Julian Epworth returned to consciousness on a luxurious day bed in a pleasant plastered room tinted a light green. For several moments he did not comprehend. Presently he put his hand up to his head, and found a bandage.

“Just what happened?” he asked curiously, not expecting a reply.

“Take it calmly,” Joan advised. She was sitting by him in a dejected attitude. “We’re prisoners, and——”

“Where are we?” he demanded impatiently.

She placed her finger on her lips, and pointed at an open door. The only thing the young man could see through the door was another plastered room tinted blue, and a radio receiving set.

“This is KFI, Los Angeles, California,” he heard come over the radio. “We are now going to hear from Professor Ainslee, the distinguished astronomer of Mount Wilson Observatory. He is going to tell you something about the things that are going on in the moon.”

There was a brief delay, and then Prof. Ainslee’s well-known voice came over the air.

“Greetings, ladies and gentlemen of Radio Land: Continuing my short talks about the marvelous growth on our satellite, I will state that the newly discovered lake in the extreme western part of the Sea of Vapours is rapidly getting larger. I should say that it is about a mile in diameter at this time. Of course it cannot be water as water cannot exist on the moon. The heat of the sun, shining steadily for fourteen days, would dry it up as there is no air on the moon to give the water protection. As all readers are aware air forms a blanket over water, and prevents its gradual evaporation. But there is certainly a dark spot at the point indicated, and the scientific world is studying it thoughtfully. The spectroscopic investigation states absolutely that it is water. This increases the mystery.”

“Ah, ha,” a shrill voice broke out in the adjoining room, “I, the greatest and mightiest scientist in the world, am the only man who can answer this mystery. Bring in the prisoners, Kosloff, and let them hear the rest of this astronomical lecture. Perhaps they may be interested to discover how ignorant their scientists are.”

The speaker had hardly finished when the door was pushed open, and four men sprang into the green-tinted room, covering Epworth and Joan with their guns.

“Come,” one of the men commanded in broken English, “the general wishes to speak to you.”

Epworth got up from the bed, and followed by Joan passed through the door guarded by the gunmen. Their captors stopped them in front of a large mahogany desk. Seated behind this desk was an enormous giant. Epworth instantly recognized him as the man who had prevented the get-away in the Greyhound with a machine gun.

The giant stood up and made an elaborate bow, drawing his immense height erect. He was fully eight feet tall, and extended an arm almost as large as Joan’s body. Epworth weighed 160 pounds, and mentally compared his weight with the appearance of the giant. He was willing to wager that the giant would weigh 350 pounds, and that there was not an ounce of surplus fat about the man’s red-haired body. He thought of red hair all over the man because the giant’s shirt was open at the throat and a huge mat of red hair was visible. In addition to this he had a mass of tousled red hair on his head and a long red beard, which came almost to his waist. He was, in fact, a Man Mountain Dean, beard and all.

He smiled at Epworth and Joan, and they thought of horse teeth, and the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac.

As Joan stepped in front of him he leaned forward, and gave her a hard stare out of his small, twinkling pale blue eyes. At first there was a slight pucker of puzzlement around his big mouth. Then he spoke in good English in a small shrill voice. His voice was so small and sharp that it was all Joan could do to keep from laughing. Epworth saw that she was about to smile, and punched her lightly in the side, shaking his head vigorously in the negative.

“It will never do to laugh at him,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “Our lives are in his hands.”

“Ah, ha! The beautiful Miss Joan Epworth, flying sister of the noted air man, Julian Epworth,” the giant exclaimed. “I think that she walks like a fly into our trap.”

He opened a drawer in the mahogany table and pulled out a Los Angeles magazine. Opening the magazine at a certain page he whirled the sheet around so that she could see. Then he stared at her again. Joan shrank back from that stare. There was something dangerous about it that she could not understand.

But she understood the picture in the magazine. It was her own picture.

“My lady,” continued the giant with distinguished courtesy of speech but with a sarcastic stare in his eyes, “that magazine is a year old. I have been keeping it for a purpose. I planned in the near future to visit Los Angeles with one of my fastest airships, and kidnap you. That picture told me that you were a very charming and fascinating young lady. Now that I see you I realize that the magazine did not tell half of the truth.”

“Just what do you mean by that speech?” Epworth demanded sharply. “I will have you to understand this girl is my sister, and is not to be hurt or insulted.”

“I am not going to hurt her. I wouldn’t hurt her for a million dollars. All I am going to do is to make her my wife. We are a little short of women up here in the colony, and I have known for a year that she would fit in admirably.”

“Marry you, you red-haired brute?” Joan cried passionately. “I shall never marry you. Besides I do not want a husband. I am just a school girl. I will not be thinking of marrying for ten years.”

“You are old enough—quite old enough. I like them young. But you will have to be satisfied with a rather crude ceremony. We go very little on ceremonies here, especially religious ceremonies. There are no priests here, no churches here, no god to solemnize a marriage. I am the only god here, but believe me I am a big one. I make and unmake worlds.”

“You will never call this girl wife,” Epworth said softly. “Not as long as I live.”

“Then you would fight for her? Fine.” He paused and looked at them with narrowing eyes. “But I am forgetting the astronomical lecture. I am the man who is doing things with the moon. I am transforming that satellite, which is a boiling caldron for fourteen days and then a freezing Arctic Ocean for fourteen days, into a pleasant place to live. It will be a place where I can take my sweet comrades, and establish a colony which will not be annoyed by world dictators or tyrannical democracies.”

He paused and drew his hand across his huge mouth, exposing his horse teeth as his hand left his face. The act proved so repulsive to Joan that she turned her head. The giant noted this and frowned. The frown was not pleasant to behold.

“The moon you are aware has for untold centuries been a dead planet,” he continued without rebuking the girl but with a sinister contortion of his under lip. “The scientists tell us that there is no atmosphere there; no plant life; no water; and that men cannot live there even if they could go there. I am fixing that all up, working the moon over so that we will find life quite pleasant when we go there. I am sending rocket projectiles loaded with water from the Arctic Ocean to the moon. A projectile leaves here loaded with ice; immediately behind it goes another projectile carrying liquid air, hydrogen and oxygen. Both projectiles hit in the same spot on the moon, and the liquid air explodes and forms a protecting velvet for the ice water when it melts.”

He paused, and began to laugh, his sides shaking up and down ludicrously. Again Joan had to turn her head; again he eyed her savagely without saying anything for a second. When he spoke there was a threat in his voice.

“When you are my wife you’re going to have to watch your risibilities,” he said gently. “But to proceed. We delay—spread out too much for your small minds. Taking cognizance of my projectiles, you see the beginning to the Lake of Vapours. Fearing that there may be no nitrogen on the moon I am sending frequent projectiles loaded with saltpeter to unite with the supposed volcanic soils, and make vegetable life possible. In addition I am sending all kinds of seeds—vegetable seeds, flower seeds, fruit tree seeds, cereal seeds. They go mixed with commercial fertilizer liquidized.”

“And you get the saltpeter and fertilizer from——”

The giant did not wait for Epworth to finish his sentence.

“Various and sundry plants in the United States—from Ford, Dupont, etc. The wholesale robberies you were about to speak of are not what one would call stealing. We need these things to start a great civilization on another planet. Your people have them. Unfortunately we have not the money to buy all we need; and consequently we are forced to adopt the methods of other nations. We take them.”

“And you think that this crazy idea is going to work?”

“Ha, ha! Do you know who I am?”

Without realizing that she was speaking to the man Joan shook her head.

“I am Herman Toplinsky, the greatest scientist in the world. I have been run out of my home country because I am too smart for the other scientists. I am being hunted like a wild animal by all the governments of the earth. This is why I am hiding in this remote place with my comrades, and using my airships to get chemicals, supplies, gold, and all the things I need. Am I a bandit? Nay, nay. I am simply a wronged scientist—a smart man without a country. I cannot help the antagonisms of rude and ignorant men.”

Epworth had heard of the man. He was no idle boaster. Before he had been chased out of his home country he had stood at the head of International Science.

The scientist turned his eyes on Joan. She had her fingers pressed on her nose, and could not remove them before he discovered her act. He smiled, and sprang nimbly forward.

“What you smell is my chemical laboratory,” he explained. “It is in here.” He threw open a door. The scent that came from the inner room caused the girl to draw back quickly. “I have just removed my hands from a vat of NH3.”

It was the smell of rotten eggs accentuated a hundred times, and Epworth now knew that what had been so repulsive to his nostrils since he had been in the room was hydrogen mixed with sulphur and nitrogen.