantern, held
it near her face, I fancied that she murmured to it. And as though in
answer to her command, the purple light grew stronger! I fancied so.

"Thanks," said father. "Give it to me. I'll lead the way. Put out your
light, Frederick. You lads took your landing very well. Strange and
disturbing--this unreality just beyond our reach--isn't it, Peter?
You'll grow used to it--you'll forget it."

He started away, with the rest of us following in the shadows behind
his upheld lantern. At his words, the crimson murmuring things in the
darkness again began crowding me. But I was not afraid of them now.

On earth, always there are a million tiny sounds, audible if we will
but listen, and things constantly to be seen which, through habit, we
look at but cease to see. This was like that. With attention upon it,
this unreal sub-world of Xenephrene was strange and fearsome. But it
never obtruded; and already, as father said, I found myself ignoring it.

There was, indeed, so much of strange reality spread now before
me! We stepped from our small doorway, upon the solid ground of
Xenephrene. The moon was beneath a heavy cloud. The landing lights were
extinguished; darkness enveloped us. It seemed a haze; the swinging
purple rays of father's lantern showed it as a swaying mist in the air.

The night was warm, almost steamingly oppressive. But this feeling,
too, soon passed, and I found it wholly comfortable. The lantern, I
learned later, was what I had thought--filled with phosphorescent
insects, like fireflies; and Zetta had commanded them to shine more
brightly!

Father led us slowly. The ground was level beneath my feet--a
corrugated, metallic surface. Sometimes there seemed a soil, and in
the darkness, the deeper shadows of giant vegetation. Great leaves
arched up over us, and soon we were under them, walking now on a soft,
moldy turf. A heavy, earthy scent rose from it; the damp smell of
molding vegetation. In the air, too, there seemed the scent of distant
blossoms. A fragrance. It lay in strata, seemingly; for occasionally it
was heavy, exotic.

       *       *       *       *       *

A moving shadow came up to us--a white-skinned man, darkened by the
purple glow of father's light.

"Oh, Kean?"

"Yes, Professor." He spoke our language!

"We're going down. They came safely. Have the guard placed as I
directed."

"Yes, Master."

"Not Master--Professor. You had it right the first time."

"Yes--Professor."

"Come to me after sunrise, Kean. I'll have plenty to say then."

A man gestured. "They are checking too many of them in. A hundred or
two more came to-night."

"Oh!" exclaimed Hulda.

Zetta said quickly. "That woman, Brea--I saw her to-day--"

This fellow Kean seemed a young man, my own age or less. His face was
serious. "Yes, I saw her. They checked her in--for how long it is they
would let her stay I do not know. Too many Brauns are here now. They
come, but there seems no record of their going--"

"Place the guard," said father. "And after sunrise I'll see you, Kean."

Zetta said abruptly: "Kean, will you seek out Graff? I wish to see
him--"

"No!" father protested.

"Yes," she said quietly. A clinging, soft little vine I had thought
her, but obviously it was not so. Kean met father's glance. Evidently
he also did not approve of Zetta's wish.

"I may not see him," he returned evasively. Before Zetta could speak
again, he vanished silently into the shadows. I fancied he made a leap
upward; I did not see him come down. We started off.

We were descending now down a gentle slope. The verdure grew thicker
as we advanced. The perfume in the air turned aromatic, as though
scented by a million spiced blossoms. Abruptly the moon came out for a
moment, a small purple sun. The darkness lifted. We were in a jungle of
vegetation. It arched over us--great leafy spires, interlocking to a
network through which the moonlight straggled.

There seemed few trees; it was all a network of stalks, and giant vines
and great huge lacy leaves. Pods and flowers hung in clusters. Over our
heads the foliage was solidly interwoven. I gazed up, and in the open
moonlight up there, it seemed to me on top of this tangled vegetation,
an artificial roadway--a street perhaps--was resting. There were moving
shapes up there, as though people might be passing along a city street.

"Here we are," father called back over his shoulder. He shook his
lantern vigorously, and raised it over his head. "Here we are, '_Under
Gardens_,' Hulda named it. Our home--yours too now, while we are here."
He chuckled. "You might almost think you were back on earth, mightn't
you?"

[Illustration: "Here we are," father told us. "This is 'Under
Gardens'--it is our home. You might almost think we were back on Earth,
mightn't you?"]

He had stopped to let us come up with him. We had been following a
narrow, winding path, which like a tunnel, had been cut downward into
the jungle. It opened now unexpectedly into a small clearing. Not
that, rather should I call it a cave. The vegetation had obviously been
hewn away to form a circular opening--a cleared ground space in an oval
of a few hundred feet, walled in by the jungle, with the heavy network
closing overhead fifty feet or more above us.

The moonlight straggled down, to mingle its purple light with father's
purple lantern. I saw here in this cave-like space, a little house
built in earth fashion, a solidly square, two-storied structure of
metallic blocks. Its walls gleamed smooth and burnished. Its windows
had shutters sticking out at an angle. Behind one of the windows a dull
interior light showed.

There was a front veranda, with a railed balcony over it. Flowers were
massed upon a flat roof. A few of their stalks had climbed and mingled
with the vegetation arching above the house. On the ground there was a
front garden with a metallic fence. Flowers growing; and low things in
the ground which might have been vegetables.

Altogether, it was a friendly-looking little dwelling place, neat,
orderly, and for all its fantastic surroundings, of wholly earthly
aspect. It was, I think, just for that reason, as surprising a sight as
anything Xenephrene ever showed me.

       *       *       *       *       *

Father was laughing at our amazement. "The government built it for me.
They were very kind--built it exactly as Hulda and I directed. They
think it is the most bizarre affair in their world--as no doubt it is.
Zetta lives here with us but she hates it. You do, don't you, Zetta?"

"No," she said. Her gaze at him was affectionate, and again I saw that
roguish, sidewise glance. A little witch, fascinating. "Oh, no," she
added. "I grow used to it now. But at first it was ver' terrible."

We were at the garden gate, which father had flung wide.

"Come in," said Hulda. "Dan, when you see how father has fixed
it up--the trouble everybody went to, trying to make things look
like earth. Oh, if we could only welcome you all at a time less
critical--frightening. Xenephrene is really very beautiful around here,
Dan--"

We mounted the metallic veranda and entered the living room. It held a
soft illumination of yellow-white light. Grass matting on the floor.
A polished wooden table--wood queerly porous; on the table a fabric
doily; a lamp of skin like the lantern father was carrying; and his
writing materials.

Furniture about the room, chairs of wood, with cane seats. A metallic
bowl, with water and flowers. Cushions on some of the chairs. On the
floor, a huge cushion bound circular with a fabric rope; I surmised it
to be a seat for Zetta. On a chair near an inner doorway lay a feminine
garment which Hulda snatched away.

Father gazed around him proudly. "Not bad, is it? Come on. I'll show
you the rest of the place, and then put you to bed. You must, all of
you, be exhausted--"

"I'm not tired," Freddie declared. And added, like a child: "I don't
want to go to bed."

"Well, you're going," said father. "I'll give you till dawn."

Dan demanded, "How long is that?"

"Five or six hours. It will be dark when I wake you up." His arm went
around my shoulders affectionately. "It's good to have you with us,
Peter. There is a great deal I have to say--but more which we'll have
to do." His voice turned very solemn. "Things have reached a crisis
here. It has come--more quickly than I thought."

Zetta said: "My people have made a mistake--if now they will listen to
you--"

"They'll listen to me to-morrow," he said grimly. "If it isn't too
late. We mustn't get into any discussion now--get these poor travelers
to sleep."

It did not seem to me that Freddie or Dan or myself could possibly
sleep, with all these new, strange things whirling in our heads. But we
certainly did. In an upper bedroom, upon beds which might have been on
earth, with bedroom windows open wide to the scented night, I closed
my eyes and in a moment drifted off. In the silence and darkness, the
crimson unreal things lurked around me. But they now seemed friendly
visions; my closed eyes shut them out; my ears heard their faint
murmurs, but they lulled me.

The last thing I remember was thinking of how we had said good night
to Zetta and she had left us. On Xenephrene, gravity was almost the
same as earth; in walking, I had noticed no difference. Zetta said good
night to us at the doorway of one of the upper rooms. She turned and
went through the doorway with a graceful leap.

I think she knew it would startle us--I think she did it just for that
reason. It carried her past the head of the stairs; she touched the
balustrade lightly with a hand for balance as she went over it, and
dropped the fifteen feet to the floor below. A fairy's leap, Dan had
called it that in the moonlight of a Porto Rican night. But it seemed
even more fantastic in these conventional interior surroundings of the
house, the halls and the stairway. I drifted off to sleep, thinking of
it.




                              CHAPTER XII

                                AT DAWN


"We have an hour," said father. "There is a great deal I must tell you,
but we must make it brief."

"Kean will be coming at sunrise," Hulda said. "I'd have got you up
earlier."

"I slept like a watchman," said Dan jovially. "Your air here must have
a drug in it--Hulda, what's the matter with your hair?"

"The matter? Don't you like it?"

"Well, but--it's turning gray. I mean--white!"

Father said: "Look at mine--wholly white. There's something in the air
here--it kills the pigment coloring. There's no one in this world with
hair other than white."

With father and Hulda, we were seated on the roof of Under Gardens. I
had, I thought, been asleep only a moment when father came to awaken
us. "Hulda is getting breakfast. Get up, you three." He added when we
were fully awake, "You'll find you don't need as much sleep here as on
earth."

Hulda served us breakfast in a quaint simulation of the way she would
have done it on earth. I would not pretend to describe the food. I was
reminded of Dan's describing the involuntary grimaces Zetta had made at
the food they served her in Porto Rico.

There was a beverage which might have been either tea or coffee--a
sweetish mixture of some herb; and the cooked flesh of what I hoped was
an animal--and eggs. They were small, and queerly oblong in shape; I
did not think it best to inquire into them too fully.

"It's a very nice breakfast, Hulda," I said lamely, as we were
finishing.

"You'll get used to it," said father. "Come upstairs."

It was dim on the roof top; the full moon was evidently low to its
setting horizon; shafts of its purple light slanted down through the
thick arch of vegetation. The flat roof of the house had a low metal
parapet; paths between gleaming basins of flowers; and a small open
area with comfortable chairs. We seated ourselves and father produced
what were evidently home-made cigars. But they were not bad.

"Well," said Dan, "this is mighty luxurious." In the moonlight I could
see his great lazy length stretched in his chair. "Hulda, sit here by
me."

She sat beside him, with her hand on his. Dear little Hulda; she would
make any man happy to whom she gave the true steadfastness of her love.
Freddie was alert and eager to hear all that father had to tell us. So
was I, but my mind was divided by thoughts of Zetta. She had not yet
appeared; and no one had spoken of her.

Father gazed around us. "It's been comfortable here. It must seem very
strange to you."

Within the vault of this encompassing wall and ceiling of vegetation,
the air hung heavy upon us. I had been convinced that a street was
overhead; if so, it was untraveled now--in the moonlight up there I
could not see the moving figures.

There seemed nothing living in sight. A moment later I was not so sure.
Vines ran up like ladders from the rooftop of the house to the jungle
ceiling. I thought, far up there, a figure was clinging. A brown shape;
a man--an animal? Or was it some giant brown insect lying motionless
on a great stalk of the vines? And then, down on the ground in front
of the house by the front fence, I saw unmistakably a brown crawling
thing. The length of a man--crawling prone with several legs; it
raised an eye toward our roof--a spot of dull red light with a circle
of smaller lights around it.

I stared; it came crawling to the gate; raised itself up, standing
the height of a man upon a tripod of jointed legs; then sank back and
crawled slowly on, following the line of fence.

Father remarked my awed, half-frightened gaze. He laughed. "One of
our guards. We've half a hundred of them on the ground here, and in
the foliage. We're just a little alarmed over Zetta's safety--you'll
understand presently."

I took advantage of that. "Where is Zetta?"

"Sleeping," said Hulda. "They do not sleep very regularly, here on
Xenephrene. She'll be up presently--I didn't want to awaken her."

       *       *       *       *       *

Father settled himself in his chair. "Before I can make you understand
conditions here, I'll have to give you an idea of the history of this
world--this race of humans so unlike ourselves physically, yet in their
human qualities so very similar. Don't be impatient, Frederick. I know
what you want are the cold scientific facts--I'll be as brief as I can.

"They have always called Xenephrene 'the Wanderer.' It was their name
for their world. Our ancient earth astronomers in their ignorance
termed our planets of the Solar System 'wanderers.' They are not. They
are chained to our sun. Xenephrene has always been free. Wandering
free among the stars. Thus you will understand that the astronomical
conditions we have here now are all new to Xenephrene. What they were
before is immaterial. Nights of wan starlight; purple days of Pyrena's
moonlight.

"Perhaps in the remote past most of Xenephrene's surface was habitable.
That is not known. Very little of it is habitable now, and there is
only one main race--these Garlands. Only this one habitable region;
they call it and the city here 'Garla.' The land very possibly is
shrinking slowly to a lesser area; the race certainly is dying. Ten
thousand years from now--" He shrugged. "What difference what the
outcome may be then? Ten thousand years ago the Garlands were evidently
a very progressive, 'modern' people. Their records show it."

Father gazed at us earnestly. "I want you to understand this; it
explains much. On earth we are climbing now from savagery to what we
might call civilized modernity. The achievements of science--modern
life--a growing complexity of existence--all that, to us on earth, has
come to stand for advancement.

"These Garlands passed that era of their development centuries ago.
Their history, their records, their traditions speak eloquently of a
past age when they lived in a machine-made world of science--the sort
of world we are building so rapidly on earth. There is, not far from
here, the ruined shell of one of their great cities. I fancy that in
its prime our present-day New York or London would have seemed very
primitive indeed. It is abandoned; in moldering ruins now.

"There came a time when, growing decadent, or perhaps with a greater
wisdom, the Garlands began to feel that they were in error. Leaders
rose among them to preach a new philosophy of life.

"You understand, I am speaking of changes that came, not quickly, but
spread over centuries. These people--a single race they were then--were
isolated upon their wandering world. Their science made them understand
it more thoroughly than we understand our earth. They had built for
themselves a complex civilization. They lived in bustling metal cities.
Machines did their work.

"But they found, strangely enough, that the more 'labor-saving' devices
they invented, the more work there was to do. The cities were racked
with disease. A hundred million people, crowded upon too small an area,
living a complex artificial life, began to die faster than they were
being born. There was little happiness; life was too complex; the rush
to keep up with it was too great a strain."

Father was smiling with a faintly ironical twist, but his voice was
very earnest. "It is queer that one must come to another world to
have a revealing mirror held up to one's self! They found out, their
Garlands, that they were on the wrong track! It may have taken them
centuries to become convinced of it--but when they decided they
evidently did it very suddenly. In a lifetime or so.

"Their wonderful modern cities began to decay. The machines which they
had built to do their work began to stand idle--and instead of there
being more work to do, it seemed that there was less! They began to
remove complexities of life; the restless urge to 'advance' into some
vague golden age of achievement, died out. They realized that happiness
in life did not lie that way; they saw in Pyrena's purple moonlight a
greater beauty than all their man-made splendor had ever given.

       *       *       *       *       *

"They fell--if you want to call it that--back to simplicity. With the
greater knowledge of what they had passed through, with the stress of
'modernity' no longer harrassing them, a new altruism came. A primitive
race climbing upward is in no sense comparable. The savage has no
knowledge; his simple life is for him one of struggle; the survival
of the fittest is the only law he knows. Up to so-called civilization
the survival of the fittest governs everything; the Garlands, at their
complex, scientific pinnacle of civilized life, were inherently as
barbarous as at their savage beginning.

"But once they began to revert--ah, then it was very different! They
had the knowledge of how to wrest from nature a comfortable existence.
As their wants grew fewer, humans looked at each other, not like
mistrustful predatory animals, but with a new kindliness.

"That is the present condition. The Garlands live now only for
happiness. Their life, their government, their whole mode of thought
and living, is designed upon a basis of as little struggle for
existence as possible. They live for one thing only; to enjoy their
world, not as they might mold and change it, but as the Creator made
it, and gave it to them.

"It is a benign world. Not to my mind, of course, as benign or
desirable as our own. But once they began to enjoy it, the Garlands
found it very blessed. There are fires within Xenephrene which,
for all her wanderings, seem to keep the surface temperature at a
pleasant warmth. Food grows readily; rains are frequent. There is,
fundamentally, no tendency toward human disease.

"The few wants that the Garlands now realize they need for happiness
and health are easily supplied. No one works very much; there is plenty
of time for pleasure. The struggle for a high civilization was perhaps
necessary. It gave an experience of what to accept and what to reject;
and a knowledge of how to control the forces of nature. I'll explain
that more fully later.

"There is evil in nature here--a danger which on earth we have not.
The Garlands have preserved enough of their science to enable them to
control it. Enough science also to guard against any attack. They're
not fatuous! There is a scientific body--they call it by a word I
translate as Guild. A small body of scientists who are 'modern' in
every respect. Their work is secret--so that what they do may not
contaminate the people with any desire again to 'achieve.' They are
thoroughly trustworthy, these scientists--"

Hulda said suddenly: "Or at least you hope so."

"Yes," he said gravely. "I hope and believe so. They hold in their
hands the power of this world. In their grottos they have weapons ready
and waiting--and controlled power which holds in check the evil forces
of nature--the great sub-world of Xenephrene which lies here within the
cognizance of our human senses, as you knew when you landed and first
opened your door to let it in."

I exclaimed: "These crimson things--this sound!"

It was around us, murmuring in our ears as we sat there.

"Yes," he agreed. "It is harmless, if controlled."

It was what his look implied, what he refrained from saying, that
brought me a shudder. He changed the subject abruptly.

"The animal and insect world is very interesting here, Peter. It is not
comparable to what we have on earth at all. You'll understand that very
shortly. There are few animals. The insects--" His glance involuntarily
went above us; that great brown thing was lying motionless up there in
the foliage. "The insect world plays a very large part in the scheme
of things here. These Garlands have a very well ordered world. All
designed for a pleasant existence. All this that the Guild of Science
does is never obtruded in the Garland's happy life. There is no
stress--no struggle--"

Freddie interrupted: "I'm hanged if I understand you, Professor
Vanderstuyft. You talk as though this were some Elysium here.
Utopia--something like that. But you sent for us because of impending
danger. Last night when we arrived Hulda talked very differently.

"Even awhile ago--and look at Hulda now--"

Hulda's face certainly was very solemn; Dan put his arm around her.
I said: "I feel the same--what Freddie says--father, if there is no
stress, no struggle here--"

He gestured. "I meant, in fundamentals. This is no Utopia. There never
has been any Utopia in human existence, and there never will be. Human
nature, wherever you find it in the immensity of God's Great Universe,
will have its human failings. If it had not, it would not be human.
There are good people--and bad people. Most of us are a blend of both
qualities. There is nothing wholly good short of Divinity, and nothing
wholly bad save our conception, perchance, of Satan."

"Your father is in a philosophical mood," Dan commented to Hulda.

But she did not smile. Father said:

"Perhaps. But in reality I'm trying to make clear to you the causes
which have brought forth here a serious condition. It affects this
world--and you, all of us--for you are now plunged into it with me. And
the safety of our own earth--" Father's voice turned vigorous. "Why do
you suppose I sent for you? I could not leave here--I would rather,
infinitely rather, have come back with Hulda."

"Tell us," said Dan.

       *       *       *       *       *

Freddie prompted: "There are two races here. You mentioned the Brauns
in your letter. Are they the race which menaces the earth? Who invaded
it before?"

Dan said: "That night in our house in Porto Rico--who took you away?
What was Zetta doing there? Who was the man with her we found dead? She
had just told you everything that afternoon you both disappeared--what
was it she told you--"

"You see, there is so much, father, which we are eager to know--" I put
in. He raised his hand against our outpouring of questions.

"I'm trying to tell you as best I can. There was only one race
here--the Garlands. They were not all of one mind in giving up
modernity. No race of people can ever be all the same. Some continued
to lust for achievement; some desired personal power--conventional
riches; some were just plain bad. Criminals. Only in Utopia would there
be a complete lack of crime.

"Out of this diversity the Garland rulers strove to weed the discordant
element. Generations ago it was found expedient to exile criminals. A
region north of here, at the edge of the metal plains, was set aside as
a penal colony. Criminals were banished to live there, and there they
bred their kind.

"Then, later, it was made by law a crime here in Garla to preach
modernity. The element--outside of the legalized scientific Guild--who
still lusted for the old achievement, were classed as criminals
and were banished also. As a matter of actuality they were largely
criminals at heart.

"There were a few well-meaning crusaders who felt that the world was
going wrong--who actually believed their doctrine of 'hustle, bustle
and get rich.' But for the most part this element was composed of men
of criminal instinct who thought they could gain power by such a stand.
They preached, sought followers, tried by every means to foster a
discontent. Some were clever, learned men; one even tried to foment a
revolution and seize the government; another started a little city and
culture of his own.

"Gradually they were weeded out and exiled. Thus, to the north of here,
the race of the Brauns was created. Of criminal stock, primarily--and
constantly absorbing all the criminals from Garla. They have one large
city--nearly all of them live in it. They are progressive--modern, as
I term it. Fundamentally, of course, they are not intellectually the
equals of the Garlands. But they think they are. They number now about
a hundred thousand. Somewhat more than that, perhaps. They have their
own government; they punish and imprison their criminals according to
their own standards of justice."

"I should think," said Dan, "that they would object to having the
Garlands dump criminals upon them."

"If they do, they have no other recourse. They could, naturally,
banish them to some other region. But they do not. The Brauns are few
in number. They welcome new citizens. Their city is very progressive.
Their chief occupation is industry. They have commercial intercourse
with Garla; they bring us clothing, implements, various manufactured
articles, which we exchange for food. They do not go in for
agriculture--indeed they have very little, and very poor land.

"The Garlands, you understand, are the ruling race. They are ten
or fifteen times more numerous than the Brauns. And for all their
voluntary, rustic simplicity, they are far more intelligent. The Brauns
are not allowed here, except when they are checked in through our
frontier guards. They are given a permit, if their desired visit seems
justifiable; they are allowed to stay only a limited time to transact
their business, and then are checked out.

"Their government now, for all their civilized talk of democracy and
freedom, is an autocracy, almost a despotism. It is controlled by one
Graff, a giant of a fellow who calls himself a scientist. As a young
man here in Garla, he tried to gather followers about him, and to seize
our government. He was exiled. Among the Brauns, he rose rapidly into
a very solid power. He is a genius in his way, no doubt. Certainly he
has a genius for organization. A magnificent physique--he is larger
than you, Dan--and possibly stronger. They tell me, too, he is a great
orator. He can sway people--he talked himself where he is, as did many
a man in our own earthly history.

"A few years ago--just before Xenephrene wandered into our solar system
to be entrapped by our sun--Graff had stirred his people into thinking
they could conquer the Garlands and thus rule Xenephrene. The most
progressive, most civilized race--why could they not overcome these
fatuous peasants? The Braun civilization, as you can imagine, has
developed all the extremes of riches and poverty. They have factory
workers who are miserably downtrodden. Graff, largely responsible now
for it all, yet poses as a patriot and a hero. His ignorant class
follows him, hoping blindly to better itself.

"Graff came here with a sudden coup to war against the Garlands. With
all his diabolical science--by every inhuman means he could employ.
And he was very much surprised to be abruptly repulsed. The Garland
Scientific Guild was ready; the Brauns were horribly slaughtered;
chastened, and things went on as before."

       *       *       *       *       *

I had been aware for some time that the scene around us was
brightening. The moon evidently had set, or nearly so. A luminous
quality of yellow color seemed in the air; the purple haze was going.
Dawn was at hand. Our first day upon Xenephrene! What would it bring
forth? My breath came faster at the thought.

The vault of foliage around and over us was taking clearer form; new
colors were coming to it. Down on the ground the crawling thing was
coming back past our gate. It met another of its kind. They rose up,
stood for a moment together, and then parted, crawling their separate
ways. Had they spoken to each other as they passed? They had seemed,
to my quickened, stimulated fancy, almost like two shapes of men,
guards, exchanging a low word as they passed on their night patrol.
I shuddered. Men! That crawling thing down there in the shadow by the
burnished metal fence might have been a giant ant; certainly nothing
human.

Father leaned forward toward us; his earnest gaze held my wandering
attention. "I come now to the more recent events which directly concern
us of the earth. Xenephrene wandered in to join our little family of
planets gathered about our sun. Graff, with his science, in which
astronomy evidently is further progressed than ours of earth, was well
aware of what had happened. His telescope showed him earth--showed him
very possibly things on earth which gave him a new lust for conquest.
Here was a great, fair world, ready to his hand for the taking. He
could never be master of Xenephrene--of that he was convinced.

"He gathered a small force and went to earth. His intention then was
not to try to conquer it--the trip was merely experimental. He wanted
to make sure of conditions there--"

"To know what he was up against," I put in.

"Exactly, Peter. He is a clever, resourceful fellow. He landed, as
we know, near New York. Then went South, to investigate the warmer
climate--the snow and cold were disconcerting to him.

"To give you an idea how carefully he plans things--he speaks now both
our English and Spanish, making ready for his future earth campaigns
when he may need them. He captured--this he told me very blandly--an
earth man near New York. Learned English from him. And also captured a
Venezuelan--who supplied the Spanish. Both captives, as Graff blandly
says, unfortunately died when he was through with them. It was not a
great task for him to learn our tongues. The Xenephrene mind absorbs
new things--learns--more readily than ours. And Graff is perhaps even
exceptional in that."

"Zetta--" I began.

"Zetta and her father were here in Garla. The news that Graff had
invaded earth aroused great interest here. The Garlands doubtless might
have stopped him if they had known of it sooner. But they did not.
Also, the government here decided that they would not interfere--it was
really nothing to them."

"I'd think," said Freddie, "they'd have been pleased to get rid of him
and his tribe."

"That was the general idea. Indeed, perhaps it still is. That's
what I'm working against. Zetta's father--alone of all the Garland
government at that time Graff made his first invasion of earth--was
anxious to stop him. Zetta's father preached the doctrine, 'Do as you
would be done by.' He wanted to protect the earth people, or, if not
that, at least to warn them.

"Zetta, of course, felt the same. Her mother is dead--she and her
father, without other near kin, were very close and dear to each other.
They got nowhere in trying to persuade the Garlands to help our earth.
Zetta, had she found the opportunity, might even have tried to join
Graff's expedition, a wild, girlish idea--she felt she might have some
influence with him--get him to give up his scheme of conquest--"

"In Heaven's name, why?" Dan demanded. "Why did she think she might
influence him?"

"Because he is in love with her," father replied gravely.

"In love--" I exclaimed.

"Yes. He has pleaded for her many times. He never comes here that he
does not try to get her to return to the Braun city with him. He's very
gentle with her--she seems not to fear him."

"Well, I would," said Hulda; and father nodded. And added: "An
unscrupulous scoundrel, beyond question. I have felt for months that
Zetta was not safe from him. Whenever he is in Garla, I keep our place
here well guarded."

"He's in Garla now?" I asked. My heart was beating fast. "Didn't Zetta
tell that man last night that she wanted to see this Graff?"

"Yes. But I will not let her. She thinks she might be able to stop him
going to earth. A foolish girl's idea." Father waved it away.

"I learned very recently, though we have suspected and feared it for
some time--Graff's real expedition to attack earth is now ready! Do
you understand me? He's going to earth with all his force to make his
real play to conquer it--not seventeen months hence--but now! Graff is
ready now to attack the earth. Oh, Peter, if I had only known!"

That miserable phrase again! That accursed phrase!

"Peter, I should have sent for you sooner. I could have used every
effort--sent for you seventeen months ago. Well, it's too late now to
think of that. In a few days! Unless we can stop him! Or persuade the
Garlands to do something about it--"

"Which they won't," said Hulda. "He's here in Garla buying food for his
expedition. And making public speeches to our people--promising them
heaven knows what kind of rewards when he returns from conquering the
earth. The Garland public is half won to him now. And the woman Brea is
here--"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Who is Brea?" I asked.

"A woman who wants to join him," said father. "Call it marriage--I
haven't time now to go into the social laws of this world."

"You were telling us how Zetta went to the earth," Freddie prompted.
"Was that her father who went with her?"

"Yes. They could get no help from the Garlands, so they started
alone--to warn us on earth--to do what they could to help us. Zetta's
father was ill. The trip was bad for him. He died, just as they
arrived. And Zetta carried on his plans."

Freddie persisted: "The Garlands gave them the vehicle?"

"Yes."

"What weapons have they available here? Now, I mean. Suppose they gave
us some--"

Father smiled somewhat ruefully. "The Scientific Guild here takes me
only partially in its confidence. Smiling, polite, courteous--but I
am a stranger--they never forget that for a moment. What weapons they
have, I confess I don't know. Graff's method of attack on earth--that,
too, I don't know. His weapon, which we called the 'Crimson Sound'--I
can only guess its real nature. It is allied with the Infra-Red
world--that is obvious.

"At all events, when I learned that Graff was planning to attack our
world again, I demanded of the Garlands a vehicle with which to go to
earth. They told me they had none. We're building one--it may be ready
now. As a matter of fact, I did not feel it best to leave here. I still
may be able to persuade them to help us. They were willing to have
you come. They provided me with the cylinders--and the mechanisms--so
readily that I was forced to suspect that in reality they have
everything on hand which we would need. Zetta has done everything she
can do. But she is only a girl--the government pays little attention
to her. She has made several speeches to the women of Garla--but they
availed nothing."

Father's fists were clenched on the arms of his chair. "When I sent for
you three, I thought we would have seventeen months. I thought with
your presence--your words and pleadings to add to mine--to make them
help us, and--I'll confess it--I was lonely for you. I'm getting old."

"You thought something else, father," said Hulda quietly. Strange
little Hulda! A will of iron, beneath her soft, dovelike little body!

Father lowered his voice slightly; his glance around us in the growing
twilight of dawn had a surreptitious aspect. "Yes, I did. I thought
that with your youth and strength and daring we might perhaps be able
to thwart Graff here on Xenephrene before he started. Or, failing
that"--his voice fell lower--"we might even dare try and make away with
the Garlands' weapons--get them to earth."

Dan leaped to his feet; his height towered over us. "Well, it's not too
late for that, is it? See here, why can't we--"

"Sit down," said Freddie. "There's a lot we don't know about this thing
yet. Professor Vanderstuyft, how did you and Hulda and Zetta happen to
disappear that night in Porto Rico?"

"Graff knew Zetta was on earth," said father. "He came to get her--I
was up, and Hulda was awake. The man Graff sent captured all three of
us. We went back in the vehicle Zetta had arrived in. Our captor's
name was Kean--that same young fellow who spoke to us last night--he's
coming here shortly now to see me."

"Then he was a spy--not really one of Graff's men?" Freddie suggested.

"No. He was in Graff's service. But a very decent fellow. He had been
convicted of a crime here in Garla. A theft. Convicted unjustly, he
says, for he still maintains his innocence. They're trying him again
now--at his request--even though he has recently been pardoned and
reinstated in Garla. He was exiled, and, in his resentment, he joined
Graff. He captured us in the Cain plantation house. He was supposed to
take us to the Brauns. But he didn't. He brought us here."

"Why?" asked Dan.

Father was smiling at Hulda. "Well, Dan, I think you'd better ask Hulda
that. But don't be angry with her. She is--"

A woman's scream brought us all to our feet. My blood chilled; a wave
of ice seemed sweeping up to grip my heart. A scream from within the
house below us! A scream of terror! Zetta!




                             CHAPTER XIII

                        "EMPEROR OF THE EARTH!"


In the flat light of dawn we must have looked ashen as we stood there
on the roof top with Zetta's scream ringing in our horrified ears. I
remember standing transfixed just an instant. Father made a leap toward
the stairway that led down into the house, but a cry from Hulda checked
him.

"Look! The guards--look there!"

[Illustration: The Braun with the knife sprang at Zetta, and she called
on her insect guards for help.]

We were at a corner of the roof where it projected and gave a side
view of the building. In the twilight I could see the ground--a garden
path between flowering shrubs; the burnished side wall of the house;
the lower windows, with shutters slanting out; and an upper window,
diagonally beneath us, Zetta's room! It seemed so. It was opened;
another scream from Zetta came through it.

I recall that my confusion was mingled with a sense of relief--this cry
seemed to hold not so much terror as anger and words of command.

It all happened in no more than an instant, while we hung over the roof
parapet, watching. From the ground a figure leaped upward--a great
brown thing with spindly legs, shining shell of jointed body and a head
with thin waving arms beside it.

From within the room a commotion now sounded, a struggle--the
scratching of giant insect legs, the pad of human feet. The thing on
the ground outside came sailing up with its leap; it clutched the
casement, went scuttling in the window.

Father left us and ran down the staircase from the roof, but we did
not heed his going. Then from the window a man's body was tumbled out.
The grotesque forms of two great insects showed there; they were in
the room, pushing the man through the window. He fell lightly to the
ground; lay huddled, writhing in a heap. From the window they leaped
down after him. A thing with brown spreading wings came sailing down
from the foliage; a dozen others were leaping from unseen places.

Zetta appeared at the window. Zetta, unharmed. She gazed down but
behind her, father appeared and drew her back into the room. On the
ground a score of the insect guards were writhing, scratching, pawing
over the body of Zetta's assailant. One scuttled away with a fragment,
and two others chased it.

"It's perfectly clear to me," said father. "Kean, this blackguard Graff
tried to abduct Zetta. What will your government say to that, when I
tell them this morning? Are we to have these Brauns committing crimes
right here in Garla?"

We were all in father's living room, half an hour after the attack on
Zetta. Kean had come; he stood now before us respectfully listening
to father's indignant words. He was a slim young fellow, as short as
Freddie and as slender; a smooth, white-skinned youth, in leather,
sleeveless jacket and short, wide-flaring leather trousers. Bareheaded,
his thick, white hair hung long to his ears, with a thong binding it
about his forehead. His face was pleasant, with a delicacy of cast
suggesting girlishness, but his mouth was wide and firm-lipped, his
chin strong and thoroughly masculine.

I liked him at once, this Kean. He smiled at us and shook our hands. He
spoke English, like Zetta, with that quaint, clipped accent.

Zetta had not been hurt. She had been awakened by an intruder at her
window. An insect guard evidently had followed him in, had attacked
him. The rest we witnessed.

"Who was he?" Kean demanded.

She shook her head. "I do not know."

Father said: "You never saw him before?"

"No, never. I think not."

"A Braun?"

"Oh, yes."

Kean gestured. "If we had him, we could tell--"

"He is--gone now," said Zetta. I shuddered at the memory. Gone indeed!

Father repeated: "Graff evidently sent him to abduct her. Is the
government going to do nothing--"

"They would want proof," said Kean quietly. "I was thinking--Zetta, was
he trying to get you away, or--"

"Or what?" Hulda demanded.

"Or kill her. I was thinking--it might not be Graff who sent him." He
waved away his words. "It would be a very serious problem--other days.
But not now--there is too much else."

It struck me that Zetta's face bore a queer expression. She said
suddenly: "I will tell you the truth."

We turned on her; she was smiling a faint, quizzical smile. "I was
sleeping, as I said. The insect guards caught a man who leaped for my
window. A Braun--I had never seen him before. They would have torn
him--but I made them stop. I tell them, bring him in. And when they
did, I sen' them, the guards, outside, for I wish to speak to him
alone."

Hulda exclaimed: "Zetta, you did not!"

"I did," she returned calmly. "The insects wanted to attack him--so I
force them away. I thought then he was from Graff--I thought he want to
carry me off--steal me for Graff. I was not afraid of him--" Her smile
broadened. "Especially with my guards jus' outside. So I stood agains'
the wall, with him across the room, to talk to him."

"But why?" father demanded. "Child, why would you do a thing like this?"

"I think to find out if really he was from Graff; and if so, then I
wanted to send a message. If Graff would give up his attack upon the
earth, I would marry him as he wants. That was my message."

She said it so calmly! I could picture her standing there in her room,
trying to bargain herself for the safety of another world. There was
not one of us who could find a word to comment. I saw the tears spring
to Hulda's eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

Zetta went on unmoved, heedless of our expressions. "I tell the Braun
this. But he was not--that seems sure--he was not sen' by Graff. He
stood of a sudden with a knife--a long knife of the kind we use in
Garla to cut the pods. He jump for me--he would kill me. It was then I
screamed. In the room I avoided him for a moment--and then my guards
came in." She gestured. "The res' you know--and there you have now the
truth--all of it."

Hulda took Zetta in her arms. "You strange little thing Zetta, you
mustn't do anything like this--"

Father said: "If Graff had got your message, he would trick you. Zetta,
promise me you won't try that again. Will you promise?"

She eyed him. "I think perhaps I may not get the chance."

Kean said: "He tried--that Braun--to murder her. He was from Brea--not
from Graff."

"Yes," said Zetta. "I think that is so."

"I'm going before the Council at noon," said father. "I'll have this
out with them--Zetta, if you're going to force me, I'll put you under
guard so you won't be able to do anything foolish--Kean, I want you
to tell the Council I'm bringing my son, and two young friends.
Earthmen--they must hear us now--"

"Yes," said Kean solemnly. "The people are excited, interest' that men
of earth are here. But most interest' in Graff. He promises big things
for Garla--" Kean was very solemn. "The gov'ment is making mistake.
There are too many Brauns here. At the border--I tell them jus' now
that out of our border something mus' be wrong."

He was talking mainly to father, but his gaze seemed involuntarily
swinging to Hulda. "At our border they are not checking the Brauns out
as they should. Or at leas' not sending the reports back to us. All
night--none have come. I have sen' messengers to see what is wrong--"

Father turned to us. "You understand? The authorities have grown
suddenly lax--"

"I'll tell you why," said Freddie. "They're satisfied, since Graff is
going to attack earth, that they have no immediate cause to fear him,
or his people. Maybe, too, they think that when he comes back, laden
with spoils, Garla will benefit--"

"That is it," Kean interrupted. "He tells our people that--exactly
that. It is not our gov'ment which is tempt' into greed--it is the
people--"

Father said: "Well, the authorities are making a mistake, Kean. This
Graff--you believe it as well as I do--is playing a double game. You
know he means no good to Garla. The insect workers--you say there are a
great many of them missing?"

"Yes, I am order to-day a checking of them. Many--a thousan' as you say
it--seem gone--"

"Gone?" I echoed. "What does that mean? Gone where?"

Kean waved his slim white hand. "Over the border? Per'aps--I do not
know. It is ver' strange--"

"Smuggling them out!" said father to us. "You understand? There are
no insect workers in the Braun city. Graff is here, talking--blandly
protesting friendship, with his insidious lures of gain from his earth
conquest--and all the while he's secretly smuggling out our insects--"

Kean had turned away momentarily to Hulda. "My trial, it finish last
night. They gave the verdic' jus' now--I am said, innocent."

Hulda's face brightened; she took his hands. "Oh, Kean, I'm so glad.
Father, the verdict has cleared him!"

"Yes," he said quietly. "Thank you, Hulda."

I whispered to Dan: "Father said you'd have to ask Hulda why Kean
brought his captives to Garla instead of delivering them up to the
Brauns. I can tell you why."

It was obvious, seeing Kean's earnest, flushed face as Hulda
congratulated him.

"Why?" demanded Dan.

"Because he's fascinated by her. Look at him--"

"Oh, he is?" Dan's expression was a study. "He is, is he?" And then he
laughed. "Well, you can't blame him, can you?"

"No," I said, "you can't."

Kean left presently; and Dan made a studied, but very graceful
attempt to be friendly. Both Hulda and Kean knew what he meant.
Kean's handclasp was firm and cordial; his gaze into Dan's eyes was
unfaltering. He carried himself then--and indeed, always--with a very
manly dignity worthy of any one's admiration. When he was gone, Hulda
turned to Dan, flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"Dan, you're a darling."

       *       *       *       *       *

The morning was well advanced when we started with father from "Under
Gardens." He wanted to show us the city; we would finish at the
government house--I call it that for the want of a better term--and
make our plea to the Council. I was not aware then what thoughts and
vague plans possessed Dan and Freddie; but for my own part, my mind was
roaming upon what father had said: "With your youth and strength and
daring we might even try to make away with the Garlands' weapons. Get
them to earth--"

Why not? I determined that what was shown me of the city and the
government this morning, I would see with eyes and mind open to watch
every opportunity. And I must get a chance to plan alone, with Dan and
Freddie.

Hulda and Zetta were determined to appear before the Council with us.
Just as we started, Freddie said abruptly: "Professor Vanderstuyft, fix
it so we can go through the Scientists' Grotto, will you?"

His thoughts were running in the same channels as my own! Dan gave him
a very significant nod of approval; and father said firmly: "I intend
to. But it will likely be after the midday meal. I want you to see the
Infra-red Control. The greatest power for good or evil in this world."

Zetta and Hulda stood apart from us at the doorway. Zetta called:
"Shall we start? The guards are here, Professor Vanderstuyft--they say
you insis' on having them with us."

A group of the brown insect things were ranged before our gate! I could
not approach them at first without an inward shudder--a reluctance
wholly involuntary, which made me revolt at their nearness. Jointed
brown things crawling prone on the ground. Gruesome. Not alone because
their size was full that of a man--gruesome, in the way they sometimes
stood upright upon three hind legs; other legs dangling like arms;
head, grotesquely wearing a single, multiple-lens eye; antennae, like
arms waving above the head.

Gruesome for all this--and more gruesome for a crude leather jacket
strapped around them in the fashion of a garment. Things--living
things--more than giant insects as we of earth would conceive the term;
yet less than humans. Some stood erect now; they eyed my father as one
to whom they must look for commands. Others crawled unheeding along the
edge of the fence--ghastly! Horrible! One stopped, half raised itself,
and eyed me with a calculating stare that turned me cold.

We started. Some of the insects remained about the house; eight went
with us, four of them slithering along on each side of us. It was
full daylight now. The sunlight came down through the jungle ceiling
in a subdued yellow glow. There was a street up there; I could see the
straight lines of a causeway laid upon the top of the foliage; figures
moving along it. We were under a portion of the city. Father had said
so; and now, almost at once, we came to the foot of an incline which
led us upward.

"This way," said father. "Take it slowly. These cursed things will hold
our weight, but I never feel very comfortable on them."

We left the solid ground upon which Under Gardens was built, and I
confess I never felt comfortable either, until we were back again. The
inclined causeway was some twenty feet wide. It wound steeply upward
through the forest growth, with a ten-foot space cleared over it like a
tunnel.

It was built of porous tree-trunks, lashed together with a heavy
vegetable fiber laid on them for a walking surface. Its framework was
bound to the trees and the thick vines which grew everywhere throughout
this gigantic forest tangle. The whole structure bent and swayed
beneath our weight as we advanced up it. I was reminded of the old-time
giant bamboo bridges of Japan.

We went up through some two hundred feet of the jungle and came
abruptly into the broad daylight of its upper surface. We were in the
heart of the city they called Garla; this small locality where we
emerged was the center of population of all Xenephrene.

"Here," said father, "come up here for a minute--I'll show you how it
lies--Zetta, keep them back."

A crowd of people already was gathering, staring at us silently. Father
waved them away; and murmured a queer guttural command to our insect
convoy. The things lay quiet in a group. Near at hand, on a tree-trunk
framework, was a small platform some twenty feet in the air with a
ladder leading up to it.

"Come up," said father. "We can see better--a jumping platform, as I
call it."

       *       *       *       *       *

We mounted, and gazed upon as strange a scene as ever I could have
imagined would be spread before me. The surface of Xenephrene here was
covered, for an area of perhaps five miles square, with this dense
forest growth. Its top--two hundred feet above the ground--was tangled
and matted into an undulating upper surface.

Upon this forest top, the main section of the city of Garla was built.
The streets--we seemed now to be on one of the main ones--were narrow,
crooked roadways of split porous logs, bound with matting. The tops of
the jungle vines projected with waving branches between them.

Houses lined the streets, fiber shacks of every size and shape,
with large empty areas like gardens between them. Cubical, oval,
triangular--some low like a bungalow--others tall and narrow as towers.
Flimsy vegetable structures, with matted roofs to shed the rain; with
windows, doorways, sometimes twenty feet above the roadway. Some of the
houses were set like nests below the street level, in the vegetation
itself, with entrance from the roof. Others clung between the trunks of
taller projecting branches, bound there with living vines, half hidden
by leaves and giant flowers.

At intervals were platforms like the one upon which we stood. The
street nearest to us was most closely lined with houses; the fronts
were open, with what seemed food displayed. The business district.
Further away, with a great circular open space before it, was a large,
broad structure. "The government house," said father. "An incline there
leads down to the ground--the grottos are down there."

It was an amazing, colorful scene--I fear my words are futile, wholly
inadequate to picture it. The familiar blue vault of the heavens was
above us. White clouds, tinged with a vague purple. The familiar
sun--with a dim purple haze in the air breaking its tropical heat and
glare.

This five mile area of city, laid upon the jungle top, all seemed
incredibly flimsy. It swayed everywhere in the gentle morning breeze.
All the vegetation was gigantic, and flimsy--porous like our bamboo
stalks, or banana trees.

Father commented: "Nothing living weighs very much here. All living
organism seems constructed with strange lack of solidity compared to
our earthly standards."

The lack of weight was everywhere apparent. Great brown vines and
trees, branches with giant green, red, and purple leaves, huge colorful
flowers. But with a machete I could have hacked it away, slashed
through the stoutest trunk with a single stroke. The houses! I felt,
gazing at them, that I could rip them apart with my naked hands!

Zetta, both on earth and Xenephrene, weighed some eighteen pounds.
There were white-faced, white-haired, half naked little children gazing
now at us from the near-by houses--children who weighed a pound or
two. Women passed us--in aspect save for their flowing white hair,
not unlike peasant women of the primitive, tropical cities of earth
as they were before the Great Change--but these women weighed twenty
or twenty-five pounds! Men in crude leather garments, bare-legged,
bare-armed, white hair flowing about their ears, some with small oval
kindly faces, with no hairgrowth on them; these men might weigh from
twenty-five to thirty pounds--no more.

All flimsy! Everything--it brought me a sudden sense of power. Why, in
a hand-to-hand fight I could smash a dozen of these men! We of earth
were solid; the platform bent beneath our weight as we stood there;
Dan's bulk tipped its unrailed corner until he nearly fell, lurching
backward hastily to safety. Had he fallen, I felt he might have crashed
on through the street itself, down through the forest to the ground. No
wonder father had demanded his home built down where it was!

       *       *       *       *       *

I have not pictured the strangest aspect of all. The city was busy with
its activities. There seemed no vehicles here. Pedestrians only--moving
about their daily tasks. Strange, weird movements! They walked along
the streets in easy, graceful leaps. Fifteen feet at a stride. They
climbed down into the vegetation; or leaped to a housetop. A man came
from a house doorway. It was in the upper story--thirty feet from the
street. He stared at us--waved his hand in a gesture of greeting to
father and Zetta; then he leaped into the air, over the road, landing
in the notch of a tree; and from there dropped soundlessly down out of
sight.

From other platforms like the one on which we were standing,
occasionally a man would take a greater leap. Not far away, there was
one high tower, with platform at its top. Beyond it, the upper surface
of the forest sloped down to where, half a mile away in that direction,
the city ended at the ground level. There were broad fields of loam off
there, evidently under cultivation.

"Look!" said father. "There's a man climbing the tower--he's going down
to the ground-fields."

He stood poised on the platform a moment, and then leaped. It was
more the sort of leap Zetta had made in Porto Rico. This man spread
flaring folds of his leather garment. They hung like wings from his
outstretched arms. He sailed horizontally, head first, from the tower
top, over the forest slope and landed down on the ground nearly half
a mile away. I have seen, in Switzerland, a ski jumper parallel the
sloping ground in a leap something like that.

"Quite some jumper," Freddie commented.

"That is Rowlande," said Zetta to father.

"One of Garla's athletes," father explained. "They enjoy sport
here--the sail jump is a favorite contest. Over there--" He gestured.
"That open area, with the curved line of branches standing up--that's
what you might call our stadium."

"Graff speaks there to the people to-night," said Zetta.

Father did not comment on that. He pointed out where in the distance
the vegetation ended, and the open fields began; with other distant
patches of jungle here and there; and at the far horizon a purple line
of metal mountains.

Hulda said: "This is the city, here around the government house. But
most of the population lives in the rural section. You can see the
houses."

Down in the fields were occasional structures like farmhouses. They
dotted the distant landscape; and I could see that the other patches of
jungle had houses and streets on them, villages like this larger one of
Garla. Father said: "You think all our agriculture is down there on the
ground level. It isn't. Those pods, for instance--see them?"

A street or so away there was what I had thought was a large open
square. The vine tops were covered with great brown pods. I saw now, as
father pointed it out, that the pods grew everywhere under us in the
forest.

"The pith is one of our staple vegetables," said father. "Those
pods grow there because they are planted. Grafted, so to speak. The
seedlings are raised in the ground soil, then grafted into vine fiber.
The vines are used as a soil. The agriculture is here in the air, as
well as on the ground. There are several vegetables grown in the vine
soil."

Men and women were working in the field he indicated. And insects were
there. I could see them crawling up from beneath, carrying pods; men
and women were picking the pods also--and a line of insects, dwarfed by
distance to look like ants, were carrying the pods along a street.

We presently descended from the platform and walked, with our insects
again beside us, along the causeway streets toward the government house.

The people crowded around us. Once, the press of them added to our own
weight, caused the street and half a dozen of the neighboring houses
to sag alarmingly. No one seemed to mind but ourselves; but when Zetta
shouted to disperse them they went willingly enough--dropping down into
the foliage, or leaping nimbly away with their uncanny movements. My
self-satisfied sense of power was somewhat marred by the realization
of how we must have appeared to them. Chained by our weight to a slow,
dragging walk, fearful every moment that we might fall.

As we went along, father explained the city activities. All normal
enough for a primitive, peasant civilization. He told us, too, how most
of the workers sold their products to the government, exchanging their
credits by buying from the government other things they needed. One
of our ancient Indian civilizations of earth had a somewhat similar
system. And these super-modern people of Xenephrene had chosen it as
best of all! Strange commentary!

We saw the government storehouses. A huge building set in an excavation
of the forest, with its foundations on the ground; we passed through to
its top floor. Food of every sort was stored here; merchandise of every
kind involved in this primitive life was here on display.

"The manufactured stuff comes mostly from the Brauns," said father.

It was obvious to me why these Garlands did not want to champion
the earth against Graff and his Brauns. Here on Xenephrene--however
much the Garlands might differ from the Brauns in ideals and ways of
living--the two races had their interests closely interwoven.

We of earth were the real aliens. What did they care for us? I could
even imagine that the Braun conflict with earth might serve to draw
the Garlands to them, rather than estrange. Families of our earth
people often quarrel, reuniting only when an outside enemy comes in
conflict with one of their factions.

It was, I fancied, upon this human instinct which Graff now was
playing. Coupling with it an appeal to the latent cupidity which lies
in every human breast. He was succeeding. I knew that at this moment
the Garlands--people and government--felt more friendly toward the
Brauns than they ever had before. Father and Kean were convinced that
Graff was playing a double game. What could it be? He might be trying
to trick the Garlands to serve his own ends. But how?

       *       *       *       *       *

Strange walk we had that morning through the city of Garla! My words
convey the merest sketch of its strangeness. Insect workers everywhere.
Patient, silent, methodical as well-trained domestic animals, yet with
a far higher intelligence. I gazed at what might have been a double
line of giant red ants, carrying boxes down an incline into the forest.
Patient workers; suddenly I was struck with the feeling that there
was a sullen resentment upon them; a smoldering hate for their human
masters.

We saw a few Brauns; swaggering fellows flushed with a new sense of
their importance. They were dressed in many complex garments. At sight
of them the cynical thought came to me that in clothes and manner they
might have been a burlesque of us on modern earth. They eyed us with
hostile stares.

"There's Kean," said Hulda. We were beyond the storehouse, back on the
street. The government house was only a block or so away.

Kean approached. "I have been sen' to you from the Council. They will
see you, Professor, but no one else."

Father was taken aback. "You mean, not my son--nor his friends--"

"Jus' you. So they sen' me to say. They would have you come now."

"I'll come," said father grimly. "Look here, Kean--"

"They tell me, Professor, they will have nothing definite to say to you
this morning. After Graff's meeting to-night, they will decide."

"What do you mean by that?" father demanded.

Dan spoke up. "The idea is, if the Garland public seems enthusiastic
about Graff's invasion--then they'll turn us down. Isn't that it, Kean?"

"Yes, I fear that is it. But if our people would favor helping earth--"

"Don't worry," exclaimed Freddie. "They won't."

A commotion near us checked him. Zetta murmured: "Graff!"

A huge figure of a man was coming slowly along the cross-street, with
a half admiring, wholly awed throng of the Garlands around him. He
saw us, waved the crowd back and, with a leap over the thirty feet of
intervening street, he stood before us. Our insect guards rose upright,
eyed father, and stood alert. Behind me I saw three young Garland men,
with metal objects like small projectors in their hands. Government
street guards. They were watching Graff narrowly, but they did not
interfere.

"Professor Vanderstuyft--" He spoke English; his manner was courteous,
but authoritative. "I wish to speak with Zetta--one moment."

The man who was about to try to conquer our earth! I stood tense,
and an awe of which I was secretly ashamed swept me as I gazed at
him. A giant fellow, six and a half feet tall, at the very least.
Broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, straight and muscular.

He wore a tubular leather garment, strapped in at the waist, falling
like a short flaring skirt to his bare knees. A short, gaudy jacket
over it; shoes with broad, flat heels, and pointed toes, curled up and
fastened to his ankles with ornamental metal chains. A heavy metal
triangle hung at his chest; chains of gleaming metal hung from his
shoulders to his elbows; his muscular forearms were bare, with heavy
metal bands at the wrists. A metal band circled his forehead, with the
close-clipped white hair under it.

A man of perhaps forty years. Deep-set blue eyes; heavy white
eyebrows--a beardless face. A strong, handsome face. He was smiling
now, but I could see a ruthless determination in the set of his square,
cloven jaw, and more than a hint of cruelty in the lines of his thin,
firm lips. A swaggering, arrogant fellow. But he was more than that.
In his voice, his bearing, I read a consciousness of his own power,
a dignity about him, more than a mere arrogant swagger. A kingly
scoundrel, contemptuous by instinct of all his fellows.

He was saying something to Zetta in his own tongue. She stood before
him, gazing calmly up into his face--a child in stature beside his huge
bulk.

Father said sharply: "Speak in my own language, please! What you can
have to say to Zetta need not be secret from us."

Graff smiled again--a smile of faintly amused tolerance. "As you
please. Zetta, I hear there was an attack made upon you this dawn. A
Braun, they say, came to carry you away." His voice was very gentle;
hate rose in me for the gentleness of it--the calm dignity of his
regard.

"Yes," she said.

"I want you to know, Zetta, I was not concern in that. Do you believe
me?"

She hesitated. "I think so."

"I want you to think so, for I was not concern in it. I would not harm
you. That you know?"

"Yes," she said.

"That is all. Excep'--Zetta, I am to-morrow going to earth--I want to
conquer it for you--I want all its riches and its pleasures to be for
you. Won't you come with me? You are master of yourself by the laws
here. This earthman, who thinks to control you--"

"Enough!" interrupted father. "She doesn't want to hear that kind of
talk, Graff."

[Illustration: "Zetta does not want to hear your kind of talk, Graff!"]

The gentleness faded from his voice. "I speak with her, not you. Let
her answer."

Zetta burst out: "What you plan to do on earth is wrong, Graff! If you
think to please me, stay here! Stay here on Xenephrene--"

He interrupted her gently: "You are misled, Zetta. You live with earth
people--they mislead you. Zetta, will you come with me--"

"No," she said.

Regret swept his face. If this were acting, it was a good brand. A very
kingly scoundrel, this! "You hurt me ver' deeply, Zetta." A faint irony
tinged his words and his glance.

Her quiet gaze was measuring him. "You want me to love you--that you
have always said. You go about it wrongly, Graff."

He was openly amused. "Do you think so? When I am succeeded--then you
will be proud of me." His tone changed. "Oh, Zetta, you know that then
I will do anything for you. Everything I have shall be yours."

I could see her hesitate, part her lips to speak, then close them
again. She was on the verge, here before all of us, of trying to bribe
him with herself. A shudder must have swept her. But she said: "You are
willing to please me--when you have had your way on earth--but not now."

No fool, this frail little girl! Her own smile was ironical. "If I
could trus' you, Graff, we might--" She checked herself.

"What?" he demanded.

"Nothing. I am finish."

Abruptly he swung from her. His gaze roved me as I stood suddenly
conscious of my clenched fists; Freddie beside me; Dan towering over
us, yet shorter than Graff. Hulda, angry and half afraid, clinging to
Dan. And Kean, a little apart--Graff fastened upon Kean, and his thin
lips twisted with contempt.

"Ah, there is my little criminal traitor!"

I saw Kean stiffen; for an instant I thought he would hurl himself
bodily upon his accuser. Graff evidently thought it, also. He added
calmly: "You are quite safe here, Kean. If you attack me, you would be
stopp'--I am guest here of Garla, as you know. And for the same reason,
I cannot do as I would like with you." His lean fingers were working;
he raised his large hand with a twisting gesture, and dropped it. "You
are quite safe here. Some other time--"

"Come," said father to us. "Enough of this. Come, Zetta."

Again Graff's glance swept us. "So these are some more of my little
earth enemies? Look well upon me! I am Graff, future Emperor of the
Earth!" He said it in a way hardly to be described. An amused, an utter
contempt. My hot anger boiled. Why, this fellow, for all his insolence,
his giant stature, was a flimsy thing of forty or fifty pounds! I
became aware that I had launched myself at him, and Freddie was holding
me.

"Easy, Peter! Stop it! You'll have us all in jail!"

Graff had not moved, his expressions unchanged save that perhaps his
amused contempt was greater. "Your littlest fellow seems to have the
mos' sense. Zetta, perhaps I will see you again."

He turned slowly, and with a lazy bound vanished down the cross-street.




                              CHAPTER XIV

                     BRAVE, FOOLISH LITTLE ZETTA!


It was a crowded day, with our morning walk through the city and our
meeting with Graff. And from a distance we had seen the woman Brea.
An arrogant giantess. A fitting mate for him, no doubt. "Empress of
the Earth"--she was already calling herself that. Kean informed us she
was going to address the meeting to-night--to tell the people of Garla
what wonderful things would be brought back to them by Graff when he
returned.

Father visited the Garland Council. He returned discouraged and
indignant. They would have none of our pleas now. They did not want to
see me or Dan or Freddie officially, to talk politics. Politely, they
requested father to leave their affairs alone. After Graff's meeting
they would give us their decision.

"I warned them," father exclaimed. "What will happen at this meeting
to-night, I don't know. But I feel it bodes no good for Garla. Graff is
treacherous to the very core of him. You'll see--they'll all see!"

Freddie, Dan and I, had a brief consultation while father was at
the Council. "What we'll do," said Dan, "will have to be on our
own. Your father, Peter, has lived here, and likes these people.
Even he can't see them as they are. Doubtless they did grow
altruistic--peace-loving--all that he told us. But humans are humans.
They think they see a way to personal gain. This government is greedy
to get whatever it can out of Graff--"

Freddie commented: "I wouldn't trust a shock from any of these people
with a broken battery. Graff is the worst. Imagine little Zetta trying
to bargain with a villain like Graff!" Freddie's admiration for Zetta
was profound. "But she ought to be watched. Heaven knows what a girl
like that will try and do!"

"I'd trust Kean," said Dan. "He's the only one."

We argued to very little purpose from a dozen angles. I think all three
of us were sorry we had not leaped upon Graff--made an end to him at
once, up there on the Garla street corner.

"It would have been simple," said Dan. "But--killing a man in broad
daylight--they'd have had us locked up by now--I wonder how they punish
murder in this place."

We had Kean to ourselves later in the day. It was before we went to the
Scientists' Grotto. Kean said he had never seen the Garland weapons,
though he knew where they were kept, under heavy guard. But he thought
that during the evening meeting Graff was to hold, he would perhaps be
able to plan a way to get into the grotto arsenal. With the physical
force we three of earth were capable of using we could break into it.

During the meeting, attention would all be centered there. Most of the
guards would be at the meeting. Kean planned to investigate conditions
at the arsenal--and report to us. If we could get the weapons--get them
to our vehicle--We would try attacking Graff first, here in Garla. Or,
preferably, as Kean pointed out, catch him on his way to the Braun
city. And then, if we brought the wrath of the Garlands upon us, we
would all escape to earth. Kean said very solemnly: "I trus' Zetta's
woman conscience on this. She heard you talking of it this morning. Did
you know that?"

"No," I said.

"Well, she did--we Garlands have ver' sharp ears. I ask her advice.
You see, that man Graff called me traitor. That hurt--I was traitor,
from the way he sees it. Not again would I be traitor--mos' of all, not
to my own worl'. But I ask Zetta. She says for us to take the Garland
weapons to save the other worl' is just." He was very earnest. "Not to
take anything which by losing my Garla would be hurt. There is such a
thing. If you planned to steal it, Zetta and I would not permit--"

"The Infra-red Control?" said Freddie.

"Yes. That, Zetta and I would not let you touch. The ordinar'
weapons--of those Garla has many. The loss of some will help your
worl', and cannot harm mine."

A very manly fellow--quaintly dignified as he stood earnestly
explaining. One Garland at least, whom we could trust. And Zetta.

We said nothing to father, or to Hulda, or Zetta. In mid-afternoon,
before starting on this visit to the grotto which father had arranged,
he took an hour and told us more of the strange science of this world.
I feel that it would be out of place for me to set it forth in detail
here. It is not my purpose to encumber this personal narrative with
scientific data. Volumes of scientific text books will be written
concerning Xenephrene, with father's voluminous notes as a basis. So I
have summarized here merely such fundamentals necessary to make clear
the strange adventures on earth, so briefly on Xenephrene and back
again on earth, into which my family, friends and myself were plunged.

The basis, father told us, of all natural scientific phenomena on
Xenephrene was an entity called _Reet_. An "etheric fluid." A "movement
of detached electrons." He used both phrases. In its essence, Reet,
he said, was an enigma. A force "akin perhaps to our electricity."
It existed in nature--in the rain, the clouds, the air. It was the
growing, life-giving essence of all vegetable and animal organism.

Just as we of earth, in a wide variety of forms, had learned to harness
electricity, so on Xenephrene, Reet was harnessed. On earth a common
electrical current, a bolt of lightning, a magnetic field, fluorescence
of a Crooke's tube, the heat of an electric coil, a giant, leaping
electric spark, the X-ray, radio waves--all are akin. We know that
now; we learn it more surely every year. On Xenephrene, a score of
scientific phenomena were all manifestations of Reet, in various forms,
under various abnormal conditions.

       *       *       *       *       *

Our earth now is using Reet for the anti-gravity vehicles which now are
adventuring into Space; and our scientists say that Reet itself is but
another form of electrical force.

Father told us how our vehicle operated. The force of gravity itself
is merely a vibration flowing between two material bodies, connecting
them with a tendency to draw near, to coalesce--a fundamental tendency
in all nature when in vibratory contact. The Reet current, applied in
a form abnormal to nature, slows down and stops this gravitational
vibration.

It is, to me at least, a deep subject; I leave it to father's text
books. But with several of the Reet rays, we were to have diabolical
dealings! Their control of the hidden, unseen forces of nature--we saw
a little of it that afternoon in the Scientists' Grotto.

The grotto, at least this one to which we were admitted, seemed to be a
series of underground passages; converging into a number of underground
rooms. Workshops; laboratories; storehouses, perhaps, of weapons and
equipment of war. We were shown none of that; we saw, indeed, but one
room. Enough to leave us shuddering.

On the ground, beneath the forest, we came to the tunnel entrance. A
guard--a man standing there, with half a dozen of the insect things
lying watchfully beside him, passed us in. A tunnel sloping downward;
smooth, gleaming, metallic walls; shifting purple and red lights; a
steady movement of artificially controlled air for ventilation; vague,
pungent smells; in the distance, ahead of us, the murmur and throb of
machinery.

It was like plunging into yet another brand new world. Outside the
grotto, the Garlands seemed a primitive, pastoral race. This was like a
plunge, centuries into the future. An inferno of the future.

From a cross tunnel, the sudden whine of a dynamo tore at us. A wave
of gas, not unlike chlorine, Freddie said, brought us up gasping and
choking, until a blast of fresh cool air fortunately dissipated it.
A place of shifting lurid lights; workmen passed us--sometimes with
masks, but all wearing what seemed heavy insulated garments.

An inferno, frightening in its strangeness. Frightening, also, in
another way. The half-seen world of the Infra-red had never left my
consciousness since I first set foot upon Xenephrene. It was with me
all that morning in the upper streets of Garla, but I had ignored it.

Here, in the gloom and weirdness of the grotto, the crimson chattering
things seemed to gain reality. My imagination perhaps. I do not know.
But when once we entered the tunnel, I was newly conscious of them. As
though this were their home--their very breeding place. Or perhaps,
their jail, where they were held imprisoned--sullen, resentful,
watchful of any chance to escape. All fancy, yet as I was soon to
learn, it had a very real basis of fact.

My fancy was oversharp; my nerves taut. An insect loitered idle against
the burnished tunnel-wall; a purple ball of light was over it. I
fancied the thing tensed itself as though to spring upon me. I did not
breathe again until we were past it.

A scientist was leading us now. Freddie, Dan, myself and father--we
had left the girls at home. We came to the barred entrance to a room.
Its heavy metal door suggested the circular door to a vault in a New
York bank. Nothing flimsy here; solid metal, everywhere. My heart sank.
Kean had said that with our great physical strength we might be able to
force our way in; it did not seem very reasonable.

A scientist met us. He smiled gravely at father--a short, slim man,
garbed in smooth, dull black. His white hair was clipped close; heavy
bull's-eye goggles made his face grotesque. His ears were clasped with
a device in appearance not unlike a radio headphone; he removed it,
stepping over its dangling wires as he laid it aside.

"Come in," said father softly to us. "This is the control room. I
wanted you to see it."

A low, black-vaulted room. I could see nothing but a small railed
area on a two-foot metal platform in the room's center. Within this
low metal railing, on a bare flooring of burnished metal, two small
mechanisms stood side by side. Two transparent globes, each about a
foot in diameter. Within one, a fluorescence of purple; the other held
a crimson glow. Wires connected them to near-by batteries; wires ran
to a bank of indicators--dials and pressure gauges. Above the neck
of each globe, fastened to it, was a small grid of wire; from one, a
vague, violet-purple beam streamed out; and from the other, the beam
was crimson.

I could barely see the scientist as he moved about us; there was no
light save these purple and crimson beams.

The man seemed adjusting his goggles, and replacing his headphone. Then
he moved a switch. The crimson globe sprang into greater intensity.
The beam from it deepened; it seemed streaming out across the room,
through the further wall of metal rock--streaming out and opening to
my gaze a blackness of distance unfathomable. A murmur was coming
from it! A myriad tiny growls and screams! The crimson sounds! The
red things lurking around me responded to it! Or were they making the
sounds? I could not tell. They seemed rushing out from the unseen, into
visibility--searching--one almost seemed plucking at me.

       *       *       *       *       *

Father murmured, "It is bringing the Infra-red nearer to us. Or
swinging us nearer to it--all the same. Bringing the two planes
closer together. That ray permeates the whole of Xenephrene. Like a
broadcasted radio wave on earth--it goes everywhere! If it persisted--a
day--an hour--the Infra-red would be let loose upon us! Possessing us--"

The scientist was saying, "Let one of them try it. This is very weak--"

"Try it, Peter." Father drew me forward. "Stand, there in the red
glow--just a moment. When you--feel too queer--come back out."

Every instinct in me revolted, but I yielded to him as he shoved me
gently into the red glow. It bathed me with a tingling warmth. Or was
it burning?

The red things were howling around me. One came up--a great crimson
shadow. It seemed condensing into the form of a man. Suddenly I heard
myself laughing. Why, this was funny! It looked like me! A crimson
shadow of Peter! Or was it my evil spirit? Its face, malignant, like
some diabolical travesty of my own, came close and leered at me. I was
trying to get into my body. I laughed; but I was thinking, "Why, this
is madness--"

[Illustration: "As I stood in the Ray, the red things were howling
around me, and their faces and actions were so grotesque that I laughed
aloud. But I thought mirthlessly, 'Why, this is madness'"]

Father's hands jerked me back into the darkness. I stood trembling; my
face and hands were flushed, as though inflamed.

"Madness indeed," said father, and then I knew that I had shouted
the words aloud. "They think that the Infra-red is perhaps the evil
nature of man held submerged. A greater intensity of the crimson
sound would have burned you." I recalled how Freddie and Dan had
been burned in their fight with the intruder that night the cylinder
arrived. "And a still greater intensity would reduce you to the plane
of the Infra-red--dissolve you into Nothingness--the fate of Davis and
Robinson, when they attacked the crimson sound. Near New York, with
their aeros--remember?"

I did indeed. The scientist moved back the switch; the red glow
faded. Father said, "On earth we have no such condition. Here on
Xenephrene, the sub-world is always striving for mastery. The purple
glow from Pyrena is nature's adjustment; it holds in check, banishes
the sub-red world. But since Xenephrene came into our sunlight, things
are changing. Our sunlight seems favorable to the Infra-red. So an
artificial adjustment has to be made. The purple haze you see in
Xenephrene's air--it all comes from this little globe."

The purple globe now was active--the beam deepened. Around me the red
things seemed vanishing. A great peace, a stillness came to the vaulted
room. I had not realized under what subconscious strain I had been
laboring until it was removed.

Freddie said, "Why use the crimson ray at all? Why not just the purple
ray, and banish the red things completely?"

"The red-world cannot be banished completely, here on Xenephrene,"
father answered. "Too great a use of the purple--it would swing our
plane too far toward the Ultra-violet--be injurious to human life. The
best balance which can be maintained--that is the purpose of these two
globes--this control room."

A solemnity, greater than I had ever heard before came to father's
voice. "The Brauns had no spreading rays on earth, like these. They
tell me, here in Garla, that these two little globes are the only ones
of their kind in existence. Without them, in a month, or a few months
at the most, Xenephrene, bathed in our sunlight, would be overrun with
the demons of the Infra-red! A world gone mad!"

       *       *       *       *       *

"A world gone mad!" His words rang shudderingly in my head all the rest
of that afternoon; echoed through the evening meal, and those tense
hours while we waited for the time when we were going to hear Graff's
speech in the stadium. "A world gone mad!" Father meant Xenephrene. But
with what diabolical, prophetic vision, my thoughts kept swinging to
earth! A world gone mad!

From our visit to the grotto we returned home where we had left the
girls. I was suddenly impatient to get there. A feeling was upon me
that it had been wrong to leave them. Would Zetta take this opportunity
to slip away? To attempt to see Graff?

My fears were dispelled. The insects were quietly patrolling the
grounds. The girls were busy about the house. Hulda whispered to me,
"We're getting ready to leave."

"Leave?"

"Yes. If you should be successful to-night--if you get the weapons--you
might want to leave for earth at once."

And we had thought to keep our secret from these girls! Hulda added,
"Zetta is coming with us. Kean also. Neither has any ties here--"

Zetta coming! If only everything would work out like this--

With the afternoon passed, I thought no more of Zetta's threatened
attempt to see Graff. After the evening meal, we all tried to sleep for
a time. But I was restless. After an hour in our room with Freddie and
Dan, I slipped away to the roof to smoke alone. I found it vacant; dim
with straggling moonlight.

I had no thought of Zetta, save that she was resting beneath me in the
house. She was coming back with us to earth. When these terrible times
were over, I would take her in my arms--claim her--I wondered if she
loved me. I am not unduly vain; truly it seemed at once impossible, but
inevitable--

I have no idea how long, with roaming fancy, I sat there. Half an hour
perhaps. Above me a figure suddenly came fluttering down from the
foliage, landed lightly on the roof, within a few feet of where, in a
stunned surprise, I was sitting. It was Zetta. Her face was flushed;
she was panting.

"Zetta!" I sprang to my feet.

"Oh--is it you, Peter? I did not know you were up here."

"Where have you been? I thought you were downstairs. Zetta, have you
been up to see--"

"Let go of me! Peter, don't do that! You hurt me! You--forget how
strong you are!"

I had gripped her shoulders; I cast her hastily off. "Where have you
been? What have you been doing?"

She eyed me. The impish smile was twitching at her lips. "You are ver'
much like a master--you deman' knowing where I have been?"

"Yes. I do."

"Sit down." I sat in my chair and she sat crosslegged at my feet.
"There. This is better."

"How did you get out?" I demanded. "Father said he was having you
watched."

"He is. But he forget--those insects know me better than himself. I
took them with me."

She was smiling broadly. She added calmly, "I have run away from them,
coming back. They will be here soon--I have been up to see Graff."

I knew it! I made no comment. She went on, as calmly, evenly as before.
"I thought--before to-night when you three men try to get the Garland
weapons--I thought I would make one las' try for Graff." She gestured.
"I met him--up there on the street. We were alone--"

She saw my expression. She laughed. "Oh, no, Zetta is not a fool! We
were alone so that none could hear us. But many were near. My own
insects--and I made sure the city guards were close by, watching. I was
quite safe."

She paused. But when I did not speak, she went on quietly.

"I have fail'. I tol' him openly that he--could have me for his wife,
as you call it--" She was stumbling, but only for a moment. "I tol' him
that. But when I tried to bargain--I am no fool--I tol' him I would
have to be satisfy he would not trick me--then I saw it could not
succeed. I could not trust him. That I could tell by the way he talked.
Yet I believe he really thinks he loves me--"

She added the last words as though to herself.

I exclaimed: "Why would you make a sacrifice like that? Or perhaps it
isn't such a sacrifice?"

Unworthy, churlish thing for me to say! The impulsive words were no
sooner out than I hated myself for them.

Her wide eyes searched my face. "I forgive you--for saying that, Peter.
I would almos' rather die than be his wife." For just an instant she
yielded to the shuddering emotion she was holding in check; then again
she was calmly imperturbable.

"You say, would it be a sacrifice? Of me--yes. But what am I? Jus'
one small woman. I am thinking of your earth--all those millions of
people--"

Brave, foolish little Zetta!

If she could have trusted Graff, of course, it would have been best.
But I did not feel it so at the moment. She was more to me, this one
small woman sitting now at my feet, than all the millions of distant
earth. I interrupted her gently.

"You were going to sacrifice some one else, Zetta. Some one--"

Her face turned quickly up; her wide eyes were on mine. I found myself
holding her against my knees. Ah, then I felt the strength of the force
between us! "Zetta, don't you know I love you? Can't you feel it--as I
feel it?"

She forced herself back from me; did not rise, sat leaning backward,
pushing at my knees as though holding us apart against the surge that
was drawing us together.

"Peter! Peter, don't say that yet!"

"Why not? It's true. I love--"

"No! You can't be sure. It--will sweep us if you talk like this."

Sweep us, indeed! Love! It was that! Love physical, mental and
spiritual. The trinity--complete. I knew it! I heard my pleading voice
telling her so.

"No, Peter! Trus' me--I understan' better than you. Peter--smile at me!
Smile! Do not be so serious!"

She was so pathetically earnest! I strove for calmness. I smiled. "All
right. There you are, Zetta."

I could feel her relax. Her hands left my knees; she sat on the
roof-floor a few feet away from me.

"Thank you, Peter."

I laughed. "You're quite welcome." The stress of our emotion was
broken. I lighted a cigarette. I felt quite calm, master of myself--and
of her. Masterful, because now in my calmness, I knew I was unchanged.
It was love, and I knew she loved me.

"I'll say it differently, Zetta. Listen: I love you. When we get
through all this mess we're in--your world and mine--I'm going to marry
you. There--that's calm enough, isn't it? Nothing peculiar about that,
is there?"

Her surprise made me laugh again. She stammered. "Peter--you--do not
ask--if I love you!"

"No. Why should I? I know it."

"But I am not sure, Peter."

"Of course, you are."

"I am not. Perhaps on earth your girls are able to judge when they feel
a swift heap of emotion--"

"Yes," I said blandly. "That's it."

But I could not make her smile. She shook her head. "We of Xenephrene
are different. The emotion--is not always to be trusted, Peter."

"Let's trust it," I said.

"No. I cannot--yet."

She was on her feet and I stood beside her.

"I think--I'm very glad we had these moments together, Peter."

She was about to leave me; I could not let her go. "You do love me,
don't you? Say it!"

"I think--mos' likely--I do!" She gave a little jump; her lips brushed
mine. Before I could catch her she was gone, down into the house
leaving me alone.




                              CHAPTER XV

                           GRAFF'S TREACHERY


"It's time," said Hulda. "Shall we start?"

Another hour had passed. Zetta had not mentioned her escapade into the
city to meet Graff; nor had I. We were ready now to start for Graff's
meeting. It was our first adventure abroad at night on Xenephrene. We
had been twice before up this incline into the streets of Garla; but
this time it seemed very different.

A sense of evil lay heavy upon me. It was a cloudless night, with
Pyrena, the moon, a great purple round disk. The forest was full of
purple shadows; the red murmuring things were abroad, and I blessed
with a new understanding, this purple light which held them in check.
We ascended the incline and came upon Garla's main street. The two
girls were shrouded in cloaks of white. Father the same. Once, Hulda
raised her cloak like a hood over her head until Freddie asked her to
lower it.

"You look like a ghost in this moonlight." He laughed, but it was
high-pitched and nervous, unlike him.

Dan whispered to me: "Kean is to join us at the stadium entrance. Do
you think he will, Peter? If anything goes wrong--"

"We'll sit near the back," I whispered. "He'll find us. You and Freddie
and I must sit together, where we can slip away."

Freddie edged toward us as we walked along; the street swayed and bent
beneath us. "This cursed flimsy city! Where did Kean say he'd join
us? Peter, give me my knife and revolver--thank Heaven for these dark
cloaks--"

We three had seen cloaks of a dark woven fiber lying in one of the
rooms of Under Gardens. We had wanted to wear them, and father had
acquiesced.

I raised my cloak, surreptitiously handed Freddie the weapons. We each
had a short, wide dirk--and an Essen soundless automatic--the only
weapons we had brought from earth. They were very welcome now!

"Move back," I whispered to Dan. "Father will wonder what we're talking
about."

We were determined to get into the grotto by whatever desperate
expedient Kean would think possible of success. Father would
approve--we did not doubt that. But he would want to go with us. That
we did not desire. In the event of failure, we wanted him, at least,
to remain in safety. He would not, very probably, be blamed by the
Garlands for our attack. He would be left to look after Hulda. And--I
added to myself--look after Zetta.

Shrouded in our cloaks, we hastened through Garla's tree-top streets.
In the purple moonlight the dark houses seemed giant birds' nests;
the giant leaves which occasionally hung over them were motionless in
the still night air. A breathless silence brooded over everything.
The houses showed occasional glows of light; but most of them seemed
unoccupied. There were many pedestrians. All were going our way.

From a doorway a woman clutching a baby at her breast, gazed down on us
with an obvious hostility. "A Braun," I thought. But she was not.

Hulda pointed her out--a Garland. From over us, as a crowd of young
people went past in a leap, some one dropped a flower. A heavy
thing--it struck Dan a blow on the shoulder which brought a startled
curse from him. Hulda waved her white arm upward in a friendly gesture;
but her face was very solemn.

"I don't like this," father murmured. "They're hostile--in all the
months we've been here, it's never been like this."

Father had stopped. "I think we'll go back." He drew me aside. "It's
only curiosity taking us here--we know what Graff will say to the
people. The Garland government will decide against us to-morrow. The
time is short, Peter--if we're going to do anything."

Father lowered his voice. "Look here, I want to get you three
alone--without the girls. We'll have to try something desperate. Peter,
if we let Graff get away from us--if he gets to earth--whatever we do,
we ought to try it to-night."

I drew him along. Good old father--he would have plunged into the most
desperate adventure with us. It went against me to let him down, but I
thought it best.

"Let's go--just a little while. And Kean is to meet us--right ahead
here, at the entrance." A Braun went sailing by with a menacing,
derisive shout; but father did not notice him. I called to Dan and
Freddie; warned them with a significant word and glance. They joined
their urging to mine, and father yielded.

We went on. The crowd began pressing around us as we approached the
stadium gate. Out of the moonlight Kean came sailing at us; landed
lightly beside me. Dan and Freddie crowded up. I whispered: "It's all
right, Kean?"

"Yes. They are remove most of the guards to atten' the meeting here. I
will get you seated, then go back and see how it is. In half an hour,
we will be ready to try it."

Father approached us. "You coming with us, Kean? The Garlands are
hostile; I've never seen anything like it. Have you heard from the
border?"

"No," said Kean. "Something is wrong. No Brauns have left. There are
many, oh, ver' many, around here in Garla to-night--"

Freddie asked: "You seen Graff? Where is he now?"

"Inside," Kean gestured. "On the upper platform leap. The woman Brea is
with him--and many Brauns." He whispered aside to me. "Are you guarding
Zetta well? When we leave, only the professor will be with her and
Hulda, so I order' your insects to come--yes, here is one."

An insect appeared upright at our elbows. Then another. Kean told
father he had ordered them. "Good," said father. "Tell them to stay
close to Zetta. But we'll be with her anyway."

       *       *       *       *       *

The stadium was a great moonlit area on the tree-top surface. A high
wall of latticed boards surrounded it. We passed through a gate.
Inside, banks of seats swung around a great circle. They were jammed
with people--tiers of seats, one above the other, with giant projecting
trees serving as uprights to hold them.

The branches, too, were crowded. Upon a thick vine, swinging like
a cable across one end, men clung like flies, dark blobs in the
moonlight. The seats everywhere seemed built in disorderly array,
banked high or low according to the contour of the growing vegetation.
At intervals around the outer circumference small jumping platforms
were set. They were all black with people.

An oval running track was perched on stilts at one side; another track
stood vertically, as though races might be held on its inner surface
like a squirrel cage. People clustered both structures. There was a
single row of flimsy fifty-foot high poles, set upright in a line; ten
of them, at intervals of ten feet or so. Gymnasium apparatus. A man
clung now to the bending top of each of them.

Upon every point of vantage, people were clinging. The top of the
lattice fence, which was at least fifty feet high, held a fringe of
young men and girls perched precariously there, laughing. Occasionally
one would fall off and come climbing nimbly back.

In the purple moonlight it was a scene of confusion. The audience was
assembling, leaping from the gateway, climbing to where space seemed to
offer. A man and girl leaped hand in hand. They missed their intended
perch and fell a dozen feet in a heap. A great shout of laughter went
up.

We entered with our heavy, dragging tread. People craned to see us. A
murmur rose. A few girls called to Zetta, or to Hulda. Some shouted
derisively. We were in a deep shadow of the gate. In the gloom, father
stumbled, fell heavily. A flimsy empty seat broke where he went down;
Dan kicked another seat to fragments as he jumped to pick father up.

"I'm all right, Dan. Thanks." His words were almost drowned in the
jeers around us.

"We'll sit here," I whispered to Kean. "Here near the gate. Go ahead
now, we'll wait here. Come back as soon as you can."

We took these first empty seats, just inside the gate. Platforms and
poles partly obstructed our view; but we could see enough. The rostrum
from which Graff was to speak was in clear sight--a platform in the
center of the stadium, raised about a hundred feet. A bank of soft
lights up there cast a lurid purple glow which did little more than
intensify the moonlight. Brauns were crowded up there; among them I
could see the towering figures of Graff and Brea.

We sat in a line; father, Hulda and Zetta were at one end, we three
conspirators nearer the gate. Behind Zetta, our two insects were lying
prone on the surface of a vine. The thought occurred to me then, as
it had several times before--these insects were not armed. There were
police guards all over the stadium; some seemed to have a single small
weapon--it was the only weapon I had ever seen in Garla. I had my dirk
in its sheath at my belt; and the Essen automatic in its holster--with
the black cloak shrouding them. But I wondered what was the nature of
the police guards' weapon.

Zetta was next beside me. In all the turmoil of my thoughts, I was
wholly conscious of it. I leaned over her. "Zetta, when he begins
talking, you'll have to translate for us."

"Yes," she whispered. Her long white hair lay on the seat between us.
In the darkness my fingers found a lock of it and clung. She did not
know it--or perhaps she did? I fancied her shoulder bent toward me.

"Peter," she whispered, "be ver' careful what you do to-night--keep out
of harm if you can. I did not tell you, I have arrange' with Kean that
if you are successful, your father, Hulda and I will meet you out in
the open country, where your vehicle can pick us up--"

An abrupt hush had fallen over the audience. The towering figure of
Graff had come to the edge of the platform facing us. Some one had
turned a light full upon him; he stood etched in the darkness, a lurid
purple figure. A hush. He raised his arms; he was smiling benignly
as he regarded the sea of upturned faces beneath him. A very kingly
scoundrel!

A moment; and then he began to speak. His voice, with its words
unintelligible to me, rolled out over the silence. Soft, persuasive,
yet powerful. It evidently carried to every far corner of the
amphitheater. Sometimes he turned to regard those behind him. Speaking
quietly. Then, with a sudden, explosive, thundering statement; then
a gentle, persuasive question. All the tricks of the orator! A very
kingly scoundrel! He was carrying them.

Applause broke out; his gesture was deprecating as he silenced it. I
wondered when Kean would return for us. We could easily slip away from
father.

My thoughts were roaming; Kean ought to come shortly. Now was our
chance, with most of the guards here at the meeting. Graff was
unconsciously playing into our hands--drawing all the guards away from
the grotto to hear him talk.

Kean dropped before me! I looked up to meet his white, agitated face.
"Peter, don't cry out! Get your father--all of you get out of here!"

Something was wrong! I recall that I felt a little tug as the lock of
Zetta's hair pulled from my fingers. Just a little tug--I forgot it at
once, gazing into Kean's horrified face.

"What--" Freddie and Dan were shoving toward us to hear. It made a
slight confusion. I repeated, "What--" Half rose to my feet.

A shout stiffened me. It came from a small house by the gate, where
officials as the crowd assembled had been directing the seating. A
shout from there. An official's voice, bellowing. Accents of horror,
and command.

Kean gasped his news: "The Infra-red Control! The crimson and purple
globes--they have been stolen!"

The news was already here! The frightened voice from the gate was
bellowing it. Graff's voice died away. There was an instant of
horrified silence. Kean murmured: "I found the tunnel guards murdered!
The controls are gone! These Brauns--"

The amphitheater broke into a pandemonium. Shouts; the thump and
rattle of scrambling, panic-stricken Garlands. Figures leaping up. The
official voice was bellowing. A police guard near me raised a weapon
toward the platform where Graff was standing. But he did not fire. The
lights up there were suddenly extinguished. A red glow took their place.

The crimson barrage Graff had used on earth! His Brauns had smuggled
it into Garla--they had its apparatus now on the platform. A great
circular red curtain enveloped the rostrum up there. From a dozen
points about the amphitheater the police guards were firing their short
purple stabs of flame at it.

A panic of confusion was around me. A sailing figure--a man trying
to leave the stadium--came down and landed full on me. I was knocked
sidewise; kicking, trying to disentangle myself from him. We crashed
through a seat, and with my weight we fell half my height to a lower
level. I got to my feet, fighting the press of frightened people who
were shoving me. I could still see Graff's barrage; I could hear its
squeals above the pandemonium of shouts.

Up there in the purple moonlight, over the barrage, a black object was
descending from the sky. A vehicle? A flying platform--I could not see
it clearly. It dropped swiftly down within the barrage circle. In a
moment it came sailing up. It passed high over me. A flying platform.
The escaping Brauns crowded its rails. The crimson barrage faded out;
the rostrum was empty.

Graff's treachery was laid bare. He had stolen the globes of the
Infra-red Control!

Without them, Xenephrene in a month or two was doomed. These frightened
officials of Garla, these panic-stricken people, all knew it. A world
gone mad! But my thoughts were not concerned with that; the cold horror
within me sprang from another thought. A realization. Graff had stolen
the Infra-red Control to use on earth! My shuddering imagination leaped
ahead. A world, our blessed earth, gone mad!




                              CHAPTER XVI

                   ON OUR WAY TO CONQUER THE EARTH!


In the confusion I found myself pushed a considerable distance,
separated from all our party. I could not see any of them; with the
scrambling throng, the changing scene I could not at first determine
where we had been sitting. Then I saw the place; it was empty. I strove
to get there, fighting my way. The amphitheater was fast emptying. The
official voice was still bellowing. Guards were leaping away, perhaps
rushing to the grotto. In the distance across the city a siren was
sounding--a long electrical scream.

I thought, over near the gate through which a press of people were
surging, that I saw father. I forced my way in that direction; went
through the gate. They ought to be waiting for me here. But they were
not.

A cross-street ran down at an angle here into the forest vegetation--a
narrow, shaky-looking causeway of fiber. It was unlighted, dark with
straggling moonlight--a purple, ghostly-looking street. It seemed at
the moment empty of people--the throng surged past it, keeping to the
upper level.

From behind me as I stood there a dark-cloaked figure darted past me
and plunged down it. Dan! It was as tall as he; seemed moving with our
earthly heavy tread. I started down after it; I would have shouted, but
the words choked me. It was not Dan--not anyone of earth, for all its
solid gait! It passed through a shaft of moonlight; from the cloak, I
saw a white arm hanging. Waving.

This was a man, carrying some one; I caught a glimpse of the bulk
of the other body he was holding in his arms, under his cloak. He
disappeared down into the purple darkness. Memory of the little tug I
had felt in my fingers as Zetta's hair was withdrawn sprang to me now.
Was that Zetta under that cloak? Her arm I had seen waving from beneath
it?

With the Essen automatic in my hand, I found myself plunging, half
falling, down the flimsy street. Beneath the strain of my incautious
descent, it bent and crackled. Houses like nests were set here in the
dark, pod-laden foliage. They sagged with me as I passed. A woman came
to the window of one of them and shouted.

I reached the ground. A vaulted, tunnel-like street was cut through the
jungle. Ahead of me, a hundred yards or so, the moonlight showed clear
where the jungle ended and the open country began. I thought I saw the
hooded figure hurrying out there. I ran--I wondered if I would get a
chance to shoot. If that were Zetta he was carrying I would not dare.

I think now I have never been, before or since, so incautious. I came
with a rush out of the dark depths of the forest, into an open moonlit
area. A red glow hovered like a circular curtain near at hand. Within
a dozen steps of me, a small railed platform lay upon the ground. Men
were on it. Brauns! A black-hooded figure was standing holding Zetta!
Zetta, with fear sweeping her face as she saw me appear.

I must have stood for an instant in confusion. I remember casting off
the impediment of my cloak. A dozen men came leaping at me. I fired
the Essen, but hit no one. It was knocked from my hand as one of the
leaping bodies struck me.

They closed in on me. I turned and swung at them. Flimsy things! My
dirk tore into the shoulder of one. He went down with a scream. The
dirk had buried, hilt and all; I let it go. I wrenched an arm loose
from around my neck; hit another man full in the face. Two others I
knocked aside with a sweep of my arm. Another leaped astride my back,
but I heaved him off as though he were a child clinging there. They
must have been without weapons. They clung, bit and tore at me--a ring
of them struggling to hold me.

I burst through them; but, like birds, they were at me again. One I
lifted bodily and hurled a dozen feet. Another I caught by his legs,
whirling him, a thirty-pound bludgeon to knock the others away. I
had almost reached Zetta. I shouted to her--I do not know what. She
answered; but it was a scream of warning. I turned too late. Some one
from behind crashed a block of metal stone on my head. I went down into
soundless, empty darkness.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I recovered consciousness I was lying on the platform. It was in
mid-air; I could feel it sway, feel the rush of the wind past me on
that thirty-foot square, railed platform. Some fifteen men crowded near
its center, where in a small pit, its anti-gravity, lifting mechanism
was installed. It was this pit--a white glow there--which first I saw
when I opened my eyes. The glow shone upward upon the faces and figures
of the seated men. Brauns. I sat up unsteadily. One of my captors was
beside me. He murmured an unintelligible command; but when he saw I
only intended to sit up, he relaxed.

The platform was sailing through the purple moonlight. I was too far
from the rail to see over it to the ground, but in the distance I could
make out a line of the metal mountains--naked crags glistening under
the stars.

From behind a platform a yellow fire streamed out, like a vessel's
wake; we were being propelled forward by the impulse of its thrust
against the air. Vertical and horizontal rudders were back there. In
front also, and to the sides, were small lateral wing-rudders.

A gentle hand touched my shoulder. Zetta was seated beside me.
Unharmed, her face lighting with relief that I, too, seemed uninjured.
My head was roaring from the blow; blood, now drying, matted my hair.
But it seemed only a scalp wound.

The man guarding us called to his fellows; two of them came and looked
me over, and then went back. The guard moved to seat himself between us
and the rail. Zetta and I were left free to talk. She had been seated
beside me in the Stadium; when the panic began she had turned to see
our two insect guards vanishing under a tiny red beam.

She had leaped up, unnoticed in the confusion, and had seen me fall.
Hulda was nearest her. She called, but a hand over her mouth stifled
it. She was carried off. Her captor had crouched hidden near the gate,
with his cloak over them, waiting his chance to get unobserved down the
little street. At the forest entrance, when they were about to take her
on the platform, I had burst upon them.

This was not the platform upon which Graff and his men had escaped from
the amphitheater. "That is much larger," said Zetta. "It is ahead of us
now."

"They're taking us to the Braun city?"

"Yes. It is not so much farther. Oh, Peter, you have been lying here
like death so ver' long time!"

Zetta's account of her abduction, it suddenly struck me, did not ring
wholly true. I eyed her.

"Did you try to escape from the man who seized you in the Stadium?" I
demanded.

She understood me at once. She shook her head. "No. Mus' I confess
it? I will, Peter. I heard that the controls were stolen--doom for my
worl'--perhaps for yours."

She stopped. I said: "So you gave yourself up? Is that it?"

"No. Not jus' that. The man had me--but you ask me frankly if I try to
escape. I said no."

"You mean you're glad you're here?"

"Yes," she said solemnly. "In what other way possibly could I help my
Garla, or your earth?"

"You think you can help them?"

She shrugged. She was almost unbelievably calm, but I knew it was a
pose. "Perhaps. If there is any way I can influence Graff--I am no
fool, I will do my best--oh, Peter, not you would I have sacrificed! I
did not know you were following--did not know you would be taken--"

"But Zetta, darling--"

"Peter--please!"

She was building a wall up between us! "I am not pledge' to you yet,
Peter--"

I thought it best to drop the subject then.

There were many other such small platforms escaping from Garla.
They came presently, converging in upon us. We sailed high over the
border--a thin, very tall latticed wall stretched over the country to
mark it.

Zetta pointed. "The border searchbeams are gone. Our guards all
dead--it was what Kean feared. These platforms came into Garla
unseen--taking back the Brauns and what they have stolen."

The Infra-red control globes! They were on Graff's platform,
undoubtedly.

"See!" exclaimed Zetta. "There are the city lights!"

Ahead, a great yellow radiance illumined the sky. The full moon was
low to one side of us; to the other, the dawn was coming. Almost
soundlessly we swept on. Over a sea of deep purple water, with a barren
metal plain beyond it.

The city came up into view. Tremendous metal buildings, set in terraces
upon a barren metal rock surface. Fantastic structures, aerial like a
giant hive. Spider-web bridges of gleaming metal; giant ladders; metal
causeways swinging from cables at heights tremendous. All aerial,
spiderlike, fantastically unreal. Glaring with blasts of yellow light;
roaring with the noises of industry.

We swept over it at a considerable height and dropped into a broad
metallic pit in the plain beyond. A pit two hundred feet deep and
several miles across. It was flooded with yellow radiance. Brauns
crowded close around us; but I caught glimpses of a great activity. A
thousand men at least were busy here. Platforms were landing, like ours
from the direction of Garla. A large one was already here.

Zetta and I were pushed to the ground. A dozen or more space-flying
globes of various sizes--somewhat similar to the one Dan, Freddie and
I had used coming from earth--stood about. At a distance one gigantic
affair--a great terraced cylinder with banks of windows like a monster
modern steamship--lay on a raised stone platform. Leaders led up to it
from the pit-bottom. Our captors shoved us, though not ungently, in
that direction.

Graff's expedition to earth! His forces, embarking now! I saw very
little of it as with a crowd of Brauns around me I was shoved toward
the monster vehicle. The sloping ladders had wide steps one above the
other at nearly ten-foot intervals. At a word of command, Zetta bounded
up.

They let down a cable, hooked it on me, hauled me up the fifty-foot
height. I saw them leading Zetta away. She turned toward me, but they
forced her on. A Braun abruptly threw a metal hook around me, pinning
my arms. I was jerked through a doorway, down a long echoing metal
passage and thrown into a metal room, which had a single bull's-eye
window. The door slammed upon me. I was left alone.

[Illustration: A cable they let down was hooked onto me; I was hauled
up the fifty-foot height. . . . In an hour, I knew, the great cylinder
would embark for Earth]

Within an hour, in the light of my second dawn upon Xenephrene, we left
the purple planet on our way to conquer the earth.




                             CHAPTER XVII

                         PLANNING THE CONQUEST


"Well," said Graff, "I had not thought to have you with me, but you are
welcome. A pleasure--"

I got to my feet; I had been lying on the bare metal floor. We were
well beyond Xenephrene's atmosphere now. And so insistent are the human
mundane needs--amid all my perturbed thoughts of the future, my worry
over Zetta, my aching head with a miserable gash and lump on it--my
chief trouble at the moment was an almost intolerable hunger.

I swayed as I stood up; Graff put out his hand to steady me. "You're
not hurt?"

"No. I'm hungry."

"That is good. Zetta said you would be. Well, you shall be fed. Come
with me." He stood off, regarding me. I must have been a disheveled
enough figure; wide-flaring, corded gray riding trousers, tight over
the knee; heavy rolled stockings; a white shirt, open at the throat,
torn and with Braun blood upon it; and with my own blood matting my
tousled hair.

"You are a strong-looking little fellow," Graff chuckled. "My men,
worse luck to them, told me how you fought them. It is my idea--now
that you are here with me--you would not run wild like that again. Is
it so?"

"Yes," I agreed. Why not? Of what use for me to try to fight, penned up
here? I added: "Besides, your men took my weapons."

He was leading me down a long metal passage with closed doors along
it at intervals. "Yes. They look interesting--the mechanical one
particularly. I mus' get you to explain it to me. Zetta says you will
be ver' helpful to me. I think she is right. A clever little girl,
Zetta."

His words made my blood run cold! But I kept silent. We entered a wide
room, set amidship of the vehicle; through its windows I could see the
black firmament on both sides--the great, star-filled void of Space.

Zetta was here, perched on a bench before a high table littered with
parchment sheets. She flashed me a smile and a warning glance. Food was
on the table near her.

"Your breakfast, Peter," she said calmly. "Sit here."

I ate. Strange meal! Strange food of Xenephrene, but stranger still we
three as we sat there. Graff sat pleasantly talking. He seemed in a
high good humor; wholly frank and sincere. But I wondered; sometimes I
fancied he was gently ironical.

"There were two or three other earthmen besides yourself who came into
my hands, Peter. All of them--unfortunately--died. You--I think--may
not die. Do you know why? Firs', because Zetta has ask' me to let you
live--and I would do anything to please her. That is--almos' anything.
Second, because she has promise' me you will help with my campaign.
Will you?"

At his brusque question, I hesitated; Zetta's warning glance decided me.

"Yes," I said.

"I mean, really help. I will be able to guess at once you try to fool
me. Do not try it, frien' Peter!"

I began: "I don't see how I can help you--"

"He'll help you," Zetta put in.

"Information about your worl'," Graff explained. "There are many
things you know, which I do not. Zetta and I have been talking over my
plans--I will be the greatest man on your earth, Peter--"

It decided me. A vain glory was his weakness. He wanted to impress
Zetta; he seemed even to take pleasure in impressing me. Zetta was
playing upon it. We would give him information, authentic enough, which
would help him undoubtedly. But we would learn his plans, too. Work
with him, as he wished; and once on earth--

I said: "I can see no harm in helping you. Especially if it will
benefit me." I smiled shrewdly. "Will it?"

I thought perhaps he swallowed my bait, but I could not be sure.
He said emphatically: "If you work with me, I will make you secon'
greatest man in your worl'."

And Zetta? I wondered. I had only an instant alone with her that day.
She whispered: "You were perfec', Peter. Work with him--learn what you
can. Tell him truthfully what he asks. It is necessary--best in the
end."

"But Zetta, you--"

"I can take care of myself. He would not harm me. He wants to make me
love him. That, truly, he desired. I am letting him try."

"He won't give up his plans--he'll give up nothing for you--"

"No, of course, not. But I preten' I think maybe he will--move! There
he comes! In a few days perhaps he will leave us more alone."

"When we get to earth--"

But she had moved away from me as Graff approached.

       *       *       *       *       *

We were twelve days reaching earth. Dan, Freddie, and I had made the
voyage in eleven days. In this great ship we were traveling faster; but
the distance, with Xenephrene drawing away from the earth, was greater
now.

It was a monotonous voyage. I was housed alone in a cabin with fairly
comfortable furniture. Three times a day, Graff personally came and
took me to that larger room where invariably I found my meal waiting
me. Of all the rest of the ship--its men, its equipment--I saw nothing.

Zetta very often was in the cabin when I was brought in to my meal.
Occasionally I saw the woman Brea. Once, when for a moment Zetta and
I were alone, I glanced behind us to see Brea's giant figure lurking
in the doorway. Watching us; I caught a glimpse of her face--white,
thin-lipped, with eyes that seemed smoldering with fury. There is a
menace in the aspect of a man who is a scoundrel; but it is mild and
meek indeed compared to the scoundrel woman!

"Zetta, is that Brea ever left near you? Alone with you?"

"No. Oh, no. I watch her."

"She's there now in the passage doorway."

"Yes. I see her."

"Don't forget. She tried to have you murdered! Does Graff know that?"

"I think so. She would not dare harm me here--he would kill her."

"Don't you be too sure. A woman--a jealous woman--might do anything."

But Zetta only laughed. "Perhaps we may use her, Peter. When we get to
earth--" She would not say any more.

Graff was constantly questioning me. The chaos Xenephrene's coming had
brought to earth seemed intensely interesting to him. He understood
astronomy far better than I did, undoubtedly. We talked of the changed
inclination of earth's axis; the changed climate. He questioned me
about the different countries--most of them were only names to him. He
wanted to know the distribution of the people; the different races; the
present great centers of population; the agricultural areas.

"You are ver' helpful, Peter." He seemed to mean it. "It is all quite
confusing. So big a worl'--populate' over all its surface. A ver' great
conquest for me, Zetta, don't you think so?"

I tried to get information from him. It was not easy. He only wanted to
talk generalities, both about earth, and about himself. He had asked me
nothing about airplanes or warships--nothing at all about the weapons
of war on earth. Except the Essen automatic of mine which he had taken.
He laid it on the table before us. I explained it to him; the whole
theory of explosives.

"That is mos' interesting." But he did not seem greatly impressed. "I
suppose you make these things quite large?"

"Yes," I agreed. And since he asked no more, I volunteered nothing
further.

From Graff I learned that there were already on earth several hundred
of his men. Hiding, as he put it. They had with them only a very small
hand battery with which they could fling around them the crimson
barrage. The fellow who had attacked us at Cains', trying to steal the
Reet battery, was one of them.

I said: "That crimson barrage--in a larger form--was all you had
yourself, when you were on earth before?"

He laughed. "I had other things--it was no time to use them."

"But now--you have other things with you now?"

"Oh, yes, I have other things, Peter."

He had in this expedition some ten thousand men--and nearly a thousand
of the Garland insects. And there were several thousand women and
children. The Braun race--earth's future ruling race--these were to be
the pioneers. They were not all on this vehicle; there were others,
equally as large. And several small globes. This vehicle held only the
main equipment--the scientific apparatus for war. He mentioned flying
platforms, more mobile for low-altitude air transportation than this
great Space-liner; I gathered that they were platforms similar to the
one on which Zetta and I had been brought from Garla.

"How are the other Space-vehicles going to find you?" I suggested.

"We are leading. I shall pick out an earth base and then signal them
where it is. Soon, Peter, before we get to earth, you and I mus' talk
some serious details. You will help me pick our earth base--"

I saw then the wisdom of Zetta's plan that we should be in Graff's
confidence; here, at least, I could influence him. His landing place
on earth; I would urge him as best I could to where he would do earth
least damage. Perhaps I might even be able to sway his whole campaign
into a channel least damaging to us.

Once I mentioned the Infra-red Control. He shut me up very sharply.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was one time during the voyage when by chance I overheard
Graff and Zetta when they thought they were alone. It was Graff in
a new light. Amazing scoundrel! I thought at the time--and I still
think--that in this one instance at least, every word that he uttered
was truthful and sincere.

I could hear and see both him and Zetta plainly. They were in Graff's
cabin, where I ate my meals; I was in the length of passageway leading
to my room, which now was freely allowed me. I cannot claim I did not
try to eavesdrop; for most assuredly I did.

Graff was saying: "If you insis' I talk in English I will do it. For
the practice, as you say." Did Zetta know I overheard them? Did she
want me thus to realize upon what basis they were? I think so; but I
have never known it for a certainty. "And if we are to live on earth,
Zetta, it is best. The race which speaks English is greatest on earth.
Is it so?"

"I think, yes."

They were sitting by the table; I saw him reach out and touch her arm,
saw her involuntarily shrink away.

"Zetta! You hurt me much when you do that."

"I cannot help it, Graff."

He leaned toward her. I could see his face. Sincere--for the moment
absolutely sincere.

"You are afraid of me?"

"No, I am not."

"Do not be, Zetta. I love you--I want you to marry me in whatever
fashion they use on earth." His voice was impassioned. "Oh, Zetta, what
a future there will be for you and me! Cannot you see it? Look ahead! I
will be greatest man of this great worl'."

He suddenly stood up before her, drawn to his full height, his great
bare arms with the dangling chains extended up before him with a
gesture of power. A kingly figure indeed! A white-haired, blue-eyed
Viking of old; but there was about him as well, an aspect of
modernity--a modern, conquering scientist.

"Look at me, Zetta! A man of whom you will be proud! You--jus' a little
girl--to yourself you will say: 'There is my man, greatest in the
worl'. I love him.'"

"Ah!" she said. "If I did, Graff."

"You will. I treat you gently." Abruptly he held one of his huge hands
before her. "With this hand, I could twist the neck of that Peter."

I doubted it very much!

"I do not do that, because you ask me not to, Zetta."

"And because he will always be of great help to you," she retorted
slyly.

He was taken somewhat aback.

"Yes, that is true. But for the other reason also. I try to please
you--"

I could see her gaze measuring him. She looked so small, sitting there
before him; but I knew that with her keen woman's instinct she was
planning how to handle him best.

"You captured me, Graff. Brought me here, by force. When we get to
earth, will you let me go?"

"No! I had to bring you--I mus' keep you with me. How else, if you are
not with me, can I make you love me?"

She said gently, "Perhaps you go about it wrongly."

"No. I think not. I tried leaving you alone. I was a ver' great man
among my Braun people--but you say you have never loved me. It is the
love I want--nothing else! You know that! Your love--without that, you
are nothing!"

I must admit he said it with regal dignity which to the woman must have
been impressive. For just that moment, Zetta's emotion must have been
touched. Her hand went impulsively toward him.

"I believe you, Graff. It is why I have no fear of you."

He did not follow his advantage. He said, "I am glad. In a few days we
will land upon earth. I shall be ver' busy--we will talk no more of
this for a long time. But I want you to know--everything I do will be
for you."

She said slowly, "If you want to please me, give it up. You have
stolen the Red Control. You have doomed your own worl' and mine to
disaster. And now you would attack the earth, which never has harmed
you. Wait, hear me this time, Graff! Perhaps--if now we were--to turn
back--perhaps back on Xenephrene I might find--I loved you--"

He checked her; he was frowning. "You have said that before--do not say
it again! I love you--but I am a man--a ruler. You are nothing but a
woman. Do you think my love is so unworthy of us that I would let you
wreck our destiny? I will not! The man who is mastered by a woman no
longer is a man! You would not love me! That is a lie! You will love me
as I am, and I am made for great deeds. Enough of this!"

He strode away from her; stopped and turned. "When I am master of the
earth we will talk of this again. You say woman's love comes unbidden?
Perhaps it does--we will wait then upon its pleasure. But remember
this: No woman ever loved a man who was a weakling. I want not that
kind of woman's love!"

He strode from the room.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Let us get to the details," said Graff. My supper was finished; he
pushed away the dishes. We were approaching the earth; slowing down
now; in another twenty-four or thirty-six hours we would be ready to
land. Zetta was seated across the cabin. Graff had drawn two long
tables together; a bank of parchment insect lamps was over them with
the illumination shaded downward.

Graff added, "Zetta thinks you might be able to draw me a map of your
worl'. Could you?"

Geography had been rather my hobby. "I think so," I said readily. "I
can draw you one, fairly accurate, on the old Mercator's projection."

"What is that?"

I explained it; the surface spread flat; the lines of latitude and
longitude at right angles rather than in a simulation of the globular
surface. He nodded.

"That will do all right. Try it now. I will watch you, and you mus'
explain as you do it. We mus' pick our landing place and plan the
general campaign. Here, Zetta, help us."

He unrolled a white opaque parchment some four feet by six. Zetta
fastened it flat to the table. For a pen, I had a metal point in a
small handle, with a dangling wire. The point glowed and etched a
thin dark line on the parchment. And there was a very serviceable set
of drawing instruments--one for measuring angles, the equivalent of
a ruler, a compass--and an intricate affair which drew at will every
variety of curve--circle, ellipses of every eccentricity, parabola,
hyperbola, many other curves which Graff named, but which were
unfamiliar to me. And there was a pantagraph--

He explained the uses of these various instruments. "Go ahead," he said.

I took perhaps two hours. It was doubtless a very crude world map I
drew from memory. But in its broadest features it was fairly accurate.
I laid down the horizontal equator; spaced parallel lines, above it,
and below; drew the Greenwich meridian and the others at ten-degree
intervals.

There was a time, in my university days, when I knew with fair
exactitude the latitude and longitude of most of the world's great
cities. I marked them now as dots; and from them, the coast lines grew.

Graff was intensely interested. When I had the main national boundaries
sketched in, he stopped me. "That will do us ver' nicely. Show me where
the daylight is now."

I calculated. It was now by earth-time, the noon of July 7, 1957;
almost exactly mid-spring in the north and mid-autumn in the south. The
equator was pointing toward the sun. The days and nights were now about
equal at the equator--each some twelve hours long, shading off into
twilight at the poles.

"And next month?" said Graff.

"The nights are lengthening in the south. The days are lengthening in
the north."

He made me mark it all on the map; the changes of daylight and
darkness, and the approximate climate from now until early October,
when the North Pole would point to the sun. Then it would be all heat
and daylight in the north, shading to equatorial twilight, down to the
night and cold of the southern hemisphere.

"My campaign may run until then," he said. "It is these months I am
mos' interes' in." He added abruptly, "Where would you advise me to
land?"

       *       *       *       *       *

It was my opening. "That depends on many things--there's a great deal
you'll have to tell me, Graff," I said frankly. I smiled. "You can't
have a council of war, with your chief councillor wholly ignorant of
everything."

"Ver' true, Peter. I will tell you what you want to know." My heart
leaped with exultation. I had his confidence at last!

"Our weapons," I said. My first inclusion of myself with him! He took
it without notice. "Our weapons. Our method of warfare. What countries
we think best to attack first. We'll have the whole world against us,
you know."

"I know it."

"Our defense--"

"That is simple, Peter. We have only one, but it is impregnable against
anything they have on earth."

"The crimson barrage?"

"Yes."

"Can you lay it over a widespread area? How wide? Graff, is it your
idea to capture a great spread of country--devastate it--"

"I cannot," he said. "I can include within the barrage an area that you
would call a circle of ten-mile diameter. Four such circles, if I wish
to divide my forces. Not much more."

He described how his batteries supplied projectors of the crimson
light. It would extend some fifty thousand feet into the air and
sidewise some five hundred feet on each side of its source. A projector
thus must be set about every thousand feet. He had enough of them to
include four ten-mile areas. His storage batteries would last, he said,
for continuous use some three months.

"I can stand the barrage up into the air, or tilt it forward, level
with the ground--it is then a beam which will annihilate what it
touches--"

"With about fifty thousand feet--ten miles--effective range," I
finished.

"Exactly so, Peter. But with it in that horizontal position we have a
barrage height of only five hundred feet. It is my plan to select a
base, in some area not ver' crowded. From there we can move within our
barrage over any area of country we wish to take."

"Move how, Graff? On land? Sea?"

"And in the air--over land and sea. We can mount the barrage projectors
on our platforms. They will fly; and they will float upon earth's
'water'--I have made sure of that."

We discussed it for another hour. Midnight came; Zetta served us with
food and hot drink. Graff was planning to destroy what he could of
earth until such time as the leading governments would acknowledge his
supremacy.

"I will have them bring all their weapons before me--we will send them
into nothingness with our crimson sound. Our Braun weapons then will
rule earth indeed! I shall build my city upon your faires' land, and
all your nations will pay me tribute. My Garland insects will work for
me. The earth people will work for me. Our Braun race will spread--"

His plans after conquest were of a rosy hue. He dwelt on them, while
Zetta and I listened in silence.

"Your colony will be small," I said finally. "Your five thousand
women--"

"A new race will come on earth. The blending of the two worl's."

"Won't you bring more of your people from Xenephrene?"

Zetta said suddenly, "Xenephrene is doomed."

Graff frowned at her. "That was necessary, Peter. Ver' unfortunate. No.
We who have left, plan not to return. Nor send for others--the best of
us are here, Zetta is a silly child--silly with woman sentiment. Why
should we bother with Xenephrene? A ver' small worl', so little of it
habitable. I was master there--"

He had not been master, save of his small minority, themselves in
subjection. "But it was not big enough for me. I have lef' it to its
destiny."

Left it to its fate--its doom! But I only smiled. "We must decide where
we are to land upon earth," I suggested. "Do you want the daylight or
darkness?"

He ran his finger along the line of the equator. "Here. In the equal
days and nights. It will be warm?"

"Yes."

"That I want. How warm?"

"Like Garla. Warmer probably."

He nodded. "And from there, I will go north, following the warmth and
daylight. What is here, Peter?"

       *       *       *       *       *

His finger was on the equator in South America. My heart quickened.
Our new great cities of the Western World were springing up, there
in Ecuador, Venezuela, the Guianas, northern Brazil. This area was
thronged now with colonists. They were planning, at the Falls of
the Iguazu, to supply light and heat through all the Americas. Vast
industrial plants were planned for these new cities. It would be the
industrial and mining center of our western hemisphere. He must not
land there!

"It used to be jungle," I said casually. "And small rather backward
nations. Down there in Bolivia and Peru--all the equatorial Andes
region--there were great mining possibilities, largely undeveloped. It
has changed a little now."

I led his interest elsewhere. The East Indies, where my great Dutch
Islands were thriving now with a new activity, drew his attention.
But I distracted him. We determined at last upon the plains north of
Mombassa, in British East Africa. A fair land with the new climate, but
as yet not densely settled, except to the north and north-west.

In the north were Abyssinia and the Egyptian Sudan--the great valley
of the Nile. To the northwest, the Libyan and Saharan deserts. These
were springing into fertile, temperate areas. The governments of Great
Britain, France and Spain were locating down there. But I felt I could
keep Graff away from this region. Graff would want to move north. I
would make him move northeast--up the African coast, over Eastern
Abyssinia and get him across the Gulf of Aden, into Arabia, Persia
and thence to the sparsely settled, still barren lands of the Central
Asian Socialists.

"What about your food supplies?" I demanded. "You can't maintain your
people very long with what you've brought, can you?"

"No," he said. "But I will get food from the country we capture.
You must show me where at this season the agriculture is under way.
Perhaps, too, you have some large gov'ment storehouse now which I could
seize."

He listened carefully as I pointed out the route into Socialist
mid-Asia. "What we want," I said, "is to frighten the world--bring
it to our feet. Not to devastate it completely, with nothing to rule
afterward but a chaos. You must be careful, Graff, as future emperor,
not to wreck the food supply of your new domain. It's precarious at
best now."

"I understan'," he said gravely.

"You are right in that, Peter. We will bring them to yield--ver'
quickly, I hope. Tell me in detail what they will use as weapons
against us."

He seemed tireless. For another hour or two, I explained as best I
could the armament of the great nations. It was all chaotic since the
Great Change. Indeed, I was sure of very little I said. Most of the
world capitals had moved; all the races and centers of population had
shifted. Nations were disintegrating, blending as their people moved in
wholesale flight to new areas.

In a few years most of the world would be united almost like one
big family. There had been no thought, since the Great Change, of
maintaining national armaments. The worst possible time to have an
invader from another planet attack us! But this latter, I did not
explain to Graff.

Still another hour. "Graff," I said abruptly. "You never mention the
Infra-red Control. What part will it play?"

I expected he might frown his displeasure. He did not. He met me with
an imperturbable smile. "You are tired, Peter," he said calmly. It was
nearly dawn; Zetta had been listening to me silently, but keenly aware
of my motives. But she, too, now was tired. She flashed me a warning
look when I mentioned the Control.

Graff's slow smile continued. "Peter, you go to your cabin. I will work
this out."

I slept. It must have been noon when I was awakened, not by Graff,
but by a Braun I had never seen before. In Graff's cabin my meal was
waiting. Zetta was not there. Graff was still poring over my map; I
think he had not left it.

"Sit down, Peter."

When I was fairly eating, he gestured at the map. "I have made my
decision. We will land in north Brazil. I will also sen' a force to
Central Africa. It can move north over the Sahara grain fields, into
Europe. And from Brazil we can move north and south. I think that North
and South Americas and Europe and Africa are mos' important places to
attack, Peter. We will frighten them, if we attack them there!"

Irony was in his voice and in his smile! And I had thought to influence
this fellow!




                             CHAPTER XVIII

                           THE EARTH AT BAY!


History will record that the forces of Graff, the Xenephrene, landed
upon earth at 2 A.M., July 9, 1957, in north Brazil, at one degree
fourteen minutes north latitude, and sixty-one degrees twenty-two
minutes west longitude. There was no one person on earth who saw more
than a fragment of what followed during those frightful weeks; out of a
myriad accounts, history will piece a pallid, dispassionate vision of
the whole.

For myself, I witnessed many horrible things. But only fragments--as
an ant with its tiny viewpoint sees the forest through which it
crawls, and might futilely try to describe it. I can only name facts;
imagination must supply the rest, and even then inevitably fall far
short of the grim, tragic reality.

I was crouching with Graff and Zetta at a floor window of the giant
Space liner when, that July 9, we slowly settled to within a thousand
feet of the ground. A dark, tropic, overcast night.

From beneath our bow a crimson, howling radiance, one of the barrage
projectors, sprang downward. There was no one left alive over the
ten-mile circular area around which our barrage was flung that
night, to tell what happened. I saw the houses of this newly-settled
agricultural area melt and vanish as we swept them with the radiance.

The barrage went up. By dawn, all the country near us was deserted of
its people, who fled in terror as far away from us as they could get.
The tropic jungle had wilted since the Great Change. The land here
was cleared; broad, fertile fields, planted now with grain, corn, and
garden produce. Prosperous farms, crowded with settlers in their small,
new houses. New villages. Several small cities. Over a hundred mile
area they were deserted in a day.

Graff's other vehicles arrived. One was dispatched to Africa. It landed
in the French Sudan, in latitude fifteen degrees five minutes north
and longitude three degrees nineteen minutes west--not far south of
the city of Timbuktu, which had tripled in size and importance since
the Great Change. The red barrage was flung up here, but it was on the
flying platforms. Within a day it began moving directly north.

Around our encampment in north Brazil, the barrage projectors were
mounted on the ground for a permanent stay. A ten-mile circle. It
included a stream. I found Graff had apparatus for distilling the
water, for drinking supply. He foraged out for food, even though he had
a three months' supply with him. He began building dwelling houses for
his women and children--using materials he had brought, and materials
his insects dragged in from neighboring, abandoned villages.

An incredible activity. By the end of July his permanent base was well
established. We had been attacked. I can only hint at the surprise, the
panic, our landing caused all over the world. Since the Great Change,
the last thing that had been thought of was war.

The nations were concerned with their bare existence--the welfare of
their people. War between them was an impossibility. The great battle
fleets of Britain, the United States, France and Japan were no longer
armed for combat. Most of the vessels had been dismantled of their
armament, converted into transports, for the people in distress and for
the transportation of food.

Armies were organized now as government industrial and agricultural
workers. Every government was in the business of producing,
buying, storing, and selling food. The war airplanes were used
for transportation; thousands of the great Arctic A type were in
commission--but few of them were armed.

The world was wholly unprepared and unequipped for war. Nevertheless,
Graff's base in north Brazil was attacked. Railroad lines were near us.
They were abandoned to traffic within fifty miles of us. But an armored
train was run up in the night. It shelled us with a long-range gun. One
of Graff's foraging parties outside the barrage was struck and most of
its members killed. But the screaming shells--they came all one night
at twenty minute intervals--exploded harmlessly against our barrage.

A few planes came up cautiously to inspect us. One must have risen over
the ten mile height of our barrage. It dropped bombs. One of them
fell within our lines. It killed a dozen men and working insects, and
wrecked some of our apparatus; it barely missed our group of vehicles,
lying on the river bank in the center of our encampments. I doubt if
that aviator ever knew how true was his aim of that one bomb.

The train with its thirty-mile range gun was gone at dawn. But it came
again the next night. I went with Graff, aloft on a small platform,
high over our lines. Through the red glow of our barrage we could see
the train in the distance--a blur of moving lights. We carried a single
small projector. At dawn we sailed out, through a momentary break
in the barrage. The train saw us coming. It retreated, swinging and
swaying over its rails at an eighty-mile-an-hour gait. It was a Garga
locomotive, and a flat car. Puffing, snorting, careening through the
country to avoid us. But we caught it. There was nothing there in a
moment but a tumbled heap of its heavier steel parts. We sailed back.

       *       *       *       *       *

The world during these days must have been frantically assembling its
armament. Our Brazil base continued to be harassed. By July 15, our
river quite suddenly went dry. We found that some fifty miles up the
course on a distant rise of ground they had mounted a queerly-fashioned
projector. It might have been from Xenephrene itself!

It was Freddie's heat-projector, sent here from Miami by the United
States government. It had an effective range of some two miles, and
its heat--they must have been applying it continuously for several
days--had dried up the small water-course, sending it up in clouds of
steam.

Graff ordered an attacking platform out. It never returned.
Miraculously, a long-range gun must have hit it. Then we found that,
still farther up, they were damming our stream. Graff let them alone.
We sent out foraging parties at intervals for water. They were
frequently attacked.

From Zetta, I sometimes had translated accounts of these hand-to-hand
engagements. Graff had a variety of small hand weapons with which
his foraging men were generally armed. Hand batteries of the purple
Reet-current. They shot very short, purple stabs of flame. I recalled
seeing the guards use them that night in the Garla Stadium.

There were hand knives, not unlike the Spanish machete. And
occasionally Graff used a lethal gas. It clung its weight close to the
ground. The wind would sometimes sweep it over a village.

The small purple flame projectors interested me particularly. I
persuaded Graff to show me one. The crimson barrage was a form of Reet;
so was this purple light. The one a low vibration rate; the other, a
high. Both, of course, were akin to the Control-globes. I tried again
to mention the Control, but Graff shut me up. He was not using it, as
yet. I found out soon afterward that, by every artifice in her power,
Zetta was holding him back.

But he explained the purple flame. It stabbed into the crimson barrage,
neutralized it. With one of these small projectors, a man at a distance
of ten feet or so could stab a small hole through our red radiance.
Graff used this small hand projector to blind the earthmen at short
range, and to explode their gunpowder weapons in their hands--both of
which it evidently did with great efficacy.

I said casually: "The Garlands had these purple projectors?"

"Of course, Peter."

"And, Graff, why couldn't that be made in a larger form? A giant purple
beam?"

"It could. The Garlands have it."

My thoughts were running tumultuously. Father, Dan, and Freddie were up
there in Garla. I said, still casually: "Then the Garlands could have
penetrated our barrage--neutralized it?"

He smiled lugubriously. "Yes. That is what they did to me when I
attack' them years ago."

Graff was in a good mood this day. He showed me some of the defensive
apparatus he had brought along. "I do not need it here, Peter. But I
have it, jus' the same."

Insulated garments which one might wear and be protected, at least
partially, from the red barrage. Infra-red goggles to protect the
sight; ear-grids to bar out the sound--to raise it again to the normal
vibration to which our human ears are accustomed.

"Why," I said, "with these one might walk through our barrage!"

"Yes," he agreed, "I should not care to try it--but one might get
through safely."

He put them away.

       *       *       *       *       *

We had no reports from Africa. But it was over there that in these
early days the greatest damage to earth was done. The flying ring of
platforms, with the vehicle in their midst, had immediately begun
moving northward.

Slowly some two or three hundred miles a day, but inexorably,
impervious to every attack that could be sent against them, they blazed
a ten-mile twisting trail, northward across Africa--a trail of queerly
blank, dead-gray surface of empty earth.

It was as though some giant finger of death were dragging, trailing
itself over the continent. It cut a swath through Timbuktu, trailed
over the newly settled, newly fertile Sahara, swung east over the
mountains into the erstwhile Libyan desert; then north over the
Mediterranean. It was there by July 20.

A fleet of warships, hastily assembled from every nation, was in the
Mediterranean. The red enemy flew high. Its barrage was downward. The
ships, at a fair distance, withstood the red glow. Especially at night.
The world was learning the nature of this gruesome enemy.

The crimson screaming radiance seemed more deadly, more uncanny in the
darkness of night. But it was not. Our sunlight was favorable to it; by
day its range was greatly increased. Graff knew it. He had told me he
would follow the daylight northward!

The great steel ships in the Mediterranean--if they kept off several
miles--were safe, especially at night. Safe from annihilation! But on
them must have been queer, uncanny scenes!

One, just south of Malta, was caught in a fringe of outflung red beam.
Those on board have told what for a minute or two they went through. It
was night. The ship's lights went out. Its dynamos were burned. There
were several explosions aboard. But the ship escaped. Its men were
half deafened; eyes red, smarting and strained; a queer irritation of
the skin. And many were laughing with an hysteria which no one could
explain.

The invaders turned east from Malta. They were never unduly aggressive,
the barrage generally was closely held for defense--save that over
the land it blighted always that ten-mile swath. They passed over the
isles of Greece and again turned north. Heading up into mid-Europe.
Before them--as well as their course could be guessed for it always
was erratic--the country was deserted. A rout, with occasionally an old
fortress, or a group of armed earth planes, or a railroad line with an
armored train, making a brief, futile stand.

During this period the few Brauns whom Graff had sent previously
to earth now began to make their appearance. A few, scattered
individuals; they were found in various localities, and by the earth
people summarily killed. In mid-Europe a group of them--a hundred or
more--suddenly appeared and made a stand. Graff's expedition rescued
them, took them aboard the flying platforms. They were the last, I
think, of the scattered Xenephrenes; no others ever appeared, anywhere
on earth.

The last week in July saw us spreading out in South America. Our
permanent camp housed the women, children and the older men. They
maintained the barrage. The insects were working with the men building
the town.

With a ring of flying platforms, we made a sortie north. A week up and
back. We laid waste a swath through central Venezuela to the coast; we
returned with a western swing, through Colombia, Ecuador, north Peru
and back to our base. By July 30 it was evident that the earth people
were doing their best to evacuate all the territory inclosed by the
circle we had cut. Graff saw it; a new idea gripped him.

"We can patrol it, Peter. With a few platforms I can hold this
territory--and spread farther."

It was an area roughly from five degrees south to seventeen degrees
north latitude, and from sixty degrees to seventy-eight degrees west
longitude. A small Space-flying globe was now dispatched with a message
to the east. It joined Graff's other force in mid-Europe. Together they
moved in one leap to the Orient, landed in Java, and began sweeping the
East Indies. They attacked the rich Dutch islands near the equator,
which with the new climate we Dutch had proudly thought would become
the fairest places of the earth.

From an island there was no swift escape for the multitudes of
panic-stricken people--I have read that they flung themselves into the
sea by thousands.

I have seen the great Javan temples, which in the 1940's before the
Great Change, we Dutch were using as a lure for the tourist trade--seen
them in ruins as they looked when the Xenephrenes had passed. They say
that the Banda Sea, in August, reeked with the bodies floating in it.

Fair, green islands, metamorphosed from the tropic to a temperate
zone, were laid waste without a living human remaining. From twenty
degrees north to twenty degrees south--down into the best land of
the Australian continent, up beyond the Philippines--the East was
devastated.

Graff's plan was to drive the world's people away from the equator.
There was only mid-Africa left, and his force now went back there.

       *       *       *       *       *

"We'll see," said Graff. "Perhaps--long ago, who knows, they are
willing to yield. You can go with me, Peter. We will deliver them a
message and see what they have to say."

It was the first week in August. We took a small Space-flying globe.
Just Graff and I, with three or four of his men to handle it. Then
Zetta wanted to go. Graff agreed. He was always pleased to have her
with him; his vanity was pleased that she should see his triumphs.

I think, too, that he would not have cared to leave her in the camp
with Brea. The woman was a snake-like menace. Graff seemed contemptuous
of her. He told me once he had promised long before, to marry her, but
had since decided it was not to his liking.

We started in the globe, and sailing high, watchful that no airplane
could get up to attack us, we went to Miami. At a twenty-mile height,
we waited for nightfall. The nights were brief now in this northern
latitude. We had prepared a small metal cylinder. I wrote the message
to go in it.

"_To the governments of the earth, from Graff, the Xenephrene._"

We told them that if they wished to yield, we would name our terms, and
give directions for the destroying of all their armament. One condition
of surrender we named now, in advance.

From ten degrees north to ten degrees south latitude, all the land
in the world was permanently to be evacuated--to be held by the
Xenephrenes.

Graff, with his fifteen or eighteen thousand people, could not possibly
be expected to use or need more than a fraction of this land area,
as I had pointed out to him. But he had great, if somewhat nebulous,
colonization plans. Earth men and women from several different earth
races chosen by him, were to be sent, to be selected and judged by him
as the old Eugenic sect once thought to judge the applicants for future
parenthood.

A hundred thousand such earth people would come and swear allegiance
to his ruling government. With his Brauns they would build new cities;
populate this most benign central region of earth; build their new and
greater civilization--breed their new race, the best of the two worlds.

We directed the Miami authorities that if this message were received,
they should notify us by a swaying white searchlight beam from Miami
Beach the following night. We would then wait another two nights.
Then, the night of August 7, if the beam showed again, swaying, we
would know they desired to yield. But if it stood straight up into the
sky, motionless, we would understand they still defied us. We made no
threats--our deeds, not our words, would speak for us.

We dropped the cylinder into the outskirts of Miami. It went down,
flaming like a beacon from the blazing gas we had ignited in its top.
It fell, as close as I could judge, near the Greater Miami--Fort
Lauderdale line. By daylight we hung fifty miles high, waiting.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have been told, and I can fairly imagine, the scene at the conference
which was held in the Miami War Department during those three following
long days with the brief nights between them.

At this daylight season there was a freight and passenger air line
flying from Miami to the Canaries, with connections at the Canaries for
the recently established capitals of Great Britain and France, near the
Barbary Coast.

Upon one of these liners representatives of all the European
governments came hastily to assemble at Miami; from Japan came leaders
of the Oriental powers; and from Caracas--greatest capital now of Latin
America--came the newly elected President of the Pan American Union.

Graff and I, in our devastating swing up through Venezuela late in
July, had passed not far west of Caracas; those had been anxious
moments for me.

I need not picture that grave, solemn conference of the World Powers in
Miami that August 6. I understand it lasted without intermission for
some thirty-six hours. They had determined to yield.

A giant searchlight was erected at Miami Beach. It swayed its answer
that the cylinder had been found--that Graff's message was being
considered. We saw it. We hung far, inaccessibly far aloft, waiting for
the decision.

The night of August 7 came. The conference was ending. The definite
decision to yield had been reached. From the War Department a telephone
was connected with the little house at the beach where the operator was
ready to flash the signal. Our War Secretary rose to his feet.

"Shall I phone him now, gentlemen?" They say his voice nearly broke.

There was a silent assent. From the adjoining room a telephone rang
sharply; then another. A confusion in there. Telephones ringing, and
the government radio sounding a peremptory incoming call. A confusion,
while the War Secretary stood irresolute. Then an Under Secretary burst
into the room. "A globe from Space has landed in the Everglades!"

A few moments, and fromen sources came the details. Professor
Vanderstuyft had arrived from Xenephrene! With his daughter, and Daniel
Cain, Frederick Smith--and a young man, a Xenephrene friendly to
earth--named Kean. They had weapons with them with which to fight this
invader! They were no more than fifty miles from Miami, and were being
rushed to the conference by a government Arctic A.

       *       *       *       *       *

We were crouching over the floor of our hovering globe, gazing down at
the shadowy outlines of the Florida coast. The twilight of August 7
deepened into night. No searchlight beam showed. We waited. We did not
see father's globe come down: I did not know anything about it until
afterward.

The hours passed. "They will yield," said Graff confidently. "They
postpone now the humiliating hour. But before the dawn we will see
their searchlight beam. It will waver, tremble--jus' as in their own
hearts they are wavering and trembling."

And Zetta and I thought so, too. The short night passed; the twilight
of dawn began showing. And then the white beam from down there sprang
up. It stood vertical. Motionless!

For a moment we stared at it, almost unbelieving. Moisture clouded my
sight of it; my brave world, firmly shining its defiance!

Graff sprang to his feet. "Why! Incredible! They have not yielded?"

Anger contorted his face--chagrin was in his voice. I think he felt the
chagrin more strongly from Zetta's presence.

"So they will not yield? The worse for them! You shall see now the Red
Control, Peter!"

"No!" burst out Zetta. "You mus' not do that, Graff!"

His laugh was grim.

"You shall see! The Red Control--I will loose it now upon them!"




                              CHAPTER XIX

                    RED MADNESS STALKING THE EARTH


Days of grim activity in Graff's camp followed. I think Graff had no
intimation of the reason for the earth's defiance; he seemed to feel
that our governments were fool-hardy, stupid--stubborn beyond the point
of human reason. He had been in a towering rage, but that passed. He
moved about his tasks now with a cool, careful efficiency. But I could
see a certain almost awed grimness about him for the diabolical nature
of this thing he was doing.

His mood was reflected in all his men. And they changed toward me.
Never more than contemptuously tolerant, they were now openly hostile.
Gibing at me, the earthman.

I was passing one morning down the line of flimsy houses which was the
main street of the camp. A woman leaped from a doorway and struck me
in the face. My guard was at hand. Graff never let me move anywhere
without an armed man to watch me. He said to protect me, especially
from the giant insects which lurked about the camp, and which, in
truth, I always feared; but I knew Graff's motive was to watch that I
did not try to escape. The woman struck and reviled me until my guard
pulled her away.

Graff had sent a globe at once to Africa, to order back his force
operating there. It came in, crowding our camp. Near the north line
of our barrage Graff built a small stone house. Within it the control
globes were being erected. He would never let me or Zetta near it.

The barrage throughout its entire circumference was strengthened.
All our projectors were in use, triple-banked in some places. Graff
had built a chemical laboratory in the camp. His scientists had for
weeks been working in it, endeavoring to produce the Reet current on
earth for a renewal of the storage tanks which had been brought from
Xenephrene. I was now barred from this building; they were working in
it on the Control-globe mechanisms.

Above our camp a flying platform now constantly hovered at a
ten-thousand foot altitude. It spread a thin, red barrage like a
ceiling above us. Graff anticipated that he would be attacked more
vigorously than ever before; he said so to me once, with his sardonic
smile--and he had not forgotten that one aviator who had dropped a bomb
upon us.

By August 14 our force had returned from Africa, our lines about our
base were strengthened, the Control-globes were erected in the little
house, and everything was ready. About the camp, and at intervals five
miles out to the barrage line, small projectors the size of a man's
hand had been erected; wires in conduits ran from them back to the
laboratory. There must have been fifty or more.

On the afternoon of August 14 a current was turned into them. They
hummed gently; when the twilight and night came, I saw them emitting a
faint purple radiance. Within an hour it hung over the camp--over all
the inside area of the barrage--like a purple haze. The haze I had seen
in the air of Xenephrene. It was to protect us here, in our enclosed
area, from the effects of this thing we were about to broadcast over
the earth!

A week from that night over Miami when we were defied--and now Graff
was ready. An anxious week for me. A thousand times I had thought of a
thousand vague plans of something desperate I might do. But what? I was
more closely guarded than ever before. A very pseudo-liberty was all
that was permitted me.

Zetta, in a few snatches of talk I had alone with her, still seemed
to think she might persuade Graff to stop. Futile hope! Her brave
endeavors had from the first been futile. At last, she seemed
convinced.

A wariness of manner, an alert, calculating look whenever she was with
Graff, came upon her. I can only guess now, what thoughts and plans
were behind that grim, masklike little face. She said nothing of her
thoughts to me; there seemed suddenly an added estrangement between us.

During the evening of August 14, while I was watching the purple haze,
Graff sought me. Zetta was near him.

"We are ready, Peter. I thought that you and Zetta would like to see
these little globes that are so powerful to triumph for us."

"Walk out to the Control house?"

"Yes. I am going now to turn the current into the Red Globe."

I strove not to show my emotion; I thought he might dismiss my
guard--and he, Zetta and I might take the walk alone. If I could watch
my chance and spring upon him.

But he bade the guard follow close behind us. It was a dark, overcast
night. Our little town by the dried river bank was almost in the center
of the circular barrage lines. From here it was some five miles to the
north of the barrage.

       *       *       *       *       *

We walked over the slightly undulating dead-gray waste of what had been
the Brazilian farm country. The ground was covered with a gray dust,
like burned powder. Graff and Zetta and my guard could have leaped over
the distance in a few minutes. Graff was impatient, contemptuous of my
slow progress. He forced me forward at a trot.

We passed the occasional towers he had built; a few sailing platforms
on the summits of the slopes. The purple projectors standing on the
ground at intervals were all humming, casting up their purple haze into
the still night air.

Ahead of us loomed the red curtain of the barrage. The night now was
filled with its howl. A Braun appeared from the darkness--one of the
interior ground guards. His white, half-naked body, with bullet head of
clipped white hair, was edged, lurid with the reflected crimson glow.
Goggles were on his eyes--thick glass cones projecting out grotesquely;
his ears were muffled with small wire grids. He spoke to Graff, and
stood deferentially aside to let us pass.

The stone house was set close behind the barrage, bathed in the
crimson--a small, one-storied house with a single door and no windows.
At the door two guards stopped us. My personal guards waited outside.
The room we entered was tiny, with one small white light. Evidently
the sleeping room of these two interior guards. They wore goggles and
ear-grids, and tight trousers and smock of black, insulating fabric;
a cap with a black mask, now raised; and black gloves. Here, near the
broadcasting of the Infra-red Control, exposed to its nearness over a
long period, the men needed utter protection. A rack on the wall held
other similar protecting garments, masks, goggles and ear-grids. "We
will not need them," said Graff. "We will be here but a moment. Jus' a
moment--but long enough!"

The room had one interior doorway--a small, round opening with a
heavy bull's-eye door. We stooped to pass through; emerging into a
low, black-vaulted room. On a small railed platform stood the two
little globes. Another man was here, robed in the tight-fitting black
garments; gloved, masked and goggled. Grotesque executioner! He
murmured to Graff, and stood aside.

There was a tense moment. The room was dim, and dead silent. No
windows. No opening save the round doorway into the room through which
we had entered.

Graff said slowly: "We will give them a few hours of the Red
vibrations--to-night and to-morrow perhaps, and then broadcast from the
purple globe--restore normality." He added grimly: "We will see then
what they say, Peter."

The two globes were white, opaque and silent. Graff turned to a switch.
For the first time that evening Zetta spoke; an involuntary cry of
protest.

"No! Graff--no!" She gripped him, but he thrust her roughly aside. I
was tense; I think then I was about to leap upon Graff. But from the
hand of the black-robed man a weapon was pointing quietly, menacingly
at me.

Graff's face was grimly inscrutable. He reached up suddenly and
threw the switch. The dim light from somewhere in the room faded and
vanished. A crimson glow from one of the globes took its place; the
other globe stood milk-white, silent, alert.

A humming. From the grid over the active globe a faint red beam was
streaming. It spread; it deepened; it streamed out through the solid
black wall of the room. I stared after it. Sidewise--upward; I seemed
to be gazing out into a black illimitable distance, red-tinted. Long
unearthly vibrations, broadcast now around our world! They were already
around and back again and starting anew.

"Come," said Graff's voice abruptly. "That's all."

The black-masked operator was seated at his little table, watching
his dials. The red globe had settled to its steady hum as we left the
room. Strangely brief, undramatic scene! I sensed that Graff had made
it so--a cloak to hide what emotions sweeping him, only he would ever
know. A matter-of-fact casualness.

Yet I have never witnessed a scene of such potential horror. A small
stone house, black-vaulted room with its lone, black-garbed man. Just a
single small globe, faintly humming, glowing crimson. But I knew that
within a day or so our great earth would be at its mercy!

Back on Xenephrene, in Garla that evening at the Stadium, there had
followed a night of confusion. With the Infra-red Control stolen, the
Garlands were in a panic. The frightened people had rushed for the
grottos; by the time the authorities were able to bring order, the
night had passed. At dawn, pursuit had started for the Braun city.
Too late. Graff's expedition had left for earth. The Brauns remaining
on Xenephrene learned now their leader's duplicity. They, too, were
stricken with fear and horror.

There is an old saying on earth, "When the devil is sick, the devil a
monk would be!" The Garland authorities were very ready to listen to
father now! They sent at once for him and Dan and Freddie. They begged
his advice; there was nothing they would not do to help him, if only he
could suggest a way to get back the Control.

Their scientists had spent years refining by slow process the vital
elements necessary to its construction. The work had started when
Xenephrene came within the first faint rays of our sunlight. There
was no time now to repeat that process. Unless they could remove the
Control, within a few months, at most, they were doomed.

       *       *       *       *       *

They had been truthful in telling father that there was no
interplanetary vehicle ready in Garla. And Graff had left none in his
Braun city. There was only the small vehicle in which Dan, Freddie and
I had arrived. It was decided that father and his earth people were
to return in this globe to earth at once, taking Kean with them. Kean
could be taught by father how to navigate the vehicle. If on earth the
Control were recovered from Graff, Kean would bring it back to Garla.

They waited about a week, gathering weapons and equipment with which to
fight Graff on earth.

The globe was too small to take very much. They brought to earth four
giant projectors of the purple ray with which to stab neutral openings
in Graff's barrage; a projector of the crimson barrage itself; and the
insulating equipment for some four hundred persons--black-hooded suits,
masks, gloves, Infra-red goggles and ear-grids.

It seemed very little, but the best that could be done. The Garlands
promised to rush another vehicle to earth with other weapons. But the
vehicle would be some weeks yet in construction, and the distance
between the worlds was daily lengthening.

It was, even now, a long voyage for father's party. They
arrived--dropped into the Everglades on the evening of August 7--as I
have told. Father, at the conference, would have none of the idea of
surrender. And the delegates from the World Powers, heartened with the
weapons now at hand, with Freddie and Dan vigorously stating that they
knew how to use them--reversed their decision. The searchlight beam
held steady with its defiance.

Both Dan and Freddie have since told me how forcefully father spoke in
Miami that night. On Xenephrene an ineffectiveness had seemed to be
upon him. I had noticed it. A strange world, among strange people where
he had lived and worried all those months, had beaten him down. He had
seemed years older; an almost querulous, ineffectual old man.

Subconsciously realizing this, Dan, Freddie and I had discarded him
from all our planning. But back on earth, among his own people, his own
environment, his forceful character returned.

He told them, that night at the conference, about the Control. It was
disturbing news. But Graff obviously had not used the Control as yet.
Perhaps on earth it would not operate.

There was much to do before Graff could be seriously attacked. Four
Arctic A warplanes were to be equipped with the four purple ray
projectors. They were to be armed with long-range Essen-Bloc guns.
These guns, developed in the early fifties, just before the Great
Change, were for aircraft use in war.

They fired a peculiarly destructive shell which, it was thought, would
be most effective against the light Xenephrene structures--Graff's
space-vehicles and his flying platforms. There also was the crimson
barrage projector to be assembled and mounted. And a fighting force
of some two hundred planes, whose pilots and gunners were all to be
black-garbed and goggled.

It would take a week or two for these preparations. The attack would
be made against Graff's Brazilian base; it was found now that his
mid-African force had withdrawn and returned to Brazil. All the
Xenephrenes were concentrated there; it was exactly what the earth
leaders most desired.

There was a week of complete inactivity from Graff. Scouting planes,
ordered not to approach too close, reported that his barrage seemed
deepening in color and sound; and he had placed a red radiance
overhead. His inactivity seemed threatening to the Miami authorities.
All the earth preparations were going hurriedly forward in Miami.

It seemed an ominous lull, while both sides were preparing. Graff,
it was hoped, did not know what the earth was planning. He would be
taken completely by surprise. One great surprise rush, by night. They
believed in Miami that they would be ready by about August 20.

The world publics waited, expectant. The news of the arrival of weapons
from Garla was hushed and suppressed lest by some chance it get to
Graff. The world public was fed with radio propaganda; the invaders had
withdrawn from Africa because they feared the earth's attack; they were
concentrated in Brazil--their power to harm earth was lessening; soon
the earth forces would fall upon them; destroy them. Or perhaps even
now, the Xenephrenes were planning to withdraw from earth, as they had
before.

Upon such opiate as this the public was fed. It is always so in times
of war! Newspapers printed pages of learned technical explanation of
what would happen, by all the laws of mathematics and logic, when once
the world powers went into battle. Newspaper experts analyzed the
scientific facts from every angle, reaching always the same triumphant
solution--experts who knew no more of the real facts than did their
readers. And the public waited expectant.

Freddie and Dan, chafing at their forced inactivity, persuaded the
Miami authorities to let them try Freddie's heat ray, in advance of
the main earth attack. It was Freddie's plan, and father also agreed
to its merit. Graff would be suspicious at this long silence from his
enemy--just as Miami was daily growing more suspicious of him.

Freddie's projector could create, with a two-mile range, a heat of some
three hundred degrees Fahrenheit; it had a three-mile range, if the
heat were concentrated to a six-foot striking area. Graff's barrage was
vertical. Its horizontal area of danger was no more than five or six
hundred feet.

In a muffled, unlighted plane, selecting a dark night, Freddie and Dan
could get within a few miles of the barrage; the heat might wreck some
of the barrage mechanism. There was no one to say whether these heat
vibrations would penetrate the crimson glow or not. It had never been
tried. And at least it would create a diversion which Graff would think
a normal earth attack. He would expect none other for a time.

Freddie and Dan planned to start on the night of August 15. By evening
of August 14 they were in the Miami War Department, receiving last
admonitions. The official radio was droning its routine messages.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a sudden interference. A chaos of weird voices such as only
the radio--particularly in the old pioneer days--could produce. The
interference grew worse; then the radio went dead. The telegraphs,
telephones and undersea cables all had sudden interference, but they
kept in operation. The new "Invisible light-beam" phones, as they were
popularly called, withstood it, but service was maintained under
difficulty. The electric lights went dim, almost out; then brightened
suddenly; and dimmed again.

This, all within a few minutes, that evening of August 14. In Miami,
and all over the world it was the same. And then, almost unnoticed at
first, slowly, insidiously, inexorably, the reign of the Red Madness
began. The great mass of people throughout the world did not understand
it, had no idea what was happening to them. They called it, they still
call it, the Red Madness.

It began with a feeling of uneasiness. An oppression. The feeling
one has sometimes when the barometer falls in the lull before a
coming storm; the feel, as they would say, of electricity in the air.
Thousands said that, undoubtedly. A growing uneasiness. The countries
in the daylight felt it most.

The sick, the weak, the nervous, were most quickly affected. In
hospitals there was a sudden hysteria among the patients. In a Miami
hospital early that evening an old woman patient ran screaming and
laughing, screaming that red demons were after her. Perhaps, of all the
millions, she was the first.

She leaped into the street; Freddie and Dan recall her shuddering
scream and eerie laughter as it floated into the open windows of the
War Department.

At the War Department the reports from abroad were increasingly
alarming. Within an hour every official channel of communication was
cluttered with news. A diversity impossible to picture! At first,
abnormality in the sick, the old, and the very young. Infants wailing,
unable to sleep; old people stricken with hysteria, a morbid, weeping
melancholia, or a wild frenzy of madness.

A lone old man suddenly gone mad; then, not only old people--a
mob rushing screaming down a city street; a great airliner very
nearly plunging into the China Sea because its pilot was laughing
uncontrollably, and then weeping with realization of the tragedy he had
so nearly caused.

People in crowded Oriental villages running amok, shot down by the
police. A Miami surgeon at an operation killed his patient with a
sudden vicious stroke and cried like a child that he had done it. A
thousand incongruous, horrible incidents.

From every quarter of the earth, medical authorities, scientific bodies
and governments were demanding an explanation of Miami. And then the
world of the Infra-red began showing. Not only to the infirm--to every
one. The strongest man was frightened--terrified, sometimes, at his
own mad desire to laugh. Vague red shapes were in the air, murmuring,
chattering.

I personally did not experience any of this. Father and the others say
it was at first like the sensations we had felt on Xenephrene. The
red things were not so tangible or visible--nor so clearly audible,
perhaps. Not at first. But every hour, every moment, they were
intensifying. Soon, it was far worse.

The world could not understand, but the authorities in Miami knew at
once what was happening--that Graff was using the Red Control. It
promised disaster; worse, a fate unspeakable--the world gone mad.

The confusion of the Miami authorities now hastily assembled again in
conference, was intensified by the red hysteria which was affecting
them, as every one else.

Hulda was there; she says it was a bedlam within an hour. She sat
quietly watching and listening to the red things coming out from their
invisible world. She sat there terrified, not of them so much, for to
her they were familiar things--terrified at what they were doing to our
world.

A bedlam surged around her, in which father, Freddie and Dan strove to
hold a sanity. The President of our United States, listening to what
was being reported from abroad, burst into tears. He had never been
in robust health; the strain of the past few days had worn his nerves
nearly to the breaking point. They took him away, and by then he was
laughing and raging alternately.

Out at the beach some one had given orders for the searchlight to
signal a world surrender. There was no enemy to see it; but no one
thought of that. It was wavering up into the sky; but no one in the War
Department heeded it. Then it held steady. Then a shouting throng of
people rushed it; smashed it.

Father, Freddie and Dan were busy getting the equipment they had
brought from Xenephrene into hasty use. The insulated suits were
unnecessary. The Infra-red glasses and ear-grids were able to bar out
this storming red world. The officials donned them. With normality
regained they sat together trying sanely to determine what should be
done. A world going mad around them.

Even as they sat, news of the glasses and ear-grids had spread into the
city; a mob was surging around the building, shouting demands that the
glasses be distributed to them. A few hundred glasses and ear-grids,
needed by our fighting aviators, and now the hundreds of millions of
people would be demanding them!

An official at the conference seized his telephone to call the head of
the Government Research laboratories, demanding that this necessary
equipment be manufactured in quantity at once, for world distribution.
The very madness in the air made the conference burst into gibing
laughter at the futility of it.

Freddie and Dan had had the heat-projector hastily transferred to
a Nungess monoplane-type flyer. A tiny affair--nothing, for their
purpose, like the huge Arctic A. But it was capable of some four
hundred miles an hour under favorable conditions. They donned suits of
the black insulated fabric; they had the glasses and ear-grids; the
heat-projector, and a small Essen-Bloc airplane gun.

Within two hours they left the chaos of the War Department, took off
from an adjacent stage for Graff's Brazilian encampment. This now was
no mere test attack to create a diversion! They were determined, by
whatever desperate means, to stop the Red Control.

They left with the assurance that the earth's main attack would follow
them in a few days. A few days! If the workmen assembling the weapons
could hold their reason. The War Secretary laughed a little wildly as
he said it. White-faced Hulda flung her arms around Dan, and wept.
There was in her mind no other belief but that she would never see him
again.




                              CHAPTER XX

                          THE NIGHT PROWLERS


"Where the devil are we?" demanded Dan. "I can't see anything--much
less with these cursed glasses."

"Put them back on!" said Freddie sharply.

They had run into a gale from the north, soon after crossing over
Cuba. It would have been accounted a storm-wind, before the days
of the Great Change. But such winds now were common. A steady,
fifty-mile-an-hour blow. Flying with it, they had made great speed.
Over Jamaica, across the Caribbean, to strike the Colombian coast near
the mouth of the river below Baranquilla.

It was a race against the dawn; by daylight they would be seen by
Graff's watchers, before they could get near the barrage; and to wait
another day, with the Red Madness stalking the earth, was unthinkable.

At Baranquilla they were flying low. No lights showed. From Baranquilla
to Cartagena had been one great city of small farms. It was deserted
now. Graff and I, in that swing up to the coast, had cut a swath
through it; and the people all fled.

Freddie and Dan swept southeast. A vast territory; mountains, with
mines all abandoned; and the forests, and lower farm lands, uninhabited
now.

The dawn must have been very near. Dan was anxiously, fearfully
watching for it. The Infra-red glasses turned everything a dull, dead
gray; the ear-grids muffled sound to an annoying hush.

Dan occasionally would cast them off. The red things were riding the
night with the plane. They hovered outside the small inclosed cabin
in which Dan and Freddie were sitting. They seemed crowding the cabin
itself, their voices jabbering over the muffled motor-throb.

"Keep on those glasses!" Freddie repeated sharply. "Think I want to
take any chances, cooped up here with you!"

"I'm all right," Dan growled. "Where the devil are we? You said we were
almost there."

"We'll see it shortly. I'll look." Freddie raised the goggles from his
eyes. Faintly, far ahead through the overcast night, the crimson glow
of Graff's barrage was streaming above the horizon.

"It's there, Dan! Don't look! I'll descend--"

They swung down, barely skimming the tree-tops; over the roofs of
dark farmhouses, white lines of fences, empty fields--abandoned farm
country. The barrage came fully over the horizon; they could see the
points of concentrated light at intervals around its base where the
ground projectors stood. With the glasses on, it seemed to vanish.
It was soundless through their ear-grids; without them its howl was
plainly audible.

They were over devastated country now--a dead gray, blank waste.
Skimming close over it. Three miles from the barrage. Dan had taken the
controls. Freddie was fumbling with the heat-projector and with the
Essen-Bloc gun beside it. They donned their black gloves, dropped their
masks over their faces; their heads were black-hooded.

"Easy, Dan! Not too low!"

Dan swung them up. Freddie lifted his glasses. He hoped he would see
some sign of the Red Control ray streaming through the barrage. They
must determine the location of the Control--And then rush at it--

"Off, Dan! Close enough!"

"Too close!" Dan murmured. "If they spot us--"

It would be failure; they must locate the Control first. They swung to
the left, paralleling the barrage. Every moment they feared it would
tilt suddenly down with its beam darting at them. They could withstand
it, but their plane could not--

"Freddie! What's that?"

On the dead-gray surface of the ground ahead of them, figures showed.
Two black blobs. The crimson light faintly edged them. Dan swung the
plane up, then down, undecided. Two black-garbed figures, running
along the ground, away from the barrage. Men! A man, and a half
grown boy. The boy leaped ahead; then waited. The man was running
steadily--heavily--

       *       *       *       *       *

From the Control house--that brief scene when Graff had turned the
current into the crimson globe--Zetta and I were led back to the
encampment. Graff gave orders to my guard, and left us, busy with his
other duties. The guard was alert, but he seemed out of earshot. I
whispered:

"Zetta, you never want to talk to me any more! I must do something
to-night--stop that damnable thing--"

"Peter, hush! He'll hear you!"

"I can't help it. Zetta, listen--"

In truth I had no clear idea of what I wanted to say. Some desperate
plan! To remain idle and let that crimson globe broadcast madness upon
our world was dastardly. My hand went to Zetta's arm, but she drew away
sharply.

"Hush, Peter! Do nothing! Go to bed--jus' trust me--"

Trust her! The barrier she had built up between us seemed to fall.

"Zetta, dear, what do you mean? Have you some plan--something, later
to-night--"

She knew so much more of conditions here in the camp than I did; she
had had more freedom, living almost unguarded in a house with one old
woman. And she spoke the language of these Brauns. If she had a plan it
would be more rational than mine!

"What is it?" I demanded. "What did you mean by that?"

"Peter, hush! Trust me." She shook me off. "You go to bed. Please, I
ask that of you! Trust me--I know best."

She leaped away, leaving me standing there.

I occupied alone a little house which had been built for me by Graff.
It stood at an end of one of the cross-streets, where the gray blank
waste land stretched out to the distant line of barrage. The dry river
bed was near it.

My bedroom had one barred door and two barred windows. My guard,
relieved by another at intervals, sat by the door. Occasionally at
night I could hear him prowling about the house.

I went to bed, but could not sleep. The darkness of my room seemed
luminous with purple haze--the protecting purple glow which hung
throughout the camp. The world outside had no such protection. The
broadcast crimson vibrations were seeking out every tiny corner of the
earth.

I must have drifted off--I was awakened by a hand over my mouth; a dark
form was beside me in the blackness; a voice murmured in my ear.

"Peter! Be quiet! Don't struggle!"

Zetta's voice! I relaxed. Then I sat up. I could see her dimly. She
was dressed in a tight-fitting black smock; tight, long trousers to
her ankles, joining black cloth shoes. A black hood, pushed back with
dangling mask. Black gloves pulled up over her tight black sleeves.
The insulating fabric!

"Quiet, Peter! Here, put these on. Hurry!"

She thrust garments at me. In a moment I was dressed like herself. We
carried our Infra-red goggles and ear-grids in our hands. There was no
time for me to question; she gave me a long curved pod-knife.

"If you have to, use it, Peter. I will lead--hurry--"

I sensed her shudder. The knife was wet. I knew why; in the darkness
outside, my guard lay motionless, sprawled face down on the ground.
Zetta leaped, I stepped over him. She waited for me; then leaped
lightly forward again.

The camp was dark and silent; we avoided a low-humming purple
projector. I ran, with Zetta leaping ahead of me. We got safely past
the houses. The insects were quartered at the opposite end of the
town. None were allowed abroad at night; I was thankful for that. The
night was overcast, darker, it seemed, than before. I wondered how
near dawn it was; probably very near. Zetta came to the bed of the
dry water-course; jumped down into it. I climbed down, thirty feet,
perhaps. In the blackness I ran forward.

Zetta now was at my side, holding one of my hands, trying to draw me
on. Miles of this; it seemed hours. A guard from the bank appeared
suddenly over our heads. He called softly. Zetta answered. She leaped
up and stood beside him; spoke to him; held his attention. I crept up
through the gloom, lunged with the knife. He fell.

The barrage line at last was before us; its red glow bathed the bottom
of the river bed. Zetta stopped me.

"You mus' get your breath, Peter. Then, run fas'. We will be through it
in a few minutes. Oh, Peter, you go so slowly!"

"You run ahead," I told her. "Get through as fast as you can--then wait
for me." We were adjusting our glasses, strapping on the ear-grids.
"Zetta, where did you get these?"

"From Brea!" The red illumination showed her faint, ironical smile.
"We have been planning it for a long time. She was afraid again to try
and kill me. But she wants that I never see Graff again. Jealous--and
so she has help' us escape. I did not tell her--naturally not--that we
would try for the Control house."

"And me? Why help me escape?"

"You, Peter--I tol' her you love me. If she help you escape, then you
would marry me. You see? Brea wants that--then I will be los' to Graff
forever. So she waited a chance and steal these things--"

       *       *       *       *       *

My arms went around her. What a time for love-making! But my emotion
took no account of the time.

"Marry you, Zetta? Oh, if you will let me! You said 'I am not pledged
to you yet, Peter!'" Those words of hers had been like a weight on my
heart; a weight which I wanted now to dispel forever. I held her close.
"Zetta, you love me--"

She pushed me away; more rational always than I. "That I said--because
then the sacrifice to Graff might have been necessary."

"But now--it isn't?"

"No. Not now. Peter--come--run fas'."

At the edge of the barrage a guard was standing on the river bank. He
flung a tiny white beam down on us. Zetta called up to him, tried to
lure him down. But abruptly he shouted an alarm. From across the river
another figure came in a leap, sailing over our heads. We ducked into a
hole; above us the two guards stood consulting.

"Zetta, call again! Talk to them--I'll climb up."

I got behind them on top of the bank. I could hear Zetta calling up
something about Graff. I lunged at them. One stabbed at me with a short
purple flame; but it missed, or my black garments killed it. I struck
into them as they stood together; struck with my knife and flailing
arms. I could feel their flimsy bodies crack. They sank at my feet.

There seemed no general alarm given; these two guards doubtless were
the only ones within hearing at this section of the line. We went
through the barrage. Running. With the glasses on, it was all the dead
gray of night, and soundless. But I could feel it plucking at me; once
I got the impression I was almost wading through it, fighting it. A
panic of fear seized me; I laughed to ward it off.

I was laughing when Zetta gripped me, jerked off the glasses and my
mask. "Peter, stop that! You are all right!"

The cool night air steadied me. We were in the darkness, well beyond
the barrage. It was a mile, perhaps, to the Control house. We followed
the barrage line, creeping, running, taking advantage of every gully,
every hillock. Garbed in black, we were doubtless not easy to see.
There was no alarm given.

The dawn was near. We got back through the barrage, inside the line
again. A guard near the Control house came up to us. Fortunately he had
not seen from which direction we came. He was less suspicious than the
others; our masks, glasses and black garments were more to be expected
here by the Control than elsewhere. Zetta told him we were from Graff.
He sank soundlessly as my knife slashed at his throat.

The two guards in the outer room were almost equally easy. But one
screamed. The Control-keeper came out at us. My fist crushed his face.

We were in the Control room! The crimson globe stood there murmuring.
Diabolical thing! With my gloved hands I ripped at it; tore its wires;
tumbled it down; kicked and wrecked it with a passionate frenzy.

[Illustration: With my gloved hands I ripped at the wires of the
diabolical crimson globe; and I kicked with passionate fury at the
instrument of destruction.]

"Enough, Peter! Here, help me with this."

Zetta had been swiftly unfastening the inert purple globe. She gathered
up its mechanism, handed it all to me.

"Here--be ver' careful."

It weighed only a few pounds. It seemed not unduly fragile, and I put
it under my arm. We were outside again in a minute or two. No one
accosted us this time; there seemed no one about but the three sprawled
figures; one was twitching as he lay there.

Again we ran. At the barrage I stuffed the globe under my jacket to
protect it. When we were outside the red area I could feel the skin of
my stomach and chest burning where the light had entered. But we were
safe. We ran north, over the gray empty country. The barrage faded to
a radiance in the distance behind us. A mile--two miles--I was on the
verge of exhaustion. I could not run much further now. But I forced
myself. If we could get far away before the dawn we would escape being
seen. Then, rest. And by daylight, travel on.

But what a distance! I figured that heading northeast was our best
chance, but it might be a hundred miles or more before we encountered
any one. The wrecked Control would be discovered by Graff. Pursuit
would overtake us. Perhaps I had better send Zetta on ahead with this
purple globe. Send her on to safety.

To one side of us, up in the darkness, a shape suddenly took form. A
small aero, flying low. An earth airplane! This could be no enemy!
Zetta had been leaping ahead of me, waiting after each leap as I plowed
my heavy way along. We stood together. I waved my arms.

A small white searchlight caught us as the plane passed close over us.
I flung back my hood and mask to meet the light. The plane circled,
came back, landed on the level gray expanse.

In a moment we were with the amazed Dan and Freddie; the precious
purple globe was safe on board. The twilight of dawn was silvering our
plane as we headed northwest, flying for Miami.




                              CHAPTER XXI

                           A NEST OF VERMIN


There are some things which may be pictured by a shuddering
imagination. But one does not voluntarily put them into spoken words;
certainly they are never printed. History will say that for twenty-four
hours, August 14 and 15 of 1957, our earth was swept by a wild insanity.

The burning of Cape Town by a maddened mob will be mentioned--the glare
of the city against the night sky, the thousands who, bereft of reason,
cast themselves with screams into the flames. The wrecking of the two
great surface liners, with three thousand lives lost. The major riots
of a dozen great cities.

The attack by crazed men and women on the Biskra arsenal; the frenzied,
half-crazed soldiers who waded heedlessly into the mob, wildly firing;
the ten government planes circling over the city whose aviators, crazed
by what they saw in the streets and the red madness of the air, firing
down with machine guns and then plunging their planes to crash headlong
into the crowd.

All high lights. History will only hint at the million individual
incidents. Marauding, lustful men, breaking by night into dwellings.
Lone criminals, crazed into thoughts unspeakable, prowling the dark
streets, seeking victims.

But the details, the full or the real truth will never be known. They
revolt all but an imagination most morbid. The Red Madness of 1957 had
best be forgotten.

It was late in the afternoon of August 15 before the frantic chemists
in the government laboratories at Miami could assemble the purple globe
and begin the broadcasting of its healing waves. All that evening they
were flung out into the ether. The radio was again working--though
badly, because the purple vibrations also interfered with it. The
world was assured by radio that the danger was over--the Red Madness in
a few hours would be gone.

By midnight, August 15, the "ether-plane," as scientists now term it,
had regained normality. The current was cut from the purple globe. The
world rested, exhausted, bewildered, gazing back stupefied at what it
had been through.

For hours more, governments, soldiers, police, with sanity come at
last, fought sanely with the eddies and backwash of the storm. It wore
itself out. Order was restored. There remained the smoking ruins of
property destroyed, and the dead, the maimed, and the thousands of poor
miserable creatures with reason permanently gone.

A single day of the Red Madness! May there never be, on this or any
other world, another day such as that!

On the night of August 15 we were all with Kean in the Miami War
Department. He was ready to start back to Xenephrene with the purple
globe. Zetta and I were sure that we had destroyed the Red Control;
Graff could not use it again. Earth had no further need of the purple.
Nature would hold our ether-plane at normality, as it always had
before. But not so on Xenephrene. Its Infra-red world would not, like
earth's remain hidden. What we had been through soon would be coming
upon them. Xenephrene was very far from earth now; it would take Kean a
month to get there.

Opposition developed in Miami to our sending the purple globe away so
soon. But it was overruled; Kean was told to take it and go. He stood
before us, bidding good-by. The same quiet dignity he always bore was
on him. He turned to our officials who were gathered in a group to wish
him well.

"My worl' has brought great disaster upon you. I am sorry. I think you
will defeat Graff easily now. I hope so."

Our air force was to start at Graff within a day or two; we were
all tense with the thought of it. Kean said good-by to Zetta; shook
her hand in our earth fashion. "You choose a ver' wonderful worl',
Zetta--and a man ver' good."

A wave of color swept her, but he turned away. His gaze went to Dan
and Hulda, who were standing together. "I shall never see you again. I
think now, Dan, at the las', you will not mind if I say how ver' much
I--love Hulda."

Dan's hand went out and gripped his heartily.

"No, of course not, Kean. You--you are very complimentary. I mean,
Hulda and I appreciate how manly--"

Dan was floundering. Good old Freddie came to the rescue. He clapped
Kean on the back.

"Kean, listen. You think you're going back to Xenephrene to eat your
heart out over a girl you didn't get. That the idea?"

"Why, I--"

"Well, listen. Look at me--I'm a bachelor."

A gleam of humor came to Kean's blue eyes. "I understan', Freddie."

"Good. Now, listen. I've got some advice for you--the advice of a man
who's a bachelor and always will be. I've got some deep theories about
women--"

Freddie winked broadly at Zetta and Hulda. "All women are marvelous
things, Kean--one is as good as another, and maybe better. Remember
that! You'll save yourself a lot of trouble in life. And if you miss
out with one, just stand still--another one will be along in a minute!"

The strain we had all been under for so long made us laugh
immoderately. All but Kean. He was twinkling; but his voice was quietly
solemn.

"I thank you, Freddie. It is ver' good advice."

He bowed quaintly; his fingers barely touched Hulda's outstretched
hand. He left us hastily.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the roof of the War Department we watched his tiny globe ascending
into the star-filled night. Would he ever reach Xenephrene? We never
knew; to this day we do not know. But we think so. Father told us
then what astronomers, just before the Red Madness, had discovered.
Xenephrene had broken the orbit of her eclipse about the sun! She
seemed heading outward again. Leaving our Solar System, perhaps? Father
thought so.

He had suspected, back in those days of Garla, that it might happen.
He had mentioned it in his letter to us, saying that Freddie would
understand. It had now probably occurred. Xenephrene, the wanderer,
might soon be gone from our ken forever.

Best for them--without our sunlight, their purple moon would hold the
Infra-red in check, even if Kean, with the purple globe, never reached
them. I have wondered since if perhaps those scientists of Garla were
not capable of directing, to some extent, their planet's movements?
Perhaps their departure was their own method of saving themselves from
the Red Terror.

There was another thing which father hinted at now. He believed, with
Xenephrene gone, our earth's axis might swing back to its former
inclination. He thought--but this no one yet knew--that it was already
swinging. The old order of the day and night, the familiar progression
of seasons, would return to us. Our great cities--New York, London,
Paris, Buenos Aires--now almost abandoned but not yet fallen into ruin,
would come back into their own.

"Oh, Peter," he exclaimed, "if you lads can now overcome this enemy!
Stamp out these vermin! I will live yet to see my old familiar world
restored!"

On the morning of August 18, our air force was ready to start. From
Brazil news came that Graff's encampment outwardly showed no change.
But it was thought, and afterward we decided it was a fact, that he
was planning a new flight of devastation with his flying platforms. It
never took place; our attack was first.

Our expedition consisted of a hundred and fifty Arctic A warplanes,
each with two or three men, pilot and gunners. We were all garbed in
the black garments, with glasses and ear-grids. One plane carried
nothing but our lone crimson ray; four other planes carried the four
purple-ray projectors and Essen-Bloc long-range guns. The rest carried
guns only--the Essen-Blocs and the short-range, old-fashioned machine
gun.

Dan, Freddie and I were to fly together. Our plane carried a purple
projector, an Essen-Bloc, and a machine gun. We were chosen to lead
the expedition because of our familiarity with the Garland weapons,
and my knowledge of Graff's lines. The most skillful, most daring
young aviators of the world--the pick of a dozen nations--comprised
this force we commanded. The plane carrying the crimson projector was
flown by Davis and Robinson, sons of the men who had given their lives
attacking the Xenephrenes near New York during Graff's first invasion.

We were all linked together by the modern Rand system of air
phones--the first time it had been given a practical demonstration. For
a test we circled that morning above Miami. Dan ordered them to wheel,
to loop, to execute a variety of movements which they did with the
skilled precision of a regiment on parade ground.

The people thronged Miami's streets and roof-tops, and cheered.
Biscayne Bay was crowded with boats, as at a holiday festival. People
everywhere cheered us to battle.

I had just a moment alone with Zetta before we started. How many
warriors, in all the ages, of every race and every time, have parted
thus upon the eve of battle from the woman they loved!

Zetta at first held out her hand timorously. "Be ver' careful, Peter."

She had said it like that, back in Garla!

"Zetta, aren't you sure now?" I pleaded.

"Of what, Peter?"

"Your love for me. Our love--Kean said. 'You've chosen a good world,
Zetta, and a good man.' Do you think that? Have you--chosen--me?"

My arms were outstretched. Oh, it was sweeping me, this love for her,
as always it did when I would let it! But I would not force her.
"Zetta--haven't you--aren't you sure, now?"

She came suddenly drawn into my arms. Unresisting at last; our
love sweeping her into my opened arms; her lips seeking mine. And
whispering, "Yes, Peter--I am sure now."

All my dreams of all my life came into reality with the coming of her
love.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the sunlight of that morning of August 18, our shining planes left
the Miami airport, and, like silver birds soaring with motionless
spread of wing, flew southward.

It was full night when, out of the star-lit sky, we sighted Graff's
barrage. Our four planes with the purple ray were leading, the others
were massed behind and below us. Graff had a brief warning no doubt. We
were several miles off when one of his red beams swung down. We could
see it coming--a broad band of crimson, like a giant searchlight beam.

It missed us with its first swing. Dan roared his orders into the
Rand-phone. I was at the controls. I headed the ship down, in advance
of our line, to protect the planes behind us. Freddie leveled our
projector. Its narrow purple beam sprang forward at the barrage.
Behind us the planes were strung out. Davis and Robinson were well
behind.

We were determined not to use the crimson projector in the mêlée of
battle. It would confuse our other planes, and be too dangerous to
them. We also wanted to protect it, for use in case of last, desperate
need. Davis and Robinson were ordered to keep close behind our purple
rays.

This showing of our purple ray was Graff's first real knowledge that
here on earth the Garland weapons were to be used against him. There
must have been panic sweeping the Xenephrene camp at that instant!

Freddie evidently had caught the range. Our purple light mingled with
the crimson--mingled and merged into a vacant blackness through which
the farther stars showed dimly. The whole front crescent of the barrage
swung down at us now; but our four purple beams held it. We roared
forward. Black holes of neutral emptiness were ahead; the front face of
the Xenephrene red line was broken by our rays.

At two miles we began firing the Essen-Blocs. Graff's crimson beams
were waving confusion now from every part of his line. Some of our
shells were caught and fired in mid-air; but some got through,
undoubtedly. It was soon a chaos, as we darted in. It was to be one
brief, desperate, reckless attack; there was not a man of us who had
been willing to plan it otherwise.

At a mile we could no longer hold our phone communication. The air was
snapping and hissing with its mingling, warring vibrations; the phones
went dead. Each plane now had to act for itself.

I headed ours straight in. Freddie was firing the Essen at swift
intervals. Our purple light held steady before us, boring its black
hole in the confusion of crimson--a black hole into which Freddie was
firing as I headed our plane into it.

A few minutes only. It seemed hours. We were so close now that beams
from the side angles of the barrage were coming at us. The edge of one
caught one of our wing-tips, melted it off. We wavered, but I steadied
us.

I had taken off my glasses and ear phones for a moment. The night was a
confusion of hissing, crossing beams. Vivid glares--crimson and purple,
merging black; a myriad sparks snapping around us; and ahead, a growing
yellow-red glare of distant buildings burning. Our shells were finding
their mark!

A chaos of color and of sound! The throb and thrum of our motors; the
steady click and sharp report of our Essen; the screaming howl of the
stricken barrage; the whistling of our shells; the distant crash of
their explosions.

Dan was busy passing up the shells to Freddie, and tossing out the
falling empties. Once he growled at me: "Look over us, Peter! Damn that
fellow Davis--look where he's going!"

Our other three planes, carrying the purple projectors, were flying
level with me. But most of the others had climbed.

       *       *       *       *       *

The barrage beams were all swinging out and downward. I could see a
hundred of our planes in a group mounting to climb over the camp. Davis
and Robinson were up there. The crimson beam of their projector showed
for a moment, then went out. They seemed climbing higher than all the
other planes--spiraling now, straight up. I lost sight of them.

A stray red beam caught some of the soaring planes; they came wavering
down, spirals of light, vanishing. One melted as it passed near us;
flickered into nothingness like a flame dying.

Our planes up there were firing downward. And then, coming over Graff's
line, they were dropping bombs. The yellow glare from the camp village
was spreading.

We were now well over Graff's lines. Every one of our planes, save
those which we had lost, were over the line now. The very desperation
of our attack was irresistible. Graff had no time to prepare a defense.
Once within his lines, his immobile ground projectors were impotent to
harm us. The barrage was flickering; in sections now it was dark even
when our purple rays were turned aside. It was broken, flickering out.
Our shells doubtless had hit many of its ground projectors; the planes
from high up had hit others with their bombs. The distant south segment
of the barrage was still active. Suddenly the whole barrage vanished
completely, as one of our shells must have hit its power house. I knew
the location of that low frame building in by the river bank; I had
been trying to direct Freddie's aim at it.

Five hundred feet above the dead gray ground we flew in toward the
camp itself. The barrage was gone; a single last beam came up from the
river, caught one of our planes full, and suddenly vanished.

Below us now the ground within Graff's lines was glaring yellow-red
from the conflagration of the village. We could see the figures of
people and the giant insects running in aimless panic. Our planes shot
them down.

Flying platforms were standing in a long line, where Graff had had
them ready for his new attack. Panic-stricken Brauns were crowding
onto them. Our planes swung low, firing now with machine guns. Across
the river most of Graff's Space-vehicles were wrecked and burning from
our shellfire. But, at intervals, the small Space-globes were rising.
And from everywhere the flying platforms were trying to get away.
Our planes attacked them; and far overhead I could now see Davis and
Robinson's crimson beam. They were up there, waiting, and any vehicles
which escaped us they caught and annihilated.

From the river bank Graff's huge cylindrical Space-liner now struggled
up. Its end was gone; smoke and flame were rising from its interior
fittings. It rose laboriously, painted red-yellow with the lurid glare
from below. I have often wondered if Graff were on it! Making his last
effort to escape!

It evidently had no weapons; it rose heavily, with our planes darting
after it like wasps, circling it, stabbing its huge vitals with
shellfire. It did not get very high; it came down presently, turned
completely over, crashed and broke into leaping flames and black smoke
rolling up in a cloud.

I had guided our plane across the encampment and back, then circled, as
a score of our other planes were circling. We kept firing steadily with
the machine gun. We had long since abandoned the purple beams. Most of
our planes were now flying low, using the machine guns only.

There were scenes down there in the burning town--where half an hour
before more than fifteen thousand people had been living--scenes which
now I do not like to remember. They filled us at the time only with
triumph--for the memory of the Red Madness was too vivid upon us. No
quarter to be given here!

We had determined upon it--all four hundred of us--when we had planned
our desperate assault which was to win salvation for our world, or
bring death to all of us. No quarter here! A nest of vermin and we were
stamping it out.

But Freddie suddenly flung off his glasses; with his hood pushed back,
I saw that his face was pallid, and wet with sweat.

"Peter, fly higher! I'm done--I can't do it any more! By God, there are
women and children down there! I've been--shooting them down--"

I headed into a climb. Dan tried to use his phone to order the others
to stop. But the phone seemed permanently dead.

And then Davis and Robinson's plane abruptly appeared below us. Its red
beam sprang downward! Under its crimson light the ground was turning
blank! The burning village; the wrecked and burning vehicles; the
panic-stricken people left still alive; the dead bodies now strewn
everywhere about--all melting, vanishing into nothingness.

Dan with a growling curse had fumbled with his phone and then cast it
aside. Perhaps Davis and Robinson, sitting grimly behind their crimson
projector, steeling their hearts with memory of the Red Madness, with
memory, too, of their fathers, and with no desire save to protect their
world--perhaps they were right in doing what they did. It is not for me
to judge.

We climbed, and for a long time I did not again look down. When I did,
the yellow-red glare of the conflagration had vanished. A circular
ten-mile spread of blank, dead-gray ground lay beneath us. Over it,
some of our planes were circling low, with white searchlights examining
it. Vacancy complete--where so short a time before had been the most
diabolical enemy, the greatest menace which ever had assailed our earth!




                             CHAPTER XXII

                            PEACE ON EARTH


It is common knowledge now how the great purple star departed as
inscrutably as it had come. Throughout those concluding months of 1957,
it steadily faded until at last it was gone. The Wanderer! It is out
there now, wandering somewhere among the stars. With our imaginations
we may follow it, but no way else. It has left the name we gave it
written large across the most tragic pages of our history--but itself
is only a memory.

It would be superfluous for me to recount familiar world events as
the old order of day and night, the old progression of the seasons
gradually returned. By September, 1957, astronomers had announced
that the earth's axis was swinging back to its normal inclination. It
reached there, they told us, in June, '58.

There was another year of adjustment--storms, torrential rains, floods,
a disarrangement of all our earth activities newly established since
the Great Change. But fortunately, the new conditions had existed for a
very short time--it was not difficult to return to the old. I saw, in
our Western World, swift evidence of that. Property in the north was
reclaimed. Settlers in the tropics began returning. By the end of '58,
New York and all the other great cities of the temperate zones, both
north and south, were well on their way toward rehabilitation.

With us of human mold, lifelong habits are not easily broken, and are
quickly resumed. It is good to feel the warm summer of July, with
daylight and darkness coming as they should! Welcome autumn days,
merging into winter--with the knowledge that spring will come again!

Within my own lifetime I suppose, there will be slight evidence left
anywhere on earth of the Great Change. They say that the tropics
will always be more densely populated than before; that some of the
industry started there will remain. But on the whole, those fearsome
tragic months will linger only as a memory; and soon, when all of us
on earth now have passed--they will fade from memory into tradition;
then into legend. And the world will go on into the other great changes
perhaps--and even legend of this one will be forever forgotten and lost
forever.

But now as I write, with the curtain so recently rung down upon its
horror, it is all too vivid. The old routine is come back to earth.
Father and Freddie are with the Dutch Astronomical Bureau, in Chile,
where I am to join them when I have finished helping reestablish the
A.B.A. in New York. Dan and Hulda are in Porto Rico. Things are very
much as they were before. Our world, for me, for every one, is hardly
different.

But there is a difference. Out of the tragedy and horror of those
months, has come, I think, a benefit to our world. The Great Change
brought all the nations, people of every race, into a sudden community
of interest. Like brothers in a family sorely pressed, they fought
united against a suddenly wrathful nature. And then fought the invaders
from Xenephrene.

We four hundred young men--the pick of the world united--when we flew
against Graff that night in Brazil, I think we raised then a monument
to a new earthly spirit. It was our united world against another world.
Our united life, or death! We cannot soon forget that.

A lesson from Xenephrene! Economists sometimes use that phrase. There
was much that the Garlands had come to realize which we of the earth
might well heed! Economists are saying it.

And we are heeding it; I see it now in little things all around me.
The nations are planning now to establish a working basis of industry
and agriculture whereby each may produce without competition from the
other, what it can give the world best and most cheaply. An economy of
effort! It will decrease enormously the world's work.

They had been planning a gigantic municipal subway to run the length
of Long Island, to handle the new population which is coming steadily
from the tropics. But the subway plans were yesterday defeated. New
York, they claim, will not grow so large. The new radio power-sending
stations will make every farm a small factory if need be.

The age of steam flung us into roaring infernos of cities; the age of
electricity will send us back into God's green country. They say that
is happening now. And I have read in newspaper editorials--and heard,
just this evening in the Government radio broadcast--that we would do
well, by ourselves, and most of all by our children, if we heeded the
lesson from Xenephrene.

I have been just now in Zetta's bedroom, standing in the dimness gazing
down into the cradle where our little son lies sleeping. Xenephrene
brought tragedy upon our world--a lesson for good, perhaps; but to me
it brought a great happiness. I see Zetta lying there, like a little
child herself, so early asleep to-night. She gave up everything for me.
I mentioned it to her once, soon after we were married. She smiled her
quaint smile and held me close.

"Back in Garla, Peter, your father used to read from his Bible. A ver'
wonderful book--for the Garlands, for all, it is all the same. There
was a place in the Bible, I memorize' it. You say, Peter, for you I
have given up my worl'. And I answer, like Ruth:

"'_Whither thou goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people_--'"

I sit here to-night finishing these pages. A great thankfulness is upon
me. Out of the horror of the past, I have come to-night with a dear
father still holding his health and strength; a loving sister, happily
married to a man I respect and admire. I have a bachelor friend, joyous
with his chosen lot.

I have a beautiful, adoring wife, to realize every romantic dream of my
boyhood, to mother our lusty little son growing up to personify all the
good which is within us both.

I am very singularly blessed.


                                THE END



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