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RALPH 124C 41+


[Illustration]


A ROMANCE OF THE YEAR 2660


RALPH 124C 41+

by

HUGO GERNSBACK

Forewords by Dr. Lee de Forest and Fletcher Pratt






New York: Frederick Fell, Inc.

Copyright 1925 by the Stratford Company

Second Edition Copyright 1950 by Hugo Gernsback

All rights in this book are reserved. It may not be used for dramatic
or motion- or talking-picture purposes without written authorization
from the holder of these rights. Nor may the book or part thereof be
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing,
except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address: Frederick Fell, Inc., 386 Fourth Avenue, New
York 16, N.Y. Manufactured in the United States of America by H. Wolff,
New York. Designed by Sidney Solomon.

Published simultaneously in Canada by George J. McLeod, Ltd.,
Toronto.




CONTENTS


 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION               _7_

 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION               _11_

 FOREWORD BY DR. LEE DE FOREST              _15_

 FOREWORD BY FLETCHER PRATT                 _19_

 1   _The Avalanche_                        _25_

 2   _Two Faces_                            _40_

 3   _Dead or Alive?_                       _52_

 4   _Fernand_                              _66_

 5   _New York A.D. 2660_                   _79_

 6   "_Give Us Food_"                       _97_

 7   _The End of Money_                    _110_

 8   _The Menace of the Invisible Cloak_   _118_

 9   _The Conquest of Gravitation_         _127_

 10  _Two Letters_                         _140_

 11  _The Flight Into Space_               _147_

 12  _Llysanorh' Strikes_                  _164_

 13  _Alice Objects_                       _172_

 14  _The Terror of the Comet_             _176_

 15  _Llysanorh' Throws Off the Mask_      _188_

 16  _The Supreme Victory_                 _195_




PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION


Since the first edition of _Ralph 124C 41+_ in 1925, an eventful
quarter century has passed. Since I first wrote the story, 39 amazing
years have been swallowed into the Einstein space-time-continuum--years
pregnant with scientific progress.

Since 1925, the 5,000-edition volume has had a rather remarkable
career. It has been quoted by hundreds of authorities both great and
small, in hundreds of publications--not only in the United States but
also in many other countries. Whenever a history of science-fiction
was written, _Ralph_ nearly always was included routinely, much to my
surprise.

In the meanwhile the book became a sort of museum piece. Early in 1950
the quoted price in the second-hand book market was $50.00 for a single
copy. Left with only two copies of the 1925 edition I myself endeavored
to buy a copy for a friend in France, but no copies were forthcoming
even at $50.00!

Authors avowedly never read their own books--I am no exception to that
rule. So the other day when I was reading proofs for the 1950 edition,
after a lapse of 25 years, I began to ask myself a lot of questions.

Why for instance was _Ralph_ written, in the first place?

In 1911 I was a young publisher--not yet 27 years old. I had started
publishing _Modern Electrics_ in 1908, three years before. It was
the world's _first_ radio magazine. By 1911 it had attained a print
order of around 100,000 copies and was for sale on all the principal
newsstands in the U.S. and Canada, and sold by subscription all over
the world.

Yet, today I must confess I do not recall just _what_ prompted me to
write _Ralph_. I do recall that I had no plan whatsoever for the whole
of the story. I had no idea how it would end nor what the contents
would be.

The story began in the April, 1911, issue of _Modern Electrics_ and
ended with the March, 1912, number. On the twelve covers of the
magazine for that year there was a monthly illustration depicting
some _Ralph_ exploit as divulged in the current installment. Thus
for instance the first (April, 1911) cover showed Ralph at the
_Telephot_--not the broadcast television of today but person-to-person
television by phone, which has as yet to be realized. (See
illustration.)

Indeed the word _television_ was practically unknown in 1911. (The
first technical article in print, using the term, was written by me:
"Television and the Telephot," _Modern Electrics_, December, 1909).

As the story developed from month to month there was the age-old
scramble to beat the deadline--but somehow or other I always made
it--usually under duress, finishing the installment at 3 or 4 A.M. on
the last day. That the literary quality suffered painfully under such
continuous _tours de force_ every month, there can be no question, but
somehow the scientific and technical content came through unscathed
most of the time.

[Illustration]

After 39 years I could point out a number of minor technical flaws
in some of my early predictions, but on the whole I probably could not
do much better today. To be sure, I would not think of a gyroscopic
propelled space flyer now, but then in 1911 no one was thinking
of rocket-propelled or atomic-powered space flyers. In 1911 too,
scientists still thought of a universal ether permeating all space.
Today we seem to get along very well without it.

While quite a number of the scientific predictions made in _Ralph_ have
come to pass, many more are still unrealized. I have, however, little
concern that all--or most of them--will come about in the not too
distant future. I am certain that _all_ of them will be commonplace by
2660, the time in which the action of this novel moves.

Perhaps I can do no better than reprint the foreword of the original
1911 "_Ralph_":

  This story which plays in the year 2660, will run serially during the
  coming year in Modern Electrics. It is intended to give the reader as
  accurate a prophecy of the future as is consistent with the present
  marvelous growth of science. The author wishes to call especial
  attention to the fact that while there may be extremely strange
  and improbable devices and scenes in this narrative, they are not
  impossible, or outside of the reach of science.

We are now at the beginning of a new and fantastic era--the
electronic-atomic age--an age that makes the impossible come true
overnight. If _Ralph 124C 41+_ can fire the present-day young minds
with the same enthusiasm for scientific research and accomplishment as
it did their fathers in the past, I shall feel amply repaid in having
instigated this new, 1950 edition of _Ralph_.

 Hugo Gernsback

_New York, May 1950_




PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION


Ralph 124C 41+ first appeared as a serial in the author's first
magazine, "Modern Electrics," in 1911. This magazine was first devoted
exclusively to radio activities. At the time the story was written the
word "radio" had not yet come into use. We were at that time still
using the term "wireless."

It has been necessary, in view of scientific progress since the time
the story was first written, and in order to present the book to a
much wider reading public, to rewrite much of the story and to make
many changes. Yet, the ideas and conceptions embodied in the original
manuscript have been little altered.

The author appreciates that many of the predictions and statements
appear to verge upon the fantastic. So was Jules Verne's submarine
"Nautilus" in his famous story "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."
Verne's conception of the submarine was declared utterly ridiculous.
Nevertheless, the prophecy was fulfilled. In fact, Verne's imagination
hit far below the mark in what was actually accomplished by science
since the book was written.

Lest you think that the author has gone too far into the realms
of pure imagination, place yourself in the position of your
great-great-grandfather being told about locomotives, steamships,
X-rays, telegraphs, telephones, phonographs, electric lights, radio
broadcasting, and the hundred other commonplaces of our lives today.
Would he not have condemned such predictions as the height of folly and
absurdity?

So with you. You are in the same position with respect to the
prophecies in this work as your remote ancestor. Your descendants,
picking up this book 750 years hence,--or at the time in which this
story is laid,--will ridicule the author for his lack of imagination
in conceiving the obvious developments in the first half of the next
century.

It may be of passing interest to note that several of the predictions
made by the author when this story was written have already become
verities. Notable among these is what the author termed the
_Hypnobioscope_, the purpose of which is to acquire knowledge while
asleep. The author was greatly astonished to read the results obtained
by J.A. Phinney, Chief Radioman, U.S. Navy, who, having tried the
system himself, in 1923, introduced it at the Pensacola, Florida, Naval
Training School. Here one may see naval students stretched out on long
benches asleep with casket-like coverings over their heads. The caskets
contain two telephone receivers through which radio code is sent to
the sleeper. It has been demonstrated that the sleeping student can be
taught code faster than by any other means, for the sub-conscious self
never sleeps. Students who have failed in their studies have passed
examinations after being taught by this method.

The scientific conception or vision of the world of 750 years hence,
represents the author's projection of the scientific knowledge of
today. Scientific progress is moving at an accelerating pace, and if
that pace is maintained, it seems fair to assume that the conception
herein described will, 750 years hence, be found to have fallen far
short of the actual progress made in the interim.

 Hugo Gernsback

_September 3, 1925_




FOREWORD

BY LEE DE FOREST, Ph.D., D.Sc., D.Eng.

_Father of Radio_


No book in two generations, no book since Jules Verne, has undertaken
to do what Hugo Gernsback in the first decade of our century has here
so outstandingly achieved.

He is gifted with a mind eternally alert, trained from childhood to
observe and think. His unbridled imagination has ever fed on the facts
of science and technology which his habit of omniverous reading has
been continually storing within his brain. As result of this unusual
combination his tireless energies have been directed, since childhood
in Luxembourg, to writing popular science in a fashion peculiarly
attractive to young men and boys who, like himself, possess a keen
interest in all realms of physical Nature.

His first essay in this field was his monthly magazine, _Modern
Electrics_, the first to attempt to outline in language understandable
by American youth the newly developing science of _wireless
communication_. He made of this first venture into the publishing
business a medium wherein, amid serious newsy articles regarding
current electrical developments, his eager imagination could find full
play. The most outstanding, most extraordinary prophecies which this
young clairvoyant had at that time conceived--all based on his keen
observations and appreciation of their real significance and trend--he
chose to record in the guise of a fanciful romance bearing the
strange, cabalistic title of this book.

The author, even at that early date (1911) had a clear conception of
future television, then quite unheard of, almost undreamed of. He dubs
it "Telephot" and outlines its revolutionary utilities. His hero,
Ralph, explains to his enamorata how man has mastered weather-control.
Only today has a professor shown New York City how to end its water
famine by man-made torrential rains. Years in advance of their advent
he describes libraries of microfilm projected on large screens; and
news printed electrolytically, without printer's ink. Today we begin
to read of this as being partially commercialized. His "Menograph," or
thought recorder, is today crudely realized in our lie-detector. By
means of his "Hypnobioscope" most of scholastic studying is done while
the pupil sleeps. Who is bold enough to scoff at the possibility of
such a delightful method? For one, not I.

"Most of the studying was done while one slept," explains Ralph--a
statement truly applicable to many a somnolent student's performance
today!

Ralph explains, as of the year 2660, the resuscitation of animal
(human) life years after the body has been drained of blood. Yet only
yesterday a Russian doctor claims to have accomplished this "miracle."
His 750-year future has already begun to be realized. Many Utopias
are here foretold, such as absolutely permanent non-wearing, metallic
highways, where trolley-cars and gas-driven autos are only ancient
memories, long obsolete.

"Only electrobiles were to be seen." Here the author badly misjudged
the future trend of auto-travel, _away_ from the electric.

He foresaw far better night-illuminated streets than we have yet
attained. Let us hope that we must not wait 750 years until cities are
"as bright by night as by day"; nor New York's climate, man-controlled,
to be "the finest on Earth," with temperatures perennially at 72,
sunshine all day, rain for one hour only, every night! In that future
we shall have reliable transfer of sun energy into electric by means of
photo-electric elements responsive to ultra-violet radiation.

In Musak we already have the wide distribution of music which Mr.
Gernsback foresaw in 1911; also our night baseball games, then
first foretold. His airplanes launching from roof-tops we partly
realize already in our helicopter mail service. But instead of his
agglomeration of colored light-beams for direction of aviation we have
the far reaching radio beacons, coupled with Loran.

Even today's mysterious "flying saucers" he foretold with nice detail!

Foreseeing the vast increase in global population (the world's gravest
menace) Ralph has so deftly applied science to plant growth that we
shall reap four crops of wheat per year in sun-heated glass houses
of county-sized acreage, to feed the new billions. He fears not an
overcrowded, 200 million metropolitan New York!

Only today I read of a recent system for using heat from deep earth for
house-warming, now being commercialized. "Ralph" described the same
arrangement forty years ago!

Here is liquid fertilizer sprayed as a crop accelerator; and plant-root
stimulation by means of high-frequency currents, wholesale diathermy
applied to farming; and many other improvements in farm procedure which
make this book profitable reading for today's science-minded farmers.

The author foresaw a much-to-be-desired manufacture of news-print from
the resultant excessive growth of grain stocks, thereby terminating
today's wanton destruction of our forests for comic supplements and
sexy pulps.

Last year in the Bell Laboratories I witnessed the recording on paper
of the complexities of my voice, very much as Ralph described it in
1911 to his A.D. 2660 friends.

As to the plausibility of Ralph's conquest of gravitation I refer
the reader to the recently published General Field Equations of Dr.
Einstein. Ralph insisted, even in 1911, that gravitation is indeed
wave form, similar to the electromagnetic, and that by interference
there--between the force of gravitation may be partially nullified. Let
us wait until 2660 to see if he was correctly reported. This and many
other strange things our descendants _may_ see.

But to me the most impressive pages of this strange book are those
that outlined with striking clarity the basic idea of radar as we
know it today. Although gummed over with reference to imaginary
metals, inter-planetary ships travelling at comet speeds, and a very
earthy romance, the uncanny foresight of Hugo Gernsback in 1911 into
the realities of World War II constitutes perhaps the most amazing
paragraphs in this astonishing Book of Prophecy.

 _Chicago, Ill.
 May 1950_




FOREWORD

BY FLETCHER PRATT


This is a book of historic importance, which belongs on the shelves
of a variety of types of people, though not for the usual reasons
why a fictional work is a must. No one will ever compare _Ralph 124C
41+_ with the novels of Marcel Proust or even those of Robert Louis
Stevenson. The story is the simplest kind of romantic adventure tale
and characters are not particularly significant as such. What matters
is the view from the windows as the train runs through the landscape.

For it is a book of prophecy, one of the most remarkable ever
written. It has long since been a gold mine for nearly every writer
of science-fiction during a generation. No author laying his story
in the future would think today of doing without Mr. Gernsback's
three-dimensional color television, and very few without his satellite
city circling the Earth; and no reader would think of questioning the
feasibility of these devices.

The very method employed in the book, that of supplying the people
of the future with technical inventions which are the logical
outgrowths of those currently in use or logically developed from
currently accepted principles--this method has become fundamental in
science-fiction. Indeed, it may be said to constitute that new art;
and in a very proper sense, _Ralph 124C 41+_ may be called the first
science-fiction story ever written.

This will doubtless bring some protest from the admirers of Mr. H.G.
Wells. But a little thought will show that, in spite of some arresting
and rather wonderful pictures of the future, and some extremely
ingenious scientific devices described, Mr. Wells was not really
writing science-fiction. There is nothing known to science out of which
the time machine could be developed; Wells simply tells us that it was
built and goes on with his story. The invincible balloon-battleships
in _The War in the Air_ are flatly contradictory to logic; even when
the book was written, everybody knew that hydrogen is inflammable.
Heat dissipates in air far too rapidly to allow the heat-ray camera of
the Martians in _The War of the Worlds_ to be built; and a very brief
consideration will show that the construction of the antigravity plates
in _The First Men in the Moon_ would be child's play beside the problem
of constructing the screens which temporarily kept those plates from
working.

It is the same all down the line, and with Jules Verne as well--whose
passengers in the moon-shell would be killed at the moment of firing.
The fact is that Wells, himself enough of a scientist to use technical
terms correctly, was afflicted with low scientific morality where
fiction was concerned. He tried to be a prophet in the domain of
sociology, but he was not really interested in the progress of physical
science. As long as he could get his characters into a situation by
means of a plausible-sounding device, he was quite willing to flim-flam
the reader about the practicability of the device and the soundness of
the principles involved.

Mr. Gernsback, on the other hand, founded the school of fiction in
which the technical plausibility of the surroundings is at least as
important as the literary plausibility of the characters. For that
matter, the reader is besought to show some interest in what can be
done for us by the chemist, the inventor, the electrician, and even the
meteorologist. It has often been pointed out that these technicians
cannot change human nature, but Mr. Gernsback indicates that they can
put human nature into a position where it can hardly avoid changing
itself. World government is not an impossibility in an atmosphere where
any person on the planet can be instantly in visible communication with
any other, and where the barrier of language can be thrown down during
a night's sleep.

Thanks to the rules he set for himself (and also, no doubt, to his
wide acquaintance with that region in which all the sciences are
applied to the practical service of man in the form of inventions) Mr.
Gernsback has been rather astoundingly successful in predicting actual
developments. _Ralph 124C 41+_ was written in 1911. The writer's most
famous hit, of course, is _radar_ (p. 152), which no one else had come
near to conceiving at the time. Yet his description will do as a fair
working description of radar as it is today. The device here called
"the hypnobioscope" (p. 49) for teaching during sleep, has not been
developed to the extent described in the story, but works in a limited
fashion and is obviously capable of extension. On p. 116 artificial
silk and wool are produced by a process so much like that currently
used in the manufacture of rayon and nylon that one wonders whether Mr.
Gernsback has a share in the patents. Rustproof alloy steel (p. 103),
magnesium alloys in light-weight construction (p. 29), televised opera
performances (p. 86), vending machines (p. 89), packing in paper-thin
sheets of metal (p. 89)--are all things we know about today but which
only Hugo Gernsback could have conceived in 1911.

In addition, there are a number of items where the essential
correctness of the concept may be concealed from the reader by the
terms employed in this book--for it is not granted to prophets to
foresee what words will be employed when inventors designate their
products. The "glass" furniture (p. 25) has been made good in the form
of plastics--which are, technically, glasses. Fluorescent lighting
appears on p. 30 under the name of "luminor." The electric elevator
(p. 43) has not turned up as an elevator, but its mechanism is used to
drive the electric torpedoes which sank much of the Japanese merchant
marine during the war. Newspapers are printed on microfilm on p. 46,
and the trans-Uranium elements show up on p. 53. Baseball and football
are played at night on p. 80 and paper is made from straw on p. 104. A
device which is essentially the radio-direction-finder is on p. 120,
and on p. 128 there is a recording mechanism which differs from today's
wire-recorders only in employing a strip of paper scanned by light, and
which has since been built. This by no means exhausts the list, but it
would detract from the reader's enjoyment not to allow him to make some
discoveries for himself.

To be sure, there are certain inaccuracies. The underearth tube from
France to New York does not seem a good engineering proposition today.
Nobody understood the nature of radium emanation in 1911 and neither
did Mr. Gernsback. But the percentage of accurate judgments (one cannot
call them guesses, when they are so numerous and so close to the mark)
is somewhere up in the nineties.

Which leads one to the thought that this book perhaps has an importance
beyond that as a literary and historical curiosity. Not all the
predictions have been fulfilled or placed beyond fulfillment; and
if research had proceeded along the lines of (for instance) Mr.
Gernsback's suggestion for radar, we might have had that device a
good deal earlier. In _Ralph 124C 41+_ the weather is under complete
control. We seem to be edging in that direction, but maybe a little
more push is needed--the kind of push that could be supplied by a
book like this. Medical research has now caught up with Gernsback by
deciding that thought in the human brain is accompanied by electrical
manifestations; on p. 48 this concept has advanced to the point where
thoughts can be recorded on a tape in the form of interpretable graphs,
and it may become true in practice if someone works on the problem. The
idea of draining off all the blood from a living body for purification
and then replacing it (transfusion also ranks as a Gernsback
prediction) is today far from fantastic. It is the standard and only
treatment for RH newborn infants.

Yet perhaps the most interesting of all the predictions is that
regarding space flight. (Incidentally, the physical and psychological
effects of space travel are worked out with a care that would be
worth the attention of some current science-fiction writers.) In the
days of _Ralph 124C 41+_, this is not accomplished by means of the
rockets everyone is talking about at present, but by using a gravity
neutralizer.

But be it noticed that this is not the mysterious metal of H.G. Wells.
Gernsback does it in a technically explicable and plausible way, by
means of a metal grid, electrically (or electronically) excited. Today
it is as possible to do this as it was to build a radar set in 1911;
that is, not at all. But the new formula of Dr. Einstein, at last
integrating gravity with other manifestations, makes it seem probable
that it is not beyond hope to screen gravitation from a selected area;
and when that happens, Mr. Gernsback's educated imagination, which has
preceded the normal human mind to so many things on Earth, will have
led the way to the stars.

  _New York, May 1950_




1

THE AVALANCHE


As the _vibrations_ died down in the laboratory the big man arose from
the glass chair and viewed the complicated apparatus on the table.
It was complete to the last detail. He glanced at the calendar. It
was September 1st in the year 2660. Tomorrow was to be a big and busy
day for him, for it was to witness the final phase of the three-year
experiment. He yawned and stretched himself to his full height,
revealing a physique much larger than that of the average man of his
times and approaching that of the huge Martians.

His physical superiority, however, was as nothing compared to his
gigantic mind. He was _Ralph 124C 41+_, one of the greatest living
scientists and _one of the ten men on the whole planet earth permitted
to use the Plus sign after his name_. Stepping to the _Telephot_ on the
side of the wall he pressed a group of buttons and in a few minutes
the faceplate of the Telephot became luminous, revealing the face of a
clean shaven man about thirty, a pleasant but serious face.

As soon as he recognized the face of Ralph in his own Telephot he
smiled and said, "Hello Ralph."

"Hello Edward, I wanted to ask you if you could come over to the
laboratory tomorrow morning. I have something unusually interesting to
show you. Look!"

He stepped to one side of his instrument so that his friend could see
the apparatus on the table about ten feet from the Telephot faceplate.

Edward came closer to his own faceplate, in order that he might see
further into the laboratory.

"Why, you've finished it!" he exclaimed. "And your famous--"

At this moment the voice ceased and Ralph's faceplate became clear.
Somewhere in the Teleservice company's central office the connection
had been broken. After several vain efforts to restore it Ralph was
about to give up in disgust and leave the Telephot when the instrument
began to glow again. But instead of the face of his friend there
appeared that of a vivacious beautiful girl. She was in evening dress
and behind her on a table stood a lighted lamp.

Startled at the face of an utter stranger, an unconscious Oh! escaped
her lips, to which Ralph quickly replied:

"I beg your pardon, but 'Central' seems to have made another mistake. I
shall certainly have to make a complaint about the service."

Her reply indicated that the mistake of "Central" was a little out of
the ordinary, for he had been swung onto the Intercontinental Service
as he at once understood when she said, "_Pardon, Monsieur, je ne
comprends pas!_"

He immediately turned the small shining disc of the Language Rectifier
on his instrument till the pointer rested on "_French_."

"The service mistakes are very annoying," he heard her say in perfect
English. Realizing however, that she was hardly being courteous to
the pleasant looking young man who was smiling at her she added, "But
sometimes Central's 'mistakes' may be forgiven, depending, of course,
on the patience and courtesy of the other person involved."

This, Ralph appreciated, was an attempt at mollification with perhaps a
touch of coquetry.

Nevertheless he bowed in acknowledgment of the pretty speech.

She was now closer to the faceplate and was looking with curious eyes
at the details of the laboratory--one of the finest in the world.

"What a strange place! What is it, and where are you?" she asked
naïvely.

"New York," he drawled.

"That's a long way from here," she said brightly. "I wonder if you know
where I am?"

"I can make a pretty shrewd guess," he returned. "To begin with, before
I rectified your speech you spoke French, hence you are probably
French. Secondly, you have a lamp burning in your room although it is
only four o'clock in the afternoon here in New York. You also wear
evening dress. It must be evening, and inasmuch as the clock on your
mantelpiece points to nine I would say you are in France, as New York
time is five hours ahead of French time."

"Clever, but not quite right. I am not French nor do I live in France.
I am Swiss and I live in western Switzerland. Swiss time, you know, is
almost the same as French time."

Both laughed. Suddenly she said:

"Your face looks so familiar to me, it seems I must have seen you
before."

"That is possible," he admitted somewhat embarrassed. "You have perhaps
seen one of my pictures."

"How stupid of me!" she exclaimed. "Why of course I should have
recognized you immediately. You are the great American inventor, Ralph
124C 41+."

He again smiled and she continued:

"How interesting your work must be and just think how _perfectly_
lovely that I should be so fortunate as to make your acquaintance in
this manner. Fancy, the great Ralph 124C 41+ who always denies himself
to society."

She hesitated, and then, impulsively, "I wonder if it would be too much
to ask you for your autograph?"

Much to his astonishment Ralph found himself pleased with the request.
Autograph-hunting women he usually dismissed with a curt refusal.

"Certainly," he answered, "but it seems only fair that I should know to
whom I am giving it."

"Oh," she said, blushing a little, and then, with dancing eyes, "Why?"

"Because," replied Ralph with an audacity that surprised himself, "I
don't want to be put to the necessity of calling up all Switzerland to
find you again."

"Well, if you put it that way," she said, the scarlet mounting in
her cheeks, "I suppose I must. _I am Alice_ 212B 423, of Ventalp,
Switzerland."

Ralph then attached the Telautograph to his Telephot while the girl
did the same. When both instruments were connected he signed his name
and he saw his signature appear simultaneously on the machine in
Switzerland.

"Thank you so much!" she exclaimed, and added, "I am really proud to
have your autograph. From what I have heard of you this is the first
you have ever given to a lady. Am I right?" she asked.

"You are perfectly correct, and what is more, it affords me a very
great pleasure indeed to present it to you."

"How lovely," she said as she held up the autograph, "I have never seen
an original signature with the +, for there are only ten of you who
have it on this planet, and now to actually _have_ one seems almost
unbelievable."

The awe and admiration in her dark eyes began to make him feel a
little uncomfortable. She sensed this immediately and once more became
apologetic.

"I shouldn't take up your time in this manner," she went on, "but you
see, I have not spoken to any living being for five days and I am just
dying to talk."

"Go right ahead, I am delighted to listen. What caused your isolation?"

"Well, you see," she answered, "father and I live in our villa half
way up Mount Rosa, and for the last five days such a terrible blizzard
has been raging that the house is entirely snowed in. The storm was
so terrific that no aeroflyer could come near the house; I have never
seen such a thing. Five days ago my father and brother left for Paris,
intending to return the same afternoon, but they had a bad accident in
which my brother dislocated his knee-cap; both were, therefore, obliged
to stay somewhere near Paris, where they landed, and in the meanwhile
the blizzard set in. The Teleservice line became disconnected somewhere
in the valley, and this is the first connection I have had for five
days. How they came to connect me with New York, though, is a puzzle!"

"Most extraordinary--but how about the Radio?"

"Both the Power mast and the Communico mast were blown down the same
day, and I was left without any means of communication whatever.
However, I managed to put the light magnesium power mast into a
temporary position again, and I had just called up the Teleservice
Company, telling them again to direct the power, and getting some other
information when they cut me in on you."

"Yes, I knew something was wrong when I saw the old-fashioned Radialamp
in your room, and I could not quite understand it. You had better try
the power now; they probably have directed it by this time; anyhow, the
Luminor should work."

"You are probably right," and raising her voice, she called out
sharply: "_Lux!_"

The delicate detectophone mechanism of the Luminor responded instantly
to her command; and the room was flooded at once with the beautiful
cold pink-white Luminor-light, emanating from the thin wire running
around the four sides of the room below the white ceiling.

The light, however, seemed too strong, and she sharply cried,
"_Lux-dah!_" The mechanism again responded; the cold light-radiation of
the Luminor wire decreased in intensity at once and the room appeared
in an exquisite pink light.

"That's better now," she laughed. "The heater just begins to get warm,
too. I am frozen stiff; just think, no heat for five days! I really
sometimes envy our ancestors, who, I believe, heated their houses with
stoves, burning strange black rocks or tree-chunks in them!"

"That's too bad! It must be a dreadful predicament to be cut off from
the entire world, in these days of weather control. It must be a novel
experience. I cannot understand, however, what should have brought on a
blizzard in midsummer."

"Unfortunately, our governor had some trouble with the four
weather-engineers of our district, some months ago, and they struck
for better living. They claimed the authorities did not furnish them
with sufficient luxuries, and when their demands were refused, they
simultaneously turned on the high-depression at the four Meteoro-Towers
and then fled, leaving their towers with the high-tension currents
escaping at a tremendous rate.

"This was done in the evening, and by midnight our entire district,
bounded by the four Meteoro-Towers, was covered with two inches of
snow. They had erected especially, additional discharge arms, pointing
downward from the towers, for the purpose of snowing in the Meteoros
completely.

"Their plans were well laid, for it became impossible to approach the
towers for four days; and they finally had to be dismantled by directed
energy from forty other Meteoro-Towers, which directed a tremendous
amount of energy against the four local towers, till the latter were
fused and melted.

"The other Meteoros, I believe, will start in immediately to direct
a low-pression over our district; but, as they are not very near us,
it will probably take them twenty-four hours to generate enough heat
to melt the snow and ice. They will probably encounter considerable
difficulty, because our snowed-under district naturally will give
rise to some meteorological disturbances in their own districts, and
therefore they will be obliged, I presume, to take care of the weather
conditions in their districts as well as our own."

"What a remarkable case!" Ralph ejaculated.

She opened her mouth as if to say something. But at that moment an
electric gong began to ring furiously, so loud that it vibrated loudly
in Ralph's laboratory, four thousand miles away.

Immediately her countenance changed, and the smile in her eyes gave way
to a look of terror.

"What is that?" Ralph asked sharply.

"An avalanche! It's just started--what shall I do, oh, what shall I do!
It'll reach here in fifteen minutes and I'm absolutely helpless. Tell
me--what shall I do?"

The mind of the scientist reacted instantly.

"Speak quick!" he barked. "Is your Power Mast still up?"

"Yes, but what good--?"

"Never mind. Your wave length?"

".629."

"Oscillatory?"

"491,211."

"Can you direct it yourself?"

"Yes."

"Could you attach a six-foot piece of your blown-down Communico mast to
the base of the Power aerial?"

"Certainly--it's of alomagnesium and it is very light."

"Good! Now act quick! Run to the roof and attach the Communico
mastpiece to the very base of the power mast, and point the former
towards the avalanche. Then move the directoscope exactly to
West-by-South, and point the antenna of the power mast East-by-North.
Now run--I'll do the rest!"

He saw her drop the receiver and rush away from the Telephot.
Immediately he leaped up the glass stairs to the top of his building,
and swung his big aerial around so that it pointed West-by-South.

He then adjusted his directoscope till a little bell began to ring.
He knew then that the instrument was in perfect tune with the far-off
instrument in Switzerland; he also noted that its pointer had swung to
exactly East-by-North.

"So far, so good," he whistled with satisfaction. "Now for the power!"

He ran down to the laboratory and threw in a switch. Then he threw
in another one with his foot, while clasping his ears tightly with
his rubber-gloved hands. A terrible, whining sound was heard, and the
building shook. It was the warning siren on top of the house, which
could be heard within a radius of sixty miles, sounding its warning to
all to keep away from tall steel or metal structures, or, if they could
not do this, to insulate themselves.

He sounded the siren twice for ten seconds, which meant that he would
direct his ultra-power for at least twenty minutes, and everybody must
be on guard for this length of time.

No sooner had the siren blast stopped, than he had seen Alice at the
Telephot, signalling him that everything was in readiness.

He yelled to her to insulate herself, and he saw her jump into a tall
glass chair where she sat perfectly still, deathly white. He could see
that she clasped her hands to her ears; and he knew that she must be
trying to shut out the thunder of the descending avalanche.

He ran up his high glass ladder; and having reached the top, began to
turn the large glass wheel the shaft of which was connected with the
ultra-generator.

As he started turning the wheel, for the first time he looked at the
clock. He observed that it was just nine minutes after he first had
heard the gong and he smiled, coldly. He knew he was in time.

A terrifying roar set in as soon as he had commenced to turn the wheel.
It was as if a million devils had been let loose. Sparks were flying
everywhere. Small metal parts not encased in lead boxes fused. Long
streamers of blue flames emanated from sharp objects, while ball-shaped
objects glowed with a white aureole.

Large iron pieces became strongly magnetic, and small iron objects
continually flew from one large iron piece to another. Ralph's watch
chain became so hot that he had to discard it, together with his watch.

He kept on turning the wheel, and the roar changed to a scream so
intense that he had to pull out his rubber ear vacuum-caps so that
he might not hear the terrible sound. As he turned the wheel farther
around the tone of the ultra-generator reached the note where it
coincided with the fundamental note of the building, which was built of
steelonium (the new substitute for steel).

Suddenly the whole building "sang," with a shriek so loud and piercing
that it could be heard twenty miles away.

Another building whose fundamental note was the same began to "sing"
in its turn, just as one tuning fork produces sympathetic sounds in a
similar distant one.

A few more turns of the wheel and the "singing" stopped. As he
continued turning the wheel of the generator, the latter gave out
sounds sharper and sharper, higher and higher, shriller and shriller,
till the shrieking became unendurable.

And then, suddenly, all sound stopped abruptly.

_The frequency had passed over twenty thousand, at which point the
human ear ceases to hear sounds._

Ralph turned the wheel a few more notches and then stopped. Except for
the flying iron pieces, there was no sound. Even the myriads of sparks
leaping around were strangely silent, except for the hissing noise of
flames streaming from sharp metal points.

Ralph looked at the clock. It was exactly ten minutes after the first
sounding of the gong. He then turned the wheel one notch further and
instantly the room was plunged into pitch-black darkness.

       *       *       *       *       *

To anyone unacquainted with the tremendous force under the control of
Ralph 124C 41 +, but having the temerity to insulate himself and stand
on a nearby roof there would have been visible an unusual sight. He
would also have undergone some remarkable experiences.

The uninitiated stranger standing--well insulated--on a roof not very
far off from Ralph's laboratory, would have witnessed the following
remarkable phenomena:

As soon as Ralph threw the power of the Ultra-Generator on his aerial,
the latter began to shoot out hissing flames in the direction of
West-by-South.

As Ralph kept turning on more power, the flames became longer and
the sound louder. The heavy iridium wires of the large aerial became
red-hot, then yellow, then dazzling white, and the entire mast became
white-hot. Just as the observer could hardly endure the shrill hissing
sound of the outflowing flames any more, the sound stopped altogether,
abruptly, and simultaneously the whole landscape was plunged into such
a pitch-black darkness as he had never experienced before. He could
not even see his hand before his eyes. The aerial could not be seen
either, although he could feel the tremendous energy still flowing away.

What had happened? The aerial on top of Ralph's house had obtained such
a tremendously high frequency, and had become so strongly energyzed,
that it acted toward the ether much the same as a vacuum pump acts on
the air.

The aerial for a radius of some forty miles attracted the ether so
fast that a new supply could not spread over this area with sufficient
rapidity.

Inasmuch as light waves cannot pass through space without the medium
of ether, _it necessarily follows that the entire area upon which the
aerial acted was dark_.

The observer who had never before been in an etherless hole (the
so-called negative whirlpool), experienced some remarkable sensations
during the twenty minutes that followed.

It is a well known fact that heat waves cannot pass through space
without their medium, ether, the same as an electric bell, working in
a vacuum, cannot be heard outside of the vacuum, because sound waves
cannot pass through space without their medium, the air.

No sooner had the darkness set in, than a peculiar feeling of numbness
and passiveness would have come over him.

As long as he was in the etherless space, _he absolutely stopped
growing older_, as no combustion nor digestion can go on without ether.
_He furthermore had lost all sense of heat or cold._ His pipe, hot
previously, was neither hot nor cold to his touch. His own body could
not grow cold as its heat could not be given off to the atmosphere,
nor could his body grow cold, even if he had sat on a cake of ice,
because there was no ether to permit the heat to pass from one atom to
another.

He would have remembered how, one day, he had been in a tornado center,
and how, when the storm center had created a partial vacuum around
him, he all of a sudden had felt the very air drawn from his lungs. He
would have remembered people talking about an air-less hole, in which
there was no medium but ether (inasmuch as he could see the light).
Now things were reversed. He could hear and breathe, because the ether
has no effect on these functions; but he had been robbed of his visual
senses, and heat or cold could not affect him, as there was no means by
which the heat or cold could traverse the ether-hole.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alice's father, who had heard of the strike of the Meteoro-Tower
operators and guessed of his daughter's predicament, rushed back from
Paris in his aeroflyer. He had speeded up his machine to the utmost,
scenting impending disaster as if by instinct. When finally his villa
came into sight, his blood froze in his veins and his heart stopped
beating at the scene below him.

He could see that an immense avalanche was sweeping down the
mountain-side, with his house, that sheltered his daughter, directly in
the path of it.

As he approached, he heard the roar and thunder of the avalanche as it
swept everything in its path before it. He knew he was powerless, as
he could not reach the house in time, and it only meant the certain
destruction of himself if he could; and for that reason he could do
nothing but be a spectator of the tragedy which would enact itself
before his eyes in a few short minutes.

At this juncture a miracle, so it seemed to the distracted father,
occurred.

His eye chanced to fall on the Power mast on the top of his house. He
could see the iridium aerial wires which were pointing East-by-North
suddenly become red-hot; then yellow, then white-hot, at the same
time he felt that some enormous etheric disturbance had been set up,
as sparks were flying from all metallic parts of his machine. When he
looked again at the aerial on his house, he saw that a piece of the
Communico mast, which apparently had fallen at the base of the Power
mast, and which was pointing directly at the avalanche, was streaming
gigantic flames which grew longer and longer, and gave forth shriller
and shriller sounds. The flames which streamed from the end of the
Communico-mast-piece looked like a tremendously long jet of water
leaving its nozzle under pressure.

For about five hundred yards from the tip of the Communico mast it was
really only a single flame about fifteen feet in diameter. Beyond that
it spread out fan-wise. He could also see that the entire Power mast,
including the Communico mast, was glowing in a white heat, showing that
immense forces were directed upon it. By this time the avalanche had
almost come in contact with the furthest end of the flames.

Here the unbelievable happened. No sooner did the avalanche touch the
flames, than it began turning to water. It seemed that the heat of
those flames was so intense and powerful that had the avalanche been
a block of solid ice it would not have made any marked difference. As
it was, the entire avalanche was being reduced to hot water and steam
even before it reached the main shaft of the flame.

A torrent of hot water rushing down the mountain was all that remained
of the menacing avalanche; and while the water did some damage, it was
insignificant.

For several minutes after the melting of the avalanche the flames
continued to stream from the aerial, and then faded away.

Ralph 124C 41+, in New York, four thousand miles distant, had turned
off the power of his ultra-generator.

He climbed down his glass ladder, stepped over to the Telephot, and
found that Alice had already reached her instrument.

She looked at the man smiling in the faceplate of the Telephot almost
dumb with an emotion that came very near to being reverence.

The voice that reached him was trembling and he could see her struggle
for coherent speech.

"It's gone," she gasped; "what _did_ you do?"

"Melted it."

"Melted it!" she echoed, "I--"

Before she could continue, the door in her room burst violently open
and in rushed a fear-stricken old man. Alice flew to his arms, crying,
"Oh father--"

Ralph 124C 41+ with discretion disconnected the Telephot.




2

TWO FACES


Feeling the need of fresh air and quiet after the strain of the last
half hour, Ralph 124C 41+ climbed the few steps leading from the
laboratory to the roof and sat down on a bench beneath the revolving
aerial.

The hum of the great city came faintly from below. Aeroflyers dotted
the sky. From time to time, trans-oceanic or trans-continental air
liners passed with a low vibration, scarcely audible.

At times a great aircraft would come close--within 500 yards
perhaps--when the passengers would crane their necks to get a good view
of his "house," if such it could be called.

Indeed, his "house," which was a round tower, 650 feet high, and thirty
in diameter, built entirely of crystal glass-bricks and steelonium, was
one of the sights of New York. A grateful city, recognizing his genius
and his benefits to humanity, had erected the great tower for him on a
plot where, centuries ago, Union Square had been.

The top of the tower was twice as great in circumference as the main
building, and in this upper part was located the research laboratory,
famous throughout the world. An electromagnetic tube elevator ran down
the tower on one side of the building, all the rooms being circular in
shape, except for the space taken up by the elevator.

Ralph, sitting on the roof of his tower, was oblivious to all about
him. He was unable to dismiss from his mind the lovely face of the
girl whose life he had just been the means of saving. The soft tones
of her voice were in his ears. Heretofore engrossed in his work, his
scientific mind had been oblivious to women. They had played no part in
his life. Science had been his mistress, and a laboratory his home.

And now, in one short half hour, for him the whole world had become a
new place. Two dark eyes, a bewitching pair of lips, a voice that had
stirred the very core of his being--

Ralph shook himself. It was not for him to think of these things, he
told himself. He was but a tool, a tool to advance science, to benefit
humanity. He belonged, not to himself, but to the Government--the
Government, who fed and clothed him, and whose doctors guarded his
health with every precaution. He had to pay the penalty of his +. To be
sure, he had everything. He had but to ask and his wish was law--if it
did not interfere with his work.

There were times he grew restive under the restraint, he longed to
smoke the tobacco forbidden him by watchful doctors, and to indulge
in those little vices which vary the monotony of existence for the
ordinary individual. There were times when he most ardently wished that
he were an ordinary individual.

He was not allowed to make dangerous tests personally, thereby
endangering a life invaluable to the Government. That institution would
supply him with some criminal under sentence of death who would be
compelled to undergo the test for him. If the criminal were killed
during the experiment, nothing was lost; if he did not perish, he would
be imprisoned for life.

Being a true scientist, Ralph wanted to make his own dangerous
experiments. Not to do this took away the very spice of life for him,
and on occasion he rebelled. He would call up the Planet Governor, the
ruler of 15 billion human beings, and demand that he be relieved of his
work.

"I can't stand it," he would protest. "This constraint which I am
forced to endure maddens me, I feel that I am being hampered."

The Governor, a wise man, and a kindly one, would often call upon him
in person, and for a long time they would discuss the question, Ralph
protesting, the Governor reasoning with him.

"I am nothing but a prisoner," Ralph stormed once.

"You are a great inventor," smiled the Governor, "and a tremendous
factor in the world's advancement. You are invaluable to humanity,
and--you are irreplaceable. You belong to the world--not to yourself."

Many times in the past few years he recalled, had the two been over the
same ground, and many times had the diplomatic Governor convinced the
scientist that in sacrifice of self and devotion to the world's future
lay his great reward.

The voice of his manservant interrupted his reverie.

"Sir," he said, "your presence in the transmission-room would be
appreciated."

"What is it?" asked the scientist, impatient at the interruption.

"Sir, the people have heard all about the Switzerland incident of an
hour ago and desire to show their appreciation."

"Well, I suppose I must submit," the inventor rather wearily responded,
and both stepped over into the round steel car of the electromagnetic
elevator. The butler pressed one of the 28 ivory buttons and the car
shot downward, with neither noise nor friction. There were no cables or
guides, the car being held and propelled by magnetism only. At the 22nd
floor the car stopped, and Ralph stepped into the transmission-room.

No sooner had he entered than the deafening applause of hundreds of
thousands of voices greeted him, and he was forced to put his hands to
his ears to muffle the sound.

_Yet, the transmission-room was entirely empty._

Every inch of the wall, however, was covered with large-sized Telephots
and loud-speaking devices.

Centuries ago, when people tendered some one an ovation, they would all
assemble in some great square or large hall. The celebrity would have
to appear in person, else there would be no ovation--truly a clumsy
means. Then, too, in those years, people at a distance could neither
see nor hear what was going on throughout the world.

Ralph's ovation was the result of the enterprise of a news "paper"
which had issued extras about his exploit, and urged its readers to be
connected with him at 5 p.m.

Naturally everyone who could spare the time had called the Teleservice
Company and asked to be connected with the inventor's trunk-line--and
this was the result.

Ralph 124C 41 + stepped into the middle of the room and bowed to
the four points of the compass, in order that all might see him
perfectly. The noise was deafening, and as it rather grew in volume
than diminished he beseechingly held up his hands. In a few seconds the
applause ceased and some one cried--"Speech!"

Ralph spoke briefly, thanking his audience for their interest, and
touching but lightly upon his rescue of the young Swiss girl, begged
his hearers to remember that in no way had he risked his life and
therefore could scarcely be called a hero.

Vociferous cries of "No, no," told him that no one shared his humble
opinion of the achievement.

It was at this juncture that Ralph's attention was caught by two
persons in the audience. There were so many thousands of faces on each
plate that nearly every countenance was blurred, due to their constant
movement. (He himself, however, was clearly seen by them, as each one
had switched on their "reversers," making it possible to see only the
object at the end of the line.)

To Ralph, the shifting, clouded appearance of his audience was a
commonplace.

This was not the first time that he had been called upon to receive the
thanks of the multitude for some unusual service he had rendered them,
or some surprising scientific feat he had successfully accomplished.
While realizing that he must of necessity yield to public adulation, it
more or less bored him.

He was not particularly interested in the crowd, either collectively
or individually, and as there were so many faces crowded into each
faceplate he made no attempt to distinguish friends from strangers.

Yet there were two faces among the numerous Telephot faceplates
that Ralph in making his brief speech, found his eyes returning to
again and again. Each occupied the whole of a respective faceplate
and while dissimilar in appearance, nevertheless were markedly alike
in expression. It was as if they were studying this great scientist,
endeavoring to fix in their minds a permanent picture of him. Ralph
sensed no animosity in their steady almost hypnotic gaze and yet they
were curiously apart from the enthusiastic throng. He felt as though he
were, to both of them, under the microscope.

One of the faces was that of a man in his early thirties. It was a
handsome face, though, to the close observer, the eyes were set just
a trifle too near together, and the mouth betrayed cunning and had a
touch of viciousness.

The other was not a Terrestrial, but a visiting Martian. It was
impossible to mistake the distinctly Martian cast of countenance. The
great black horse eyes in the long, melancholy face, the elongated
slightly pointed ears were proof enough. Martians in New York were not
sufficiently rare to excite any particular comment. Many made that city
their permanent home, although the law on the planet Earth, as well as
on Mars, which forbade the intermarriage of Martians and Terrestrials,
kept them from flocking earthwards in any great numbers.

In the applause that followed the conclusion of Ralph's words the
incident of the two pairs of scrutinizing eyes vanished from his
thoughts. But his sub-conscious self, that marvelous mechanism which
forgets nothing, had photographed them indelibly. With the plaudits of
the crowd still ringing he bowed and left the room.

He went, via the elevator, directly to his library, and asked for the
afternoon news.

His man handed him a tray on which lay a piece of material _as large as
a postage stamp_, as transparent and flexible as celluloid.

"What edition is this?" he asked.

"The 5 o'clock _New York News_,[1] sir."

Ralph took the "News" and placed it in a metal holder which was part
of the hinged door of a small box. He closed the door and turned on
a switch on the side of the box. Immediately there appeared on the
opposite white wall of the room, a twelve-column page of the _New York
News_ and the scientist, leaning back in his chair, proceeded to read.

The _New York News_ was simply a microscopic reduction of a page,
which, when enlarged by a powerful lens, became plainly visible.

Moreover, each paper had eight "pages," in separate sheets, as was the
fashion centuries ago, but eight pages literally on top of each other.
The printing process was electrolytic, no ink whatsoever being used in
the manufacture of the "newspaper." This process was invented in 1910
by an Englishman, and improved by the American 64L 52 in 2031, who made
it possible to "print" _in one operation_ eight different subjects,
_one on top of another_.

These eight impressions could be made visible only by subjecting the
"paper" to different colors, the color rays bringing out the different
prints. The seven colors of the rainbow were used, while white light
was employed to show reproduced photographs, etc., in their natural
colors. With this method it was possible to "print" a "newspaper,"
fully ten times as large in volume as any newspaper of the 21st
century, on a piece of film, the size of a postage-stamp.

Each paper published an edition every 30 minutes, and if one did not
possess a projector, one could read the "paper" by inserting the _News_
in a holder beneath a powerful lens which one carried in one's pocket,
folded when not in use. To read the eight different pages, a revolving
color screen was placed directly underneath the lens, to bring out the
different colors necessary to read the "paper."

Ralph, 124C 41+, glancing over the head-lines of his _News_, saw that
considerable space was given to his latest exploit, the paper showing
actual photographs of the Swiss Alpine scene, which a correspondent had
taken as the avalanche thundered down the mountain. The photographs
had been sent by _Teleradiograph_ immediately after the occurrence
in Switzerland, and the _News_ had printed them in all the _natural_
colors twenty minutes after Ralph had turned off the ultra-power in New
York.

These photographs seemed to be the only thing that interested Ralph,
as they showed the house and the surrounding Alps. These, with the
monstrous avalanche in progression photographed and reproduced in the
natural colors, were very impressive.

Presently he revolved the color screen of his projector to green--the
technical page of the _News_--to him the most interesting reading in
the paper.

He soon had read all that interested him, and as there was still an
hour before dinner time he began to "write" his lecture: "On the
prolongation of animal life by π-Rays."

He attached a double leather head-band to his head. At each end of
the band was attached a round metal disc that pressed closely on the
temples. From each metal disc an insulated wire led to a small square
box, the _Menograph_, or mind-writer.

He then pressed a button and a low humming was heard; simultaneously
two small bulbs began to glow with a soft green fluorescent light.
Grasping a button connected with a flexible cord to the Menograph, he
leaned back in his chair.

After a few minutes' reflection he pressed the button, and at once a
wave line, traced in ink, appeared on a narrow white fabric band, the
latter resembling a telegraph recorder tape.

The band which moved rapidly, was unrolled from one reel and rolled up
on another. Whenever the inventor wished to "write" down his thoughts,
he would press the button, which started the mechanism as well as the
recording tracer.

(Below is shown the record of a Menograph, the piece of tape being
actual size.

[Illustration:

 I  N--OLD EN--T I M  ES--]

Where the wave line breaks, a new word or sentence commences; the three
words shown are the result of the thought which expresses itself in the
words, "_In olden times_." ...)

The Menograph was one of Ralph 124C 41+'s earliest inventions, and
entirely superseded the pen and pencil. It was only necessary to press
the button when an idea was to be recorded and to release the button
when one reflected and did not wish the thought-words recorded.

Instead of writing a letter, one sent the recorded _Menotape_, and
inasmuch as the Menolphabet was universal and could be read by
anyone--children being taught it at an early age--it was considered
that this invention of Ralph's was one of his greatest gifts to
humanity: Twenty times as much work could be done by means of the
Menograph as could be done by the old-fashioned writing, which required
considerable physical effort. Typewriters soon disappeared after its
invention. Nor was there any use for stenographers, as the thoughts
were written down direct on the tape, which was sent out as a letter
was sent centuries ago.

As was his custom in the evening he worked for some hours in the
laboratory, and retired at midnight. Before he fell asleep he attached
to his head a double leather head-band with metal temple plates,
similar to the one used in connection with the Menograph.

He then called for his man, Peter, and told him to "put on" Homer's
_Odyssey_ for the night.

Peter went down to the library on the 15th floor, and took down from a
shelf a narrow box, labeled _Odyssey, Homer_. From this he extracted
a large but thin reel on which was wound a long narrow film. This
film was entirely black but for a white transparent wave-line running
through the center of it.

Peter returning to Ralph's bedroom placed the reel containing the film
in a rack and introduced the end of the film into the _Hypnobioscope_.
This wonderful instrument, invented by Ralph, transmitted the impulses
of the wave-line direct to the brain of the sleeping inventor, who
thus was made to "dream" the _Odyssey_.

It had been known for centuries that the brain could be affected during
sleep by certain processes. Thus one could be forced to dream that a
heavy object was lying on one's chest, if such an object was placed on
the sleeper's chest. Or one could be forced to dream that one's hand
was being burnt or frozen, simply by heating or cooling the sleeper's
hand.

It remained to Ralph, however, to perfect the Hypnobioscope, which
transmitted words direct to the sleeping brain, in such a manner that
everything could be remembered in detail the next morning.

This was made possible by having the impulses _act directly and
steadily on the brain_. In other words, it was the Menograph reversed,
with certain additions.

Thus, while in a passive state, the mind absorbed the impressions
quite readily and mechanically and a story "read" by means of the
Hypnobioscope left a much stronger impression than if the same story
had been read while conscious.

For thousands of years humanity had wasted half of its life during
sleep--the negative life. Since Ralph's invention, all this was
changed. Not one night was lost by anyone if anywhere possible,
conditions permitting. All books were read while one slept. _Most
of the studying was done while one slept._ Some people mastered
ten languages, during their sleep-life. Children who could not be
successfully taught in school during their hours of consciousness,
became good scholars if the lessons were repeated during their
sleep-life.

The morning "newspapers" were transmitted to the sleeping subscribers
by wire at about 5 a.m. The great newspaper offices had hundreds of
Hypnobioscopes in operation, the subscriber's wire leading to them.
The newspaper office, notified by each subscriber what kind of news is
desirable, furnished only such news. Consequently, when the subscriber
woke up for breakfast he already knew the latest news, and could
discuss it with his family, the members of which were also connected
with the newspaper Hypnobioscope.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: At the time this was written there was no newspaper of
that name.]




3

DEAD OR ALIVE?


An apologetic cough came through the entrance to the laboratory. It was
nearing one o'clock of the following day.

Several minutes later it was repeated, to the intense annoyance of the
scientist, who had left orders that he was not to be interrupted in his
work under any circumstances.

At the third "ahem!" he raised his head and stared fixedly at the empty
space between the doorjambs. The most determined optimist could not
have spelled welcome in that look.

Peter, advancing his neck around the corner until one eye met that of
his master, withdrew it hastily.

"Well, what is it?" came from the laboratory, in an irritated harsh
voice.

Peter, in the act of retreating on tiptoe, turned, and once more
cocked a solitary eye around the door-jamb. This one feature had the
beseeching look of a dog trying to convey by his expression that not
for worlds would he have got in the way of your boot.

"Beg pardon, sir, but there's a young--"

"Won't see him!"

"But, sir, it's a young lady--"

"I'm busy, get out!"

Peter gulped desperately. "The young lady from--"

At this moment Ralph pressed a button nearby, an electromagnet acted,
and a heavy plate glass door slid down from above, almost brushing
Peter's melancholy countenance, terminating the conversation summarily.

Having secured himself against further interruption Ralph returned
to the large glass box over which he had been working, and in which
one could see, through greenish vapors, a dog, across whose heart was
strapped a flat glass box filled with a metal-like substance.

The substance in the box was Radium-K. Radium, which had been known for
centuries, had the curious property of giving out heat for thousands of
years without disintegrating and without apparently obtaining energy
from any outside source.

In 2009, Anatole M610 B9, the great French physicist, found that
Radium obtained all its energy from the ether of space and proved that
Radium was one of the few substances having a very strong affinity
for the ether. Radium, he found, attracted the ether violently and
the latter surging back and forward through the Radium became charged
electrically, presenting all the other well known phenomena.

Anatole M610 B9 compared the action of Radium on the ether with that
of a magnet acting upon a piece of iron. He proved this theory by
examining a piece of pure metallic Radium in an etherless space,
whereupon it lost all its characteristics and acted like a piece of
ordinary metal.

Radium-K, as used by Ralph, was not pure Radium, but an alloy composed
of Radium and Argonium. This alloy exhibited all the usual phenomena
of pure Radium and produced great heat, but did not create burns on
animal tissue. It could be handled freely and without danger.

The dog lying in the glass box had been "dead" for three years. Just
three years previous, in the presence of twenty noted scientists Ralph
124C 41+ had exhibited a live dog and had proceeded to drain off _all_
its blood till the dog was pronounced quite dead and its heart had
stopped beating. Thereupon he had refilled the empty blood vessels of
the animal with a weak solution of Radium-K bromide, and the large
artery through which the solution was pumped into the body had been
closed.

The flat box containing Radium-K was then strapped over the dog's heart
and it was placed in the large glass case. The latter was filled with
_Permagatol_, a green gas having the property of preserving animal
tissue permanently and indefinitely. The purpose of the box containing
Radium-K was to keep the temperature of the dog's body at a fixed point.

After the case was completely filled with gas, the glass cover was
sealed in such a manner that it was impossible to open the case without
breaking the seals. The scientists had agreed to return after a lapse
of three years to witness the opening of the box.

There were several delicate instruments inside the box and these were
connected by means of wires to recording instruments on the side, and
these Ralph inspected twice each day. Throughout the three years the
"dead" dog had never stirred a muscle. His temperature had not varied
1/100 of a degree and his respiratory functions had shown no signs of
life. To all intents and purposes the dog was "dead."

The time was close at hand for the final stages of what Ralph
considered to be his greatest experiment. Three years ago when he faced
his fellow scientists at the end of the first stage of this work, he
electrified them by announcing that he expected to prove that this
dog, which they had all pronounced "dead," could be restored to life,
unharmed, unchanged, with no more effects upon the dog's spirits,
habits, and nature, than had the animal taken but a short nap.

For three years this experiment of Ralph 124C 41+ had been the subject
of innumerable scientific papers, had been discussed intermittently in
the newspapers and the date of the final phase of the great experiment
was fixed in the mind of every human being on the planet.

If the experiment succeeded it meant the prolongation of human life
over greater periods of the earth's history than had ever been
possible. It meant that premature death except through accident would
be ended.

Would he succeed? Had he attempted the impossible? Was he challenging
Nature to a combat only to be worsted?

These thoughts obtruded themselves into his consciousness as he began
the preparations for the great test of the afternoon. He pumped out
the Permagatol from the box until the green vapor had completely
disappeared. With infinite care he then forced a small quantity of
oxygen into the box. The instruments recording the action of the
respiratory organs indicated that the oxygen reaching the dog's lungs
had stimulated respiration.

This being all he could do for the present, he pressed the button
that raised the glass barrier, and summoned Peter by means of another
button.

That individual, looking a trifle more melancholy than usual, responded
at once.

"Well my boy," said Ralph good-humoredly, "the stage is all set for the
experiment that will set the whole world by the ears.--But you don't
look happy, Peter. What's troubling your dear old soul?"

Peter, whose feelings had evidently been lacerated when the door had
been lowered in his face, replied with heavy dignity.

"Beg pardon, sir, but the young lady is still waiting."

"What young lady?" asked Ralph.

"The young lady from Switzerland, sir."

"The--which?"

"The young lady from Switzerland, sir, and her father, sir. They've
been waiting half an hour."

If a bomb had exploded that instant Ralph could not have been more
astounded.

"She's here--and you didn't call me? Peter, there are times when I am
tempted to throw you out--"

"Pardon sir," replied Peter firmly, "I made bold to assume that you
might be interested in the young lady's arrival, and presumed to step
into the laboratory to so inform--"

But his master had gone, shedding his laboratory smock as he went.
Peter, gathering his dignity about him as a garment, reached the
doorway in time to see the elevator slide downwards out of sight.

And in it, Ralph, his heart thumping in a most undignified way, was
acting more like a schoolboy than a master of science. He twitched at
his tie with one hand and smoothed his hair with the other, peering
into the elevator's little mirror anxiously. Discovering a smudge on
his cheek he checked the car between floors while he wiped away the
spot with his handkerchief.

When he reached the reception room he sprang from the elevator eagerly
and hurried in. Seated by one of the windows were Alice 212B 423 and
her father. Both turned as he entered, and the girl rose to her feet
and with a charming gesture held out both hands.

"We just _had_ to come," she said prettily, and in perfect English.
"You didn't give us an opportunity to thank you yesterday, and anyhow,
we felt that telephot thanks were not nearly so nice. That is, father
thought we really ought to come in person--of course, I did, too. I
wanted to see you ever so much"--she broke off, and then, realizing
the implication of her words, went on hastily with reddened cheeks and
downcast eyes, "I mean, to--to thank you, you know."

"It was wonderful of you," he declared still holding her two hands, and
utterly unmindful of the fact that she was gently trying to disengage
them. Indeed, he was not conscious of anyone or anything but her, until
the voice of her father brought him to the realization that there was
someone else in the room.

"We need no introduction I think," said the gentleman, "but I am
James 212B 422 and I must ask you to pardon our intrusion upon a
busy scientist's time, but I felt that we should come personally to
thank you for the great service you have done us both. She is my one
daughter, sir, and I love her dearly--dearly--"

"I can quite understand that," said Ralph with an unconscious ardor
that caused Alice, who had completely recovered from her momentary
confusion, to dimple and blush delightfully.

"I'm afraid, father dear," she said, "that we are keeping a busy man
too long. Your man," she added, turning to Ralph, "said you were
engaged in a wonderful experiment, and could not be disturbed."

"Busy? Not at all," said Ralph gracelessly. "You should not have been
kept waiting one moment, and I am very indignant with Peter for not
breaking down the door. He should have known, when he saw you, that you
were not to wait."

"Oh, please, don't scold him because of me," said Alice, not, however,
at all displeased with the implied compliment.

"I didn't know yesterday that you spoke English," he said, "so I
used the language-rectifier, but I see that you speak it perfectly.
That is a great relief to me, I assure you, for I speak French very
indifferently. But tell me," he continued, "how did you get here so
soon? The afternoon transatlantic aeroliner is not due yet, and it can
hardly be twenty-four hours since you left Switzerland."

"We had the honor of being the first passengers to arrive by means of
the new _Subatlantic Tube_," said James 212B 422. "As you are doubtless
aware, the regular passenger service opens next week, but being one of
the consulting engineers of the new electromagnetic tube, my daughter
and I were permitted to make the first trip westward. We made it in
perfect safety, although it was a little risky, as some small portions
of the tube are not entirely completed."

"And we were so anxious to get here as quickly as possible," broke in
Alice with a glance at Ralph.

"But you shouldn't have risked your lives, in an untested tube," he
exclaimed. And then, the scientist in him to the front: "Tell me all
about this new tube. Busy with my own work I have not followed its
progress closely enough to know all its details."

"It has been most interesting work," said James 212B 422, "and we
regard it as quite an achievement in electrical engineering. The new
tube runs in a straight line between New York and Brest, France. If the
tube were to run straight along the bottom of the ocean the distance
between the two points would be from 3600 to 3700 miles due to the
curvature of the earth. For this reason the tube was pushed _straight
through the earth_, thereby making the distance only 3470 miles.

"You will understand it better by examining this chart," and unfolding
a plan, he proceeded to elaborate on the finer points of the tube
construction. "The greatest trouble," he went on, "our engineers
experienced near the middle of the tube; this point is 450 miles
nearer the center of the earth and the heat became very marked. It was
necessary to install large liquid-air plants at several points in the
tube to reduce the heat, and now as you ride through no heat is noticed.

"We boarded the spacious steel car, which resembles a thick cigar, at
Brest last night at midnight, and arrived at the New York terminal
at noon today. There was only one stop, a few hundred miles out from
Brest, because of several short-circuited electromagnets.

"There are no wheels to the tube car and it is propelled by magnetism
only. At each three hundred feet is stationed a powerful tubular
electromagnet, about thirty feet long, through which the tube car
passes. Each electromagnet exerts a tremendous pull upon the car
three hundred feet away, this being the only steel object, and the
car rushes toward the electromagnet with a tremendous speed. When the
car is only two feet away from this electromagnet, the current is cut
off automatically by the car itself, the latter plunging through the
open space of the magnet coil, only to be influenced now by the next
electromagnet, three hundred feet distant.

[Illustration]

"The momentum acquired by the pull of the former electromagnet propels
the car with ever-increasing speed, and by the time it has passed
through twenty-five electromagnets it has reached the speed of three
hundred miles an hour. It then continues at a steady pace till the end
of the journey.

"As the car is held suspended entirely by magnetism, there is
practically no friction whatever, as there are no wheels or rails. The
only friction is from the air, and in order that this may not heat the
car it is equipped with a double wall, the space between the inner and
outer walls being a vacuum. Consequently the temperature inside is
comfortable at all times. Once inside the car, we retired and slept
as soundly as in our swinging beds at home. There were no shocks, no
noise, no rocking--all in all the trip was so delightful, that I must
say the new tube is a decided success!"

"Fine, fine," said Ralph enthusiastically. "This new tube is going to
revolutionize intercontinental travel. I suppose it won't be long now
before we will regard our tedious twenty-four hour journeys as things
of the past. Tell me," turning to Alice who had been an interested
listener, "how did the trip impress you?"

"Oh," she exclaimed eagerly, "it was delightful! So smooth and fast! I
was so excited. Really, it was over too soon."

As she spoke Ralph watched her with keen interest. Here was a girl who
attracted him. Beneath the vivacity that so fascinated him he sensed
the strength of her character, and the depth of her mind.

"I am so glad to be in New York," she was saying. "Do you know, this
is my first visit here for ages. Why, the last time I can just barely
remember, I was such a little girl. Father has been promising me a trip
for years," with a laughingly reproachful glance at him, "but it took
an avalanche to get us started."

"I'm afraid I've been a neglectful father of late years," said her
father, "but my work has kept me tied pretty close to home. I, too,
am pleased to be here once more, and my visit promises to be doubly
interesting, for I understand that your great dog experiment will be
completed today. I am looking forward to receiving the earliest reports
of it at the hotel."

"But I can't permit you to spend your days here in a hotel," protested
Ralph. "Of course you must both be my guests. Yes, yes," as they seemed
about to demur, "I won't take no for an answer. I am counting on
showing you New York, and, as for my experiment, it will give me great
pleasure to have you both present in my laboratory this afternoon at
four."

He pressed a button. "Peter will show you to your rooms, and I will
send some one for your luggage."

"You are more than kind," said James. "This is quite unexpected,
but none the less delightful. As to attending the meeting in your
laboratory this afternoon, it is an honor, sir, that I appreciate
deeply."

At this moment Peter stepped from the elevator and Ralph, after giving
him instructions to show his guests to their apartment, and directions
as to their bags, escorted them to the car and returned to the
laboratory.

       *       *       *       *       *

Promptly at four, Ralph greeted a notable group of fellow scientists,
who had come from all corners of the planet to witness the completion
of the famous "Dead-Alive Dog" experiment. A host of reporters lined
the walls. Alice and her father were seated near Ralph.

A number of the twenty scientists who had witnessed the beginning of
the experiment three years before were dubiously contemplating the
glass box, and one or two of the reporters, unawed by the personages
in the laboratory, seven of whom were "Plus" men, seemed to find much
covert amusement in the whole affair.

Finally, when all of the preparations were completed, and Ralph's two
assistants had stationed themselves beside the glass box containing the
body, the young scientist addressed the gathering.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "you have come here to witness the
final phase of my dog experiment. The preliminary phases you observed
three years ago this day in this room. The seals you put in place are
intact, and you may see them for yourselves, untouched as you left them.

"As I explained three years ago I formulated the theory that a well
preserved animal, though dead to all intents and purposes, could be
revived, or new life given to it, provided the body had not undergone
decomposition; and also provided that none of the organs had suffered
in the least.

"I found that the rare gas Permagatol would conserve animal tissue and
animal organs indefinitely; when it is used in conjunction with a weak
solution of Radium-K bromide, mixed with antiseptic salts, no part of
an animal body would undergo any change for many years.

"I also found that the body would have to be kept at a fixed
temperature and this was possible by the use of Radium-K alloy. I am
now ready to prove my theory."

He signaled to his assistants, and with their aid, the seals were
broken and the glass cover of the case removed.

A profound silence prevailed. Every eye was focussed on the dog and
many of those present found it difficult to remain seated.

Ralph coolly and deliberately freed the dog of his bandages and
attachments and placed him on an operating table in plain view of
everyone.

From then on he and his aides moved rapidly. First the dead dog's
artery was opened and the Radium-K bromide solution drained off. A
young goat was brought in and strapped on the table, and in a very few
seconds one of its arteries had been opened and connected to the dead
dog's main artery. In less than a minute the dog's body was full of
fresh warm blood and immediately efforts were made to bring the dog
back to life.

Oxygen was freely administered and the heart was artificially pulsated
by means of an electrical vibratory apparatus.

At the same time one of the assistants had trained a vacuum tube on the
dog's head and its cathode shot the powerful F-9-Rays into the animal's
brain. No sooner had these rays, which are among the most powerful
brain stimulants, been trained on the dog than he began to show weak
signs of life. One of the hind legs was drawn up with a jerk as if in a
fit. Then came a faint heave of the chest, followed by a weak attempt
to breathe.

A few minutes later the body seemed to contract and a shiver ran
through it from head to tail. A deep respiration followed, and the
animal opened its eyes as if awakening from a long sleep.

In a few minutes more the dog was lying on its paws and licking up milk
when Ralph turned to the group and said:

"Gentlemen, the experiment is concluded and I believe the condition of
the animal at this moment establishes sufficient proof of my theory."

As the reporters eagerly dashed from the laboratory to get to the
nearest Telephot in order to communicate the news to the waiting
world the scientists gathered around Ralph and one of them, a white
haired old man considered to be the dean of the "Plus" men, voiced the
sentiment of the entire group.

"Ralph, this is one of the greatest gifts that science has brought to
humanity. For what you have done with a dog, you can do with a human
being. I only regret for myself that you had not lived and conducted
this experiment when I was a young man, that I might have, from time to
time, lived in suspended animation from century to century, and from
generation to generation as it will now be possible for human beings to
do."

The vista opened up by the results of this experiment in the minds
of the other scientists had dazed them and it was with the most
perfunctory good-byes that they left the scene of the experiment,
enveloped with their thoughts of the future.

Tired and exhausted by the nervous strain of the afternoon Ralph, a
few minutes later, lay down on his bed for a few hours' rest. But as
he closed his eyes there came to him a vivid picture of a pair of warm
dark eyes, radiating admiration, trust and something more that aroused
an emotion he had never before experienced.




4

FERNAND


On the following morning, Ralph, breakfasting alone, sent Peter to the
apartments of his guests to ascertain at what hour they would be ready
to do a little sight-seeing with him as guide.

He himself, in the habit of rising at an early hour, had not expected
to see either Alice or her father much before noon, and it was a
decided surprise to him, to see the latter enter the room a moment
after Peter had gone on his errand.

"I see that you, too, like to get up with the birds," said the
scientist after they had exchanged morning greetings.

"And Alice also, when she is at home; but the journey, and our exciting
day following it have tired her. I shall just have a bite to eat
with you, if you will permit me, and then I must be off to keep an
appointment with one of the chief engineers of the Tube."

"Then you will be unable to accompany us on our tour of the city?"

"Yes, but don't let that interfere with your plans. I know that Alice
will be safe with you," smiled her father, "and I daresay you young
people can get along very well without me."

"I'm sorry," replied Ralph, but in his heart he could not but rejoice
that he was to spend the day alone with her who, in a few short hours
had so captivated him. Perhaps something of this showed in his face,
for James 212B 422 smiled to himself.

Peter returned and presently Ralph and James were seated together at
the table. They conversed in a more or less desultory manner until just
before the end of the meal when Alice's father, laying down his napkin,
said:

"Before I leave you I have a request to make, a strange one, you may
think." He hesitated. "A short time ago I said that I felt that Alice
would be safe in your care. I had a special reason for making the
remark. The fact is, I am a little worried about her. A young man,
by name Fernand 60O 10, has been making rather a nuisance of himself
lately. He has asked her to marry him, a number of times, and she has
refused, and he has begun to force his attentions on her in a manner
which savors something of persecution.

"In fact, he went so far, four days ago, as to threaten her. Exactly
what passed between them I don't know, but I do know that, although
she treated the matter lightly at the time, she is frightened. I
have an impression that he may try to kidnap her if she does not
accept him, and though, in these enlightened days such a thing seems
ridiculous--well, the affair makes me a little nervous myself. When
we left Switzerland I understood that he was there, but he may have
followed Alice here. If he has and renews his unpleasant surveillance I
shall know that my fears have some grounds."

"What does this Fernand look like?" asked Ralph.

"Oh, a nice looking fellow--at least, the women think so. Personally,
I don't care for him. He is tall and dark, and has the sort of
temperament that seems to delight in opposition. His eyes have a
sullen expression, and his mouth is somewhat weak. She has, by the
way, another admirer, a thoroughly harmless chap, who is here on a
visit at present. He is the Martian Llysanorh' CK 1618, and he is
really hopelessly infatuated, but being, as I say, a very decent
chap who respects the law against marriage between the Martians and
Terrestrials, he has never annoyed her in any way. On the other hand
they are very good friends, and I doubt very much whether she even
suspects that he has any other feeling for her than that of a devoted
friend."

As he was speaking, a picture leapt to Ralph's mind. He saw again
two faces, each in the center of a Telephot, who, among the crowds
of applauding admirers regarded him with such intentness. If these
were the two men who cared for Alice, each in his own way, it was not
surprising that they had displayed more than a passing interest in the
man who had rescued her from what seemed to be certain death, and who
was a possible rival.

He recounted the incident to James, who agreed with him that in all
likelihood his suspicions were correct, and the two men parted for the
day, the older bearing with him the comforting reassurance that Ralph
would take care of his daughter as he would himself.

It was nearing eleven when Alice appeared, bright-eyed after her long
rest. She laughingly apologized for being so late, and they set out at
once.

"You know," he said before they started, "we New Yorkers are strange
birds. We only like our city when we are far away from it, or when we
can take some stranger about to show him or her the marvels of the
town. As a matter of fact the real, dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker hates
the town and only stays in it because it has cast a spell over him
which he cannot escape."

By this time they had arrived at the street level of the building and
Ralph bade Alice sit down on a chair in the vestibule. He pressed a
nearby button twice and a servant brought two pairs of what appeared to
be roller-skates.

In reality they were _Tele-motor-coasters_. They were made of
alomagnesium and each weighed only about one and one-half pounds. Each
had three small, rubber-covered wheels, one in front and two in the
rear. Between the wheels was a small electric motor--about the size of
a lemon; this motor could only be operated by high frequency currents
and, despite its small size, could deliver about one-quarter horsepower.

Ralph explained the coasters and their use to his companion; and after
they had put them on by means of an ingenious clutch, whereby the
coaster could be snapped onto the shoe in less than five seconds, they
both went out into the street. From each coaster a thin insulated wire
led up the wearer's back to the hat or cap. Here it was attached to the
_collector_, which was a stiff pin about eight inches long, projecting
half-way out from the hat or cap. This pin sucked up, as it were, the
high frequency electricity and carried it to the small motors, which
latter propelled the coaster. To control the speed of the motor, one
simply lifted up the front part of the coaster; this not only cut off
the current, but automatically braked the two rear wheels.

When the two rolled out in the street, Alice at once remarked upon the
splendid condition of the roads.

"You see," the scientist explained, "for centuries the city had to
content itself with temporary pavements, until about fifty years ago it
woke up and covered every street with steelonium.

"You will notice that there are no cracks or fissures. Steelonium won't
rust and is ten times as strong as steel. We now make our streets by
putting down large slabs of the metal, six inches thick. After they are
in place we weld them together electrically and the result is a perfect
street composed of a uniform sheet of metal without cracks or breaks;
no dirt or germs can collect. The sidewalks are made in the same manner.

"As a matter of fact, the Tele-motor-coasters would not be possible
were it not for the metallic streets. The flat spring which trails on
the street between the two rear wheels must make continuous contact
with the metallic 'ground,' else the current cannot flow."

"But where does the current come from?" asked the girl.

"You have perhaps noticed already the white slender posts at the edge
of the sidewalk, and on their tops umbrella-like insulators which carry
a thick spiked wire. This wire, as you see, is about fifteen feet above
the curb and carries the high frequency current which not only supplies
our coasters with power, by way of our needle collectors, but also
propels all the vehicles which you see gliding so noiselessly."

They were well under way and rolled along at a speed of about twenty
miles an hour. They passed thousands of citizens, all coasting at
high speed. There was no noise but the peculiar hum produced by the
thousands of motors, a sound which was in nowise annoying.

Each sidewalk was divided in two parts. On the outside only people
going in one direction, on the inside only people going in the opposite
direction could coast. Collisions, therefore, were impossible. If a
person rolling on the outside wished to enter a store, it was necessary
to go to the end of the block, and then turn to the left, which brought
him on the inside of the sidewalk where he could roll up to his
destination. Of course, this was only necessary when the sidewalk was
crowded, nothing preventing one's crossing it if but few people were on
the block.

The trolley car had long since become obsolete as well as the
gasoline-driven automobile. Only electromobiles carrying either
passengers or freight were to be seen. Each vehicle was equipped with
a short collector mast by means of which the electrical energy was
conveyed to the motors. The wheels of all vehicles were rubber-covered.
This accomplished two purposes: one to insulate the vehicle from the
metallic street, the other to minimize the noise to the greatest extent.

Although Alice had had a good scientific training, some of the wonders
of New York amazed her and she, as strangers had done for centuries,
asked questions continuously, while her companion eagerly explained
everything with a pleasure peculiar to the New Yorker, loving his town.

"What are those strange spiral wire affairs hanging high over all
street crossings?" was one of her first questions.

"Those illuminate our streets at night," was the answer. "They are
iridium wire spirals, about ten meters in diameter, hanging forty
meters up in the air, at the intersection of all our streets. This
evening you will see how the entire spiral will glow in a pure white
light which is absolutely cold. The wire throws out the light, and
after sundown you will find that the streets will be almost as light as
they are now. Each spiral furnishes over one-half million candlepower,
consequently one is needed only where streets intersect, except on very
long blocks, when a smaller spiral is hung in the middle."

Presently, while crossing a large square they passed Meteoro-Tower No.
26, of the seventh district, and Ralph at once launched off into praise
of it.

"While you of other countries have a good weather service, we in
New York boast of having the finest climate of any town on the face
of the globe. As you may imagine, our weather-engineers always have
difficult work, owing to the peculiar shape of the city, geographically
as well as physically. The tall spires and buildings make the work
exceptionally hard, as the air currents are extremely erratic over the
city and very hard to control. We now have sixty-eight Meteoro-Towers,
all of various power, in Consolidated New York. These are scattered
over a radius of ninety miles from the _City Governor's Building_,
and control the weather as well as the temperature of New York's two
hundred million inhabitants.

"You may look at a thermometer any time during the year and you will
find it invariably pointing at fifty units.[2] There is never an excess
of humidity in our air and life is made enjoyable for the hard-working
city dwellers, thanks to our well-trained weather engineer corps.

"During the daytime rain or snow is unheard of. There is continuous
sunshine during the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year.
Between two and three each morning it rains for exactly one hour. This
is done to freshen the air and to carry the dust away. It is the only
rain New York ever gets and it seems to be sufficient for all purposes."

When it neared noon Ralph escorted his companion to a luxurious eating
place, which across its entrance bore the name _Scienticafé_. "This
is one of our best restaurants, and I think you will prefer it to the
old-fashioned masticating places," he told her.

As they entered, a deliciously perfumed, yet invigorating fragrance
greeted them.

They proceeded at once to the _Appetizer_, which was a large room,
hermetically closed, in which sat several hundred people, reading or
talking.

The two sat down on leather-upholstered chairs and looked at a humorous
daily magazine which was projected upon a white wall, the pages of the
magazine changing from time to time.

They had been in the room but a few minutes when Alice exclaimed:

"I am ravenously hungry and I was not hungry at all when we entered.
What kind of a trick is it?"

"This is the Appetizer," Ralph exclaimed laughing, "the air in here is
invigorating, being charged with several harmless gases for the purpose
of giving you an appetite before you eat--hence its name!"

Both then proceeded to the main eating salon, which was beautifully
decorated in white and gold. There were no attendants and no waiters,
and the salon was very quiet except for a muffled, far-off, murmuring
music.

They then sat down at a table on which were mounted complicated silver
boards with odd buttons and pushes and slides. There was such a board
for each patron. From the top of the board a flexible tube hung down
to which one fastened a silver mouthpiece, that one took out of a
disinfecting solution, attached to the board. The bill of fare was
engraved in the board and there was a pointer which one moved up and
down the various food items and stopped in front of the one selected.
The silver mouthpiece was then placed in the mouth and one pressed upon
a red button. The liquid food which one selected would then begin to
flow into the mouth, its rate of speed controlled by the red button.
If spices, salt or pepper were wanted, there was a button for each
one which merely had to be pressed till the food was as palatable as
wanted. Another button controlled the temperature of the food.

Meats, vegetables, and other eatables, were all liquefied and were
prepared with utmost skill to make them palatable. When changing from
one food to another the flexible tube, including the mouthpiece, were
rinsed out with hot water, but the water did not flow out of the
mouthpiece. The opening of the latter closed automatically during the
rinsing and opened as soon as the process was terminated.

While eating they reclined in the comfortably upholstered leather
arm-chair. They did not have to use knife and fork, as was the custom
in former centuries. Eating had become a pleasure.

"Do you know," said Ralph, "it took people a long time to accept the
scientific restaurants.

"At first they did not succeed. Humanity had been masticating for
thousands of years and it was hard to overcome the inherited habit.

"However, people soon found out that scientific foods prepared in a
palatable manner in liquid form were not only far more digestible
and better for the stomach, but they also did away almost entirely
with indigestion, dyspepsia, and other ills, and people began to get
stronger and more vigorous.

"The scientific restaurants furnished only foods which were nourishing
and no dishes hard to digest could be had at all. Therein lay the
success of the new idea.

"People at first did not favor the idea because the new way of eating
did not seem as aesthetic as the old and seemed also at first devoid
of the pleasures of the old way of eating. They regarded it with a
suspicion similar to a 20th century European observing a Chinaman using
his chopsticks. This aversion, however, soon wore off as people became
used to the new mode of eating, and it is thought that the close of the
century will witness the closing of all old-fashioned restaurants.

"You will notice, however, that the liquid scientific foods are not
absolutely liquid. Some of them, especially meats, have been prepared
in such a manner that slight mastication is always necessary. This
naturally does away with the monotony of swallowing liquids all the
time and makes the food more desirable."

After their luncheon Ralph and Alice rolled "uptown," the former
explaining the various sights as they progressed. At Broadway and 389th
street, in a large square, a petrified animal stood upon a pedestal.
The girl, desiring to know what it represented, approached and read
this inscription, hewn in the stone:

 PETE

 The last Horse in Harness in the
 Streets of New York
 Died on this Spot
 June 19th, 2096 A.D.

"The poor thing," she said, "it looks so pitiful, doesn't it? To think
that once the poor dumb animals were made to labor! It is much better
nowadays with electricity doing all the work."

Ralph smiled at this very feminine remark. It was like her, he thought
tenderly, to feel sympathy for even this former beast of burden.

As they turned to leave the pedestal, the girl made an involuntary
shrinking movement toward him. He looked up and saw, advancing toward
them on Tele-motor-coasters, a tall dark man, a little younger than
himself. The newcomer ignoring Ralph utterly, rolled up to Alice.

"So you are enjoying the sights of New York," he said, with no other
greeting, and with a disagreeable smile on his lips.

"Yes," said the girl coldly, "I _was_ enjoying them, very much."

He bit his under lip in an annoyed fashion, and a dull flush mounted
to his hair. "I told you I'd follow you if you ran away," he said in a
lower tone.

Ralph, unable to catch the words, but reading a menace in the fellow's
look, stepped forward. Alice turned to him eagerly and put her hand on
his arm.

"What is next on our program, Ralph?" she asked in a clear voice,
while at the same time she pressed his wrist with her fingers as a
signal for him to go on.

As if Fernand had not existed, she moved away, her hand still on
Ralph's arm. "Please, please," she murmured as he would have turned
back.

"That fellow needs his head punched," muttered Ralph savagely.

"Don't make a scene--I just couldn't bear it," she pleaded. Looking
down at her he saw that she was on the verge of tears.

"I'm sorry," he said gently.

"I'm so ashamed," she said pathetically, "what must you think!"

"That I should go back and knock his head off," said Ralph. "But if you
ask me not to, I won't. I suppose that was Fernand?"

She looked at him in astonishment. "Do _you_ know him?"

"Your father told me."

"Oh," she said, troubled, "father shouldn't have done that. But I
suppose he was afraid of a meeting of this sort."

"How long has he been following you around?"

"Oh, for ages, it seems. Really, about a year. I never liked him, but
lately he's been perfectly horrid, and acts in such a threatening
way--you saw him. I can't see why he should take the trouble to annoy
anyone who loathes him as I do. But let's forget it. We have had such
a wonderful day that I don't want it spoiled." And then timidly, with
downcast eyes: "I called you Ralph. You must have thought me very
forward, but I wanted him to think--"

She stopped suddenly, and in confusion. And then, her natural gaiety
coming to her rescue: "Heavens, the more I say, the worse I make it,
don't I?"

"It sounded fine to me," said Ralph, falling in with her mood, "I hope
you will always call me that."

And laughing together they rolled on.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: 72° Fahrenheit.]




5

NEW YORK A.D. 2660


Being much interested in sports, she desired to know presently how the
modern New Yorker kept himself in condition and for his answer Ralph
stopped at a corner and they entered a tall, flat-roofed building. They
took off their coasters, stepped into the electromagnetic elevator and
ascended the fifty odd stories in a few seconds. At the top, they found
a large expanse on which were stationed dozens of flyers of all sizes.
There was a continuous bustle of departing and arriving aerial flyers
and of people alighting and departing.

As soon as Ralph and Alice appeared a dozen voices began to call:
"_Aerocab, sir, Aerocab, this way please!_" Ralph, ignoring them,
walked over to a two-seated flyer and assisted his companion to
the seat; he then seated himself and said briefly to the "driver,"
"_National Playgrounds_." The machine, which was very light and
operated entirely by electricity, was built of metal throughout; it
shot up into the air with terrific speed and then took a northeasterly
direction at a rate of ten miles per minute, or 600 miles per hour.

From the great height at which they were flying it was not hard to
point out the most interesting structures, towers, bridges, and wonders
of construction deemed impossible several centuries ago.

In less than ten minutes they had arrived at the National Playgrounds.
They alighted on an immense platform and Ralph, leading Alice to the
edge, where they could see the entire playgrounds, said:

"These National Playgrounds were built by the city in 2490, at the
extreme eastern end of what used to be Long Island, a few miles from
Montauk.[3] An immense area had been fitted up for all kinds of sports,
terrestrial and aquatic as well as aerial. These municipal playgrounds
are the finest in the world and represent one of New York's greatest
achievements. The City Government supplied all the various sport
paraphernalia and every citizen has the right to use it, by applying to
the lieutenants in charge of the various sections.

"There are playgrounds for the young as well as for the old, grounds
for men, grounds for the women, grounds for babies to romp about in.
There are hundreds of baseball fields, thousands of tennis courts, and
uncounted football fields and golf links. It never rains, it is never
too hot, it is never too cold. The grounds are open every day in the
year, from seven in the morning till eleven at night. After sunset, the
grounds and fields are lighted by thousands of iridium wire spirals,
for those who have to work in the daytime.

"As a matter of fact all the great baseball, tennis, and football
contests are held after sundown. The reason is apparent. During the
daytime, with the sun shining, there is always one team which has an
advantage over the other, on account of the light being in their eyes.
In the evening, however, with the powerful, stationary light overhead,
each team has the same conditions and the game can be played more
fairly and more accurately."[4]

Ralph and his companion strolled about the immense grounds watching
the players and it was not long before he discovered that she, like
himself, was enthusiastic about tennis. He asked her if she would care
to play a game with him and she acquiesced eagerly.

They walked over to the dressing building where Ralph kept his own
sport clothes. Since the girl had no tennis shoes, he secured a pair
for her in the Arcade, and they sauntered over to one of the courts.

In the game that followed, Ralph, an expert at tennis, was too
engrossed in the girl to watch his game. Consequently, he was beaten
from start to finish. He did not see the ball, and scarcely noticed the
net. His eyes were constantly on Alice, who, indeed, made a remarkably
pretty picture. She flung herself enthusiastically into her game, as
she did with everything else that interested her. She was the true
sport-lover, caring little whether she won or not, loving the game for
the game itself.

Her lovely face was flushed with the exercise, and her hair curled into
damp little rings, lying against her neck and cheeks in soft clusters.
Her eyes, always bright, shone like stars. Now and again they met
Ralph's in gay triumph as she encountered a difficult ball.

He had never imagined that anyone could be so graceful. Her lithe and
flexible figure was seen to its best advantage in this game requiring
great agility.

Ralph, under this bombardment of charms, was spellbound. He played
mechanically, and, it must be admitted, wretchedly. And he was so
thoroughly and abjectly in love that he did not care. To him, but one
thing mattered. He knew that unless he could have Alice life itself
would not matter to him.

He felt that he would gladly have lost a hundred games when she at last
flung down her racket, crying happily: "Oh, I won, I won, didn't I?"

"You certainly did," he cried. "You were wonderful!"

"I'm a little bit afraid you let me win," she pouted. "It really wasn't
fair of you."

"You were fine," he declared. "I was hopelessly outclassed from the
beginning. You have no idea how beautiful you were," he went on,
impulsively. "More beautiful than I ever dreamed anyone could be."

Before his ardent eyes she drew back a little, half pleased, half
frightened, and not a little confused.

Sensing her embarrassment he instantly became matter-of-fact.

"Now," he said, "I am going to show you the source of New York's light
and power."

A few minutes later, after both had changed their shoes, they were
again seated in an aerocab and a twenty minute journey brought them
well into the center of what was formerly New York state.

They alighted on an immense plain on which twelve monstrous
Meteoro-Towers, each 1,500 feet high, were stationed. These towers
formed a hexagon inside of which were the immense _Helio-Dynamophores_,
or Sun-power-generators.

The entire expanse, twenty kilometers square, was covered with glass.
Underneath the heavy plate glass squares were the photo-electric
elements which transformed the solar heat _direct_ into electric
energy.

The photo-electric elements, of which there were 400 to each square
meter, were placed in large movable metal cases, each case containing
1,600 photo-electric units.

Each metal case in turn was movable, and mounted on a kind of large
tripod in such a manner that each case from sunrise to sunset presented
its glass plate directly to the sun. The rays of the sun, consequently,
struck the photo-electric elements always vertically, never obliquely.
A small electric motor inside of the tripod moved the metal case so as
to keep the plates always facing the sun.

In order that one case might not take away the light from the one
directly behind it, all cases were arranged in long rows, each
sufficiently far away from the one preceding it. Thus shadows from one
row could not fall on the row behind it.

At sunrise, all cases would be almost vertical, but at this time
very little current was generated. One hour after sunrise, the plant
was working to its full capacity; by noon all cases would be in a
horizontal position, and by sunset, they again would be in an almost
vertical position, in the opposite direction, however, from that of
the morning. The plant would work at its full capacity until one hour
before sunset.

Each case generated about one hundred and twenty kilowatts almost
as long as the sun was shining, and it is easily understood what an
enormous power the entire plant could generate. In fact, this plant
supplied all the power, light, and heat for entire New York. One-half
of the plant was for day use, while the other half during daytime
charged the chemical gas-accumulators for night use.

In 1909 Cove of Massachusetts invented a thermo-electric
Sun-power-generator which could deliver ten volts and six amperes, or
one-sixtieth kilowatt in a space of twelve square feet. Since that
time inventors by the score had busied themselves to perfect solar
generators, but it was not until the year 2469 that the Italian 63A
1243 invented the photo-electric cell, which revolutionized the entire
electrical industry. This Italian discovered that by derivatives of
the Radium-M class, in conjunction with Tellurium and Arcturium, a
photo-electric element could be produced which was strongly affected by
the sun's ultra-violet rays and in this condition was able to transform
heat _direct_ into electrical energy, without losses of any kind.

After watching the enormous power plant for a time Alice remarked:

"We, of course, have similar plants across the water but I have never
seen anything of such magnitude. It is really colossal. But what gives
the sky above such a peculiar black tint?"

"In order not to suffer too great losses from atmospheric
disturbances," Ralph explained, "the twelve giant Meteoro-Towers which
you notice are working with full power as long as the plant is in
operation. Thus a partial vacuum is produced above the plant and the
air consequently is very thin. As air ordinarily absorbs an immense
amount of heat, it goes without saying that the Helio-Dynamophore plant
obtains an immensely greater amount of heat when the air above is very
clear and thin. In the morning the towers direct their energy toward
the East in order to clear the atmosphere to a certain extent, and in
the afternoon their energy is directed toward the West for the same
purpose. For this reason, this plant furnishes fully thirty per cent
more energy than others working in ordinary atmosphere."

As it was growing late they returned to the city, traversing the
distance to Ralph's home in less than ten minutes.

Alice's father arrived a few minutes later, and she told him of the
delightful time she had had in the company of their distinguished host.

Shortly after they had dined that evening Ralph took his guests down
to his _Tele-Theater_. This large room had a shallow stage at one end,
with proscenium arch and curtain, such as had been in use during the
whole history of the drama. At the rear of the room were scattered a
number of big upholstered chairs.

When they had seated themselves, Ralph gave Alice a directory of the
plays and operas that were being presented that night.

"Oh, I see they are playing the French comic opera, _La Normande_, at
the National Opera tonight," she exclaimed. "I have heard and read much
of it. I should like to hear it so much."

"With the greatest of pleasure," Ralph replied. "In fact, I have not
heard it myself. My laboratory has kept me so busy, that I have missed
the Opera several times already. There are only two performances a week
now."

He walked over to a large switchboard from which hung numerous cords
and plugs. He inserted one of the plugs into a hole labeled "National
Opera." He then manipulated several levers and switches and seated
himself again with his guests.

In a moment, a gong sounded, and the lights were gradually dimmed.
Immediately afterward, the orchestra began the overture.

A great number of loud-speaking telephones were arranged near the
stage, and the acoustics were so good that it was hard to realize that
the music originated four miles away at the National Opera House.

When the overture was over, the curtain rose on the first act.
Directly behind it several hundred especially constructed Telephots
were arranged in such a manner as to fill out the entire space of the
shallow stage. These telephots were connected in series and were all
joined together so cleverly that no break or joint was visible in the
rear part of the stage. The result was that all objects on the distant
stage of the National Opera were projected full size on the composite
Telephot plates on the Tele-Theater stage. The illusion was so perfect
in all respects that it was extremely hard to imagine that the actors
on the Telephot stage were not real flesh and blood. Each voice could
be heard clearly and distinctly, because the transmitters were close to
the actors at all times and it was not necessary to strain the ear to
catch any passages.

Between the acts Ralph explained that each New York playhouse now had
over 200,000 subscribers and it was as easy for the Berlin and Paris
subscribers to hear and see the play as for the New York subscriber. On
the other hand, he admitted that the Paris and Berlin as well as the
London playhouses had a large number of subscribers, local as well as
long distance, but New York's subscription list was by far the largest.

"Can you imagine," mused Alice, "how the people in former centuries
must have been inconvenienced when they wished to enjoy a play? I was
reading only the other day how they had to prepare themselves for the
theater hours ahead of time. They had to get dressed especially for the
occasion and even went so far as to have different clothes in which to
attend theaters or operas. And then they had to ride or perhaps walk to
the playhouse itself. Then the poor things, if they did not happen to
like the production, had either to sit all through it or else go home.
They probably would have rejoiced at the ease of our Tele-Theaters,
where we can switch from one play to another in five seconds, until we
find the one that suits us best.

"Nor could their sick people enjoy themselves seeing a play, as we can
now. I know when I broke my ankle a year ago, I actually lived in the
Tele-Theater. I cannot imagine how I could have dragged through those
dreary six weeks in bed without a new play each night. Life must have
been dreadful in those days!"

"Yes, you are right," Ralph said. "Neither could they have imagined in
their wildest dreams the spectacle I witnessed a few days ago.

"I happened to be passing this room and I heard such uproarious
laughter that I decided to see what caused it all. Entering unnoticed,
I found my ten-year-old nephew 'entertaining' half-a-dozen of his
friends. The little rascal had plugged into a matinee performance of
'Romeo and Juliet' playing at the 'Broadway'--in English of course.
He then plugged in at the same time into _Der Spitzbub_, a farce
playing that evening in Berlin, and to this, for good measure, he added
_Rigoletto_ in Italian, playing at the 'Gala' in Milan.

"The effect was of course horrible. Most of the time, nothing but a
Babel of voices and music could be heard; but once in a while a single
voice broke through the din, followed immediately by another one in a
different language. The funniest incident was when, at the 'Broadway,'
Juliet called: _Romeo, Romeo, where art thou, Romeo?_, and a heavy
comedian at the Berlin Theatre howled: _Mir ist's Wurst, schlagt ihn
tot!_

"Of course, everything on the stage was blurred most of the time, but
once in a while extremely ludicrous combinations resulted between some
of the actors at the various theaters, which were greeted with an
uproar by the youngsters."

As he concluded the anecdote the curtain rose once more, and the
audience of three settled back to enjoy the second act of the opera.

Later, when it was all over, they went down to the street floor at
Ralph's suggestion, where they put on their Tele-motor-coasters,
preparatory to seeing more of New York--this time by night.

The party proceeded to roll down Broadway, the historic thoroughfare of
New York. Despite the fact that it was 11 o'clock at night, the streets
were almost as light as at noonday. They were illuminated brilliantly
by the iridium spirals, hanging high above the crossings. These
spirals gave forth a pure, dazzling-white light of the same quality as
sunlight. This light moreover was absolutely cold, as all electrical
energy was transformed into light, none being lost in heat. Not a
street was dark--not even the smallest alley.

James 212B 422, as well as his daughter, lingered over the superb
displays in the various stores and they entered several to make a few
purchases. Alice was much impressed with the automatic-electric packing
machines.

The clerk making the sale placed the purchased articles on a metal
platform. He then pushed several buttons on a small switchboard, which
operated the "size" apparatus to obtain the dimensions of the package.
After the last button was pressed, the platform rose about two feet,
till it disappeared into a large metal, box-like contrivance. In about
ten to fifteen seconds it came down again bearing on its surface a neat
white box with a handle at the top, _all in one piece_. The box was
not fastened with any strings or tape, but was folded in an ingenious
manner so that it could not open of its own accord. Moreover, it was
made of _Alohydrolium_, which is the lightest of all metals, being
one-eighth the weight of aluminum.

The automatic packing machine could pack anything from a small package
a few inches square up to a box two feet high by three feet long. It
made the box to suit the size of the final package, placed the articles
together, packed them into the box which was not yet finished, folded
the box after the handle had been stamped out, stenciled the firm's
name on two sides and delivered it completely packed, all within ten to
fifteen seconds.

The box could either be taken by the purchaser or the clerk would
stencil the customer's name and address into the handle, place a
triangular packet-post stamp on the box and drop it into a chute beside
the counter. It was carried down into the _Packet-Post Conveyor_,
which was from seventy-five to one hundred feet below the level of the
street, where it landed on a belt-like arrangement moving at the rate
of five miles an hour. The action was entirely automatic and the chute
was arranged with an automatic shutter which would only open when there
was no package immediately below on the moving belt. This precluded
the possibility of packages tumbling on top of each other and in this
way blocking the conveyor tube.

When the package had landed on the conveyor belt it traveled to the
nearest _distributor office_, where the post office clerk would take it
from the belt and see if it was franked correctly. The stamp was then
machine cancelled and after the clerk had noted the address he routed
it to the sub-station nearest to the addressee's home. Next he clamped
onto the package an automatic metal "rider" which was of a certain
height, irrespective of the size of the package.

The package with its rider was placed on an express conveyor belt
traveling at the rate of 25 miles an hour. This express belt, bearing
the package, moved at an even speed, and never stopping, passed
numerous sub-stations on the way. At the correct sub-station the rider
came against a contact device stretching across the belt at right
angles, at a certain height. This contact arrangement closed the
circuit of a powerful electromagnet placed in the same line with the
contact, a few feet away from the express belt. The electromagnet acted
immediately on the metal package (Alohydrolium is a magnetic metal),
drawing it in a flash into the sub-station from the belt. If there was
another package right behind the one so drawn out, it was handled in
the same manner.

After the package had arrived at the sub-station it was despatched
to its final destination. Another rider was attached to it and the
package placed on a local conveyor belt passing by the house to which
it was addressed. On arriving at the correct address its rider would
strike the contact overhead, which operated the electromagnet, pulling
the package into the basement of the house, where it fell on the
platform of an electric dumb-waiter. The dumb-waiter started upward
automatically and the package was delivered at once.

By this method a package could be delivered in the average space
of forty minutes from the time of purchase. Some packages could be
delivered in a much shorter time and others which had to travel to the
city limits took much longer.

"How wonderful!" Alice exclaimed after Ralph had explained the system.
"It must have taken decades to build such a stupendous system."

"No, not quite," was the reply. "It was built gradually by an enormous
number of workers. The tubes are even now extended almost daily to keep
pace with the growth of the city."

From the stores Ralph took his guests to the roof of an aerocab stand
and they boarded a fast flyer.

"Take us about 10,000 feet up," Ralph instructed the driver.

"You haven't much time," the man answered, "at 12 o'clock all cabs must
be out of the air."

"Why?"

"Today is the 15th of September, the night of the aerial carnival, and
it's against the law to go up over New York until it's all over. You
have twenty-five minutes left, however, if you wish to go up."

"I forgot all about this aerial carnival," said Ralph, "but twenty-five
minutes will be time enough for us if you speed up your machine."

The aerial flyer rose quickly and silently. The objects below seemed to
shrink in size and within three minutes the light became fainter.

In ten minutes an altitude of twelve thousand feet had been reached,
and as it became too cold, Ralph motioned to the driver not to rise
further.

The spectacle below them was indescribably beautiful. As far as the
eye could see was a broad expanse studded with lights, like a carpet
embroidered with diamonds. Thousands of aerial craft, their powerful
searchlights sweeping the skies, moved silently through the night, and
once in a while an immense transatlantic aerial liner would swish by at
a tremendous speed.

Most beautiful of all, as well as wonderful, were the _Signalizers_.
Ralph pointed them out to his guests, saying:

"In the first period of aerial navigation large electric lamps forming
figures and letters were placed on housetops, and in open fields
that the aerial craft above might better find their destinations.
To the traffic flying 5,000 feet or higher such signals were wholly
inadequate, as they could not be correctly read at such a distance.
Hence the signalizers. These are powerful searchlights of the most
advanced type, mounted on special buildings. They are trained skyward
and shoot a powerful shaft of light directly upward. No aerial craft
is allowed to cross these light shafts. Each shaft gives a different
signal; thus the signalizer in Herald Square is first white; in ten
seconds it changes to red and in another ten seconds it becomes yellow.
Even an aerial liner at sea can recognize the signal and steer directly
into the Herald Square pier, without being obliged to hover over the
city in search of it. Some signalizers have only one color, flashing
from time to time. Others more important use two searchlights at one
time, like the one at Sandy Hook. This signalizer has two light shafts,
one green and one red; these do not change colors, nor do they light
periodically."

From on high Ralph's guests marveled at these signalizers, which
pierced the darkness all around them. It was a wonderful sight and the
weird beauty of the colored shafts thrilled Alice immeasurably.

"Oh, it is like a Fairyland," she exclaimed. "I could watch it forever."

But presently the aerocab was descending rapidly and in a few minutes
the strong light from below had obliterated the light shafts. As
the craft drew closer the streets could be seen extending for miles
like white ribbons and the brilliantly lighted squares stood out
prominently. They landed, at the stroke of twelve, and Ralph found
three unoccupied chairs on the top of one of the public buildings and
only then did they notice that hundreds of people were seated, watching
the sky expectantly.

At the last stroke of twelve, all the lights below went out and
simultaneously the light shafts of all the searchlights. Everything was
plunged in an utter darkness.

Suddenly overhead at a great height the flag of the United States in
immense proportions was seen. It was composed of 6,000 flyers, all
together in the same horizontal plane. Each flyer was equipped with
very powerful lights on the bottom, some white, some red, others blue.
Thus an immense flag in its natural colors was formed and so precisely
did the flyers co-operate that, although they all were at least 50 feet
from each other, the appearance to those below was that of an unbroken
silk flag, illuminated by a searchlight. The immense flag began to
move. It passed slowly overhead, describing a large circle, so that the
entire population below obtained a perfect view.

Everyone applauded the demonstration. Then as suddenly as it had
appeared the flag vanished and all was once more in darkness. Ralph
explained to his guests that the lights of each one of the aerial
flyers had been shut off simultaneously in preparation for the next
spectacle.

All at once there was seen an enormous colored circle which revolved
with great rapidity, becoming smaller and smaller, as though it were
shrinking. Finally it became a colored disc, whirling rapidly on its
axis. In a few seconds, the edge opened and a straight line shot out,
the disc unrolling like a tape measure. After a few minutes more, there
remained nothing of the disc. It had resolved itself into a perfectly
straight many-hued line, miles long. Then the lights went out again.
The next spectacle was a demonstration of the solar system. In the
center a large sun was seen standing still. Next to the "sun" a small
red round globe spun rapidly about it, representing the planet Mercury.
Around both the sun and the "planet" Mercury revolved another globe,
blue in color; this was Venus. Then followed a white orb, the "Earth"
with the moon turning about it. Next came the red planet Mars with
its two small moons, then green Jupiter and its moons, and Saturn in
yellow. Uranus was orange and lastly came Neptune in pink, all globes
and their moons traveling in their proper orbits around the "sun."[5]
While the spectacle was in progress a white "comet" with a long tail
traveled across the paths of the planets, turned a sharp corner around
the "sun," its tail always pointing away from that body, recrossed the
orbits of the "planets" again on the other side and lost itself in the
darkness.

Several other spectacles were presented, each more superb than the one
preceding it. The carnival closed with a light-picture of the Planet
Governor. This was exhibited for fully five minutes during which time
the applause was continuous.

"We have never seen such a marvelous spectacle," James 212B 422
declared. "You Americans still lead the world. Upon my word, the old
saying that 'Nothing is impossible in America,' still holds good."

It was after one when they reached the house, and Ralph suggested a
light lunch before they retired for what remained of the night. The
others assented and Ralph led the way to the _Bacillatorium_.

The Bacillatorium, invented in 2509 by the Swede 1A 299, was a small
room, the walls and bottom of which were composed of lead. On each of
the four sides were large vacuum bulbs on pedestals. These tubes, a
foot in height and about six inches thick and two feet in diameter,
were each equipped with a large concave Radio-arcturium cathode. The
glass of the tube in front of the cathode had a double wall, the space
between being filled with helium gas.

The rays emanating from the cathode, when the tube was energized with
high oscillatory currents, were called _Arcturium Rays_ and would
instantly destroy any bacilli exposed to them for a few seconds.
Arcturium Rays, like X-rays, pass through solid objects, and when used
alone burned the tissue of the human body. It was found, however, that
by filtering arcturium rays through helium no burns would result, but
any germ or bacillus in or on the body would be killed at once.

The Bacillatorium was prescribed by law and each citizen ordered to
use it at least every other day, thus making it impossible for the
human body to develop contagious diseases. As late as the 20th century
more than half the mortality was directly attributable to diseases
communicated by germs or bacilli.

The Bacillatorium eradicated such diseases. The arcturium rays,
moreover, had a highly beneficial effect on animal tissue and the
enforced use of the Bacillatorium extended the span of human life to
between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and forty years, where
in former centuries three score and ten was the average.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Since this was written a national playground has actually
been created at Montauk, L.I. A rather strange coincidence.]

[Footnote 4: At the time this was written, no illuminated, night time
sports fields existed.]

[Footnote 5: In 1911 the outer planet Pluto had as yet not been
discovered.]




6

"GIVE US FOOD"


The following day was set aside for a visit to the Accelerated Plant
Growing Farms. It had been known for hundreds of years that certain
plants, such as mushrooms, could be fully developed in a few days.
Plant or vegetables grown under glass and the temperature within kept
at a high point, would grow at great speed and be ready for the market
long before those grown in the open.

But only recently, as Ralph explained to Alice, had it been possible
to do this on a large scale. To be sure, certain vegetables, like
asparagus, lettuce, peas, etc., had been produced in hothouses for
hundreds of years, but these, after all, were rather luxuries, and
could not be classed as essentials.

When, about the year 2600, the population of the planet had increased
tremendously and famines due to lack of such essentials as bread and
potatoes had broken out in many parts of the world, it was found
vitally necessary to produce such necessities on a larger scale and
with unfailing regularity. These farms became known under the term of
Accelerated Plant Growing Farms and were located in every part of the
world. The first (and now obsolete) European and African farms were
built along the lines of the old-fashioned hothouses. The European
farms were simply horizontal steel-latticed roofs, with ordinary glass
panes, permitting the sunlight to penetrate to the soil beneath. While
covering huge acreages, they were not heated artificially, using only
the sun's rays to accelerate plant growth. As compared with Nature's
single crop of wheat or corn, two could be made to grow in the same
season by means of these super hothouses.

Similar farms were used in America until Ralph undertook their study
and approached the subject from a scientific angle. One of his first
efforts was to obtain greater heat for these huge hothouses. One of
these hothouses is about three miles long and the same width. Ralph
took the existing hothouses, which were simply oblong steel and glass
boxes, and built a second hothouse box covering each of them, thus
creating a double-walled, air-locked hothouse. The second glass-paneled
wall was about two feet inside the outer one. This left dead air locked
between the walls, and as air is a poor heat conductor, the heat in the
hothouse was retained longer, particularly during a cold night.

Ralph and Alice left early in the morning, winging their way in an
aeroflyer toward northern New York, where there were many Accelerated
Plant Growing Farms. When the farms came into view, the entire country
below, so far as the eye could see, appeared to be dotted with the
glass-covered roofs of the plants, reflecting the sunlight and
affording an unusual sight. Alice marveled at their number, for while
she had seen some of these farms in Europe, she had never seen so many
grouped together of such immensity.

Within a few minutes, they landed near one of the giant hothouses. The
manager led them inside of the farm labeled No. D1569.

D1569 was exclusively a wheat growing farm. Where Mother Nature used
to grow one crop of wheat a year, Ralph's latest Accelerator made
it possible to grow four, and sometimes five crops a year. In the
old-fashioned European farms such as Alice knew, only two crops could
be grown.

"How is it possible," she asked, "that you can obtain three more crops
a year than we do in Europe?"

"In the first place," said Ralph, "it may be taken as an axiom that the
more heat you supply to plant growth, the quicker it will grow. Cold
and chilly winds retard plant growth. Electricity and certain chemicals
increase the ratio of growth, a fact that has been known for many
centuries. It is, however, the scientific application of this knowledge
that makes it possible to raise five crops a year. The European farms
use only the heat of the sun to stimulate plant growth, but during the
night, when the temperature drops, growth is practically nil.

"Notice that the top and sides of our hothouses have two walls. In
other words, one hothouse is built within another. The air locked
between the two hothouses is an excellent heat insulator and even
though the sun is low at 4 o'clock, the temperature is practically
unchanged in the hothouse, at 8 or 9 o'clock in the evening. Even in
the winter, when the sun sets about 4 o'clock and it is cold, we are
able to store up enough heat during the day to keep a high temperature
as late as 7 and 8 o'clock. If we did nothing between the hours of 8
in the evening and 8 in the morning, the temperature would continue to
fall to a point where no plant growth would be possible.

"Here in America we had to have a greater production to supply our
huge population. It was a pure case of necessity. So we had to employ
artificial heating during the night.

"If we start sinking a shaft into the earth, the heat increases rapidly
as we go down--more quickly in some parts of the world than others. On
an average, the temperature rises about one degree Fahrenheit each 100
feet of depth. We found it economic, therefore, to use the earth's own
heat to heat our farms.

"By means of high speed drills, we can cut a three-foot shaft 3,000
feet deep in the earth in less than a month. We go down until we strike
a temperature around 100 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Then we lower steel
tanks into the cavity and run pipes up to the surface. The tanks are
filled with water and two larger pipes run from each tank into the
circulating system of pipes, around the lower walls throughout the
length and breadth of the farms. The shafts are then closed at the top
and we have a circulating system that is both cheap and efficient. The
hot water continually rises into the pipes and circulates. As it cools,
it flows down again into the tanks, where it is reheated and rises
again. Thus the temperature of our farms is uniform all the year around
and plant growth is as rapid during the night as during the day.

"Heat alone, however, is not sufficient. We should still get only a
normal growth. We wanted five crops a year. I put my research forces
to work studying fertilizers. While the old nitrogen fertilizers were
excellent, they were not suitable for high pressure, high speed growing
methods. We evolved chemicals which were both cheap and easy to apply.
We found that small quantities of _Termidon_, when mixed with water and
sprayed over the field by overhead sprayers, which you will see running
along the ceiling, would accelerate the growth of the crops enormously.

"This liquid Termidon is sprayed over the entire length and breadth of
the field before planting time, so that the soil becomes well soaked.
The Termidon immediately turns the soil into a rich, dark strata, the
best soil for potatoes, wheat, or corn. No other fertilizer need be
used, the Termidon, applied after every growth, giving the soil all the
vitality necessary."

They were now in the field, when suddenly Alice asked:

"What is the peculiar tingling in the soles of my feet, I feel as we
walk along? You are using some electrical vibrations, I suppose."

"You guessed correctly," Ralph replied. "With all our artifice the
speed of the plant growth had not been accelerated sufficiently. I
therefore insulated the inside hothouse from the ground. The inside
hothouse rests upon glass blocks, and is electrified by high frequency
currents. The entire area is sprayed day and night with a high
frequency current, in the use of which we found was the real secret of
driving plant growth ahead at enormous speed. The theory of course is
nothing new, having been known for centuries. What is new, however, is
the way it is done. It makes all the difference in the world if the
current density is too high or too low, if it is direct or alternating
current, and many other details. I found that the quickest way to
accelerate plant growth by electricity was to send the current from
the growing plant toward the ceiling, and the current must be direct,
pulsating, but not alternating."

Ralph asked for a discharge pole from one of the attendants. It was
a metal pole about seven and a half feet high. In the middle it had a
long glass handle which Ralph grasped. He then set the pole vertically
so that its top was about six inches from the glass ceiling. A roar of
fine sparks leaped from the steel frame of the ceiling to the top of
the pole.

"See," said Ralph, "there is the current we use in accelerating the
growth of our plants."

Removing the pole, Ralph continued: "The electrical current density per
square foot is not very high and the wheat does not get a very great
amount of electricity during the twenty-four hours. _The continuance of
the force applied is what counts._"

After luncheon, during which they ate some of the bread made from wheat
grown on the premises, they went to an adjoining farm, also a wheat
farm, where harvesting was in full progress. Machinery, suspended from
overhead tracks, cut the wheat rapidly with circular scythes. All
the wheat being of the same height, the machine cut the wheat almost
directly below the heads, dropped them on a conveyor, which carried
the real harvest to a central distribution point. Another machine
immediately followed the cutter, grasping the stalks that were still
standing, unerringly _pulled out the straw hulks_, roots and all.
Thus the roots were entirely removed and the soil loosened, obviating
plowing. Within a few hours following cutting, the last stem was out.
The field was then sprayed with the liquid Termidon from overhead.
Within another three hours, sowing began, also from overhead pipes.

Going to an adjoining plant, they saw a bare field with almost black
soil, ready to be sowed. An attendant, at Ralph's request, pulled a
switch and immediately Alice witnessed a seed rain from the overhead
pipes.

"The seed," Ralph explained, "is supplied to these tubes by means of
compressed air. The tubes are perforated, and when air pressure is
applied, the seed, flowing through the tubes is ejected evenly--just
so many seeds to a given area. Closing the openings of the pipes
automatically as the seeding proceeds, means only a given quantity
of seed will fall upon any given square foot of soil. This makes for
scientific planting, and we raise just the exact quantity of wheat we
want."

Alice watched the seed rain spellbound. Like a wall of rain it slowly
receded into the distance until finally it disappeared. "How long does
it take to sow this field?" she asked.

"From two to three hours, depending upon the size of the field. This
particular field is about eight miles long and three miles wide. The
process should be completed within about three and a half hours."

"And when will this crop be ready for the harvest?" Alice wanted to
know.

"In about seventy days from now the wheat will be ready to cut."

Alice walked along thoughtfully and then inquired whether the great
cost of such an undertaking would not make the growing of the
foodstuffs prohibitive.

"Quite the contrary," Ralph replied. "We are now growing wheat, corn,
potatoes, and many other foodstuffs, for a much lower price than
our ancestors did five or six hundred years ago. You see, it is the
installation of the hothouses and machinery that is costly, but these
glass and steel buildings will last for centuries with proper care.
The frames are made of non-rusting steel which needs no painting. The
glass lasts for hundreds of years. The labor we use in planting and
harvesting is a mere fraction of what was used in olden times. Thus,
for sowing and harvesting this plant, eight by three miles, we require
only twenty people. This is a very much smaller number than was used on
a small old-fashioned farm.

"We waste nothing. We have no poor crops, and we get three or four
times as much as our ancestors did."

They stepped up to a glass case containing samples of wheat grown for
hundreds of years, showing that a head of wheat grown in the year 1900
was about three inches long, while the present year's crop showed a
length of more than six inches, or twice as much flour content per
stalk. Ralph also pointed out to Alice that the modern wheat stalk
was much bigger in circumference than the ancient ones, which, he
explained, was attributable to the greater weight of the modern wheat.
The old stalks could not possibly have supported such a great weight of
grain, so it was necessary to cultivate bigger stalks.

Ralph went on: "As I said before, we waste nothing here. The harvested
hulks go to a paper mill, a few miles away, and are converted into a
first class paper. A few decades ago an entirely new paper process was
invented. Where straw was once used for making so-called strawboard or
cardboard, the finest commercial papers are now being made from the
straw grown right here. We no longer annihilate our forests, to make
paper pulp. Since the invention of the straw paper process, chopping
trees for paper purposes has been forbidden and all the paper in this
country is now made exclusively of straw chemically treated."

A potato farm was seen the same afternoon. The processes in this
and other vegetable growing plants being under somewhat different
conditions than the wheat farm.

It was dark when Alice and Ralph returned to wheat farm No. D1569, and
found that the manager of the plant had prepared an elaborate supper
for the two, informing Alice that _everything_ set before her had been
grown the same day. The whole wheat bread had been harvested that
morning, the grains had been artificially aged by heat, flour had been
made, and the bread had just been baked. He said, somewhat proudly,
that this was probably a record.

The entire meal consisted of vegetables, all grown in plants in the
vicinity. There were fresh peas, fresh asparagus, new potatoes, fresh
lettuce, juicy apples, and many delicacies.

For dessert the manager brought in, on a great silver tray, a number
of new crossfoods, which as yet had not been seen in the open market.
There was, the _appear_, a cross between an apple and a pear, which
had all the good qualities of the apple and all the good qualities of
the pear. There was also a delightful combination of plum and cherry,
a cantaloupe with a faint taste of orange, and cherries as big as a
good-sized plum.

Tea was served from tea leaves grown in one of the farms and harvested
the same day. The manager also showed Alice cigarettes and set before
Ralph a box of cigars, made from tobacco planted and harvested that
day. The leaves had been aged rapidly by dry heat in a partial vacuum.

Both thanked the manager for the novel treat. After dining they walked
into the wheat growing farm. It was now dark outside, but in the
hothouse, the wheat for miles and miles seemed to be aglow in a light
purple haze. A faint half-crackling, half-swishing sound was heard. The
points of the wheat seemed to be almost luminous.

"This is the night appearance of the electricity you felt this
afternoon," said Ralph. "During the daytime you do not see the faint
discharge, but in darkness it becomes luminous. One pole of the high
frequency generator is connected with the soil and the other with the
steel framework of the hothouse. Without this electric current we would
not be able to grow more than two, or at the utmost, three crops a year.

"It is also necessary to vary the strength of the current during
the day. With full sunshine and maximum heat we do not need as much
current as we use during the night. Several hundred years ago when
using somewhat similar methods that had not as yet been perfected, it
was necessary to use artificial light during the night, as plants need
light for growth. We found, however, that the electric current with the
soft light which you see glowing now, is sufficient for the purpose and
the plant does not require any other light."

Alice stood for many minutes silently watching the beautiful sight of
the glowing purple field, listening to the faint crackling discharge of
the electric current as it leaped from the points of the wheat into the
air. They finally left and flew back to New York.

The next day, Ralph took Alice to one of the city's Synthetic Food
Laboratories. While flying toward it, Ralph explained that while the
farms which they had looked over yesterday were for the purpose of
raising real foodstuffs, there were many commodities that could not be
so raised, such as sugar, milk, and many others, which were now made
synthetically. As chemists had known for many hundreds of years, sugar
was nothing but a simple carbohydrate, whereas milk was composed of
an emulsified mixture of casein, lactic acid, butter, water and minor
constituents.

As the population increased, it was neither possible, nor profitable
to obtain these foods by natural means, and it was found necessary to
resort to the chemist.

They alighted at one of these chemical laboratories which manufactured
sugar, milk, cooking fats, butter and cheese.

There was really not much to see, save large boiler-like chemical
retorts, large white enameled vats, and a lot of pumps and electric
motors. The manager explained that sugar was made out of sawdust and
acids. The sawdust, he explained, was digested in the huge white
enameled steel vats by means of certain acids. After the digesting
process was completed other chemicals were added, the ensuing syrup
then being run through retorts and finally emerging as a stream of
white liquid sugar.

The manager handed Alice a piece of clear, transparent sugar, as well
as several specimens of crystallized sugar, which she ate delightedly,
exclaiming laughingly that "it was the best sawdust she had ever eaten."

They next visited the synthetic milk section, where hundreds of
thousands of gallons of milk were produced every day. This being a
recent discovery the manager explained it in detail.

"Milk," he said, "has been known since the dawn of humanity, but only
when man became somewhat civilized did he learn how to obtain milk from
animals, such as the goat and the cow. It took thousands of years to
domesticate these animals, and it is not known at what period man first
began to milk these domestic animals for his own supply of milk.

"Men of an inquisitive nature must have asked themselves the question
for thousands of years, 'Why grow grass, let the cow eat the grass,
digest it, and finally turn it into milk? Why not eliminate the
cow entirely?' The thought, while elementary, had no actual basis
or foundation for centuries, because the chemical processes of the
intermediate stages between the grass and the final milk were too
complicated and were not at all well understood. Only during the last
few years has the problem been solved satisfactorily.

"Now we grow the fresh grass, which we put into these large retorts,
where the grass is digested just the same as if it were in the stomach
of the cow. By the addition of salts and chemicals we imitate this
digestive process, and by eliminating solids and the liquids, we
finally get a milk that is not only better than the original cow or
goat milk, but has many qualities not possessed by cow's milk.

"Try this glass of artificial milk," he said to Alice, handing her a
glass of rather unappetizing-looking liquid of a slightly pale green
color, not too clean looking and somewhat thick. Alice tasted it,
however, and found that it tasted exactly like a good rich cow's milk.
The manager asked Alice to close her eyes and take a good drink. She
did so, and exclaimed in surprise that it tasted exactly like rich,
creamy milk.

The manager then explained that synthetic milk was free from the
bacteria which give milk its white color. Moreover, the fat content was
much higher than cow's milk, and, there being a greater percentage of
sugar present, the milk tasted sweeter. Certain added salts gave it a
distinguishing taste.

From this milk, he further explained, any sort of fat could be
extracted, and the usual array of milk products, such as butter, all
sorts of cheeses, etc., could be made much better than from cow's milk,
which never ran uniform.

After inspecting the laboratory, Alice and Ralph sampled a number of
products, all of which tasted excellent--better, if anything, than
the natural products. The manager added "You will find our synthetic
products are far easier to digest, and are more wholesome than the
natural product. The reason is that we have eliminated all of the
disease-carrying microbes and bacteria, retaining only the beneficial
ones, which we can control very easily in our plants, more than the cow
or goat can do."




7

THE END OF MONEY


A few days later, Alice, while rolling along one of the elevated
streets of the city with Ralph, inquired how the present monetary
system had been evolved: "You know," she confided, "I know very little
of economics."

"Well," said Ralph, "all monetary systems of the past or present are
based on one principle--the exchange of one thing for another. At
first it was simply a bartering or swapping of such things as a goat
for a pig, or a string of beads for a piece of cloth. Only much later
did money evolve. Before we had coins, certain rare shells were used
as tokens. Still later, precious metal was exchanged for goods, using
the weight of the metal as a basis. Later on, coins were developed,
and still later on, paper money replaced part of the coins. Where the
shells, the precious metals, and, later the metal coins, had intrinsic
value, the paper money had no such value. The public accepted with
faith and confidence a piece of paper across which was printed the
guarantee that the bearer of it would receive so many metal dollars
in exchange for the piece of paper. The paper money was built upon
confidence that the people had in the government issuing the paper
money.

"Very few people ever thought of going to a bank or to the
government's treasury to exchange the paper money for gold or silver
coins. Instead, they freely circulated this paper money among
themselves, and after people became accustomed to it, they accepted the
paper money to the practical exclusion of gold and silver. Particularly
in the former United States did this system reach a high development,
more so than in old Europe, where paper money was used in conjunction
with gold or silver coins.

"In the United States, however, nothing but paper money was eventually
used, even to the exclusion of the smallest coins. Whereas up to a
certain period the dollar bill was the smallest paper money unit used,
this was later split into the former coins of fifty cents, twenty-five
cents, ten cents, five cents, and one cent. It was found that small
paper bills the size of former postage stamps were not very practical
when issued in separate pieces, so the printed tape coins, which we
have today, came into extensive use.

"The small metal box you carry, and from which you unroll your printed
perforated tape, still represents the old paper money. When you,
therefore, make a purchase today and you unroll fifty cents in ten cent
denominations on your perforated roll, you are using a portion of the
old system.

"But the real monetary system is built upon confidence. It could not
be otherwise today because we have no more precious metals. When,
about 95 years ago, the Frenchman P865 + finished the transmutation of
all the precious metals, the death-knell of the old monetary system
was sounded. Everybody could make gold and silver for less than iron
used to cost in the old days. Consequently, if you had a one hundred
dollar bill that said on its face that you could exchange it for one
hundred dollars' worth of gold, you could have gone to the treasury
and received five twenty dollar gold pieces, which, however, were not
worth more, perhaps, than one or two cents. So of what use was the one
hundred dollar bill?[6]

"When P865 + made his announcement, it caused neither panic nor
confusion. Several centuries prior there would have been panic, but the
world had been progressing in knowledge, and understood that commerce
and economics are stabilized by confidence.

"There is only one thing in this world that has a real value, and that
is man's work. You can replace almost everything else with something
else, but you can not replace labor. The modern economic structure is,
therefore, reared entirely upon man's work.

"When the check came into use, in the 19th century the monetary system
underwent a great change. Instead of people paying what they owed by
means of coins or banknotes, they took to paying each other by means of
a written piece of paper--the check. Billions upon billions of dollars
and cents changed hands, simply by signing a check to some one else,
the check clearing through the bank. While one account was credited,
another was debited. There was little actual money that changed hands,
either between the man who wrote the check and the man who received it,
or even between the banks who cleared the checks. In other words, this
entire check system was based upon credit. You received a check for one
hundred dollars from a man who owed you one hundred dollars. You took
this check in good faith because you knew that he must have the one
hundred dollars in the bank--otherwise he probably would not make out
the check. You sent the check to your bank, which, in turn, collected
it from the bank in which your debtor had his account. In all these
transactions no real money ever changed hands. It was credit, pure and
simple, all the way through.

"So when P865 + demonstrated his synthetic metals, the situation did
not change at all. The people appreciated the fact that the government,
in one way or another, must be good, and that although the money
reserves as figured in metal dollars and cents had become valueless,
every one knew that the country was not founded and based upon
valueless metals alone. Incidentally, no government, the entire world
over, could have redeemed in gold or silver coin all of its outstanding
obligations.

"Therefore, when gold and silver became practically valueless, nothing
happened, because actual coins were no longer used, and every one used
checks, so that even banknotes had become obsolete.

"But, with the devaluation of the so-called 'precious' metals the
governments substituted other values. This was done at first by setting
fixed values on property, such as real estate, buildings, manufacturing
plants, etc. Valuations of these were made several times a year, and
whoever owned such properties was given a 'State-value certificate.'
A building, valued at $50,000, was appraised by the state three or
four times or more, a year, and a certificate was given to you which
you took to your bank, the latter immediately crediting you with
part of the $50,000. If you wanted to sell your property to a friend
for $50,000 or more, you would take his check and then, demand from
your bank the return of the original deed, which in turn would be
transferred to your friend. In that case your bank would credit you
with the $50,000 check of your friend, while he would have the property.

"Of course the illustration which I gave is not exactly accurate, for
the reason that you could not get from your bank the exact amount of
the valuation of whatever realty changed hands. The bank advanced
about seventy percent of the appraised value, with certain exceptions.
This also was in no wise different from the way our ancestors were
accustomed to do, because in the old days such a transaction would
simply have been called a mortgage. The important difference, however,
later on, was that the valuation was made by the state and such
valuation was final. This tended to stabilize real estate and property
valuations.

"Merchandise, today, is bought and sold the same as it was bought
and sold centuries ago, and that is by check. So is everything
else, including labor. Every workman is, of course, paid by check,
which check he can use either in his own bank account or for buying
merchandise from his grocer or tailor, getting the difference in a
check or otherwise in fractional paper tape coin.

"These government paper tape coins and banknotes--the few that are
being used--instead of being covered by gold and silver bullion, are
now covered by real estate bonds or other tangible property."

"But," Alice asked, "suppose there were a panic, as described in some
of the ancient books, and everybody ran to the bank at once to get his
money, what would happen?"

"Nothing," said Ralph. "Absolutely nothing. Suppose there was a
'panic,' as you call it. In the first place, why should there be one?
There is no reason for it and no one nowadays would think of running to
the bank and getting his or her 'money.' There is no 'money,' as you
call it.

"Remember, the banks are all under government control, and if a bank
should fail, which no bank has done for the last four hundred years,
the government would be obliged to make good the shortage out of its
own resources. If everybody ran simultaneously to every bank throughout
the country, a bank would simply make out a check for each total
balance, and pass out a check for the amount. Then the next morning, as
the people could not eat their checks for breakfast, they would have
to do one of two things: either take the check back to the bank and
redeposit it, or exchange the check for commodities.

"That means that within twenty-four hours all the checks would have
found their way back to the banks and things would be just exactly
where they had left off before the 'run' on the bank. As banks are no
longer under the necessity of paying in coin or banknotes, but under
the law can pay by check, there is no reason why any one should wish to
make a 'run' on the bank, simply to get a check."

"But," Alice persisted, "suppose you draw out more than you have to
your credit? Suppose you write out a check for more than you have in
the bank? What happens then?"

"You probably can answer that just as well as I can," replied Ralph.
"To do so is a prison offense, and again, it would do you no good,
because following the first offense you would get a warning from the
government, and at the second such offense you would get a still
stronger warning, and on the third, you would go to jail, because the
first two offenses could perhaps be mistakes, but the third could not.
On top of this, your account would be withdrawn from all banks and you
would not be able to open another account again for ten years, because
all checks as you know, are identified with fingerprints in addition to
the signature. The fingerprint experts of the government would prevent
you from opening another account in any bank anywhere in the country.
So no one abuses his checking privilege and writes out checks when
there are no funds to his credit."

A few days later Ralph took Alice to one of the great industrial
artificial cloth works. They flew to Pennsylvania, where the great
artificial silk, cotton, and wool mills were located. Ralph explained
that during the 20th century silk had finally been made artificially
from wood and chemicals. This was then known as artificial silk. But
only during the last century had it been possible to manufacture
artificial cotton and artificial wool, synthetically from wood and
other chemicals. Moreover, they wore better than real cotton and real
wool.

In the enormous plant were immense tanks in which the raw materials
were first cooked and then treated by chemicals until the fibers issued
in fine microscopic streams from nozzles under hydraulic pressure, the
threads were then wound on huge reels. From here the hanks were sent to
the spinneries and cloth-weaving mills.

Of particular interest was the new kind of cloth, which was much
fighter than wool or cotton, and, at the same time, cooler in summer
and warmer in winter. This material was made from cork, which was first
pulverized and then afterwards digested by means of chemicals. Under
hydraulic pressure, a somewhat thick thread was obtained, which had
all the good properties of cork, but none of its poor ones. This cork
thread, when woven into cloth, made a texture both light and durable,
had a velvety touch to the fingers, and being a poor heat conductor,
protected the wearer from heat in the summer and cold in the winter.

A number of combinations were made whereby cork thread and silk thread
were spun together, giving an entirely new product, with all the
virtues of silk as well as those of cork.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: When this was written gold coins were legal tender. Gold
payments were outlawed by Congress in 1933.]




8

THE MENACE OF THE INVISIBLE CLOAK


Leaving the Pennsylvania mills the aeroflyer, traveling at high speed
landed the party within a very short time on one of the tall landing
buildings in New York. Ralph and Alice made their way down to the
elevated roadway, where, at Ralph's suggestion they put on their _power
skates_, for, as he explained smilingly, it was but a short distance
to his home and the exercise would do them both good and give them an
appetite for luncheon.

When they were but a little way from their destination Ralph became
conscious of a faint hissing sound close behind them. Twice he glanced
over his shoulder, but the roadway at that hour--it was just before
noon--was deserted.

Yet the sibilant sound persisted, seeming to be getting closer and
closer, like some persevering insect about to alight.

Alice apparently heard nothing, or perhaps she thought it merely one
of the noises of the street, for she chattered on in the gay animated
fashion that was one of her charms, oblivious to the fact that the man
at her side was so preoccupied that he scarcely replied to her.

For Ralph had now satisfied himself that there was nothing anywhere
around them which could cause that untiring pursuant hiss. Then from
what secret invisible source did it emanate--and why?

To the scientist, accustomed to explaining the unexplainable, it was
ominous--menacing--

Again he turned to look behind him, along the deserted way, and at that
moment he heard a stifled cry from the girl beside him. He whirled to
face her, and faced--nothing! He was alone in the empty street!

Unbelieving, doubting the evidence of his eyes, he stared about
him, too astounded for the moment, by this mystifying and amazing
disappearance to think collectively.

Above him the sun shone in a clear blue sky, before and behind him
stretched the still roadway. Then he was aware of the silence, the
deadly quiet. For the hissing had receded into nothingness, and with
it, Alice.

As the full force of the catastrophe struck him, something akin to
panic seized him. Danger to himself he could have faced with the calm
courage of a brave man, but this unseen and unexpected blow from an
invisible source aimed at the girl so close and dear to his heart smote
him with a chill terror that for an instant held him powerless in its
grip.

That he should have been careless when she was in danger--but this was
no time for self-reproaches. To act, and to act at once--that was vital.

Thoughts of high frequency radio waves--of X-rays--of Fernand--

"Fernand!" he exclaimed aloud, and with the name coherent thought
returned. Putting on all possible speed he covered the distance to his
home in a few seconds and dashed up to his laboratory, the while his
swiftly-working brain attacked the greatest personal problem that it
had ever been called upon to solve.

Having experimented with ultra-short waves, he knew that it was
possible to create total transparency of any object if the object could
be made to vibrate approximately at the same rate as light. He was
familiar with the theory, and although he had worked on it at times,
he had never seen a practical demonstration of it.[7] He realized a
machine was in the hands of someone, intent on kidnapping Alice. He
knew, too, that a police description would be flashed within a radius
of thousands of miles instantly, it would be necessary for the abductor
to keep Alice invisible for some time to come, for fear of some one
seeing and recognizing her. All this flashed through his mind as he
assembled a detecting apparatus consisting of a portable aerial and a
small box containing a few radio instruments and a pair of headphones.

The aerial, by being rotated, could determine the point from which
the waves emanated. In ten minutes Ralph had the apparatus rigged up
and began rotating the aerial, until a roaring noise was heard in the
telephones. He knew that this must be the apparatus producing the
invisibility, and within a few seconds he had dashed from the house on
his power skates, carrying the detector in front of him. Two of his
assistants accompanied him.

The pursuit was on. As they approached the kidnapper the sounds in the
telephones became stronger. They sped along Broadway, while the hastily
notified police kept the way open. The rising sound in the 'phones
clearly indicated they were headed directly toward the abductor.

They gained steadily on him while the rolling, flying police cleared
Ralph's way with their shrieking sirens, while the kidnapper had to
pick his way slowly through crowds.

The chase led them into a narrow street on the outskirts of the city.

The sound that came through the telephones was now exceedingly loud,
indicating that the quarry was near by. But this very nearness was
confusing to Ralph, for the volume of sound prevented him from exactly
locating the invisible kidnapper and the girl. In vain he turned the
aerial in all directions, seeking one point from which it came louder
than another that would determine the course of his pursuit. For the
moment he was halted, and, like some hound baffled by the cunning of
the fox, he cast about him eagerly, waiting for what he knew must come,
the next move of the pursued man.

And then it came--a deepening tone in the telephones, a gradation of
sound that to the trained ear of the scientist told him all that he
wished to know. With an exultant cry he sprang forward, and dashed
through the entrance of a small store.

The proprietor, whose state of mind may best be described by the word
"flabbergasted," struggled for some moments in vain for speech while
Ralph and his men, with outstretched hands eagerly swept from wall to
wall.

"Here, here, you fellows," he finally managed to gasp, "what are you
after? What are you trying to do? You'll knock something over in a
minute. Hey, look out there--there it goes!"

For Ralph had reached around a tailor's dummy, knocking it over as his
hands closed upon something behind it, something invisible and yet warm
and firm; something that quivered and shrunk away at his touch.

The proprietor, rushing forward to pick up the dummy, stopped short,
gaping. Ralph's hands, at the moment of contact, vanished into thin
air. But in an instant they re-appeared, as he drew towards him, out of
the influence of the ultra-short waves what he knew must be the bound
and gagged form of Alice.

Once away from the influence of the apparatus she became visible again.
A sack had been tied over her head and shoulders and her hands were
tightly bound to her sides. She was still on her roller skates, and her
feet had been left free, the sack being sufficient to render her almost
wholly helpless, and unable to make any effective resistance.

As Ralph removed the fastenings and released her, she staggered and
clung to him, her head dropping in exhaustion.

"Oh," she gasped faintly, "what is it? Where did you go?"

"Water!" exclaimed Ralph harshly to those about him, and the fat
storekeeper, trembling with excitement, but withal displaying an
extraordinary energy for one who could never at any time have been a
streamline model, made a dive for a vase of flowers on the counter.
Grasping the tops of the flowers with one hand he flung them in a
corner, and tendered the vase of discolored water to Ralph, panting the
while as one who has run his race, and emerged triumphant.

"I said water--not mud," shouted Ralph in exasperation, as he rubbed
the girl's cold hands between his own warm ones.

"Well, that's water, ain't it?" said the man, and Ralph glowered at him.

"Please," said Alice, trying to withdraw her hands, "I'm all right,
indeed I am. I was just a little dizzy for a minute, but it has all
passed now."

The color returned to her pale cheeks with a rush, and she straightened
herself, and turned away in some confusion, her hands instinctively
going to her hair, the gesture that women have ever used when at a loss
for words.

In the meantime, Ralph's two assistants had found the ultra-wave
machine by the very simple method of feeling about the spot where the
girl had been discovered. When their hands disappeared they knew that
they had it, and Ralph ordered some water thrown upon it, which had the
twofold result of stopping its activity and of bringing it into view.

Having assured himself that Alice was unharmed and recovering from the
shock resulting from her misadventure, the scientist made a minute
examination of the instrument. It was a complicated machine and one
totally strange to him. As he studied it he felt a growing conviction
that this was no earth-made machine, but one conceived and made by a
Martian. Undoubtedly it was the work of some master of science, a true
mental giant.

Then where, he asked himself, did Fernand--if it was Fernand--secure
it, and how? His object, of course, was obvious. He was evidently
prepared to go to any lengths to secure the girl for himself.
Had he not so threatened her? His method of attack had been
ingenious--fiendishly ingenious. Here was no mean antagonist, no petty
enemy, but one whose cunning would tax Ralph's resourcefulness to the
utmost.

When he finally turned away from his inspection he found Alice quite
herself again. She was listening to the store proprietor's version of
the affair, a story that, under the stimulus of Alice's dark eyes, lost
none in the telling, for where facts failed him, imagination did not.

"--flew open before my very eyes," he was saying when Ralph turned
around, "as if by unseen hands. And then this terrible sound--I
can't scarcely describe it, more like (his eye fell on the ultra-ray
apparatus), more like a great machine than anything else. I says to
myself, says I, 'There's something strange about this,' I says, 'I'd
better be on the lookout, I might be needed, for it looks to me,' I
says, 'as though someone was up to something'."

As a matter of fact, he had thought the opening of the door due to a
passing wind, and the hissing of the machine, which has already been
likened to the buzz of an insect, the humming of a bee, let in by the
same agency.

"And then that black man, he gave me a fright for fair," he went on.

"What about him? What was he like?" asked Ralph sharply.

"Ah," said the proprietor, swelling with importance, "that's just what
I've been asking myself. Strange we should hit on the same thoughts
ain't it?"

"Very," commented the scientist, with wasted irony. "Can't you give any
description of him? When and how did you see him, anyway?"

The proprietor put his hands into his pockets and swayed backward and
forward on the balls of his feet. He surveyed each member of his
little audience with glances of poignant meaning, as one who had much
of consequence to tell--all in good time.

Finally he spoke. "He was black," he said, "black all over."

"Yes, yes," exclaimed Ralph impatiently, "you told us that before.
Can't you give us something definite to go by? His face, for instance.
What was that like?"

The other leaned forward and tapped him on the chest impressively.

"Ay, that was black too," he said.

"Black!" cried Ralph.

"Black it was--all covered with a black cloth," said the
none-too-intelligent shopkeeper smugly. "He come right out of the air
before my very eyes, all black, with a black cloth on his face, and
rolled out of my store like a cyclone."

"You should have tried to hold him," said Ralph.

"Well, I gave him a look, I can tell you. He won't forget it in a
hurry. I just stood there and looked at him--like this."

He screwed up his face in so alarming a manner that one of Ralph's
assistants was moved to remark that it was a wonder he didn't drop dead
with a face like that.

"What d'ye mean?" demanded the owner of the countenance in question.

"I said," repeated the assistant, "it was a wonder he didn't drop dead.
I would have. It's all I can do to look at you right now."

Alice, unable to control her laughter any longer, hastily murmured
something about "fresh air" and went to the door.

Ralph, keeping his own face straight by a valiant effort, ordered his
men to lift the ultra-ray machine and take it back to the laboratory to
give it a more minute inspection at his leisure.

The girl and the man were very silent on their way back to Ralph's
home. A tragedy had been narrowly averted and each felt that this first
attempt might by no means be the last.

Only once did Alice voice her fears.

"You know," she said, "I am certain it was Fernand." She hesitated for
a brief moment and then held out her hand. In the palm lay a small
heart-shaped object of a curious translucent green, delicately carved.
It was pierced for a chain, and indeed, a part of the chain still hung
there, but it had been broken off short, and only a few links remained.

"What's that?" asked Ralph.

"A charm that Fernand always carries. He showed it to me once. He's
very superstitious about it, he told me--and I found it back there in
the store when I went to the door."

Ralph looked very thoughtful.

"Then he must have brought that machine from Mars," he said with
decision. "And with such resources at his command, I wonder what his
next move will be."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: In 1925 John L. Reinartz, working with ultra-short radio
waves, actually made it possible to look through solid metal plates
with the naked eye.]




9

THE CONQUEST OF GRAVITATION


Alice and her father had been invited, the next day, to Ralph's
laboratory, as he wished to show them some of his latest discoveries.
They found him sitting in front of his desk while he was engaged in
dictating scientific data to thin air.

"Ah!" said Alice, as she entered, "you are evidently using some of the
methods of my kidnapper, since you seem to be dictating to an invisible
secretary!"

"Nothing so complicated," said Ralph.

Ralph, who then welcomed them, denied the charge, and went on to
explain to his party his new invention.

"The evolution of letter-writing has been a slow and painful one. Our
remote ancestors, many thousands of years ago, carved their letters
in stone slabs. Later on, the more civilized Egyptians wrote their
letters upon papyrus. Still later, upon the invention of paper and ink,
communications and letters could be written much better and faster in
that improved manner. Later still, the typewriter came into use.

"All of these methods had one great drawback. It was possible to easily
falsify such records. While there had been handwriting experts, it
happened very frequently in olden times--too frequently, in fact--that
a signature on such an important document as, for instance, a will,
was forged, and it became a question for handwriting experts to decide
whether the signature was genuine. But even the handwriting experts
were not always right.

"It has often occurred to me that it should be possible to use the
human voice as its own document so that it could be preserved in a
different manner than the phonographic method discovered in the 20th
century. Of course, under that method it was possible for one to speak
one's last will and testament, but it was a clumsy way and was rarely
used on account of its high cost. Furthermore it was difficult to
make copies of a talk. Then, too, the disc or cylinder upon which the
phonographic records were made were very fragile, and could be broken,
either accidentally or purposely.

"The method you see me using is phonetic, and it is practically
impossible to falsify such a record. Watch how the machine works."

Ralph reseated himself at his desk and started to talk. Facing him
on the desk was a machine of about the shape of an old-fashioned
typewriter, except that there were no keys. There were a few dials and
knobs and from the top of the cabinet a white sheet of paper slowly
emerged as Ralph dictated. When he had finished, he pressed a button
and the entire sheet was ejected. It was covered with queer-looking
wave lines, similar to the lines made by a seismograph when recording
earthquakes--queer little parallel lines with humps at the tops that
increased from very short wave-like scrolls to long ones. The entire
sheet was covered with these lines in indelible ink. Ralph showed Alice
the page and went on explaining:

"The page which you see here is an exact record of my voice, but just
as no two fingerprints are alike in this world, no two voices are
alike either. Each has certain characteristics produced by certain
overtones in the voices of the various individuals. The pronunciation
of individuals varies, so does the intonation, so does the speed
of talking, so does the timbre of the voice, and a hundred other
differences that to an expert are observable immediately.

"Suppose, then, during my life I have recorded a great many documents
similar to this one. The waves traced on this piece of paper have
certain characteristics, which are entirely individual. Here are two
sheets of paper, both containing the Lord's Prayer, but spoken by
two different individuals in my office. Both of these individuals
have voices that are very nearly alike, yet, you can see how great a
difference there is between the lines. On one sheet the lines are much
heavier and swing in quite an apparently different manner.

"By reference to authentic documents of this character, it will be
impossible to falsify any record by having some one else make such a
spoken record. A will, or any other important document, will, in the
future, be made by this machine and will do away with many court cases
and much business squabble, and much shirking of responsibility.

"Furthermore, by my method it is possible with the same machine to make
as many as twenty-five copies at one time, while the original is being
made. This is done by a chemical process in the machine itself, the
copies being simply thin chemical papers which are being developed at
the same time as the voice-writing is being made.

"Reading these pages is not as difficult as you might think. It would
be necessary, however, to know the _phonolphabet_. The phonolphabet
is not very much different from the alphabet that you now know. Every
syllable and every consonant used by you makes a certain impression
in my machine, and while it may vary, as explained before, still it
remains roughly the same, exactly as handwriting by different persons
may vary, but still you can read because the characteristics are the
same. The same is true of my machine. By studying the characters of the
phonolphabet, it is possible, within a few weeks, to learn how to read
a phonetic letter, with the same ease that you read a handwritten or
typewritten letter.

"I expect that in the schools of the future children will be taught the
phonolphabet so that every one will be able to read phonetic records.

"Another feature of my invention is that if you do not wish to read the
letter you can listen to it." Saying so, Ralph inserted the letter into
an odd-shaped cabinet, which had a slot at the top. Two grippers slowly
began to draw the paper into the inside of the machine. Ralph turned
two knobs and pushed a button, and within a few seconds his own voice
was heard with unmistakable clarity repeating what he had said fifteen
minutes before.

"This machine, likewise, is very simple," said Ralph. "The ink tracing
on the paper record is opaque, while the paper itself is more or less
transparent under a strong light. A light-sensitive cell on the other
side slowly moves from left to right, taking off the entire phonetic
record, as it were. This light-sensitive cell moves in the same ratio
and with the same speed that I originally dictated, and the words
are reproduced exactly as I spoke them, by means of a loud-speaking
telephone coupled to an amplifier.

"Thus it is now possible to have a double record; an audible and a
written one, and with the two it is practically impossible to falsify
records.

"As you know, there have been some big embezzlement scandals recently
and it was not always possible to convict those suspected due to the
clever methods which these swindlers used.

"One great advantage of the new system is that it is done entirely by
machine and does away with the human element. I do not require my real
secretary when I dictate. I sit alone in my study or office and simply
talk."

       *       *       *       *       *

"There is one unique place, I am sure you will be interested in." Ralph
led the way to the elevator and they quickly shot up to the roof,
where they boarded one of Ralph's flyers and within a few minutes
were heading north. The machine rose until they were up about 20,000
feet. The cold made it necessary to turn on the heat in the enclosed
cab. In the distance, just ahead there shortly appeared a brilliant
spot of light suspended in the dark sky, which quickly increased in
size as they approached. From a distance it appeared like an enormous
hemisphere with the flat side facing the earth below. As they drew
close, they could see that it was a great city suspended in the air
apparently covered with a transparent substance, just as if a toy city
had been built on a dinner plate and covered with a bell-shaped globe.

They alighted on the rim, at a landing stage outside the transparent
covering. They were soon walking along a warm, beautifully laid out
street. Here was neither bustle nor noise. The deepest calm prevailed.
There were small houses of an old-fashioned design. There were shops
in great profusion. There were playgrounds, neatly-laid-out parks, but
without looking at the humans that were walking around, the visitors
felt as if they had gone back many centuries.

There were no power roller skates, no automatic vehicles. There were no
aeroflyers beneath the glass ceiling. Instead a serene calm prevailed,
while people with happy expressions on their faces were leisurely
walking to and fro.

Very much puzzled, Alice wanted to know what this mysterious
glass-encased city was.

"This," explained Ralph, "is one of our many vacation cities that I
hope will soon dot every part of the world. People are living entirely
too intensely nowadays and with the many functions that they have to
perform, with all the labor-saving devices they have, their lives are
speeded up to the breaking point. The businessman or executive must
leave his work every month for a few days, if he is not to become a
wreck. Heretofore we have sent him to the mountain tops or to the
seashore; there he found no rest. The noise, even on top of the
mountains, due to aeroflyers and other vehicles, did not give a man a
real rest. On our floating city there is absolute rest. There is no
noise, no excitement, not even a radio telephone.

"The city, 20,000 feet above the ground, is floating in perfectly clean
and uncontaminated air. This air, while less dense than that further
down, is renewed automatically every few hours. It is invigorating,
just the same as mountain air with all its benefits.

"The roof is made of steel lattice work, thick glass panes being fitted
in between the steel frames. The shape is in the form of a huge dome
covering the entire city, which measures about a little over a mile in
circumference. The height of the center of the dome from the floor of
the city is about 200 feet. At night the city is illuminated by cold
light from high frequency wires running below the dome, similar to the
system now used to light up our cities.

"The floor upon which the entire city rests is steelonium, and the city
is held up by means of anti-gravitational impulse. By neutralizing the
gravity for the area below the floating city and a little beyond it, it
is possible to keep the floating city at any distance from the earth.
In other words, we use a gravitational 'screen,' and then build a city
on top of this screen.

"By charging the gravitational screen at a very high potential, we
nullify gravity and as the city no longer has any weight it can be
placed on any level and remain there practically indefinitely. A few
air propellers keep the city from being blown away by storms or wind.

"Although it was very cold in our aeroflyer as we came up, it is nice
and warm on the streets here. Nor is there any artificial heating
during the daytime. There is perpetual sunshine during the day at this
level, at which practically no clouds ever form.

"The city being entirely roofed over by the glass dome, and the
interior being filled with air, the sun quickly heats up the
atmosphere. Within two hours after the sun rises the air is balmy, and
it would become stifling hot if the air was not renewed from time to
time. Air is a poor conductor of heat, and if the air were not renewed,
it would soon be 150 degrees in the shade. Cold air, however, from
the outside, is continually drawn in so that an even temperature is
maintained. Only at night is the city heated artificially, as without
the sunlight at this altitude it soon becomes exceedingly cold.

"All the heating is done by electricity, and a uniform temperature
is maintained during the night, which is somewhat less than the
temperature during the day.

"There is nothing that a man or woman can do up here except rest, and
that is precisely what they do. One week's rest up here is equivalent
to a month's rest down below."

Ralph, with Alice and her father strolled through the suspended city
in which the simple life was the keynote. There were recreation
parks, gymnasiums, baths of various kinds, such as hydrotherapy,
electrotherapy, and others. There were sun parlors and sun baking
parks. The din of the city, the curse of man's own handiwork, was
absent. Everyone wore either felt or rubber shoes. The entire
atmosphere was delightful and restful.

It was with genuine regret that Alice and her father returned to the
aeroflyer and back to New York.

That night after dinner Ralph took his guests to a new entertainment
that had just become popular. They entered a big building on which, in
big fiery letters, was inscribed

  GRAVITATIONAL CIRCUS

Ralph explained to his guests that with the invention of the nullifying
of gravitation, many new and wonderful effects had come about. Gravity,
he explained, was an electromagnetic manifestation, in the ether,
the same as light, radio waves, etc. It had always been the dream of
scientists for hundreds of years to nullify the effect of gravitation.
"In other words," Ralph continued, "if you pick up a stone and open
your hand, the stone will fall to the ground. Why does it fall? First,
because the earth attracts the stone, and second because the stone
attracts the earth. There is a definite gravitational pull between
the two. The effect of the stone in pulling up the earth is, however,
inconsequential, and while the stone does exert a certain amount of
pull towards the earth, the latter is so tremendously larger that the
effect on the earth is not felt at all.

"'If,' scientists had argued for hundreds of years, 'you could
interpose between the stone and the earth a screen which nullified
gravitation, the stone would not fall down when let go, but would
remain suspended just exactly where you left it.'

"Scientists also argued that if gravitation was an electromagnetic
manifestation of the ether, it should be possible to overcome and
nullify it by electrical means.

"It took hundreds of years, however, before the correct solution was
found. It was known that certain high frequency currents would set up
an interference with the gravitational waves, for it had been found in
the first part of our century that gravitation was indeed a wave form,
the same as light waves, or radio waves. When this interference between
the two waves, namely, the gravitational waves and the electrical
waves was discovered, it was found that a metallic screen charged by
electric high frequency waves would indeed nullify gravitation to a
certain extent. If you charged a metal netting in this fashion and you
weighed yourself on a spring scale on top of the screen, insulated of
course from the screen itself, your weight would be roughly diminished
one-half.

"In other words, about half of the gravitation had been nullified, the
other half still remaining. Thus things stood until about two years
ago, when I began to occupy myself with the problem. I reasoned that
while we had achieved much, still much more remained to be done. Our
anti-gravitational screen still let through some of the gravitational
waves, or fifty percent of the energy, which we could not seem to
counteract. I felt that it was not so much the effect of the current as
the material of the screen which seemed to be at fault. Experimental
work along this line convinced me that I was on the right track and
that if ever gravitation was to be annulled in its entirety a screen
of a special material would have to be evolved in order to obtain the
desired results.

"I finally found that only the densest material known, namely
thoro-iridium, would completely stop the gravitational waves, providing
that the metal screen was uninterruptedly bombarded with alpha rays
which are continually emitted by radium.

"The screen finally evolved was expensive to make at first, but
quantity production now has very considerably lowered the price."

By this time the party had found their seats in the amphitheater, and
they had seated themselves. Seats were all around a ring, which did
not look much different from the old-fashioned circus ring, except
that it was, perhaps, a little larger. The gravitational screen,
Ralph explained, was located below and could not be actually seen.
The machinery, too, was located in the basement. A fine wire netting
surrounded the entire arena, from top to bottom, the purpose of which
became apparent later.

It was an old-fashioned horse and bareback rider act. Suddenly the
gravitation was cut off, and the horse rose, beating the air with his
hoofs, while the rider, in a sitting position hung onto the horse with
his legs. The horse and rider no longer having any weight, they could
not of course entirely control their movements. Both horse and rider at
times hung with their heads downwards, then sideways, until finally, by
jerking, they arrived in the center of the arena.

The horse had been well trained and ceased pawing the air, and his legs
hung limp.

The rider mounted on the back of the horse, and with a slight jump
reached the ceiling of the arena, some hundred feet up. Having no
weight left, he bounced by the least muscular effort. Pushing against
the ceiling with one of his fingers, he bounded down to the floor of
the arena, only to rebound again to the ceiling. He kept this up for a
few minutes, and then repeated the same thing sideways, where he hit
against the wire netting, stretched from top to bottom of the arena to
keep the performer from falling into the audience.

The gravitational field extended only vertically, but was not in
evidence immediately beyond the sides of the arena. Had there been no
screen, the performer, when passing outside the gravitational boundary,
would have immediately regained his full weight and would have fallen.

The performer could jerk himself around anywhere in the arena, and
being a good acrobat, he had no difficulty in reaching his horse. Much
care had to be exercised, however, because the slightest kick against
the horse would have sent the horse to the opposite side.

Slowly the gravitation was turned on, and both horse and rider sank
gracefully toward the ground, where with the full gravitation
restored, the horse and rider made their exit.

The next act was one that even Ralph had not seen. Two experts at
juggling bounded into the arena and after the gravitation was cut off
one of them placed a billiard cue on his forehead, and an old-fashioned
hand lamp on top of the cue. The juggler then took the cue away and
withdrew jerkily. The lamp remained in the same position, until brought
down by one of the performers.

The tricks aroused great enthusiasm among the audience. An acrobat,
using one of the billiard cues as a standing trapeze, revolved around
the trapeze as if it were held securely in place. By jerking around
the billiard cue, it was made to appear as if he was actually swinging
around under his full "weight."

A beautiful effect was obtained when the jugglers brought several
colored glass pitchers, filled with different-colored liquids. When the
pitchers were inverted, nothing happened, because the liquid, having no
weight, could not flow out. However, by turning the pitcher upside down
and suddenly jerking it away the colored liquid, due to its own lag or
inertia, stayed behind.

Due to the surface tension of liquids, it did not retain the shape of
the pitcher, but formed itself immediately into a globe. The jugglers
emptied a number of pitchers all in a row, leaving behind the globular
liquid balls, formed of water and fruit juices.

The jugglers approached the balls and began to drink, simply by placing
their lips against them. They then demonstrated the mobility of the
water balls by pushing their fingers into them and cutting the balls
in two, the halves immediately becoming new and smaller balls. Then
by carefully giving each of the balls a slight push, the water balls
would gravitate up to the ceiling of the arena and still having enough
momentum left they would rebound and come back, only to be pushed up
again by flat tennis racquets.

This had to be done carefully because the slightest false motion spread
out the water balls into a flat sheet. The surface tension of the
liquid always reasserted itself and the water balls came down sometimes
in an elliptical shape. Every time the flat tennis racquet hit the
balls, they lost their shape momentarily, but soon were globular again.

The two jugglers finally managed to push the liquid spheres one into
another, until finally all balls had been joined into one. This, of
course, amalgamated the various colors, but the colors had been made in
such a way that the ball became a somewhat dirty-looking white, all the
colors having recombined, making one color, just as all the hues of the
rainbow, if combined together, make white.

The final act was where a huge water ball, about twenty-five feet in
diameter, was pushed to the center of the arena, while a number of
pretty girls entered the liquid itself and swam within the ball. The
ball was lit up by strong searchlights, and the entire arena darkened,
as the girls swam within the clear crystal water ball. When the
swimmers needed air, all they had to do was to push their heads out of
the sphere, breathe, and then resume "swimming," or jerking themselves
around within the weightless water.




10

TWO LETTERS


During September Alice and her father had remained Ralph's guests,
extending their stay at his urgent request. James 212B 422 made a most
satisfactory chaperon. If they visited one of the great historical
museums he always managed to disappear in search of some exhibit,
leaving the other two to sit on a bench to wait his return, which was
often delayed purposely.

But to his daughter and the scientist time had become of little
importance and though the engineer was sometimes gone an hour, when he
returned he would find them still sitting on the bench, sometimes deep
in conversation, sometimes absorbed in a silence that meant more than
any words could express.

Together they were blissfully happy, apart they were wretchedly lonely.

Ralph, it appeared, had completely forgotten numerous of his lectures
in which he had labeled love as "nothing but a perfumed animal
instinct." No lover more abject than he now, none more humble in the
presence of his divinity. During those weeks they had arrived at a
mutual understanding.

All the world knew and rejoiced in their happiness. Ralph had always
been extremely popular with the people. Even the Planet Governor
himself had been moved to privately express his approval. Many times
had the scientist worried him. Ralph had so often been restive under
the restraints which must of necessity be imposed upon one so important
to the Earth's progress. And now, with this new influence to hold him,
the Governor felt that the task of keeping Ralph contented had been
lifted from the official's already over-burdened shoulders.

All the world rejoiced--all but two, and for them the knowledge of the
two lovers' happiness was gall and wormwood.

One was roused to fury, the other plunged in despair.

To Fernand the scientist was one hitherto unforeseen obstacle to be
removed from his path in his conquest of Alice. To the Martian, knowing
beforehand that his passion was hopeless, the knowledge that she loved
another was, nevertheless, a bitter blow. Before, at least, she had
been heartfree. Wretched as he had been, bitter as he had been against
the laws that made such a union impossible, there had been the barren
comfort of the fact that she belonged to no one else. Now, even that
was taken from him, and he felt that he could bear no more.

In his desperation he made up his mind to leave Earth, and immediately
booked his passage to Mars. But on the very eve of his departure he
found himself unable to make the decision that would separate him from
her forever, and the next inter-planetary liner, which left Earth for
Mars, carried, not himself, but this code letter to his best friend on
his distant planet.

 New York, September 20, 2660.

 To Rrananolh AK 42,

  Although I am booked on the _Terrestrial_ which departs tomorrow, I
  have cancelled my reservation and consequently will not arrive on
  Mars November 31st as planned. I do not know whether I shall take
  passage on the next transport or not. In fact, I don't know what I
  shall do. I am mad with despair and anguish. A thousand times over
  have I wished that I had never come to this planet!

  I have not told you before, but as perhaps you have guessed from my
  previous letters, I am in love with a Terrestrial woman. Never mind
  her name. I loved her from the first moment I saw her. You, who have
  never visited the Earth, can hardly understand. It does not matter.

  I have tried in every way to free myself from this mad infatuation,
  but it is hopeless. Chemicals and Radio-treatments seem but to
  accentuate my longing for that which is forever beyond my reach. I
  thought at first that I could conquer myself, but I know now that I
  cannot, and the knowledge is driving me to madness.

  She has never known, and I think no one else here does. I have told
  none but you, my friend. Always I feared that in some way I might
  betray myself to her. There are times now when I wish that I had.

  And yet--to have her suffer as I am suffering--I could not have borne
  that.

  I will, I suppose, go the way of all Martians who have had the
  misfortune to care for a Terrestrial. A little _Listadinide_ injected
  under the skin will free me from an existence which has become a
  daily torture unless I find a way to evade the harsh laws.

  Please hand the enclosed documents to my Second. If I do not see you
  again do not grieve for me, but remember our friendship, and think
  sometimes of your unhappy friend.

 Llysanorh'

Long after his missive had gone, he sat rigid, motionless, by the
window with unseeing eyes fixed on the city below him. At last he rose
with a sigh and left the room. Was there no way out of such misery? Was
there no straw he could grasp?

Of a very different caliber was an epistle sent by Fernand 60O 10 to
his friend Paul 9B 1261.

 New York, Sept. 28th, 2660.

 Dear Paul:

  You have heard the gossip, but don't fear my having a broken heart.
  I am not easily downed, and I have a card or two yet to play in this
  game.

  Fact is, Alice is as hard to conquer as a steelonium wall is to
  break through. That, however, is to my liking, my dear Paul. I love
  obstacles, particularly when the goal is as pretty as Alice. I have
  never wanted her more than now that she has thrown me down. Perhaps
  if she had ever encouraged me I would not have cared a rap for her.
  But--this opposition inflames me! Now I will have her. I _will_ have
  her, and she shall love me, mark my words.

  I have mentioned to you before the ridiculous Martian, Llysanorh',
  I believe. It is very amusing to see him staring at Alice with
  adoration in those enormous eyes of his. I really believe he is in
  love with her, but these Martians are so self-controlled it is hard
  to tell anything about them.

  If Alice had fallen in love with this lanky, seven-foot Llysanorh'
  she would have been lost to me, and to all the rest of the world.
  That fellow certainly can be sugary when he wants to. However, she
  really imagines that she's in love with this crazy scientist, and
  right now I'm decidedly _de trop_. That worries me very little, I
  assure you. She will soon learn to love me once I can get her away
  from him. And I am going to provide for that.

  Everything has been arranged, and I am only awaiting my opportunity.
  If I am successful, I will take her out into space for a few months.
  My machine is in readiness. It is the latest type, and the finest
  I have ever seen. Provisions, books, reels for the Hypnobioscope,
  instruments, etc., in fact, everything you can think of is on board.
  I have even provided a well trained maid. I can assure you Alice
  won't find it lonesome. Besides, I flatter myself that I can be very
  entertaining.

  Before I close I must ask you to attend to several matters for me,
  as per enclosed rolls. You will understand everything better after
  you read the instructions. I do not expect to be away more than three
  months at the latest, and you will see from the gray document that I
  empower you to take charge of my affairs. I will send you a message
  from on board the machine if all goes well.

 Until then,

 Fernand.

It was the night of the full moon. There was a faint touch of crispness
in the early autumn breeze that now and again gently ruffled the waters
of the ocean. A thousand stars danced lightly in the sky and were
reflected in the undulating waves below. And in the moonlit path over
the waters hovered an aerocab gleaming silvery white in the radiance.

The cab was far from New York, away from the beaten traffic.
Occasionally other aircraft came into view but always at a distance.

To Alice and Ralph this solitude was Paradise. Night after night they
hired an aerocab and flew to this lonely airway, where seated side by
side, with only the driver for a chaperon, they were absolutely happy.

The driver was a silent man who, as long as he was well paid for his
time, was content to describe endless circles indefinitely.

On this particular evening Alice seemed, to Ralph, more lovely than he
had ever before seen her. In the caressing light of the mellow moon her
flowerlike face glowed with a new radiance, and her dark eyes, shadowed
with long curling lashes, were mistily tender.

Between these two there was no need for words. So perfectly were their
thoughts attuned that each knew what the other felt.

And so, presently, their hands stole out and met, and clasped. And it
seemed to both that Heaven could hold no greater happiness than this,
until, with one accord, they turned their faces to each other, and
their lips met. To them nothing existed beyond themselves and their
love.

The voice of another aerocab driver hailing them made them realize that
there were still ties that bound them to Earth, and they moved apart a
little self-consciously, as a cab drew alongside their own.

"Having some trouble with my motor," called the newcomer. "Could you
let me have a few copper connectors to repair the damage?"

"Sure," returned their driver, and the two cabs came together and were
made fast.

Ralph, seeing that his man could attend to the matter, turned away from
them towards Alice, and again drew her hand into his own, where it
snuggled confidingly.

Quite suddenly he was aware of a sickish, sweet odor, which almost
instantly became suffocating. He was conscious of the pressure of
Alice's fingers and then blackness overwhelmed him.




11

THE FLIGHT INTO SPACE


How long he was unconscious Ralph did not know, but when he came to his
senses the moon had sunk low on the horizon. He felt unbearably weary
and his limbs seemed too heavy to move. For a time he half lay in his
seat looking stupidly down at the ocean, his mind a blank.

All at once it dawned upon him that the seat next to him was empty.
"Alice, Alice," he muttered, trying to shake off his stupor, "Alice,
where are you?"

There was no reply. The driver, his hands on the steering disc, was
slumped forward in his seat, his head sunk on his breast.

With a stupendous effort Ralph managed to open the glass window
in front of him. Instantly the strong odor of chloroformal almost
overpowered him, and a terrible sensation of nausea forced him to cling
blindly to his seat. In a moment it passed and he was able to collect
his senses somewhat. His first thought was for Alice. His dimmed sight
had cleared sufficiently for him to see that she was not in the cab. He
thought she must have fallen into the sea, and in his agony he cried
aloud her name again and again.

And then a recollection came to him, of her father's words on the first
morning of their visit. He had feared for Alice. Someone had threatened
her. Ralph forced his still wandering mind to concentrate. Some one
had threatened to kidnap her, and that someone was Fernand 60O 10.

He recalled the stranded aerocab. Its helplessness had been a trick to
deceive him, and to get near enough to drug him and his driver while
they took Alice away.

The thought aroused him from his dreadful lethargy. With a rush his
vitality came back. He flung himself upon the stupefied driver and
shook him violently.

The cab was still flying at an even speed in a great circle and Ralph
saw that it was imperative that he get control of it at once, for
another machine, bound evidently for New York, was bearing down upon
the helpless men.

With a powerful shove he got the driver into the auxiliary seat and
climbed over, seizing, as he did so, the steering disc. He flung it
over, just in time to escape the onrushing cab, whose occupants, as it
passed, leaned out, and in fluent profanity inquired if he wanted the
whole airway.

Unheeding, Ralph set the steering disc toward New York, and proceeded
to lighten the cab. Overboard went the glass doors, cushions, matting,
even the hood of the machine. Everything that he could wrench off he
tossed to the dark waters beneath him.

The cab, relieved of the weight of its equipment shot ahead at
tremendous speed, and in less than ten minutes dropped onto the landing
place on top of the scientist's laboratory. Leaving the driver where
he was Ralph dashed into the building. Meeting Peter he did not stop,
only motioned him to the cab while he himself sprang to the nearest
Telephot. And within fifteen minutes every detective and special agent
had been notified of the disappearance of Alice. Ralph had immediately
transmitted the lost girl's photograph to the Central Office where it
was placed before a Telephot connecting with every member of the entire
police force, and the picture was reproduced for them in their portable
radio instruments for ten seconds, enabling them to get her features
firmly impressed on their minds.

His next act was to call the Intercontinental Hotel where Fernand had
been stopping.

Upon inquiry he was informed that Fernand had left three hours ago with
his baggage. His destination was unknown.

"I knew it!" Ralph muttered to himself.

On second thought it occurred to him that it might be of advantage to
visit the hotel, and as it was only a few blocks away he flew over to
it, leaving his assistants in charge of his radio stations, with strict
orders to record every message, to tune into everything, and to take
the messages down on the recorder discs.

At the hotel he was recognized at once, and as the news had spread over
the city like wild-fire, he was treated with every consideration.

He closely questioned everyone and then asked to see the rooms which
Fernand 60O 10 had occupied.

The rooms were just as their occupant had left them and Ralph requested
that he be undisturbed there for a short time.

He examined every nook and corner without finding anything to give him
a clue to Fernand's whereabouts, and he was about to leave when his
eye caught the reflection of a light-ray falling on a bright object
under the dresser.

Insignificant as the little metal object was, it was enough to convey
a fearful picture to his mind. He recognized it at once as a metal
turning belonging to the balancer of the _Gyro-Gyrotor_ of a _Space
Flyer_. Evidently the metal part had been dropped and Fernand had not
had the time to look for it. Ralph decided that Fernand had obtained a
supply of the parts which are only required on a prolonged flight into
space.

He was now positive that Fernand 60O 10 had carried off his sweetheart
in a space flyer and that the machine by this time was probably far
away from the earth, headed for unknown regions. It would also be
practically impossible to follow without knowing the direction of the
space-defying machine.

In a daze Ralph returned to his laboratory, where he again called the
Central Office. As all space flyers must be licensed by law, he had
no trouble in getting the information he desired. A new machine of a
well-known Detroit firm had been registered four days ago, and the
description of the owner answered to that of Fernand 60O 10.

Late as it was, Ralph immediately communicated with the Detroit
manufacturer, who, upon hearing his reasons for the request, supplied
him with all the necessary details.

Ralph learned from him that the purchaser of the new machine, one of
the very latest models, was Fernand, beyond any doubt, and when he was
informed that the latter had plentifully supplied himself with spare
parts as if for a long journey, and moreover, the most significant
fact that the cabin had been fitted out as a lady's boudoir, then
indeed were his worst suspicions confirmed.

The manufacturer also told him that the entire outside shell was of
_Magnelium_--an invention of Ralph's--and that this flyer was the first
to be equipped with the new metal.

As he concluded his conversation and disconnected, Ralph brought his
clenched fist down upon the desk. "Magnelium," he muttered between
set teeth, "the only machine out in the universe made with Magnelium.
Magnelium, my own Magnelium, about which no one in the world knows more
than I do. Perhaps the odds are not all with you, Fernand, damn you!"

At first thought it might be considered a difficult feat accurately
to locate a machine thousands of miles from the earth, speeding in
an unknown direction somewhere in the boundless universe. The feat
was easy to the scientist. As far back as the year 1800 astronomers
accurately measured the distance between the earth and small celestial
bodies, but it was not until the year 2659 that Ralph 124C 41+
succeeded in accurately determining the exact location of flyers, in
space, beyond the reach of the most powerful telescope.

[Illustration]

A _pulsating polarized ether wave_, if directed on a metal object
can be reflected in the same manner as a light-ray is reflected from
a bright surface or from a mirror. The reflection factor, however,
varies with different metals. Thus the reflection factor from silver
is 1,000 units, the reflection from iron 645, alomagnesium 460, etc.
If, therefore, a polarized wave generator were directed toward space,
the waves would take a direction as shown in the diagram, provided the
parabolic wave reflector was used as shown. By manipulating the entire
apparatus like a searchlight, waves would be sent over a large area.
Sooner or later these waves would strike a space flyer. A small part
of the waves would strike the metal body of the flyer, and these waves
would be reflected back to the sending apparatus. Here they would fall
on the _Actinoscope_ (see diagram), which records only reflected waves,
not direct ones.

From the actinoscope the reflection factor is then determined, which
shows the kind of metal from which the reflection comes. From the
intensity and the elapsed time of the reflected impulses, the distance
between the earth and the flyer can then be accurately and quickly
calculated.

The reflection factor of Magnelium being 1060, Ralph succeeded in
locating Fernand's space flyer in less than five hours' search. He
found that Fernand's machine at that time was about 400,000 miles
distant from the earth and apparently headed in the direction of the
planet Venus. A few seconds' calculation showed that he was flying
at the rate of about 45,000 miles an hour. This was a great surprise
to Ralph and it puzzled him somewhat. He knew that Fernand's machine
was capable of making at least 75,000 miles an hour. Ralph reasoned
that if he were in Fernand's place, he would speed up the flyer to the
utmost.

Why was Fernand flying so leisurely? Did he think himself secure? Did
he think that nobody could or would follow? Or was he having trouble
with the _Anti-Gravitator_?

Ralph could not understand it. However, his mind had already been made
up. He would pursue Fernand even though it took him into those parts of
the solar system yet uncharted, and, if necessary--kill him!

It was now noon, and he gave sharp, quick instructions to his
assistants, ordering his space flyer, the "Cassiopeia," to be made
ready at once. Provisions sufficient to last for six months were put
on board and Ralph himself installed a great number of scientific
instruments, many of which he considered he might find useful. He also
ordered a large number of duplicate parts of the flyer's machinery to
be stowed on board in case of emergency.

To the astonishment and dismay of Peter and the others, the scientist
announced his intention of making the journey alone.

"The fight is to be man against man, brain against brain," he
said as he stood by his space flyer which was in readiness upon
the tower-platform. "Today it is not brute force that counts, but
scientific knowledge. I will demonstrate to the world that crimes of
this kind need not be tolerated."

He stepped onto the running board as he spoke and was about to step
into the flyer when the sound of an aeroflyer descending close by made
him hesitate. It was a government flyer, and even as Ralph paused, it
landed on the platform beside his own machine, and a smartly uniformed
young official sprang from the seat beside the driver. Saluting Ralph
he handed him a transcribed telegram with the words:

"Message from the Planet Governor, sir."

Dismay seized the scientist, as, breaking the seal of the wrapper, he
read the printed words:

 Unipopulis, Sept. 34, 2660,
 Planet Governor's Capitol.

  I have just received news of the calamity that has befallen you.

  I extend to you my sincere sympathy.

  I will this afternoon place at your disposal six Government space
  flyers, the crews of which are absolutely under your instructions.

  I must, however, caution you not to enter into any pursuit in person.

  As Planet Governor it is my duty to advise you that you have not the
  right to place your person in unnecessary danger.

  Allow me furthermore to point out to you that under the law "+"
  scientists are not allowed to endanger their lives under any
  circumstances.

  I therefore command you not to leave the earth without my permission.

  I have ordered your space flyer to be guarded.

 In high esteem,
 William Kendrick 21K 4,
 _The 18th Planet Governor_.

 To
 Ralph 124C 41+,
 New York.

Ralph read the radiogram twice before he folded it slowly and
deliberately thrust it into his pocket.

Then slowly withdrawing his hand and extending it to the government
official, he said:

"Well, I must obey orders."

The official took the proffered hand, and no sooner had he grasped it
than he stiffened and became as rigid as stone.

With one bound Ralph was in his machine crying to the stupefied
audience:

"Don't worry about him. I pricked his hand with a little _Catalepsol_.
In fifteen minutes he will be all right again."

He slammed the door of his space flyer and simultaneously the machine
rose as if shot from a cannon, and in ten seconds was lost to sight.

       *       *       *       *       *

Since the Dark Ages, men have had a powerful longing to leave Earth and
visit other planets. Towards the end of the twenty-first century, when
atmospheric flying had become common, scientists began seriously to
think of constructing machinery to enable man to leave the confines of
the planet to which humanity had been chained for ages.

Towards the beginning of the twenty-second century economic conditions
had become acute and the enormous population of Earth, which had passed
the twelve billion mark, clamored for an adequate outlet which the
planet itself could no longer furnish.

The moon was regarded with longing eyes, and although that body was
known to have no atmosphere and was known to be sterile, it was equally
well known that Earth's scientists and engineers felt that they could,
in a few years' time, make it habitable.

Atmospheric flying machines were, of course, totally unsuited, as they
could not even reach the limits of the Earth's atmosphere, only forty
miles away.

Obviously to reach the moon or any other celestial body, it was
necessary to devise a method of overcoming the enigmatical force known
as the Earth's gravity, which chains all bodies to the planet.

A multitude of inventions and suggestions were made, but none proved
to be of any value until the _Anti-Gravitator_ was invented by the
American 969L 9 in the year 2210.

This scientist had made extensive studies of the gyroscope and had
finally evolved a machine which when set in motion would rise freely
and continue to rise as long as power was supplied.

The action, moreover, was purely gyroscopic.

969L 9 took a large hollow sphere (the rotor) inside of which he built
a number of independent gyroscopes, all of which traveled in fixed
orbits. The large sphere which hung in a gyroscopic frame was made
to spin around on its axis at great speed. This sphere thus acted as
the fly-wheel of a gyroscope and as such was not influenced by the
so-called _horizontal gravity_. As in the case of simple gyroscopes,
its axis would always be in a vertical line as long as the spheric
rotor was in motion.

If, however, the independent gyroscopes inside of the sphere were
set in motion by means of electrical current, the _Vertical Gravity_
(weight) was overcome, the entire contrivance rising into the air, its
rising (lifting) speed being directly proportional to the speed of the
enclosed gyroscope rotors.

From 969L 9's experimental work the anti-gravitators were perfected,
and it became possible to lift a weight of 1,000 kilograms with an
anti-gravitator weighing but 12 kilograms.

Space flyers were equipped with from six to twelve large
anti-gravitators attached to various points of their shells, all of
which could be worked in unison, or operated independently in order to
control the direction of the flyer.

As Ralph's space flyer rushed through the atmosphere, the friction of
the machine against the air made the interior uncomfortably hot in
spite of the fact that the machine had triple walls, the spaces between
being filled with poor heat conducting materials.

After the flyer, however, had left the atmosphere, the stellar cold
rapidly made itself felt.

Ralph then took his bearings, after he had verified, by means of the
polarized wave transmitter that Fernand's flyer was still headed
towards Venus. He then locked the steering disc and the space flyer
continued its journey in a straight line of pursuit toward the machine
of Fernand.

This done, Ralph flashed a radiogram asking the Planet Governor's
indulgence for disobeying the law. Then he took his first look at the
earth, which, since he was traveling at the rate of 80,000 miles an
hour, had shrunk to the dimensions of a medium-sized orange. As he
was flying toward the sun, Earth, being directly behind him was fully
illuminated and appeared like a full moon. The continents and oceans
were visible except where temporarily obscured by mist or clouds.

The general aspect of the Earth as seen from Ralph's flyer was that of
a delicate faint blue green ball with white caps at each of the poles.
The ball was surrounded by a pinkish ring near the circumference. This
was the earth's atmosphere, the white caps being snow and ice around
the north and south poles.

The brilliantly lighted earth was silhouetted against the inky black
sky in sharp contrast.[8] The moon, hidden behind the earth, was not in
evidence, when Ralph first looked earthward.

The stars shone with a brilliancy never seen from Earth; distant
constellations which ordinarily cannot be seen, except, with a
telescope, were plainly visible to him, in outer space.

The sun shone with a dazzling brilliancy in a pitch-black sky, and had
he looked directly into its rays he would have been stricken blind.

The heat of the sun in the outside space when striking objects was
tremendous. Had he held his hand against the glass window of the space
flyer where the sun could strike it full, his hand would have been
burned in a few seconds.

There was of course no night in the outer space (within the bounds of
the planetary system). The sun shone uninterruptedly.

Time was an unknown quantity. Had it not been for the chronometer,
reeling off seconds and minutes according to man's standard, time would
cease to exist in a space flyer.

To a man who had never left the Earth, the phenomena encountered
inside of a space flyer in the outer space was still more amazing.

"Weight" is synonymous with the gravity of the Earth. The denser a
celestial body, the greater its gravity. The larger such a body is, the
more strongly it will attract its objects. The smaller the body (if it
has the same density), the smaller its force of attraction.

Thus a man weighing eighty kilograms on a _spring_ scale on the earth,
would weigh but thirty kilograms on the planet Mars. On the sun,
however, he would weigh 2232 kilograms.

Inside of a space flyer, which had an infinitely small gravity, objects
weighed practically nothing. They were heaviest near the walls of the
machine, but in the exact center of the flyer, _all objects lost their
weight entirely_. Thus any object, regardless of its earthly weight,
_hung freely suspended in the center of the space flyer_. It could not
move up or down, of its own accord, but hung stationary, motionless,
like a balloon in the air.[9]

The occupant of a space flyer, having no weight, moved around with
astonishing ease. He almost floated around in the machine. There was
no physical labor. The biggest table was no heavier than a match. The
passenger in a flyer could perform an incredible amount of work without
tiring and without effort.

He could walk up the walls or walk "upside down" on the ceiling without
danger of falling, as there is no "up" or "down" in outer space.

_Sleep was practically impossible._ There being nothing to tire the
occupant, _sleep is unnecessary_. Dozing off is all he can do, and that
could never last long, except after strenuous mental work.

As long as a space flyer was not too far distant from the sun (within
the orbit of Mars, at least), little artificial heat was needed. The
sun heated one-half of the flyer's shell to a fierce heat, but the
side turned away from the sun was exposed to the terrible stellar cold
(absolute zero) and a fairly comfortable temperature was the result.

The air supply was manufactured by chemical means on board, but very
little was needed, as the original supply taken from the earth is used
over and over by altering the carbonic acid gas by means of automatic
generators.

It was of course of the utmost importance that no port-hole or doors
leading to the outside be opened. The air would have rushed from the
flyer instantly, resulting in a perfect vacuum inside of the flyer, and
instant death to all living organisms.

As the flyer moved away from a celestial body, the less the mechanical
energy needed to propel it. There were of course exceptions. Thus
between every two celestial bodies a point will be found where the
attraction that one body exerts on the other is zero. If the flyer were
brought to this point its gyroscopes could be at rest, as the machine
would not be attracted by either body. It would "hang" between the two
just as an iron ball hangs between two powerful magnets if carefully
balanced. Give it the slightest push, however, and the ball will fly to
either of the magnets.

The same was true of a space flyer, between two bodies at the "zero
point." If it moved over that point it was immediately attracted by
one of the bodies, and if its gyroscopes refused to work, the flyer
would have been dashed to pieces against the attracting body.

If, however, the machine came to rest at the "zero point" it would
begin to turn around on its own axis, while at the same time moving
in an elliptical orbit around the sun--_the space flyer would become
a tiny planet_, and as such was subject to the universal laws of the
planetary system.

It was not hard to steer the space flyer; the nearer it came to a
celestial body, the faster the gyroscopes worked; the further it drew
away, the slower their movement.

After Ralph had thoroughly inspected the entire flyer he devoted his
full attention to the course of Fernand's machine. At the rate at which
he was flying he computed that he would overtake Fernand in ten hours,
provided the latter did not increase his speed meanwhile.

Fernand, when Ralph left Earth, had a handicap of 400,000 miles. He was
moving at the rate of 45,000 miles an hour. Ralph's machine had made
80,000 miles an hour since its start. If everything went well he would
overtake the other in ten or eleven hours.

As there was nothing else to do, he busied himself in the laboratory
near the conning tower at the top of the flyer in an attempt to make
the hours pass more rapidly. With all its speed his machine seemed to
crawl. He was in an agony of impatience.

At the end of the ninth hour he finally sighted Fernand's machine
through his telescope. He then tried to signal Fernand by radio, but
the other either did not hear or else did not want to answer.

Eleven hours after his departure from Earth, his machine drew to within
a few hundred meters of Fernand's. After careful maneuvering he brought
the machine parallel to the other, and looking through one of the heavy
plate windows saw the strained, drawn and ghastly white face of Fernand
staring at him.

Ralph moved a few levers and then closed a switch. A hissing sound was
heard, and Fernand was seen to fall backwards, the window turning green
at the same moment.

Ralph had struck him senseless with his _Radioperforer_.

In a few minutes he anchored his flyer to the other by means of a
powerful electromagnet. He then pushed the connecting tube of his flyer
into the tube-joint of Fernand's machine. With great care he made the
joint air-tight. Taking a coil of rope he opened the port-hole and
crawled through the tube leading into the other flyer.

Arrived at the other end he made sure that the joint at Fernand's
machine was tight before he moved on.

Fernand lay unconscious on the floor and in a twinkling Ralph had bound
him with the rope.

In high excitement he bounded upstairs to gain the room Alice should be
occupying. His heart throbbed tempestuously. In another moment he would
hold his sweetheart in his arms.

Arriving on the next floor he stood still for a moment and listened.
There was no sound except for the gentle purring of the gyroscopic
machinery.

He went from one room to another, then to the last one. The door was
open. He entered with a strange feeling of dread. The room was empty.
Apparently it had never been used.

In terror Ralph ran from one end of the flyer to the other. He looked
in every corner, in every closet. He could find neither Alice nor her
maid. Where were they hidden? To make sure he went all over the ground
again more thoroughly.

After the most careful scrutiny of every inch of the machine he fell
limply into a chair, and buried his face in his hands.

_Alice was not on board the flyer!!_

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: In the outer space the "sky" is dead black; the blue color
of the sky as seen from the earth is due to the atmosphere. The real
sky is colorless.]

[Footnote 9: If a shaft were sunk to the center of the earth, an object
placed there would stay suspended in space.]




12

LLYSANORH' STRIKES


For some minutes, Ralph stood motionless, completely bewildered. To
have spent so much time and effort to no avail, hours--days wasted in a
fruitless search! The thought was maddening.

Obviously, she was not on board Fernand's space flyer. Where, then,
was she? Certainly Fernand himself had had no opportunity to hide
her, unless his whole flight into space were a trick to deceive the
searchers, and that was more than unlikely. Fernand was cunning--was
this some new piece of duplicity?

Turning from the empty room he ran down to where Fernand lay, still
unconscious. Kneeling by his side Ralph applied a small electrical
shocking device to the spine of the insensible man, with the result
that in a few minutes Fernand opened his eyes and stared dazedly into
those of his captor.

"Where is she?" asked Ralph hoarsely. "What have you done with her?
Answer me, or by God, I'll blow you into Eternity!" and, aiming his
Radioperforer at Fernand's head, he spoke with such ferocity that the
other shrank involuntarily.

"I don't know," he muttered, weakly. "It's God's truth I don't know.
The Martian got her. He took her away and left me drugged." His voice
trailed off and he seemed about to collapse.

"You're a liar!" growled Ralph, but his tone lacked the conviction
of the words. There was that in the other's voice that rang true.
Mechanically, he cut the cords that bound Fernand, and the man rolled
over helplessly. He was weak and dazed, and altogether too broken in
spirit to make any further trouble. His nerve was gone.

Ralph propped him up against the wall, but he slumped over on his side
limply. Impatient at the delay, Ralph went in search of water, and
finding a pitcher of it in Fernand's laboratory, unceremoniously dumped
the contents over the prone man's head. This had the desired effect of
restoring him somewhat, and in a short time he was able to tell the
story in detail.

"When I applied the chloroformal to you that night, I used the same
drug on Alice, while Paul 9B 1261, a friend of mine, took care of your
driver. We dragged Alice into our cab, and made for the outskirts of
New York where I had the space flyer in readiness. A maid for her was
already on board. We got Alice on and I put her in the care of Lylette,
and in a few seconds we were off.

"When we got well out in space I locked the steering disc and helped
the maid revive Alice, and in a few minutes she was herself again,
which she fully demonstrated by slapping my face and then trying to
tear me apart like a wildcat, when she found where she was." He gave a
wry smile at the recollection.

"Go on!" snapped Ralph.

"It was an hour later, and we were burning up space, traveling at a
rate of 70,000 miles an hour, that the radio signalling apparatus began
ringing furiously. I tuned in, and heard a faint, gasping voice from
somewhere out in the great void. With difficulty I learned that there
was another space flyer somewhere near me, with two men and four women
on board, and that their oxygen supply was being rapidly exhausted,
due to the spoiling of some of the oxygen-producing chemicals. They
asked for a small supply of oxygen, enough to get them back to Earth.
Otherwise they would be doomed.

"Knowing myself to be safe from pursuit for some hours, even had you
known I abducted Alice, I decided to aid the crippled flyer, and
answered that I would assist them as soon as possible. I went up to the
conning tower and, with the telescope, located the other machine. Then
I reversed the anti-gravitator machinery and within a short time I had
drawn up level with the flyer.

"We made fast, and ran the connecting tube between the two machines.
When the joints were made air-tight I crawled through, and just as my
head came through the opening into the other, two hands gripped me
around the throat and I was jerked into the machine. I made a desperate
effort to wrench myself free but I was absolutely helpless in such
hands. I found myself gripped by Llysanorh', the Martian, and I might
as well have fought a tiger as that seven-footer.

"He said nothing, only stared at me with his enormous eyes, while he
dragged me to a small compartment, manacled my hands, and left me,
locking the door behind him. But he was back in fifteen minutes or
so, with a triumphant look in his eyes. He picked me up and pushed me
through the connecting tube into my own flyer. He dragged me into my
machine-room, and forced me to watch while he, using a big hammer,
smashed the mechanism of my six anti-gravitators, so that I would not
be able to steer, and could fly in only one direction. He ruined all
the spare parts, to make sure that I could not make any repairs or
replacements.

"Then catching me by the back of the neck, he said:

"'I intercepted your letter to Paul 9B 1261, and followed you. You
didn't count on _me_, Fernand, when you stole Alice. Neither you nor
that fool scientist Ralph 124C 41+ shall have her. _No_ man shall have
her but myself. I will kill her first. I don't know why I don't kill
you, except that you are scarcely worth the trouble. You can't pursue
me with your machine in this condition, and when--_if ever_--you are
found, it will be too late.'

"'Good God, man,' I said, 'surely you won't take a helpless Terrestrial
girl!'

"'It is only what you did,' he replied, 'and at least, I love her!' And
with that he pressed a cloth saturated with some drug unknown to me
against my face, and that is all I remember.

"I must have been unconscious at least six or seven hours and when
I came to, it was another hour before I shook off the effects
sufficiently to recollect anything. Llysanorh' had taken off the
manacles, but I was as helpless as if I had been bound. I must have
dozed off, for I had only just awakened when I looked out and saw your
flyer approaching. And that's the whole story."

Ralph had listened to the amazing narrative with growing apprehension.
He knew enough of the Martian character to realize that Alice was in
the hands of a man who, once the die was cast, would stop at nothing.
He had been hopelessly, pitifully in love with Alice. It was easy to
see that, having, probably quite by accident, intercepted Fernand's
letter to Paul telling of his plans, he had in a moment of desperation,
born of despair, determined to carry her off himself. Perhaps, in
the first place, he had only intended to save her from Fernand, and
then, considering the small possibility of discovery and pursuit, had
succumbed to his overwhelming passion for her, and abducted her instead
of returning with her to Earth. But whither was he bound? Surely, not
to Venus where the inhabitants were nearly all Terrestrials, and whose
laws were identical with those of Earth.

Mars? Possible, but improbable, although Llysanorh' might have some
friend in his sect who would perform the Martian marriage ceremony
secretly. But even if this were the case where could he take his
captive bride? They would not be permitted to live on Mars, neither
would Earth or Venus accept them.

The intolerably hot planet Mercury was out of the question, and the two
moons belonging to Mars had no atmosphere.

There remained only the Asteroids.

At this thought Ralph sprang to his feet with an exclamation.

"I've been a fool not to think of them before," he cried. "Of course he
would get her to one of them, and once there she will be lost forever.
Good God, I must find his machine and head him off before it's too
late."

He turned savagely on Fernand still crouched against the wall. "I'm
tempted to leave you to the fate the Martian intended for you. God
knows it wouldn't be half what you deserve."

"Don't do that, in Heaven's name," mumbled the other. "Don't leave me
here like this."

The scientist looked at him contemptuously for a moment.

"Bah!" he said scornfully, "can't you even take your medicine like a
man? But I'll turn your machine around and direct it Earthward. You
will intercept the Earth in about thirty hours. You can't steer, but
you can accelerate or retard the speed of your flyer, and need not
collide with the Earth if you are careful.

"And remember this," he added grimly, "if you and I ever meet again I
will pound your miserable cowardly body into jelly!"

He turned his back on the abject man, and returned to his own flyer.
Then he turned Fernand's machine around, disconnected the two from each
other, and in a few seconds Fernand's flyer had disappeared.

Ralph sprang into action. He immediately began taking observations.
These told him that it would take him at least thirty days to reach
Mars, even though he forced his machine to the utmost. He could not
travel over 90,000 miles an hour, but, on the other hand, he felt sure
that Llysanorh's machine was incapable of making more than 85,000 miles
an hour. But the Martian had a handicap of probably 600,000 miles, and
if Ralph gained on him at the rate of only 5,000 miles an hour, it
would take 120 hours, or five terrestrial days to overtake him.

Ralph turned his machine towards the point in space where Mars would be
at the end of thirty days, and now set himself to the task of making a
search for the other flyer with the polarized wave apparatus.

For four wearisome and anxious hours he sought through space
perseveringly, and was at last rewarded by locating another machine
which he was certain was that of the Martian, as he had reasoned,
heading for Mars.

At the same time the results of his calculations dismayed him greatly,
for they revealed that Llysanorh's machine was making no less than
88,000 miles an hour. At this rate, Ralph was gaining only 2,000 miles
an hour, and it would take thirteen or fourteen days to overhaul
the other flyer. But as the Martian could not hope to reach Mars
under twenty-nine days himself, Ralph figured that he, barring some
unforeseen accident, would overtake him long before he landed there.

It was absolutely imperative that he do so, for once the Martian left
Mars and headed for the Asteroids further pursuit would be useless.
There were over 4,000 of these little planets already known[10] and it
would be the work of a lifetime to search on each one for the fugitive
and his victim. Speedy action on Ralph's part was urgent.

These little Asteroids, revolving in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter
were practically uninhabited, although most of the larger ones had a
good atmosphere, and a fair climate, considering their distance from
the sun.

Some of them were only a few miles in diameter, and the largest
measured but 485 miles. An electromobile, running at the slow rate of
60 miles an hour could circle such a tiny planet in 24 hours!

The larger planetoids had a superb vegetation, and as the gravity on
these bodies was only a fraction of that on the Earth, the trees and
shrubs were gigantic, while colossal fruits and vegetables grew in
abundance. These plants helped to create a dense atmosphere, in spite
of the small gravity, and life, on one of these little planets, was,
in many respects, far more comfortable and pleasant than on Earth or
Mars.

[Illustration:

 ----  ORIGINAL DIRECTION OF RALPH

 * WHERE RALPH OVERTOOK FERNAND

 -.-.-. NEW COURSE OF RALPH IN
 PURSUIT OF LLYSANORH'

 ® WHERE MARS WOULD BE AT END
 OF LLYSANORH'S JOURNEY

 ---  COURSE OF LLYSANORH'

 O POSITION OF LLYSANORH' WHEN
 RALPH OVERTOOK FERNAND

 1 WHERE VENUS WOULD HAVE BEEN MET
 IF FERNAND HAD CONTINUED HIS JOURNEY

 x WHERE LLYSANORH' ABDUCTED ALICE]

Now began the hardest part of the chase for Ralph. There was nothing
more to do than he had already done. From now on he must wait with what
patience he could summon to his aid, until such time as his machine
should catch up with that of the Martian. He could force his own no
further, and he was very sure that Llysanorh' was also flying at his
utmost speed.

At work, he had not had much time for thought.

Now, with time hanging heavily on his hands, his conjectures as to the
fate of his sweetheart drove him, at times, nearly to madness.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: Up to 1911 over 650 Asteroids had been discovered.]




13

ALICE OBJECTS


Alice, on being aroused to consciousness by the ministrations of
Lylette, the maid, and Fernand, and finding herself a prisoner on
board a space flyer at the mercy of the latter, was overwhelmed with
fury. This cool abduction of herself provoked her to such a passionate
outburst that Fernand had actually retreated before it.

"You coward," she blazed, "how dare you keep me here! Turn around and
take me back at once--at once, do you hear?"

Fernand, in the act of opening her door and going back to his
laboratory, paused smilingly.

"My dear girl," he said mockingly, "ask of me anything and I will grant
it--except that. You have a temper that delights me. Your smiles will
be all the sweeter, later."

Her answer was to fly at him with such passion that he involuntarily
took a step backwards. In a flash she had run by him, was down the
stairs and tugging at the fastening of the door that led outward.
Fernand bounded after her calling to Lylette as he ran, and in a
moment they were both struggling with the girl, who had indeed become
a veritable wildcat. She had both hands fastened around the great bar
that held the door and fought madly to unfasten it. Let that door be
opened the fraction of an inch and all three would instantly have been
blown to pieces. Fernand wrenched at her hands in real fear that she
would succeed in her purpose, which was evidently their destruction.

She was a strong athletic girl, and at the moment her desperation
gave her added vigor. But the combined strength, and by no means
gentle handling of Fernand and Lylette, who herself was a large and
powerfully built woman, forced Alice to relinquish her hold, and she
was dragged, struggling, back to her room, and left there, with the
door double-locked.

Alone, she passed from the high exaltation of anger to a state of
nervous apprehension. Another woman in her place might have wept, have
begged piteously for mercy where there was no mercy, but this girl was
made of sterner stuff. She might be frightened but Fernand should never
guess it.

Dry-eyed, with lips set in a firm line, lest they tremble and betray
her, she sat facing the door, gripping in her small hands the only
weapon she had been able to find--a small metal vase, having a round,
and fairly thick base.

Knowing that Fernand would come back, prepared as she was for his
return, she was unable to repress a start of genuine terror when she
heard someone unbolting the door. She clutched the vase more tightly,
white-faced, but courageous.

Fernand entered alone, carefully closing the door behind him. He wore
his customary, rather bland smile, and his voice was suave to the point
of oiliness.

"All over our little fit of temper?" he asked.

Alice stared at him, disdainfully, unanswering. Then her eyes fell upon
something in his hand--manacles of glistening steelonium!

The horror she felt was depicted in her face, for he said, holding them
out for her to see, "A pair of bracelets for you, sweetheart. Just as
a precautionary measure. You are rather too quick with those hands of
yours. But I am not unkind, my dear. You need not wear them if you will
only give me your word not to repeat your recent performance."

Beyond the door she saw Lylette standing in readiness, and she knew
that physical resistance would be ineffectual. Far better to give her
promise and be free than to be bound and helpless. Besides, there was
the laboratory. In it there were many roads to freedom--there were
poisons that killed instantly and painlessly. Unmanacled she might
reach them eventually. Bound, even that way would be closed.

Coldly, clearly, she gave her promise, but inwardly she offered up
a prayer of thankfulness when he turned and handed the handcuffs to
Lylette.

"You can lay down your weapon, Alice," he said, still with his mocking
smile. "I can assure you that you have no need of it. You will find me
a gentle lover, and one who is willing to wait for his lady's favors."
He stopped suddenly, and turning his head in the direction of the
stairs, listened intently.

From the laboratory, came the insistent ringing of the radio calling
apparatus.

With a muttered order to Lylette, he was gone.

What was happening, Alice did not know. She could not read radio
messages, but she knew that only something of grave import could have
made Fernand rush like that to the radio. She strained her ears, but
heard nothing.

Her hopes rose with a great bound with the thought that perhaps Ralph
was on his way to her. Perhaps it was he signalling. She had been sure
that he would follow her as soon as possible, and now her dark eyes
brightened with hope.

At this moment Lylette, without a glance in her direction, closed the
door, and Alice was once more alone and a prisoner behind bolted doors.

It was then that she gave way to her loneliness and despair. She knew
that if it had been Ralph signalling, Fernand would at once, having
received the news that the scientist was in pursuit, set about making
plans to elude him. She knew that Fernand was desperate, that his life,
under the law, was forfeit for this crime he had committed. He would
stop at nothing. Instinctively, she felt that he would destroy her and
himself, rather than be taken. Certainly, he would not hesitate to
murder Ralph if the opportunity presented itself.

She flung herself upon the couch, and burst into tears of agony, and
terror. Suddenly she sprang to her feet, still sobbing, wide-eyed with
dread of what she knew not.

The space flyer had stopped. The throb of the machinery had stilled and
the flyer was hanging motionless in space.

Standing in the middle of the room, rigid with suspense, Alice waited
with beating heart. Suddenly she heard the sound of rapid steps on the
stairs. Now they halted at the door, and someone fumbled at the bolts
and locks.

The next instant the door was flung wide open, and Llysanorh' the
Martian stood upon the threshold!




14

THE TERROR OF THE COMET


During the next few days Ralph passed midway between Earth and Venus.
This was the spectacle that at times greatly increased the transport
space flyer travel between Earth and Mars, many of the inhabitants
of both planets making the long journey simply to get a view of the
beautiful planet Venus.

Ralph ran almost parallel for a time with the two planets (see
diagram), Venus to his left, Earth to his right. Although he was quite
near the former he could hardly see it, as the bright rays of the sun
precluded detailed observation. A few days later, however, it had swung
sufficiently far enough to the left to afford him occasional glimpses
of its beauties.

Ralph worked almost continuously in his laboratory in the conning
tower. In the course of the week since he had left the Earth, he had
only catnapped for about two hours, since sleep was impossible.

He constructed several new pieces of apparatus, which he considered
might be useful in case of a possible encounter with Llysanorh'. He
knew that Llysanorh' could not be as easily subdued or caught as
Fernand. This tall Martian was an inventor himself and knew much about
handling modern death-dealing weapons. It would be useless to try
the Radioperforer as he probably would carry a Silonium armor, proof
against all Radium emanations.

One of the first things he had done was to lead wires from the steering
apparatus up to the conning tower. On the floor of the tower he
arranged contacts in such a manner that he could press them together
with his feet. The control was similar to the foot pedals of an organ.
He then practised for some days until he could steer the flyer wholly
with his feet. Thus his hands were free to control any apparatus he
would need for attack or defense. With his feet he could so control the
machine as to avoid projectiles if necessary.

As the days rolled by, however, Ralph became more and more disturbed.
He now took observations hourly, his eyes glued to the indicator. With
a sinking heart he saw that he was not gaining on the Martian. The
latter had his machine well tuned up and was covering almost 90,000
miles an hour. At this rate Ralph could never catch up with Llysanorh'.
It was maddening. The days became a long, drawn-out agony. Ralph had
done everything in his power to accelerate the speed of his flyer and
to strain the machinery further meant inviting certain death. Within
eight days Llysanorh' would land on Mars--his course now plainly showed
that he was headed for the planet. At best Ralph would be ten hours
behind--time enough for the Martian to accomplish his purpose. And he,
Ralph 124C 41+, the greatest inventor the world had ever produced, was
powerless.

Again he took observations, and again the results were the same. A
weariness of the spirit swept over him. The dark waters of despair
seemed to inundate his very soul. To have been physically exhausted
would have been a relief. To know the blessedness of but an hour's
sound sleep, to be free from this terrible tension--

He sank down upon a seat and buried his head in his hands, and as he
sat, striving to quiet his worn and troubled mind there came to him
an idea--nay, more than an idea, an inspiration, by which he would
overcome the formidable difficulties that beset him.

An idea, so simple that, having once formulated it, it seemed
ridiculous not to have thought of it before.

His soul-weariness fell from him like a discarded garment. He sprang
to his feet, once more the scientist, the man of action, triumphant,
dominant.

His marvelous ingenuity saw the way out. His mind would again triumph
over time and space. He would achieve the impossible, surmount the
insurmountable.

The battle was not lost--it had but begun!

He knew he could not overhaul Llysanorh'. Neither could he intercept
him. A wireless decoy message was futile. Llysanorh' would never be
caught by such a flimsy trick. But he must do something to prevent
Llysanorh' from reaching Mars.

How could it be accomplished? By sending a message to the Martian
authorities? A futile thought. Even if the distance could be bridged,
which was doubtful, Llysanorh' would, in all likelihood, intercept the
message with his recorder. He would simply send a message to his friend
to board a space flyer and to rush to him at top speed. The marriage
ceremony could then be performed out in space.

No, Llysanorh' must not know that he was pursued and still he must be
prevented from landing.

Ralph would literally move the heavens. He would threaten Mars with a
comet! Llysanorh's patriotism could be depended upon to make an effort
to divert the comet from its course, to avoid the imminent collision
with Mars. This, Llysanorh' could do without danger to himself, simply
by steering his flyer close to the head of the comet--within a few
hundred kilometers. The gravitational action of his machine on the
comet would deflect the course of the latter enough--even a few degrees
would be sufficient to change the path of the meteor.

But where was the comet to come from? To Ralph this was simplicity
itself. He did not need to "catch" a comet--_he would manufacture one
for himself_--a comet more unique than ever rushed through space.

He knew that comets had been reproduced artificially on a small scale,
centuries ago;[11] however, no one had ever tried to make a real
comet. He also knew that the largest comets have a very small mass,
and that the tail is composed mainly of gas and dust, which is so thin
that the stars may be readily observed through the tail of almost any
comet.[12]

Ralph thus became the first human being to _create_ a heavenly body. As
comets are composed mainly of hydrogen gas and dust, the creating of
Ralph's artificial comet was absurdly simple to the scientist.

By means of scraps of zinc and iron filings, over which sulphuric acid
was poured, Ralph produced a great quantity of hydrogen. This he filled
in tanks and when he had generated enough of the gas he connected the
tanks with a large metal stop cock in the wall of the space flyer. As
soon as the stop cock was opened the hydrogen rushed out into the open
with a roar.

Immediately Ralph connected his high frequency apparatus with the
outside aerials of the space flyer and the expected phenomenon took
place.

_The hydrogen particles which heretofore had been invisible, began
to glow with a wonderful light_, enveloping the entire flyer. For
thousands of miles behind the machine stretched a true comet's tail,
the flyer forming its head or nucleus. The tail, as in all comets, was
turned away from the sun, and although Ralph could not see the end of
the tail, he knew that what he had created could be seen for hundreds
of thousands of miles, like any natural comet.

Ralph, however, was not fully satisfied, and he therefore started to
"improve" the comet. He manufactured several other gases in large
quantities, which he ejected into space, greatly enhancing the
brilliancy and size of the comet's head as well as of its tail.

The head, however, he thought was not "solid" enough as yet, and so he
set about correcting this defect.

Comets are composed chiefly of gases, but contain a large amount of
dust. The dust particles act very much like the dust particles upon
which a sun ray falls, and it is these particles which create the
comet's appearance. If the atmosphere is eliminated and the same dust
placed into outer space, a small comet will result. The small particles
will be highly electrified by the sun and begin to glow. Each particle
repels the other and thus even a handful of light dust will form a
respectable comet in space.

Ralph made his dust by grinding paper and wood and other materials on a
fine carborundum wheel.

After he had made a few pails full, he blew the dust out into space,
and if his comet had been a magnificent sight before, it was really
awe-inspiring to look upon now from a great distance.

The heavier particles clung close to the flyer, on account of
gravitational action, but completely enveloped it. The machine was
now a true planet, while the fine dust particles had become little
satellites, revolving around their central body, the flyer.

The lighter dust particles found their way into the tail, as the
powerful pressure of the sun's light overcame the attraction which the
flyer brought upon them.

Ralph turned off the high frequency current and yet the comet was not
extinguished and its brilliance was not in the least dimmed. The gas
and dust particles had no way to dissipate their initial electrical
charge, being in an absolute vacuum; and Ralph's artificial comet had
become a real one.

Inasmuch as the dust was quite dense immediately around the flyer,
Ralph's outlook was not as clear as it had been before. He could just
see the stars, which seemed enveloped in a haze. This, however, pleased
him greatly, as he knew that his artificial comet must look like a
natural one from a great distance.

In this he had not been mistaken. As he afterwards learned, his comet
had been "discovered" simultaneously on Earth, on Venus, and on Mars
the same day he had made it. It had been charted and named, and on
account of its great brilliance and long tail, had been immediately
termed "The Great Comet of 2660."

That Llysanorh' would see the comet Ralph never doubted for a second.
He headed his comet-space flyer exactly toward the point where it would
collide with Mars at the end of six days. He figured that the Martians
would be on the lookout, and inasmuch as Ralph's careful search did
not reveal another space flyer anywhere near him, he knew that the
Martian officials would surely locate and attempt to communicate with
Llysanorh'.

In this he was not mistaken. His chronometer pointed to 5 p.m. when he
first recorded weak signals coming from Mars. Several messages were
exchanged between the Martians and Llysanorh'. Llysanorh' gave his
number and position in the heavens and he in turn received instructions
to approach as near to the "comet's" head as feasible in order to
change its course. He was also instructed to bombard the comet's
nucleus with time-set torpedoes, if he could not deviate the comet from
its course. Llysanorh' answered that he would follow instructions as
far as his equipment allowed.

During the next few days Ralph was relieved to note that the distance
between him and Llysanorh' diminished with great rapidity. His trick
had worked. Llysanorh' was rushing at top speed toward Ralph's flyer,
firmly believing it a comet.

Confident of success, sure of victory, Ralph was jubilant. Hope, so
long deferred, flooded his spirit. He whistled cheerily at his work.

Was not every minute bringing him closer to his sweetheart, his Alice?
Was not every second drawing nearer to that moment when he would hold
her in his arms?

What wonder that he whistled all day long, and laughed to himself from
sheer joy and relief.

At last the Martian came into range. Llysanorh' approached the "comet"
up to about 150 kilometers and then receded. He then took observations,
but somehow or other the "comet," instead of being deflected, commenced
to pursue him. This was opposed to all astronomical knowledge and
reasoning, and Llysanorh', fearing collision with the "comet" began to
fire explosive torpedoes into its nucleus. As the distance between it
and his machine was only 100 kilometers, he could watch the torpedo
in its flight. Through his telescope he could see the torpedo rushing
toward the "comet's" head.

But the "comet" dodged, and the torpedo shot far above the nucleus!
It was uncanny. His aim had been accurate, he could have sworn. The
distance was short. Yet he had missed. The "comet" had moved out of the
projectile's path.

He had fired again, with equal accuracy. The torpedo would surely
strike now. But the "comet" this time "side-stepped," as it were, and
the torpedo sped on through space, missing its target by a wide margin.

Llysanorh' was bewildered. Fear gripped him.

Gravitational action had not made the "comet" act in this strange
manner. He fired one torpedo after another, but the "comet" dodged them
all.

He suddenly stopped firing torpedoes. He next tried to destroy the
infernal "comet" by electricity.

Soon his aerials were white hot with the energy he threw into them. He
then turned his flyer into such a position as to direct the outflowing
energy towards the "comet's" head. The only result was to increase the
luminosity of the "comet."

Suddenly Llysanorh' realized that the "comet" was only fifty kilometers
away. He noticed with horror that the head of the "comet" now seemed to
fill up almost one-quarter of the "sky." Another discovery that came
simultaneously was that instead of the "comet's" head being solid,
there was a mysterious small black speck in the center of the nucleus.
This was against both knowledge and theory of comets.

When Ralph had brought his "comet" within fifty kilometers of
Llysanorh', he felt that the time had come to throw off the mask. He
had lured Llysanorh' to within striking distance. It was now time to
strike.

He had one great advantage over Llysanorh'. The latter was wholly
unprepared, believing he had to deal with a comet. This facilitated
Ralph's movements.

He carefully insulated himself by sitting on a tall glass tripod. He
then attached to his ears the telephone receivers that were connected
with the induction balance,[13] which he had attached to one of the
glass port-holes.

He then started to turn the glass wheel of the ultra-generator,
connected to the outside aerials.

A terrible screaming sound came from the generator and the whole
flyer shook. Ralph continued to turn the wheel quickly. The generator
shrilled higher and higher, until the frequency had become so high that
no sound could be heard. The vibrations had passed 35,000.

Ralph turned the wheel a few more notches and everything became
pitch-dark over a space sixty kilometers in diameter.

As in his Switzerland exploit, two months before, Ralph's aerial on
the space flyer due to the powerful action of his ultra-generator,
attracted the ether so fast that it could not be replenished quickly
enough. It acted much like an immense vacuum pump on the atmosphere.

Darkness spread over a large area as the inky fluid of the octopus
blackens the sea. Both flyers became invisible to each other.

Ralph, however, pointed his machine on its former course and speeded it
up.

Llysanorh', dismayed by the unexpected darkness, had brought his
machine to a dead stop. He was almost frantic with terror and stood
like one paralyzed, unable to think or to act.

Within a few minutes Ralph's induction balance caused his telephones
to emit higher and higher notes, indicating, despite the pitch-black
darkness, just how near he was to the other flyer.

When he was certain that he had approached Llysanorh's machine, he
suddenly shut off his ultra-generator. Quick as lightning he had
grasped his radioperforer, and although the light which returned
instantly blinded him for a few seconds, he had glimpsed Llysanorh's
terrified face, just a few meters distant, his forehead pressed tight
against the glass plate of the port-hole.

Ralph took quick aim and pressed the trigger.

There was a silent flash and Llysanorh' seemed to topple over.
Simultaneously the glass of the port-hole turned green.

In a flash Ralph jumped up and peered anxiously out one port-hole, then
another, hoping to catch sight of Alice.

There was nobody to be seen.

He rushed to the wireless and signaled frantically for several minutes.
Breathlessly he clasped the receivers to his ears.

There was no answer--no sound--nothing.

With sinking heart, he rushed to the connecting tube. In his
excitement it took him twenty minutes to make the connection between
the two machines and the tube air-tight. Before crawling into the
connecting tube he grabbed up his radioperforer as a precaution.

The sight that presented itself to him as he crawled into Llysanorh's
machine drew from him an involuntary agonized cry.

Llysanorh's dead body lay across that of Alice, his sharp dagger sunk
into the upper part of her arm. Ralph hurriedly moved the rigid body
aside.

_There lay Alice in a terrible pool of her own blood, her eyes
closed--dead._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: In 1876 Reitlinger & Urbanitzky before the Vienna Academy
of Sciences published a report on their experiments on artificial
comets. A tube containing hydrocarbon has been pumped out till the
pressure has fallen to 0.1 millimeter. If connected to an induction
coil, a blue sphere will be formed at the positive electrode after a
short time, which "hangs" suspended freely. Connected to the sphere is
a tail, fig. 1. One is struck immediately with the close resemblance
between this artificial comet and that of Henry's Comet of 1873, fig.
2. If a

[Illustration: _Fig. 1_]

[Illustration: _Fig. 2_]

conductor (a brass ball) as seen in fig. 1 is brought near the tube,
the tail flees from the conductor as far as the tube allows. This again
proves that the artificial as well as the real comets are subject
to the same natural laws. As is known, the tails of all comets are
repulsed strongly by the sun, which latter is nothing but a conductor.]

[Footnote 12: According to Bredikhine, the long straight tails, as
seen in the comet of 1861, are composed of hydrogen; the long curved
tails, like the principal tail of Donati's Comet, consist largely of
hydrocarbon vapors; while the somnolent, rare, short tails of violent
curvature are made up of mixed iron, sodium and other metallic vapors.
This classification has received support from spectroscopic evidence.
In 1882, Fitzgerald first propounded the theory that the tail was
due to the pressure of light upon the gaseous matter composing it.
In 1900 Arrhenius revived the theory, but modified it to the extent
of supposing the tail to consist, not of gaseous matter, but of
fine particles produced by condensation from the emanations of the
comet.--New International Encyclopædia.]

[Footnote 13: The induction balance is an instrument which, connected
with a telephone, causes the latter to emit a singing sound, when a
piece of metal is brought near the balance. It is incredibly sensitive
and has been used to locate buried treasures, etc. Invented in 1880 by
Professor Hughes.]




15

LLYSANORH' THROWS OFF THE MASK


When Alice saw that it was Llysanorh' standing on the threshold of her
room she experienced at once great disappointment and overwhelming
relief.

The second space flyer was not driven by Ralph, but she was at least
safe from Fernand.

"Oh," she cried with a sob of relief, "I am so glad it is you,
Llysanorh'! I have been so frightened."

He made no answer, but regarded her with enormous eyes in which burned
a somber flame.

"You _are_ going to take me off this horrible flyer, aren't you,
Llysanorh'? You won't leave me here alone with that--that beast, will
you?"

He shook his head soberly, and extended one hand to her.

"Come," he said briefly.

She put her own hand confidently in his, and he led her down the
stairs, and past the laboratory. She shrank back as she saw Fernand's
bound and motionless form.

"Is he--dead?" she whispered.

"No," said Llysanorh', leading her to the connecting tube. He helped
her through with gentle hands, and in a moment she found herself in
the other flyer. Taking her hand again in his, Llysanorh' led her to a
luxuriously furnished room.

"Stay here until I come back," he said. "I won't be long."

He turned to go but she, catching his sleeve, detained him.

"Are you going to--to kill him?" she asked.

"Perhaps. I haven't decided yet," he replied, unsmiling. And then,
gripping her shoulders with startlingly sudden emotion, "Has he harmed
you?"

"No, no," she said, frightened, "he just tried to terrify me, that was
all."

He released her, and strode to the door.

"I won't kill him," he said, and for the first time he smiled, but in
that smile there was no mirth. "I shall let him live, that he may pray
for the death I have denied him."

And he was gone.

Presently Alice heard him disconnecting the two machines, and a moment
later she knew that Llysanorh's flyer was moving. A half hour passed
and still she was left alone. Beyond the vibration of the machinery
there was no sound to indicate that she was not absolutely alone on the
flyer.

Feeling a little panicky she finally left the room and made her way
through a corridor. Several doors that she opened led into rooms even
more luxurious and splendid than the one she had left.

So this was the space flyer owned by the Martian of which there had
been so much gossip. Stories she had heard before of its spaciousness
and magnificence came back to her.

It was like the palace of the Beast in the ancient fairy story, where
Beauty had wandered for hours through room after room filled with new
marvels. Alice smiled whimsically at the thought. She was "Beauty,"
she reflected, and Llysanorh'--yes, he made a very good "Beast."
Her buoyant spirits were rapidly recovering from the strain of her
imprisonment.

Finally, she tried one more door, and entered a wonderful laboratory
fully equipped.

And at the farther end, seated before a low table sat the Martian, his
head resting on his folded arms. His whole attitude suggested hopeless
desolation. He looked very lonely and remote, and somehow, to her, very
pathetic.

She stood, hesitating, uncertain of whether to advance or retreat.
Finally she spoke his name softly. At her voice he raised his head and
stared at her. And she saw that his face was lined and furrowed as if
with some terrible strain, but his eyes were steady with resolve.

"How serious you look," she said, coming into the middle of the room.
"You seem so worried and anxious, Llysanorh'. Has something gone wrong
with the flyer? And what did you do with Fernand and his machine?"

"I left him recovering from the effects of the drug," he said, in
a forced and unnatural voice which betrayed, even more than his
expression, the disturbed state of his mind. "And nothing is wrong with
the flyer. It is I--I with whom everything is wrong."

"Oh, surely it can't be as bad as you think," said the girl, her quick
sympathies aroused by his obvious misery. "Would it make you feel any
better to tell me? We have always been such good friends, Llysanorh',
and I might be able to help you."

"Later, perhaps, later," he said, and then with an effort, "can you
make yourself comfortable here for a few days, do you think? I brought
the maid with me. You will find her waiting in your rooms for you. I
don't think she will give you any trouble."

"Oh, yes, I surely can," she replied. "It is lovely here. I have
heard so much of this flyer. Why haven't you shown it to father and
me before? The rooms are like those of a fairy palace. Tell me,
Llysanorh', will it be long before we get back to Earth? Everyone"--she
had been about to say Ralph, but checked herself--"everyone will be so
worried about me."

"We are never going back to Earth," he said.

"Never going--why, what has happened then? Is there something wrong
that you won't tell me?--or are you joking? But of course you're
joking, Llysanorh', and for a minute I thought you were serious."

"I was never more serious," he said, rising to his feet and facing her.
"We are never going back, you and I."

Alice looked at him wide-eyed, amazed and bewildered.

"But I don't understand," she faltered. "Why, Llysanorh'?"

It was then that the pent-up emotion of months burst the bonds of
self-restraint that he had forced upon himself.

"Why!" he cried passionately, "you ask me why! Can't you see why? How
can you look into my eyes and not know why? Because I am a man--because
I am a fool--good God, because I love you!" He flung himself upon his
knees, clasping her about the waist with his arms.

"I worship you, I adore you--I always shall. You must love me, you
cannot help but love me, I love you so much, Alice, Alice, my dearest,
my beloved."

He threw his head back and looked into her face imploringly, as if by
the very force of his love she must respond, but he read there only
terror and a growing abhorrence. It cooled him more effectually than
any words she could have spoken, and he relinquished his hold on her,
rose and went back to his former position at the table, while she
watched him speechlessly.

For a time neither spoke. At last he said in quiet tones strangely in
contrast with his late passion, "You can't hate me, Alice, I love you
too much."

"No," she said, gently, "I don't hate you, Llysanorh', but oh, can't
you see how hopeless all this is? I love Ralph, and if you keep me here
forever I will still love him."

She got a glimpse, then, of the terrible struggle this man of Mars had
had with his conscience.

"I know, I know," he groaned, "I have gone over that ground many
times--many times, but I can not--will not--give you up. I tell you,"
he went on with a return of his former frenzied emotion, "that rather
than let him have you I will kill you with my own hands. At least, when
you are dead I will be sure that no other man can possess you."

She was a courageous girl, but before the madness in his face she fled
shuddering.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the next several days Alice kept close to her rooms. She saw
little of Llysanorh', who seemed to be avoiding her purposely, and
the maid, Lylette, was uncommunicative. Alice was horribly lonely and
afraid. At first she had confidently expected Ralph to rescue her at
any moment, but as the days dragged on, and still the space flyer
drew nearer to Mars, and there were no signs of Ralph, she became
increasingly aware that her situation was desperate.

She knew that Llysanorh' controlled powerful interests on his native
planet, and that once there, all her pleadings would be in vain and he
would make her his bride.

The few times she saw him he was quiet in manner, showing a courteous
deference to her. But he could not hide the triumphant light in his
eyes, which, the nearer they came to Mars, he took less pains to
disguise from her. And yet, she could not deny the fact of his genuine,
and fervent love for her. Only once, did he again speak of it.

One day she was sitting in the beautifully appointed library reading,
with Lylette near by, when he entered. He gazed at her a moment in
silence. Then he said, "You know, Alice, just to have you here with me,
where I can see you occasionally, is wonderful to me."

Her eyes filled with quick tears, for she was worn and unhappy. And
seeing them he quickly withdrew.

Later, he seemed very busy in the machine room. Passing it, once, she
saw him working frantically at something; what, she could not see. But
a glimpse of his face revealed it haggard and drawn. It was but a few
minutes after that, back in her own room, a complete and terrifying
blackness obliterated everything. She heard Lylette screaming somewhere
in dreadful panic, and she heard Llysanorh' shout something hoarsely.

Stumbling, she made her way as fast as she could in the darkness back
to the machine room. She heard him at one of the windows. Apparently he
was trying to pierce the blackness, to ascertain its cause. She started
toward him, when the light returned in a blinding flash, and she saw
Llysanorh' stagger as if struck by something.

"Llysanorh'," she cried, "what is it? What is happening?"

He lurched toward her and caught her in his arms savagely. "I'll tell
you what has happened," he shouted, "I see it all now. The comet--a
trick, damn him! And now he's got me. But not you, Alice, not you. You
are going with me--"

The Martian's face was distorted with passion. He had a gleaming dagger
in his right hand poised over her. Then, just as it was about to strike
she saw his face go blank and felt a terrific blow on her arm. The next
instant she was slumping--seemed to drop off into a dreamless sleep.




16

THE SUPREME VICTORY


When Ralph burst into the machine room of the Martian's flyer and
saw Alice lying dead in a pool of her own blood the shock was almost
more than he could bear. Falling on his knees beside her he caught
her small, yet warm hand in his, calling her name again and again in
agonized tones. He covered her lovely white face with kisses, while dry
tearless sobs tore at his throat.

Then, thinking that perhaps he had made a mistake, that her heart
_must_ still beat, he tried, with trembling hands to discover the
extent of her injuries. Llysanorh' had aimed at her heart but the dying
man had missed his mark, and the sharp point of the dagger had slashed
her arm, cutting into the large artery. And in those precious moments
when Ralph had been connecting the two flyers, and making his way from
one to the other, her warm rich life's blood had ebbed rapidly away.

He lifted the lifeless body in his arms and carried it to his machine,
where he laid it on his bed. His mind was confused and disordered and
he was unable to think coherently. A sickening sensation of depression
so overwhelmed him that he felt physically ill.

Suddenly an electric thrill seemed to pass through his body and his
clouded mental vision cleared. A picture flashed upon his mind. He
saw himself in his laboratory on Earth, bending over a "dead" dog. And
there came to him a memory of the words of that Dean of scientists:

"_What you have done with a dog, you can do with a human being._"

In that instant Ralph was galvanized. For the first time in his life
he doubted. Could he do it? What if he failed? Then he pushed such
thoughts from him with stem resolution.

_He would not fail!_

He touched the body of the girl. It had not yet grown cold with the
icy chill of death. He rushed for some electric heating pads, which he
applied to her to keep what warmth remained.

Then came that which proved itself a terrible ordeal for him. It was
absolutely necessary to drain away all the remaining blood, so that it
would not coagulate.

It had been a simple matter to empty the blood vessels of a dog, but
this was the girl he loved, and he shuddered as he began his work.

He opened the large artery, and it was only with supreme courage that
he forced himself to complete the heart=breaking task, while scalding
tears ran down his cheeks unheeded.

He had scarcely terminated his work, when he heard steps in the
corridor. He could feel his hair bristling, and he whirled to face the
door, reaching for his radioperforer as he did so. Could Llysanorh'?...
The next moment a large woman stood in the doorway.

Ralph stared at her in amazement. Then suddenly it dawned upon him that
this must be the maid Fernand had provided.

She had hidden herself in abject terror when the darkness came down,
and had only now mustered enough courage to investigate. The first
object she had seen upon creeping to the machine room was the dead body
of the Martian. Horrified, she had fainted away, but later, recovering,
she crawled through the connecting tube.

She was weak, trembling with fright, and could be of no use, and
Ralph hastened to get her into another room, where he put her into
a comfortable chair and left her, for he could not afford to lose a
minute now.

A most important task was now before him. He had to pump an antiseptic
solution through the veins of Alice, and after that the blood vessels
must be filled with a weak solution of Radium-K Bromide, which, taking
the place of the blood would prevent her body from undergoing physical
and chemical changes.

With infinite care Ralph applied himself to his difficult task.
After the blood vessels had been completely filled with the Radium
preparation, he sewed up the arteries. In this gruesome task he was
assisted by Lylette, who had recovered sufficiently to be of some help
to him.

There remained only one more thing--to apply the Permagatol, the rare
gas, having the property of conserving animal tissue, which Ralph had
used successfully in his dog experiment, in keeping the respiratory
organs from decomposing in the absence of blood in the blood vessels.

Ralph then quickly constructed a case of flexible glass, which he
fitted around the upper part of Alice's body, covering her head and
torso.

He took special precautions, moreover, to make the case air-tight.

When the case had been completed and the recording and registering
instruments put in place, Ralph went up to the laboratory to get the
Permagatol.

When, however, he tested the steelonium bomb, labeled "Permagatol," he
found it absolutely empty.

The discovery nearly paralyzed him. His head swam and he was forced to
sit down to keep from slumping over in the gravitation-less flyer. This
last blow was almost too much. His cup of hope, that Alice could be
brought back to life, had been snatched out of his hands.

Without the Permagatol, it was impossible to save her. There was
nothing to keep the beautiful dead body from disintegrating. While
the Radium-K Bromide stayed the process to a certain extent, the
respiratory organs could only be saved by means of the precious
Permagatol.

Could he use a substitute gas? It was a dangerous experiment to make,
but he had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

He threw himself with a frenzy into the work and in six hours had
compounded a gas that, in its general structure and atomic weight, came
close to the properties and characteristics of Permagatol. The gas he
evolved was Armagatol, and while he knew that it had never been used
for the purpose for which he intended it, he felt justified in risking
the experiment.

After the air had been drawn from the glass case, he immediately
introduced the Armagatol into it.

The change in Alice's face shocked him, as he watched the Armagatol
fill the case. The green gas-vapors cast an unearthly green pallor
over her countenance, and the ghastliness was further enhanced by the
deathly pallor of her face.

He arranged the electric heating pads around Alice's body, and
inspected the registering instruments.

It had now become necessary to take his bearings. He found to his
amazement that instead of being close to Mars, as he had expected, he
was moving away from that body.

The two space flyers, although their machinery was not working,
had been moving rapidly, due to the gravitational action of the
nearest large celestial body. This body was not Mars, however, but
Earth. Although, at the time of the encounter with Llysanorh', the
two machines had been slightly nearer to Mars, the larger mass, and
consequently the stronger attraction of the Earth had overcome the pull
that Mars exerted on the machines, and as a result the machines were
now being drawn toward Earth.

A glance at the celestial chart revealed to Ralph that Earth and Mars
would be in opposition the next day and that he was separated from
Earth by twenty-two million miles. He would have to move faster than
Earth if he were to overtake that body. Besides, he was twenty-two
million miles to the east of the planet.

The Earth was traveling 65,533 miles per hour in its orbit. A simple
calculation indicated that, by forcing his space flyer to the utmost,
or 90,000 miles an hour, he could not hope to reach Earth in less than
fifty days, as he could only gain about 24,400 miles an hour on Earth.

The next important step was to cut loose Llysanorh's machine. He
instructed Lylette to get her things from the Martian's flyer. She
started to crawl through the connecting tube, and that was the last
time Ralph saw her alive.

A loud hissing noise, like escaping steam caused him to rush to the
connecting tube, but he was too late. The automatic safety valve
had sprung, and the circular door of the connecting tube had been
hermetically closed.

The two machines had drifted apart, and as Ralph peered anxiously
through one of the windows, he was horrified at the sight of Lylette,
hanging by her feet from the circular connecting-tube door of
Llysanorh's machine.

The door had closed automatically when the two machines had become
disconnected. The air had of course rushed out immediately from
Llysanorh's flyer. She had died in a few seconds and her body had
become distended to a great many times its normal size. Ralph,
nauseated by the terrible spectacle, turned away from it. There was
nothing he could do.

Few people realize that it is nothing but the atmospheric pressure that
keeps our bodies from falling apart; thus, it is well known that when
flying at high altitudes on the Earth, where the atmosphere becomes
thin, blood will begin to flow from the mouth, nose and ears.

When he glanced backwards a few minutes later and saw Llysanorh's
machine he gave an exclamation of astonishment. The machine was not
to be seen, but in its place was a wondrous comet, its tail streaming
thousands of miles behind it!

Llysanorh's flyer, which was somewhat larger in size than that of
Ralph's, had "captured" the artificial comet! There remained not a part
of it attached to Ralph's flyer. Ralph reasoned that the air that had
been contained formerly in Llysanorh's machine had, upon rushing out
of the flyer after Lylette's fatal accident, mixed with the gases of
the "comet" and thereby assisted the latter in detaching itself from
Ralph's flyer.

It remained within range of his vision for many weeks, before it was
finally lost in the depths of infinite space, where it would, in all
probability, rush through the boundless universe for aeon upon aeon,
ere it would eventually collide with some other body, and would be
reduced to cosmic dust.

       *       *       *       *       *

The long days during Ralph's flight back to Earth left their indelible
imprint upon his mind. Never, in all the years to follow, could he look
back upon them without a shudder, remembering the heart-break of the
terrible hours in which he sat beside the bed on which lay his beloved.

The nearer he drew to Earth, the more his dread of the coming ordeal
increased. He was by no means sure that he could bring Alice back to
life; it was not even probable. It was but an experiment at best, the
outcome of which could not be foretold. If Armagatol would bring the
same reactions as Permagatol, there was a reasonable assurance of
restoring Alice to life, but Ralph was inclined to doubt the efficiency
of the substitute gas.

He examined her every few hours, and once in twenty-four he looked
at the blood vessels. This was made possible by means of his
_Platinum-Barium-Arcturium_ eyeglasses, which acted in a similar manner
to the old-fashioned X-ray screen. Inasmuch as all the blood vessels
of Alice's body were filled with Radium-K Bromide--which latter, like
Radium, excited the Platinum-Barium-Arcturium eyeglasses--each blood
vessel could be inspected with ease.

The invisible Rays (the same as X-rays) emanating from the Radium-K
Bromide solution in the blood vessels, showed Ralph their exact
condition.

While all the blood vessels remained healthy, Ralph became greatly
alarmed over the change that slowly, but steadily, made itself apparent
in the respiratory organs. Some change was taking place which he did
not understand. He knew it must be the action of the Armagatol, but
he was unable to do anything, as with the chemicals on hand it was
impossible to produce the life-saving Permagatol.

Ralph grew more despondent each day, and his hope of bringing his
betrothed back to life grew dimmer and dimmer as the hours rolled on.
For the first time since he left the Earth he became _space-sick_.

Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human
being can experience. Not all are subject to it, and it does not last
longer than forty-eight hours, after which it never recurs.

On Earth, gravitational action to a certain degree exerts a certain
pull on the brain. Out in space, with practically no gravitational
action, this pull ceases. When this happens, the brain is no longer
subjected to the accustomed pull, and it expands slightly in all
directions, just as a balloon loses its pear shape and becomes round
when an aeronaut cuts loose, to drop down with his parachute.

The effect on the brain results in space-sickness, the first symptoms
being violent melancholy and depression followed by a terrible
heart-rending longing for Earth. During this stage, at which the
patient undergoes great mental suffering, the optical nerves usually
become affected and everything appears upside down, as if the sufferer
were looking through a lens. It becomes necessary to take large doses
of _Siltagol_, otherwise brain fever may develop.

At the end of two days the sickness left Ralph, but it left him worn
and exhausted physically and he was subject to terrible fits of
depression. At these times the boundless space about him appalled him,
weighing him down with its infinite immensity. The awful stillness
crushed him. Everything seemed dead--dead as was that silent motionless
figure that had been a living laughing creature who had loved him--it
seemed so long ago.

He felt that Nature herself was punishing him for his daring assault
upon her dominions. He had presumed to set the laws of Life and Death
at variance, and this was the penalty, this living death, shut in with
the living dead.

At such times a madness of fear and despair would grip him. He would
fling himself down at Alice's side, his face buried in her cold inert
hand, and sob like a child in his loneliness and agony of spirit.

When this had passed he would return to his state of lethargy, sitting
hours at a time staring moodily at the floor. Gaunt, hollow-eyed and
listless, he seemed more mad than sane.

And yet, the tremendous will-power of the man came into evidence when,
within forty-eight hours' distance of Earth he threw off his blinding
lethargy, and made himself ready, mentally and physically, for his last
fight for Alice's life.

He had drawn close enough to Earth now to use the Radio apparatus,
and soon he was in hourly communication with his laboratory. He gave
his instructions clearly and definitely, and he soon had assurance
that everything that could possibly be done for the dead girl had been
carefully arranged.

Ralph's flyer landed on top of his tower sixty-nine days after his
departure. He was greatly impressed at the sight of the flags of the
city at half mast. The town itself was very still. There were no
aeroflyers, no vehicles in motion in the streets. Business was at a
standstill for ten minutes after Ralph landed. Thus the world expressed
its deep sympathy.

Within a few minutes Alice had been placed on an operating table in
Ralph's laboratory, and 16K 5+, the world's greatest surgeon, who had
been summoned, was in readiness. Ralph was placed on an operating table
to the right of Alice. To the left lay Cléose, a beloved cousin of
Alice.

In a few seconds Alice's arteries had been opened and the Radium-K
Bromide solution was drawn off. A quantity of warm, distilled water,
containing antiseptic salts was then pumped through her blood vessels
by two assistants. During this time the surgeon had opened the large
arteries of both Ralph and Cléose, and had introduced a flexible glass
tube into each. In a short time the blood of Ralph and Cléose began
flowing rapidly through these tubes into Alice's blood vessels.

Simultaneously a third assistant administered oxygen to Alice, while
a fourth commenced to excite her heart rhythmically by means of
electrical current.

The brain was stimulated energetically at the same time by means of the
powerful F-9-Rays, and while Ralph and Cléose grew paler and paler as
their blood flowed out into Alice's body, the latter began to acquire
color by degrees, though there was no other sign of life. After enough
blood had been taken from the two, the surgeon closed their arteries;
and, while Cléose had fainted during the ordeal, Ralph, weakened as he
was, remained conscious by sheer force of will.

The surgeon 16K 5+, asked Ralph if he did not think it would be better
for him to be removed to another room, but Ralph refused so vehemently,
despite his terribly depleted strength, that he was allowed to remain.
He asked to be raised slightly higher that he might watch the work of
restoring Alice to life, and this request too, was granted.

Almost two hours had passed since Alice had first been laid upon the
operating table, and still there was no sign of life. The suspense
became well-nigh unendurable, not only to Ralph, but to the workers as
well.

Was she lost after all?

Was he fated never to see her alive again?

The great surgeon and his assistants were working desperately. Every
conceivable means was used to revive the inanimate body, but all was
to no avail. As attempt after attempt failed the faces of the men grew
graver. A tense silence prevailed throughout the laboratory, broken
only by the surgeon's sharp low instructions from time to time.

It was then, when the tide of hope was at the lowest ebb, that Ralph
beckoned one of the assistants to his side. Though unable to speak
above a whisper, so weak was he, he managed with difficulty to convey
his meaning to the man, who sprang to the side of the surgeon and in a
low voice gave him Ralph's message.

Ralph had sent for a Hypnobioscope, the head pieces of which they
fastened to Alice's temples. They brought a number of rolls and from
them Ralph chose one of the world's most beautiful love stories.

It was the last trench in his desperate combat with Nature. It was the
supreme effort. It was the last throw of the dice in the game between
Science and Death, with a girl as the stakes.

Ralph knew that if the brain was at all alive to impressions, the
effect of the story would stimulate it to voluntary action.

As the reel unrolled, Ralph fixed his burning eyes on the closed ones
as though he would drive by the very force of his will the impressions
coming from the Hypnobioscope deep into her brain.

Then, while they watched, with bated breath, the slight body on the
operating table quivered almost imperceptibly, as the water of a still
pool is rippled by a passing zephyr. A moment later her breast rose
gently and fell again, and from the white lips came the suggestion of a
sigh.

When Ralph saw this, his strength returned to him, and he raised
himself, listening with throbbing heart to the soft breathing. His eyes
glowed with triumph. The battle was won. His face was transfigured. All
the agony, the heart-breaking foreboding of the past weeks passed from
him, and a great peace settled upon his soul.

The surgeon sprang to catch him as he dropped, unconscious.

       *       *       *       *       *

About a week later Ralph was admitted by the nurse to the room where
Alice lay, regaining her strength. He was still weak, himself, from the
loss of blood. Alice had just awakened, and at his step, she turned her
lovely face eagerly toward him. Her cheeks were faintly tinged with the
delicate pink of the seashell, her eyes were bright with the soft glow
of health.

She beckoned to him smiling into his eyes, and he knelt down beside
her, taking her hands in his own, and holding them close. She moved
her lips and he bent his head close to them, so that her gentle breath
fanned his cheek.

"I can't talk very loud," she whispered. "My lungs and vocal chords are
not strong yet, but the nurse said I might speak just a few words. But
I wanted to tell you something."

"What is it, my darling?" he asked tenderly.

She looked at him with the old sparkle of mischief in her dark eyes.

"Dearest," she said, "I have just found out what your name really
means."

Ralph twined a little tendril of her hair around one of his fingers.

"Yes?" he asked with a quizzical smile.

"Well, you see," and the lovely color deepened to rose, "your name is
going to be my name now, so I keep saying it over to myself--"

"My darling

 ONE TO FORESEE FOR ONE!"
 (1  2  4   C   4   1)

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60944 ***