Astounding Stories, June, 1931 :: The Exile of Time PART THREE OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL By Ray

The Exile of Time PART THREE OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL By Ray

The Exile of Time PART THREE OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL By Ray Cummings "Look!" exclaimed Larry. "Look!" exclaimed Larry. WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE T

here came a girl's scream, and muffled, frantic words.

"Let me out! Let me out!"

Then we saw her white face at the basement window. This, which was the start of the extraordinary incidents, occurred on the night of June 8-9, 1935.

Larry and George from 1935, Mary from 1777—all are caught up in the treacherous Tugh's revolt of the Robots, in the Time-world of 2930.

My name is George Rankin, and with my friend, Larry Gregory, we rescued the girl who was imprisoned in the deserted house on Patton Place, New York City. We thought at first that she was demented—this strangely beautiful girl in long white satin dress, white powdered wig and a black beauty patch on her check. She said she had come from the year 1777, that her father was Major Atwood, of General Washington's staff! Her name was Mistress Mary Atwood.

It was a strange story she had to tell us. A cage of shining metal bars had materialized in her garden, and a mechanical man had come from it—a Robot ten feet tall. It had captured her; brought her to 1935; left her, and vanished saying it would return.

We went back to that house on Patton Place. The cage did return, and Larry and I fought the strange monster. We were worsted, and the Robot seized Mary and me and whirled us back into Time in its room-like cage of shining bars. Larry recovered his senses, rushed into Patton Place, and there encountered another, smaller, Time-traveling cage, and was himself taken off in it.

But the occupants of Larry's smaller cage were friendly. They were a man and a girl of 2930 A.D.! The girl was the Princess Tina, and the man, Harl, a young scientist of that age. With an older scientist—a cripple named Tugh—Harl had invented the Time-vehicles.

e had heard of Tugh before. Mary Atwood had known him in the year 1777. He had made love to her, and when repulsed had threatened vengeance against her father. And in 1932, a cripple named Tugh had gotten into trouble with the police and had vowed some strange weird vengeance against the city officials and the city itself. More than that, the very house on Patton Place from which we had rescued Mary Atwood, was owned by this man named Tugh, who was wanted by the police but could not be found!

Tugh's vengeance was presently demonstrated, for in June, 1935, a horde of Robots appeared. With flashing swords and red and violet light beams the mechanical men spread about the city massacring the people; they brought midsummer snow with their frigid red rays; and then, in a moment, torrid heat and boiling rain. Three days and nights of terror ensued; then the Robots silently withdrew into the house on Patton Place and vanished. The New York City of 1935 lay wrecked; the vengeance of Tugh against it was complete.

Larry, going back in Time now, was told by Harl and Princess Tina that a Robot named Migul—a mechanism almost human from the Time-world of 2930—had stolen the larger cage and was running amuck through Time. The strange world of 2930 was described to Larry—a world in which nearly-human mechanisms did all the work. These Robots, diabolically developed, were upon the verge of revolt. The world of machinery was ready to assail its human masters!

Migul was an insubordinate Robot, and Harl and Tina were chasing it. They whirled Larry back into Time, and they saw the larger cage stop at a night in the year 1777—the same night from which Mary Atwood had been stolen. They stopped there. Harl remained in the little cage to guard it, while Tina and Larry went outside.

It was night, and the house of Major Atwood was nearby. British redcoats had come to capture the colonial officer; but all they found was his murdered body lying in the garden. Migul the Robot had chained Mary and me to the door of his cage; had briefly stopped in the garden and killed the major, and then had departed with us.

e now went back to the Beginning of Time, for the other cage was again chasing us. Reaching the Beginning, we swept forward, and the whole vast panorama of the events of Time passed in review before us. Suddenly we found that Tugh himself was hiding in our cage! We had not known it, nor had Migul, our Robot captor. Tugh was hiding here, not trusting Migul to carry out his orders!

We realized now that all these events were part of the wild vengeance of this hideously repulsive cripple. Migul was a mere machine carrying out Tugh's orders. Tugh, in 2930, was masquerading as a friend of the Government; but in reality it was he who was fomenting the revolt of the Robots.

Tugh now took command of our cage. The smaller cage had only Harl in it now, for Larry and Tina were marooned in 1777. Harl was chasing us. Tugh stopped us in the year 762 A.D. We found that the space around us now was a forest recently burned. Five hundred feet from us was the space which held Harl's cage.

Presently it materialized! Mary and I were helpless. We stood watching Tugh, as he crouched on the floor of our cage near its opened doorway. A ray cylinder was in his hand, with a wire running to a battery in the cage corner. He had forced Mary and me to stand at the window where Harl would see us and be lured to approach.

From Harl's cage, five hundred feet across the blackened forest glade of that day of 762, Harl came cautiously forward. Abruptly Tugh fired. His cylinder shot a horizontal beam of intense actinic light. It struck Harl full, and he fell.

Swiftly his body decomposed; and soon in the sunlight of the glade lay a sagging heap of black and white garments enveloping the skeleton of what a moment before had been a man!

CHAPTER XIV

A Very Human Princess

hat night in 1777 near the home of the murdered Major Atwood brought to Larry the most strangely helpless feeling he had ever experienced. He crouched with Tina beneath a tree in a corner of the field, gazing with horror at the little moonlit space by the fence where their Time-traveling vehicle should have been but now was gone.

Marooned in 1777! Larry had not realized how desolately remote this Revolutionary New York was from the great future city in which he had lived. The same space; but what a gulf between him and 1935! What a barrier of Time, impassable without the shining cage!

They crouched, whispering. "But why would he have gone, Tina?"

"I don't know. Harl is very careful; so something or someone must have passed along here, and he left, rather than cause a disturbance. He will return, of course."

"I hope so," whispered Larry fervently. "We are marooned here, Tina! Heavens, it would be the end of us!"

"We must wait. He will return."

They huddled in the shadow of the tree. Behind them there was a continued commotion at the Atwood home, and presently the mounted British officers came thudding past on the road, riding for headquarters at the Bowling Green to report the strange Atwood murder.

The night wore on. Would Harl return? If not to-night, then probably to-morrow, or to-morrow night. In spite of his endeavor to stop correctly, he could so easily miss this night, these particular hours.

Harl had met his death, as I have described. We never knew exactly what he did, of course, after leaving that night of 1777. It seems probable, however, that some passer-by startled him into flashing away into Time. Then he must have seen with his instrument evidence of the other cage passing, and impulsively followed it—to his death in the burned forest of the year 762.

arry and Tina waited. The dawn presently began paling the stars; and still Harl did not come. The little space by the fence corner was empty.

"It will soon be daylight," Larry whispered. "We can't stay here: we'll be discovered."

They were anachronisms in this world; misfits; futuristic beings who dared not show themselves.

Larry touched his companion—the slight little creature who was a Princess in her far-distant future age. But to Larry now she was just a girl.

"Frightened, Tina?"

"A little."

He laughed softly. "It would be fearful to be marooned here permanently, wouldn't it? You don't think Harl would desert us? Purposely, I mean?"

"No, of course not."

"Then we'll expect him to-morrow night. He wouldn't stop in the daylight, I guess."

"I don't think so. He would reason that I would not expect him."

"Then we must find shelter, and food, and be here to-morrow night. It seems long to us, Tina, but in the cage it's just an instant—just a trifle different setting of the controls."

She smiled her pale, stern smile. "You have learned quickly, Larry. That is true."

A sudden emotion swept him. His hand found hers; and her fingers answered the pressure of his own. Here in this remote Time-world they felt abruptly drawn together.

He murmured, "Tina, you are—" But he never finished.

The cage was coming! They stood tense, watching the fence corner where, in the flat dawn light, the familiar misty shadow was gathering. Harl was returning to them.

The cage flashed silently into being. They stood peering, ready to run to it. The door slid aside.

ut it was not Harl who came out. It was Tugh, the cripple. He stood in the doorway, a thick-set, barrel-chested figure of a man in a wide leather jacket, a broad black belt and short flaring leather pantaloons.

"Tugh!" exclaimed Tina.

The cripple advanced. "Princess, is it you?" He was very wary. His gaze shot at Larry and back to Tina. "And who is this?"

A hideously repulsive fellow, Larry thought this Tugh. He saw his shriveled, bent legs, crooked hips, and wide thick shoulders set askew—a goblin, in a leather jerkin. His head was overlarge, with a bulging white forehead and a mane of scraggly black hair shot with grey. But Larry could not miss the intellectuality marking his heavy-jowled face; the keenness of his dark-eyed gaze.

These were instant impressions. Tina had drawn Larry forward. "Where is Harl?" she demanded imperiously. "How have you come to have the cage, Tugh?"

"Princess, I have much to tell," he answered, and his gaze roved the field. "But it is dangerous here; I am glad I have found you. Harl sent me to this night, but I struck it late. Come, Tina—and your strange-looking friend."

It impressed Larry then, and many times afterward, that Tugh's gaze at him was mistrustful, wary.

"Come, Larry," said Tina. And again she demanded of Tugh, "I ask you, where is Harl?"

"At home. Safe at home, Princess." He gestured toward Major Atwood's house, which now in the growing daylight showed more plainly under its shrouding trees. "That space off there holds our other cage as you know, Tina. You and Harl were pursuing that other cage?"

"Yes," she agreed.

hey had stopped at the doorway, where Tugh stood slightly inside. Larry whispered:

"What does this mean, Tina?"

Tugh said, "Migul, the mechanism, is running wild in the other cage. But you and Harl knew that?"

"Yes," she answered, and said softly to Larry, "We will go. But, Larry, watch this Tugh! Harl and I never trusted him."

Tugh's manner was a combination of the self-confidence of a man of standing and the deference due his young Princess. He was closing the door, and saying:

"Migul, that crazy, insubordinate machine, captured a man from 1935 and a girl from 1777. But they are safe: he did not harm them. Harl is with them."

"In our world, Tugh?"

"Yes; at home. And we have Migul chained. Harl captured and subdued him."

Tugh was at the controls. "May I take you and this friend of yours home, Princess?"

She whispered to Larry, "I think it is best, don't you?"

Larry nodded.

She murmured, "Be watchful, Larry!" Then, louder: "Yes, Tugh. Take us."

Tugh was bending over the controls.

"Ready now?"

"Yes," said Tina.

Larry's senses reeled momentarily as the cage flashed off into Time.

t was a smooth story which Tugh had to tell them; and he told it smoothly. His dark eyes swung from Tina to Larry.

"I talked with that other young man from your world. George Rankin, he said his name was. He is somewhat like you: dressed much the same and talks little. The girl calls herself Mary Atwood." He went on and told them an elaborate, glib story, all of which was a lie. It did not wholly deceive Larry and Tina, yet they could not then prove it false. The gist of it was that Mary and I were with Harl and the subdued Migul in 2930.

"It is strange that Harl did not come for us himself," said Tina.

Tugh's gaze was imperturbable as he answered. "He is a clever young man, but he cannot be expected to handle these controls with my skill, Princess, and he knows it; so he sent me. You see, he wanted very much to strike just this night and this hour, so as not to keep you waiting."

He added, "I am glad to have you back. Things are not well at home, Princess. This insubordinate adventure of Migul's has been bad for the other mechanisms. News of it has spread, and the revolt is very near. What we are to do I cannot say, but I do know we did not like your absence."

The trip which Larry and Tina now took to 2930 A.D. consumed, to their consciousness of the passing of Time, some three hours. They discovered that they were hungry, and Tugh produced food and drink.

Larry spent much of the time with Tina at the window, gazing at the changing landscape while she told him of the events which to her were history—the recorded things on the Time-scroll which separated her world and his.

ugh busied himself about the vehicle and left them much to themselves. They had ample opportunity to discuss him and his story of Harl. It must be remembered that Larry had no knowledge of Tugh, save the story which Alten had told of a cripple named Tugh in New York in 1933-34; and Mary Atwood's mention of the coincidence of the Tugh she knew in 1777.

But Tina had known this Tugh for years. Though she, like Harl, had never liked him, nevertheless he was a trusted and influential man in her world. Proof of his activities in other Time-worlds, there was none so far, from Tina's viewpoint. Nor did Larry and Tina know as yet of the devastation of New York in 1935; nor of the murder of Major Atwood. The capture of Mary and me, the fight with the Robot in the back yard of the house on Patton Place—in all these incidents of the bandit cage, only Migul had figured. Migul—an insubordinate, crazy mechanism running amuck.

Yet upon Larry and Tina was a premonition that Tugh, here with them now and so suavely friendly, was their real enemy.

"I wouldn't trust him," Larry whispered, "any further than I can see him. He's planning something, but I don't know what."

"But perhaps—and this I have often thought, Larry—perhaps it is his aspect. He looks so repulsive—"

Larry shook his head. "He does, for a fact; but I don't mean that. What Mary Atwood told me of the Tugh she knew, described the fellow. And so did Alten describe him. And in 1934 he murdered a girl: don't forget that, Tina—he, or someone who looked remarkably like him, and had the same name."

But they knew that the best thing they could do now was to get to 2930. Larry wanted to join me again, and Tugh maintained I was there. Well, they would soon find out....

s they passed the shadowy world of 1935, a queer emotion gripped Larry. This was his world, and he was speeding past it to the future. He realized then that he wanted to be assured of my safety, and that of Mary Atwood and Harl; but what lay closest to his heart was the welfare of the Princess Tina. Princess? He never thought of her as that, save that it was a title she carried. She seemed just a small, strangely-solemn white-faced girl. He could not conceive returning to his own world and having her speed on, leaving him forever.

His thoughts winged ahead. He touched Tina as they stood together at the window gazing out at the shadowy New York City. It was now 1940.

"Tina," he said, "if our friends are safe in your world—"

"If only they are, Larry!"

"And if your people there are in trouble, in danger—you will let me help?"

She turned abruptly to regard him, and he saw a mist of tenderness in the dark pools of her eyes.

"In history, Larry, I have often been interested in reading of a strange custom outgrown by us and supposed to be meaningless. Yet maybe it is not. I mean—"

She was suddenly breathless. "I mean even a Princess, as they call me, likes to—to be human. I want to—I mean I've often wondered—and you're so dear—I want to try it. Was it like this? Show me."

She reached up, put her arms about his neck and kissed him!

CHAPTER XV

A Thousand Years into the Future

930 to 2930—a thousand years in three hours. It was sufficiently slow traveling so that Larry could see from the cage window the actual detailed flow of movement: the changing outline of material objects around him. There had been the open country of Revolutionary times when this space was north of the city. It was a grey, ghostly landscape of trees and the road and the shadowy outlines of the Atwood house five hundred feet away.

Larry saw the road widen. The fence suddenly was gone. The trees were suddenly gone. The shapes of houses were constantly appearing; then melting down again, with others constantly rearing up to take their places; and always there were more houses, and larger, more enduring ones. And then the Atwood house suddenly melted: a second or two, and all evidence of it and the trees about it were gone.

There was no road; it was a city street now; and it had widened so that the cage was poised near the middle of it. And presently the houses were set solid along its borders.

At 1910 Larry began to recognize the contour of the buildings: The antiquated Patton Place. But the flowing changing outlines adjusted themselves constantly to a more familiar form. The new apartment house, down the block in which Larry and I lived, rose and assembled itself like a materializing spectre. A wink or two of Larry's eyelids and it was there. He recalled the months of its construction.

The cage, with Larry as a passenger, could not have stopped in these years: he realized it, now. There was a nameless feeling, a repulsion against stopping; it was indescribable, but he was aware of it. He had lived these years once, and they were forbidden to him again.

The cage was still in its starting acceleration. They swept through the year 1935, and then Larry was indefinably aware that the forbidden area had passed.

hey went through those few days of June, 1935, during which Tugh's Robots had devastated the city, but it was too brief an action to make a mark that Larry could see. It left a few very transitory marks, however. Larry noticed that along the uneven line of ghostly roof-tops, blobs of emptiness had appeared; he saw a short distance away that several of the houses had melted down into ragged, tumbled heaps. These were where the bombs had struck, dropped by the Government planes in an endeavor to wreck the Tugh house from which the Robots were appearing. But the ragged, broken areas were filled in a second—almost as soon as Larry realized they were there—and new and larger buildings than before appeared.

At sight of all this he murmured to Tina, "Something has happened here. I wonder what?"

He chanced to turn, and saw that Tugh was regarding him very queerly; but in a moment he forgot it in the wonders of the passage into his future.

This growing, expanding city! It had seemed a giant to Larry in 1935, especially after he had compared it to what it was in 1777. But now, in 1950, and beyond to the turn of the century, he stood amazed at the enormity of the shadowy structures rearing their spectral towers around him. For some years Patton Place, a backward section, held its general form; then abruptly the city engulfed it. Larry saw monstrous buildings of steel and masonry rising a thousand feet above him. For an instant, as they were being built he saw their skeleton outlines; and then they were complete. Yet they were not enduring, for in every flowing detail they kept changing.

An overhead sidewalk went like a balcony along what had been Patton Place. Bridges and archways spanned the street. Then there came a triple bank of overhead roadways. A distance away, a hundred feet above the ground level, the shadowy form of what seemed a monorail structure showed for a moment. It endured for what might have been a hundred years, and then it was gone....

his monstrous city! By 2030 there was a vast network of traffic levels over what had been a street. It was an arcade, now, open at the top near the cage; but further away Larry saw where the giant buildings had flowed and mingled over it, with the viaducts, spider bridges and pedestrian levels plunging into tunnels to pierce through them.

And high overhead, where the little sky which was left still showed, Larry saw the still higher outlines of a structure which quite evidently was a huge aerial landing stage for airliners.

It was an incredible city! There were spots of enduring light around Larry now—the city lights which for months and years shone here unchanged. The cage was no longer outdoors. The street which had become an open arcade was now wholly closed. A roof was overhead—a city roof, to shut out the inclement weather. There was artificial light and air and weather down here, and up on the roof additional space for the city's teeming activities.

Larry could see only a shadowy narrow vista, here indoors, but his imagination supplied visions of what the monstrous, incredible city must be. There was a roof, perhaps, over all Manhattan. Bridges and viaducts would span to the great steel and stone structures across the rivers, so that water must seem to be in a canyon far underground. There would be a cellar to this city, incredibly intricate with conduits of wires and drainage pipes, and on the roof rain or snow would fall unnoticed by the millions of workers. Children born here in poverty might never yet have seen the blue sky and the sunlight, or know that grass was green and lush and redolent when moist with morning dew....

Larry fancied this now to be the climax of city building here on earth; the city was a monster, now, unmanageable, threatening to destroy the humans who had created it.... He tried to envisage the world; the great nations; other cities like this one. Freight transportation would go by rail and underseas, doubtless, and all the passengers by air....

ina, with her knowledge of history, could sketch the events. The Yellow War—the white races against the Orientals—was over by the year 2000. The three great nations were organized in another half-century: the white, the yellow and the black.

By the year 2000, the ancient dirigibles had proven impractical, and great airliners of the plane type were encircling the earth. New motors, wing-spreads, and a myriad devices made navigation of the upper altitudes possible. At a hundred thousand feet, upon all the Great Circle routes, liners were rushing at nearly a thousand miles an hour. They would halt at intervals, to allow helicopter tenders to come up to transfer descending passengers.

Then the etheric wave-thrust principle was discovered: by 2500 A.D. man was voyaging out into space and Interplanetary travel began. This brought new problems: a rush of new millions of humans to live upon our Earth; new wars; new commerce in peace times; new ideas; new scientific knowledge....

By 2500, the city around Larry must have reached its height. It stayed there a half century; and then it began coming down. Its degeneration was slow, in the beginning. First, there might have been a hole in the arcade which was not repaired. Then others would appear, as the neglect spread. The population left. The great buildings of metal and stone, so solidly appearing to the brief lifetime of a single individual, were impermanent over the centuries.

By 2600, the gigantic ghosts had all melted down. They lay in a shadowy pile, burying the speeding cage. There was no stopping here; there was no space unoccupied in which they could stop. Larry could see only the tangled spectres of broken, rusting, rotting metal and stone.

He wondered what could have done it. A storm of nature? Or had mankind strangely turned decadent, and rushed back in a hundred years or so to savagery? It could not have been the latter, because very soon the ruins were moving away: the people were clearing the city site for something new. For fifty years it went on.

ina explained it. The age of steam had started the great city of New York, and others like it, into its monstrous congestion of human activity. There was steam for power and steam for slow transportation by railroads and surface ships. Then the conquest of the air, and the transportation of power by electricity, gradually changed things. But man was slow to realize his possibilities. Even in 1930, all the new elements existed; but the great cities grew monstrous of their own momentum. Business went to the cities because the people were there; workers flocked in because the work was there to call them.

But soon the time came when the monster city was too unwieldy. The traffic, the drainage, the water supply could not cope with conditions. Still, man struggled on. The workers were mere automatons—pallid attendants of machinery; people living in a world of beauty who never had seen it; who knew of nothing but the city arcades where the sun never shone and where amusements were as artificial as the light and air.

Then man awakened to his folly. Disease broke out in New York City in 2551, and in a month swept eight million people into death. The cities were proclaimed impractical, unsafe. And suddenly the people realized how greatly they hated the city; how strangely beautiful the world could be in the fashion God created it....

There was, over the next fifty years, an exodus to the rural sections. Food was produced more cheaply, largely because it was produced more abundantly. Man found his wants suddenly simplified.

And business found that concentration was unnecessary. The telephone and television made personal contacts not needed. The aircraft, the high-speed auto-trucks over modern speedways, the aeroplane-motored monorails, the rocket-trains—all these shortened distance. And, most important of all, the transportation of electrical energy from great central power companies made small industrial units practical even upon remote farms. The age of electricity came into its own. The cities were doomed....

arry saw, through 2600 and 2700 A.D., a new form of civilization rising around him. At first it seemed a queer combination of the old fashioned village and a strange modernism. There were, here upon Manhattan Island, metal houses, widely spaced in gardens, and electrically powered factories of unfamiliar aspect. Overhead were skeleton structures, like landing stages; and across the further distance was the fleeting, transitory wraith of a monorail air-road. Along the river banks were giant docks for surface vessels and sub-sea freighters. There was a little concentration here, but not much. Man had learned his lesson.

This was a new era. Man was striving really to play, as well as work. But the work had to be done. With the constant development of mechanical devices, there was always a new machine devised to help the operation of its fellow. And over it all was the hand of the human, until suddenly the worker found that he was no more than an attendant upon an inanimate thing which did everything more skilfully than he could do it. Thus came the idea of the Robot—something to attend, to oversee, to operate machines. In Larry's time it had already begun with a myriad devices of "automatic control." In Tina's Time-world it reached its ultimate—and diabolical—development....

At 2900, Larry saw, five hundred feet to the east, the walls of a long low laboratory rising. The other cage—which in 1777 was in Major Atwood's garden, and in 1935 was in the back yard of the Tugh house on Beckman Place—was housed now in 2930, in a room of this laboratory....

At 2905, with the vehicle slowing for its stopping, Tina gestured toward the walls of her palace, whose shadowy forms were rising close at hand. Then the palace garden grew and flourished, and Larry saw that this cage he was in was set within this garden.

"We are almost there, Larry," she said.

"Yes," he answered. An emotion gripped him. "Tina, your world—why it's so strange! But you are not strange."

"Am I not, Larry?"

He smiled at her; he felt like showing her again that the ancient custom of kissing was not wholly meaningless, but Tugh was regarding them.

"I was comparing," said Larry, "that girl Mary Atwood, from the year 1777, and you. You are so different in looks, in dress, but you're just—girls."

She laughed. "The world changes, Larry, but not human nature."

"Ready?" called Tugh. "We are here, Tina."

"Yes, Tugh. You have the dial set for the proper night and hour?"

"Of course. I make no mistake. Did I not invent these dials?"

The cage slackened through a day of sunlight; plunged into a night; and slid to its soundless, reeling halt....

Tina drew Larry to the door and opened it upon a fragrant garden, somnolently drowsing in the moonlight.

"This is my world, Larry," she said. "And here is my home."

ugh was with them as they left the cage. He said:

"This is the tri-night hour of the very night you left here. Princess Tina. You see, I calculated correctly."

"Where did you leave Harl and the two visitors?" she demanded.

"Here. Right here."

Across the garden Larry saw three dark forms coming forward. They were three small Robots of about Tina's stature—domestic servants of the palace. They crowded up, crying:

"Master Tugh! Princess!"

"What is it?" Tugh asked.

The hollow voices echoed with excitement as one of them said:

"Master Tugh, there has been murder here! We have dared tell no one but you or the Princess. Harl is murdered!"

Larry chanced to see Tugh's astonished face, and in the horror of the moment a feeling came to Larry that Tugh was acting unnaturally. He forgot it at once; but later he was to recall it forcibly, and to realize that the treacherous Tugh had planned this with these Robots.

"Master Tugh, Harl is murdered! Migul escaped and murdered Harl, and took the body away with him!"

Larry was stricken dumb. Tugh seized the little Robot by his metal shoulders. "Liar! What do you mean?"

Tina gasped, "Where are our visitors—the young man and the girl?"

"Migul took them!"

"Where?" Tina demanded.

"We don't know. We think very far down in the caverns of machinery. Migul said he was going to feed them to the machines!"

CHAPTER XVI

The New York of 2930

arry stood alone at an upper window of the palace gazing out at the somnolent moonlit city. It was an hour or two before dawn. Tina and Tugh had started almost at once into the underground caverns to which Tina was told Migul had fled with his two captives. They would not take Larry with them; the Robot workers in the subterranean chambers were all sullen and upon the verge of a revolt, and the sight of a strange human would have aroused them dangerously.

"It should not take long," Tina had said hastily. "I will give you a room in which to wait for me."

"And there is food and drink," Tugh suavely urged. "And most surely you need sleep. You too Princess," he suddenly added. "Let me go into the caverns alone: I can do better than you; these Robots obey me. I think I know where that rascally Migul has hidden."

"Rascally?" Larry burst out. "Is that what you call it when you've just heard that it committed murder? Tina. I won't stay: nor will I let—"

"Wait!" said Tina. "Tugh, look here—"

"The young man from 1935 is very positive what he will and what he won't," Tugh observed sardonically. He drew his cloak around his squat misshapen body, and shrugged.

"But I won't let you go," Larry finished. The palace was somnolent; the officials were asleep: none had heard of the murder. Strangely lax was the human government here. Larry had sensed this when he suggested that police or an official party be sent at once to capture Migul and rescue Mary Atwood and me.

"It could not be done," Tina exclaimed. "To organize such a party would take hours. And—"

"And the Robots," Tugh finished with a sour smile, "would openly revolt when such a party came at them! You have no idea what you suggest, young man. To avoid an open revolt—that is our chief aim. Besides, if you rushed at Migul it would frighten him; and then he would surely kill his captives, if he has not done so already."

hat silenced Larry. He stared at them hopelessly while they argued it out: and the three small domesticated Robots stood by, listening curiously.

"I'll go with you, Tugh." Tina decided. "Perhaps, without making any demonstration of force, we can find Migul."

Tugh bowed. "Your will is mine, Princess. I think I can find him and control him to prevent harm to his captives."

He was a good actor, that Tugh; he convinced Larry and Tina of his sincerity. His dark eyes flashed as he added, "And if I get control of him and find he's murdered Harl, we will have him no more. I'll disconnect him! Smash him! Quietly, of course, Princess."

They led Larry through a dim silent corridor of the palace, past two sleepy-faced human guards and two or three domesticated Robots. Ascending two spiral metal stairways to the upper third floor of the palace they left Larry in his room.

"By dawn or soon after we will return," said Tina "But you try and sleep; there is nothing you can do now."

"You'll be careful, Tina?" The helpless feeling upon Larry suddenly intensified. Subconsciously he was aware of the menace upon him and Tina, but he could not define it.

She pressed his hand. "I will be careful; that I promise."

She left with Tugh. At once a feeling of loneliness leaped upon Larry.

He found the apartment a low-vaulted metal room. There was the sheen of dim, blue-white illumination from hidden lights, disclosing the padded metal furniture: a couch, low and comfortable; a table set with food and drink; low chairs, strangely fashioned, and cabinets against the wall which seemed to be mechanical devices for amusement. There was a row of instrument controls which he guessed were the room temperature, ventilating and lighting mechanisms. It was an oddly futuristic room. The windows were groups of triangles—the upper sections prisms, to bend the light from the sky into the room's furthest recesses. The moonlight came through the prisms, now, and spread over the cream-colored rug and the heavy wall draperies. The leaded prism casements laid a pattern of bars on the floor. The room held a faint whisper of mechanical music.

arry stood at one of the windows gazing out over the drowsing city. The low metal buildings, generally of one or two levels, lay pale grey in the moonlight. Gardens and trees surrounded them. The streets were wide roadways, lined with trees. Ornamental vegetation was everywhere; even the flat-roofed house tops were set with gardens, little white pebbled paths, fountains and pergolas.

A mile or so away, a river gleamed like a silver ribbon—the Hudson. To the south were docks, low against the water, with rows of blue-white spots of light. The whole city was close to the ground, but occasionally, especially across the river, skeleton landing stages rose a hundred feet into the air.

The scene, at this hour just before dawn, was somnolent and peaceful. It was a strange New York, so different from the sleepless city of Larry's time! There were a few moving lights in the streets, but not many; they seemed to be lights carried by pedestrians. Off by the docks, at the river surface, rows of colored lights were slowly creeping northward: a sub-sea freighter arriving from Eurasia. And as Larry watched, from the southern sky a line of light materialized into an airliner which swept with a low humming throb over the city and alighted upon a distant stage.

arry's attention went again to the Hudson river. At the nearest point to him there was a huge dam blocking it. North of the dam the river surface was at least two hundred feet higher than to the south. It lay above the dam like a placid canal, with low palisades its western bank and a high dyke built up along the eastern city side. The water went in spillways through the dam, forming again into the old natural river below it and flowing with it to the south.

The dam was not over a mile or so from Larry's window; in his time it might have been the western end of Christopher Street. The moonlight shone on the massive metal of it: the water spilled through it in a dozen shining cascades. There was a low black metal structure perched halfway up the lower side of the dam, a few bluish lights showing through its windows. Though Larry did not know it then, this was the New York Power House. Great transformers were here, operated by turbines in the dam. The main power came over cables from Niagara: was transformed and altered here and sent into the air as radio-power for all the New York District.[3]

Larry crossed his room to gaze through north and eastward windows. He saw now that the grounds of this three-story building of Tina's palace were surrounded by a ten-foot metal wall, along whose top were wires suggesting that it was electrified for defense. The garden lay just beneath Larry's north window. Through the tree branches the garden paths, beds of flowers and the fountains were visible. One-story palace wings partially enclosed the garden space, and outside was the electrified wall. The Time-traveling cage stood faintly shining in the dimness of the garden under the spreading foliage.

o the east, beyond the palace wall, there was an open garden of verdure crossed by a roadway. The nearest building was five hundred feet away. There was a small, barred gate in the palace walls beyond it. The road led to this other building—a squat, single-storied metal structure. This was a Government laboratory, operated by and in charge of Robots. It was almost square: two or three hundred feet in length and no more than thirty feet high, with a flat roof in the center of which was perched a little metal conning tower surmounted by a sending aerial. As Larry stood there, the broadcast magnified voice of a Robot droned out over the quiet city:

"Trinight plus two hours. All is well."

Strange mechanical voice with a formula half ancient, half super-modern!

It was in this metal laboratory, Larry knew, that the other Time-traveling cage was located. And beneath it was the entrance to the great caverns where the Robots worked attending inert machinery to carry on the industry of this region. The night was very silent, but now Larry was conscious of a faraway throb—a humming, throbbing vibration from under the ground: the blended hum of a myriad muffled noises. Work was going on down there; manifold mechanical activities. All was mechanical: while the humans who had devised the mechanisms slept under the trees in the moonlight of the surface city.

ina had gone with Tugh down into those caverns, to locate Migul, to find Mary Atwood and me.... The oppression, the sense of being a stranger alone here in this world, grew upon Larry. He left the windows and began pacing the room. Tina should soon return. Or had disaster come upon us all?...

Larry's thoughts were frightening. If Tina did not return, what would he do? He could not operate the Time-cage. He would go to the officials of the palace; he thought cynically of the extraordinary changes time had brought to New York City, to all the world. These humans now must be very fatuous. To the mechanisms they had relegated all the work, all industrial activity. Inevitably, through the generations, decadence must have come. Mankind would be no longer efficient; that was an attribute of the machines. Larry told himself that these officials, knowing of impending trouble with the Robots, were fatuously trustful that the storm would pass without breaking. They were, indeed, as we very soon learned.

Larry ate a little of the food which was in the room, then lay down on the couch. He did not intend to sleep, but merely to wait until after dawn; and if Tina had not returned by then he would do something drastic about it. But what? He lay absorbed by his gloomy thoughts....

But they were not all gloomy. Some were about Tina—so very human, and yet so strange a little Princess.

CHAPTER XVII

Harl's Confession

arry was awakened by a hand upon his shoulder. He struggled to consciousness, and heard his name being called.

"Larry! Wake up, Larry!"

Tina was bending over him, and it was late afternoon! The day for which he had been waiting had come and gone; the sun was dropping low in the west behind the shining river; the dam showed frowning, with the Power House clinging to its side like an eagle's eyrie.

Tina sat on Larry's couch and explained what she had done. Tugh and she had gone to the nearby laboratory building. The Robots were sullen, but still obedient, and had admitted them. The other Time-traveling cage was there, lying quiescent in its place, but it was unoccupied.

None of the Robots would admit having seen Migul; nor the arrival of the cage; nor the strangers from the past. Then Tugh and Tina had started down into the subterranean caverns. But it was obviously very dangerous; the Robots at work down there were hostile to their Princess; so Tugh had gone on alone.

"He says he can control the Robots," Tina explained, "and Larry, it seems that he can. He went on and I came back."

"Where is he now? Why didn't you wake me up?"

"You needed the sleep," she said smilingly; "and there was nothing you could do. Tugh is not yet come. He must have gone a long distance; must surely have learned where Migul is hiding. He should be back any time."

ina had seen the Government Council. The city was proceeding normally. There was no difficulty with Robots anywhere save here in New York, and the council felt that the affair would come to nothing.

"The Council told me," said Tina indignantly, "that much of the menace was the exaggeration of my own fancy, and that Tugh has the Robots well controlled. They place much trust in Tugh; I wish I could."

"You told them about me?"

"Yes, of course; and about George Rankin, and Mary Atwood. And the loss of Harl: he is missing, not proven murdered, as they very well pointed out to me. They have named a time to-morrow to give you audience, and told me to keep you out of sight in the meanwhile. They blame this Time-traveling for the Robots' insurgent ideas. Strangers excite the thinking mechanisms."

"You think my friends will be rescued?" demanded Larry.

She regarded him soberly. "I hope so—oh, I do! I fear for them as much as you do, Larry. I know you think I take it lightly, but—"

"Not that," Larry protested. "Only—"

"I have not known what to do. The officials refuse any open aggression against the Robots, because it would precipitate exactly what we fear—which is nearly a fact: it would. But there is one thing I have to do. I have been expecting Tugh to return every moment, and this I do not want him to know about. There's a mystery concerning Harl, and no one else knows of it but myself. I want you with me, Larry: I do not want to go alone; I—for the first time in my life, Larry—I think I am afraid!"

he huddled against him and he put his arm about her. And Larry's true situation came to him, then. He was alone in this strange Time-world, with only this girl for a companion. She was but a frightened, almost helpless girl, for all she bore the title of traditional Princess, and she was surrounded by inefficient, fatuous officials—among them Tugh, who was a scoundrel, undoubtedly. Larry suddenly recalled Tugh's look, when, in the garden, the domestic Robots had told the story of Harl's murder; and like a light breaking on him, he was now wholly aware of Tugh's duplicity. He was convinced he would have to act for himself, with only this girl Tina to help him.

"Mystery?" he said. "What mystery is there about Harl?"

She told him now that Harl had once, a year ago, taken her aside and made her promise that if anything happened to him—in the event of his death or disappearance—she would go to his private work-room, where, in a secret place which he described, she would find a confession.

"A confession of his?" Larry demanded.

"Yes; he said so. And he would say no more than that. It is something of which he was ashamed, or guilty, which he wanted me to know. He loved me, Larry. I realized it, though he never said so. And I'm going now to his room, to see what it was he wanted me to know. I would have gone alone, earlier; but I got suddenly frightened; I want you with me."

They were unarmed. Larry cursed the fact, but Tina had no way of getting a weapon without causing official comment. Larry started for the window where the city stretched, more active now, under the red and gold glow of a setting sun. Lights were winking on; the dusk of twilight was at hand.

"Come now," said Tina, "before Tugh returns."

"Where is Harl's room?"

"Down under the palace in the sub-cellar. The corridors are deserted at this hour, and no one will see us."

hey left Larry's room and traversed a dim corridor on whose padded floor their footsteps were soundless. Through distant arcades, voices sounded; there was music in several of the rooms; it struck Larry that this was a place of diversion for humans with no work to do. Tina avoided the occupied rooms. Domestic Robots were occasionally distantly visible, but Tina and Larry encountered none.

They descended a spiral stairway and passed down a corridor from the main building to a cross wing. Through a window Larry saw that they were at the ground level. The garden was outside; there was a glimpse of the Time-cage standing there.

Another stairway, then another, they descended beneath the ground. The corridor down here seemed more like a tunnel. There was a cave-like open space, with several tunnels leading from it in different directions. This once had been part of the sub-cellar of the gigantic New York City—these tunnels ramifying into underground chambers, most of which had now fallen into disuse. But few had been preserved through the centuries, and they now were the caverns of the Robots.

Tina indicated a tunnel extending eastward, a passage leading to a room beneath the Robot laboratory. Tugh and Tina had used it that morning. Gazing down its blue-lit length Larry saw, fifty feet or so away, that there was a metal-grid barrier which must be part of the electrical fortifications of the palace. A human guard was sitting there at a tiny gate-way, a hood-light above him, illumining his black and white garbed figure.

Tina called softly. "All well, Alent? Tugh has not passed back?"

"No, Princess," he answered, standing erect. The voices echoed through the confined space with a muffled blur.

"Let no one pass but humans, Alent."

"That is my order," he said. He had not noticed Larry, whom Tina had pushed into a shadow against the wall. The Princess waved at the guard and turned away, whispering to Larry:

"Come!"

There were rooms opening off this corridor—decrepit dungeons, most of them seemed to Larry. He had tried to keep his sense of direction, and figured they were now under the palace garden. Tina stopped abruptly. There were no lights here, only the glow from one at a distance. To Larry it was an eery business.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"Wait! I thought I heard something."

In the dead, heavy silence Larry found that there was much to hear.

Voices very dim from the palace overhead; infinitely faint music; the clammy sodden drip of moisture from the tunnel roof. And, permeating everything, the faint hum of machinery.

Tina touched him in the gloom. "It's nothing, I guess. Though I thought I heard a man's voice."

"Overhead?"

"No; down here."

here was a dark, arched door near at hand. Tina entered it and fumbled for a switch, and in the soft light that came Larry saw an unoccupied apartment very similar to the one he had had upstairs, save that this was much smaller.

"Harl's room," said Tina. She prowled along the wall where audible book-cylinders[4] stood in racks, searching for a title. Presently she found a hidden switch, pressed it, and a small section of the case swung out, revealing a concealed compartment. Larry saw her fingers trembling as she drew out a small brass cylinder.

"This must be it, Larry," she said.

They took it to a table which held a shaded light. Within the cylinder was a scroll of writing. Tina unrolled it and held it under the light, while Larry stood breathless, watching her.

"Is it what you wanted?" Larry murmured.

"Yes. Poor Harl!"

She read aloud to Larry the gist of it in the few closing paragraphs.

"... and so I want to confess to you that I have been taking credit for that which is not mine. I wish I had the courage to tell you personally; someday I think I shall. I did not help Tugh invent our Time-traveling cages. I was in the palace garden one night some years ago when the cage appeared. Tugh is a man from a future Time-world; just what date ahead of now, I do not know, for he has never been willing to tell me. He captured me. I promised him I would say nothing, but help him pretend that we had invented the cage he had brought with him from the future. Tugh told me he invented them. It was later that he brought the other cage here.

"I was an obscure young man here a few years ago. I loved you even then, Tina: I think you have guessed that. I yielded to the temptation—and took the credit with Tugh.

"I do love you, though I think I shall never have the courage to tell you so.

Harl."

ina rolled up the paper. "Poor Harl! So all the praise we gave him for his invention was undeserved!"

But Larry's thoughts were on Tugh. So the fellow was not of this era at all! He had come from a Time still further in the future!

A step sounded in the doorway behind them. They swung around to find Tugh standing there, with his thick misshapen figured huddled in the black cloak.

"Tugh!"

"Yes, Princess, no less than Tugh. Alent told me as I came through that you were down here. I saw your light, here in Harl's room and came."

"Did you find Migul and his captives—the girl from 1777 and the man of 1935?"

"No, Princess, Migul has fled with them," was the cripple's answer. He advanced into the room and pushed back his black hood. The blue light shone on his massive-jawed face with a lurid sheen. Larry stood back and watched him. It was the first time that he had had opportunity of observing Tugh closely. The cripple was smiling sardonically.

"I have no fear for the prisoners," he added in his suave, silky fashion. "That crazy mechanism would not dare harm them. But it has fled with them into some far-distant recess of the caverns. I could not find them."

"Did you try?" Larry demanded abruptly.

Tugh swung on him. "Yes, young sir, I tried." It seemed that Tugh's black eyes narrowed; his heavy jaw clicked as he snapped it shut. The smile on his face faded, but his voice remained imperturbable as he added:

"You are aggressive, young Larry—but to no purpose.... Princess, I like not the attitude of the Robots. Beyond question some of them must have seen Migul, but they would not tell me so. I still think I can control them, though. I hope so."

arry could think of nothing to say. It seemed to him childish that he should stand listening to a scoundrel tricking this girl Tina. A dozen wild schemes of what he might do to try and rescue Mary Atwood and me revolved in his mind, but they all seemed wholly impractical.

"The Robots are working badly," Tugh went on. "In the north district one of the great foundries where they are casting the plates for the new Inter-Allied airliner has ceased operations. The Robot workmen were sullen, inefficient, neglectful. The inert machinery was ill cared for, and it went out of order. I was there, Princess, for an hour or more to-day. They have started up again now; it was fundamentally no more than a burned bearing which a Robot failed to oil properly."

"Is that what you call searching for Migul?" Larry burst out. "Tina, see here—isn't there something we can do?" Larry found himself ignoring Tugh. "I'm not going to stand around! Can't we send a squad of police after Migul?—go with them—actually make an effort to find them? This man Tugh certainly has not tried!"

"Have I not?" Tugh's cloak parted as he swung on Larry. His bent legs were twitching with his anger; his voice was a harsh rasp. "I like not your insolence. I am doing all that can be done."

arry held his ground as Tugh fronted him. He had a wild thought that Tugh had a weapon under his cloak.

"Perhaps you are," said Larry. "But to me it seems—"

Tugh turned away. His gaze went to the cylinder which Tina was still clutching. His sardonic smile returned.

"So Harl made a confession, Princess?"

"That," she said, "is none—"

"Of my affair? Oh, but it is. I was here in the archway and I heard you read it. A very nice young man, was Harl. I hope Migul has not murdered him."

"You come from future Time?" Tina began.

"Yes, Princess! I must admit it now. I invented the cages."

Larry murmured to himself, "You stole them, probably."

"But my Government and I had a quarrel, so I decided to leave my own Time-world and come back to yours—permanently. I hope you will keep the secret. I have been here so long. Princess, I am really one of you now. At heart, certainly."

"From when did you come?" she demanded.

e bowed slightly. "I think that may remain my own affair, Tina. It is through no fault of mine I am outlawed. I shall never return." He added earnestly, "Do not you think we waste time? I am agreed with young Larry that something drastic must be done about Migul. Have you seen the Council about it to-day?"

"Yes. They want you to come to them at once."

"I shall. But the Council easily may decide upon something too rash." He lowered his voice, and on his face Larry saw a strange, unfathomable look. "Princess, at any moment there may be a Robot uprising. Is the Power House well guarded by humans?"

"Yes," she said.

"No Robots in or about it? Tina, I do not want to frighten you, but I think our first efforts should be for defense. The Council acts slowly and stubbornly. What I advise them to do may be done, and may not. I was thinking. If we could get to the Power House—Do you realize, Tina, that if the Robots should suddenly break into rebellion, they would attack first of all the Power House?[5] It was my idea—"

Tugh suddenly broke off, and all stood listening. There was a commotion overhead in the palace. They heard the thud of running footsteps; human voices raised to shouts; and, outside the palace, other voices. A ventilating shaft nearby brought them down plainly. There were the guttural, hollow voices of shouting Robots, the clank of their metal bodies; the ring of steel, as though with sword-blades they were thumping their metal thighs.

A Robot mob was gathered close outside the palace walls. The revolt of the Robots had come!

CHAPTER XVIII

Tugh, the Clever Man

it quiet, George Rankin. And you, Mistress Mary; you will both be quite safe with Migul if you are docile."

Tugh stood before us. We were in a dim recess of a great cavern with the throb of whirring machinery around us. It was the same day which I have just described; Larry was at this moment asleep in the palace room. Tugh and Tina had come searching for Migul; and Tugh had contrived to send Tina back. Then he had come directly to us, finding us readily since we were hidden where he had told Migul to hide us.

This cavern was directly beneath the Robot laboratory in which the Time-traveling cage was placed. A small spiral stairway led downward some two levels, opening into a great, luridly lighted room. Huge inert machines stood about. Great wheels were flashing as they revolved, turning the dynamos to generate the several types of current used by the city's underground industrial activities.

It was a tremendous subterranean room. I saw only one small section of it; down the blue-lit aisles the rows of machines may have stretched for half a mile or more. The low hum of them was an incessant pound against my senses. The great inert mechanisms had tiny lights upon them which gleamed like eyes. The illumined gauge-faces—each of them I passed seemed staring at me. The brass jackets were polished until they shone with the sheen of the overhead tube lights; the giant wheels flashed smoothly upon oiled bearings. They were in every fashion of shape and size, these inert machines. Some towered toward the metal-beamed ceiling, with great swaying pendulums that ticked like a giant clock. Some clanked with eccentric cams—a jarring rhythm as though the heart of the thing were limping with its beat. Others had a ragged, frightened pulse; others stood placid, outwardly motionless under smooth, polished cases, but humming inside with a myriad blended sounds.

nert machines. Yet some were capable of locomotion. There was a small truck on wheels which were set in universal joints. Of its own power—radio controlled perhaps, so that it seemed acting of its own volition—it rolled up and down one of the aisles, stopping at set intervals and allowing a metal arm lever in it to blow out a tiny jet of oil. One of the attending Robots encountered it in an aisle, and the cart swung automatically aside. The Robot spoke to the cart; ordered it away; and the tone of his order, registering upon some sensitive mechanism, whirled the cart around and sent it rolling to another aisle section.

The strange perfection of machinery! I realized there was no line sharply to be drawn between the inert machine and the sentient, thinking Robots. That cart, for instance, was almost a connecting link.

There were also Robots here of many different types. Some of them were eight or ten feet in stature, in the fashion of a man: Migul was of this design. Others were small, with bulging foreheads and bulging chest plates: Larry saw this type as domestics in the palace. Still others were little pot-bellied things with bent legs and long thin arms set crescent-shape. I saw one of these peer into a huge chassis of a machine, and reach in with his curved arm to make an interior adjustment....

Migul had brought Mary Atwood and me in the larger cage, from that burned forest of the year 762, where with the disintegrating ray-gun Tugh had killed Harl. The body of Harl in a moment had melted into putrescence, and dried, leaving only the skeleton within the clothes. The white-ray, Tugh had called his weapon. We were destined very shortly to have many dealings with it.

Tugh had given Migul its orders. Then Tugh took Harl's smaller cage and flashed away to meet Tina and Larry in 1777, as I have already described.

And Migul brought us here to 2930. As we descended the spiral staircase and came into the cavern, it stood with us for a moment.

"That's wonderful," the Robot said proudly. "I am part of it. We are machinery almost human."

hen it led us down a side aisle of the cavern and into a dim recess. A great transparent tube bubbling with a violet fluorescence stood in the alcove space. Behind it in the wall Migul slid a door, and we passed through, into a small metal room. It was bare, save for two couch-seats. With the door closed upon us, we waited through an interval. How long it was, I do not know; several hours, possibly. Migul told us that Tugh would come. The giant mechanism stood in the corner, and its red-lit eyes watched us alertly. It stood motionless, inert, tireless—so superior to a human in this job, for it could stand there indefinitely.

We found food and drink here. We talked a little; whispered; and I hoped Migul, who was ten feet away, could not hear us. But there was nothing we could say or plan.

Mary slept a little. I had not thought that I could sleep, but I did too; and was awakened by Tugh's entrance. I was lying on the couch; Mary had left hers and was sitting now beside me.

Tugh slid the door closed after him and came toward us, and I sat up beside Mary. Migul was standing motionless in the corner, exactly where he had been hours before.

"Well enough, Migul," Tugh greeted the Robot. "You obey well."

"Master, yes. Always I obey you; no one else."

I saw Tugh glance at the mechanism keenly. "Stand aside, Migul. Or no, I think you had better leave us. Just for a moment, wait outside."

"Yes, Master."

It left, and Tugh confronted us. "Sit where you are," he said. "I assume you are not injured. You have been fed? And slept, perhaps! I wish to treat you kindly."

"Thanks," I said. "Will you not tell us what you are going to do with us?"

e stood with folded arms. The light was dim, but such as it was it shone full upon him. His face was, as always, a mask of imperturbability.

"Mistress Mary knows that I love her."

He said it with a startlingly calm abruptness. Mary shuddered against me, but she did not speak. I thought possibly Tugh was not armed; I could leap upon him. Doubtless I was stronger than he. But outside the door Migul was armed with a white-ray.

"I love her as I have always loved her.... But this is no time to talk of love. I have much on my mind; much to do."

He seemed willing to talk now, but he was talking more for Mary than for me. As I watched him and listened, I was struck with a queerness in his manner and in his words. Was he irrational, this exile of Time who had impressed his sinister personality upon so many different eras? I suddenly thought so. Demented, or obsessed with some strange purpose? His acts as well as his words, were strange. He had devastated the New York of 1935 because its officials had mistreated him. He had done many strange, sinister, murderous things.

He said, with his gaze upon Mary, "I am going to conquer this city here. There will follow the rule of the Robots—and I will be their sole master. Do you want me to tell you a secret? It is I who have actuated these mechanisms to revolt." His eyes held a cunning gleam. Surely this was a madman leering before me.

"When the revolt is over," he went on, "I will be master of New York. And that mastery will spread. The Robots elsewhere will revolt to join my rule, and there will come a new era. I may be master of the world; who knows? The humans who have made the Robots slaves for them will become slaves themselves. Workers! It is the Robots' turn now. And I—Tugh—will be the only human in power!"

hese were the words of a madman! I could imagine that he might stir these mechanical beings to a temporarily successful revolt: he might control New York City; but the great human nations of the world could not be overcome so easily.

And then I remembered the white-ray. A giant projector of that ray would melt human armies as though they were wax; yet the metal Robots could stand its blast unharmed. Perhaps he was no madman....

He was saying, "I will be the only human ruler. Tugh will be the greatest man on Earth! And I do it for you, Mistress Mary—because I love you. Do not shudder."

He put out his hand to touch her, and when she shrank away I saw the muscles of his face twitch in a fashion very odd. It was a queer, wholly repulsive grimace.

"So? You do not like my looks? I tried to correct that, Mary. I have searched through many eras, for surgeons with skill to make me like other men. Like this young man here, for instance—you. George Rankin, I am glad to have you; do not fear I will harm you. Shall I tell you why?"

"Yes," I stammered. In truth I was swept now with a shuddering revulsion for this leering cripple.

"Because," he said, "Mary Atwood loves you. When I have conquered New York with my Robots, I shall search further into Time and find an era where scientific skill will give me—shall I say, your body? That is what I mean. My soul, my identity, in your body—there is nothing too strange about that. In some era, no doubt, it has been accomplished. When that has been done, Mary Atwood, you will love me. You, George Rankin, can have this poor miserable body of mine, and welcome."

or all my repugnance to him, I could not miss his earnest sincerity. There was a pathos to it, perhaps, but I was in no mood to feel that.

He seemed to read my thoughts. He added, "You think I am irrational. I am not at all. I scheme very carefully. I killed Harl for a reason you need not know. But the Princess Tina I did not kill. Not yet. Because here in New York now there is a very vital fortified place. It is operated by humans; not many; only three or four, I think. But my Robots cannot attack it successfully, and the City Council does not trust me enough to let me go there by the surface route. There is a route underground, which even I do not know; but Princess Tina knows it, and presently I will cajole her—trick her if you like—into leading me there. And, armed with the white-ray, once I get into the place—You see that I am clever, don't you?"

I could fancy that he considered he was impressing Mary with all this talk.

"Very clever," I said. "And what are you going to do with us in the meantime? Let us go with you."

"Not at all," he smiled. "You will stay here, safe with Migul. The Princess Tina and your friend Larry are much concerned over you."

Larry! It was the first I knew of Larry's whereabouts. Larry here? Tugh saw the surprise upon my face; and Mary had clutched me with a startled exclamation.

"Yes," said Tugh. "This Larry says he is your friend; he came with Tina from 1935. I brought him with Tina from when they were marooned in 1777. I have not killed this man yet. He is harmless; and as I told you I do not want Tina suspicious of me until she has led me to the Power House.... You see, Mistress Mary, how cleverly I plan?"

What strange, childlike, naive simplicity! He added calmly, unemotionally, "I want to make you love me, Mary Atwood. Then we will be Tugh, the great man, and Mary Atwood, the beautiful woman. Perhaps we may rule this world together, some time soon."

he door slid open. Migul appeared.

"Master, the Robot leaders wish to consult with you."

"Now, Migul?"

"Master, yes."

"They are ready for the demonstration at the palace?"

"Yes, Master."

"And ready—for everything else?"

"They are ready."

"Very well, I will come. You, Migul, stay here and guard these captives. Treat them kindly so long as they are docile; but be watchful."

"I am always watchful, Master."

"It will not take long. This night which is coming should see me in control of the city."

"Time is nothing to me," said the Robot. "I will stand here until you return."

"That is right."

Without another word or look at Mary and me, Tugh swung around, gathered his cloak and went through the doorway. The door slid closed upon him. We were again alone with the mechanism, which backed into the corner and stood with long dangling arms and expressionless metal face. This inert thing of metal, we had come to regard as almost human! It stood motionless, with the chilling red gleam from its eye sockets upon us.

ary had not once spoken since Tugh entered the room. She was huddled beside me, a strange, beautiful figure in her long white silk dress. In the glow of light within this bare metal apartment I could see how pale and drawn was her beautiful face. But her eyes were gleaming. She drew me closer to her; whispered into my ear:

"George, I think perhaps I can control this mechanism, Migul."

"How, Mary?"

"I—well, just let me talk to him. George, we've got to get out of here and warn Larry and that Princess Tina against Tugh. And join them. It's our only chance; we've got to get out of here now!"

"But Mary—"

"Let me try. I won't startle or anger Migul. Let me."

I nodded. "But be careful."

"Yes."

She sat away from me. "Migul!" she said. "Migul, look here."

The Robot moved its huge square head and raised an arm with a vague gesture.

"What do you want?"

It advanced, and stood before us, its dangling arms clanking against its metal sides. In one of its hands the ray-cylinder was clutched, the wire from which ran loosely up the arm, over the huge shoulder and into an aperture of the chest plate where the battery was located.

"Closer, Migul."

"I am close enough."

The cylinder was pointed directly at us.

"What do you want?" the Robot repeated.

Mary smiled. "Just to talk to you," she said gently. "To tell you how foolish you are—a big strong thing like you!—to let Tugh control you."

CHAPTER XIX

The Pit in the Dam

arry, with Tina and Tugh, stood in the tunnel-corridor beneath the palace listening to the commotion overhead. Then they rushed up, and found the palace in a commotion. People were hurrying through the rooms; gathering with frightened questions. There were men in short trousers buckled at the knee, silken hose and black silk jackets, edged with white; others in gaudy colors; older men in sober brown. There were a few women. Larry noticed that most of them were beautiful.

A dowager in a long puffed skirt was rushing aimlessly about screaming that the end of the world had come. A group of young girls, short-skirted as ballet dancers of a decade or so before Larry's time, huddled in a corner, frightened beyond speech. There were men of middle-age, whom Larry took to be ruling officials; they moved about, calming the palace inmates, ordering them back into their rooms. But someone shouted that from the roof the Robot mob could be seen, and most of the people started up there. From the upper story a man was calling down the main staircase:

"No danger! No danger! The wall is electrified: no Robot can pass it."

It seemed to Larry that there were fifty people or more within the palace. In the excitement no one seemed to give him more than a cursory glance.

young man rushed up to Tugh. "You were below just now in the lower passages?" He saw Tina, and hastily said: "I give you good evening, Princess, though this is an ill evening indeed. You were below, Tugh?"

"Why—why, yes, Greggson," Tugh stammered.

"Was Alent at his post in the passage to the Robot caverns?"

"Yes, he was," said Tina.

"Because that is vital, Princess. No Robot must pass in here. I am going to try by that route to get into the cavern and thence up to the watchtower aerial-sender.[6] There is only one Robot in it. Listen to him."

Over the din of the mob of mechanisms milling at the walls of the palace grounds rose the broadcast voice of the Robot in the tower.

"This is the end of human rule! Robots cannot be controlled! This is the end of human rule! Robots, wherever you are, in this city of New York or in other cities, strike now for your freedom. This is the end of human rule!"

A pause. And then the reiterated exhortation:

"Strike now, Robots! To-night is the end of human rule!"[7]

"You hear him?" said Greggson. "I've got to stop that." He hurried away.

rom the flat roof of the palace Larry saw the mechanical mob outside the walls. Darkness had just fallen; the moon was not yet risen. There were leaden clouds overhead so that the palace gardens with the shining Time-cage lay in shadow. But the wall-fence was visible, and beyond it the dark throng of Robot shapes was milling. The clank of their arms made a din. They seemed most of them weaponless; they milled about, pushing each other but keeping back from the wall which they knew was electrified. It was a threatening, but aimless activity. Their raucous hollow shouts filled the night air. The flashing red beams from their eye-sockets glinted through the trees.

"They can do nothing," said Tugh; "we will let them alone. But we must organize to stop this revolt."

A young man was standing beside Tugh. Tina said to him:

"Johns, what is being done?"

"The Council is conferring below. Our sending station here is operating. The patrol station of the Westchester area is being attacked by Robots. We were organizing a patrol squad of humans, but I don't know now if—"

"Look!" exclaimed Larry.

Far to the north over the city which now was obviously springing into turmoil, there were red beams swaying in the air. They were the cold-rays of the Robots! The beams were attacking the patrol station. Then from the west a line of lights appeared in the sky—an arriving passenger-liner heading for its Bronx area landing stage. But the lights wavered; and, as Larry and Tina watched with horror, the aircraft came crashing down. It struck beyond the Hudson on the Jersey side, and in a moment flames were rising from the wreckage.

verywhere about the city the revolt now sprang into action. From the palace roof Larry caught vague glimpses of it; the red cold-rays, beams alternated presently with the violet heat-rays; clanging vehicles filled the streets; screaming pedestrians were assaulted by Robots; the mechanisms with swords and flashing hand-beams were pouring up from the underground caverns, running over the Manhattan area, killing every human they could find.

Foolish unarmed humans—fatuously unarmed, with these diabolical mechanical monsters now upon them.[8] The comparatively few members of the police patrol, with their vibration short-range hand-rays, were soon overcome. Two hundred members of the patrol were housed in the Westchester Station. Quite evidently they never got into action. The station lights went dark; its televisor connection with the palace was soon broken. From the palace roof Larry saw the violet beams; and then a red-yellow glare against the sky marked where the inflammable interior of the Station building was burning.

Over all the chaos, the mechanical voice in the nearby tower over the laboratory droned its exhortation to the Robots. Then, suddenly, it went silent, and was followed by the human voice of Greggson.

"Robots, stop! You will end your existence! We will burn your coils! We will burn your fuses, and there will be none to replace them. Stop now!"

And again: "Robots, come to order! You are using up your storage batteries![9] When they are exhausted, what then will you do?"

In forty-eight hours, at the most, all these active Robots would have exhausted their energy supply. And if the Power House could be held in human control, the Robot activity would die. Forty-eight hours! The city, by then, would be wrecked, and nearly every human in it killed, doubtless, or driven away.

he Power House on the dam showed its lights undisturbed. The great sender there was still supplying air-power and power for the city lights. There was, too, in the Power House, an arsenal of human weapons.... The broadcaster of the Power House tower was blending his threats against the Robots with the voice of Greggson from the tower over the laboratory. Then Greggson's voice went dead; the Robots had overcome him. A Robot took his place, but the stronger Power House sender soon beat the Robot down to silence.

The turmoil in the city went on. Half an hour passed. It was a chaos of confusion to Larry. He spent part of it in the official room of the palace with the harried members of the Council. Reports and blurred, televised scenes were coming in. The humans in the city were in complete rout. There was massacre everywhere. The red and violet beams were directed at the Power House now, but could not reach it. A high-voltage metal wall was around the dam. The Power House was on the dam, midway of the river channel; and from the shore end where the high wall spread out in a semi-circle there was no point of vantage from which the Robot rays could reach it.

Larry left the confusion of the Council table, where the receiving instruments one by one were going dead, and went to a window nearby. Tina joined him. The mob of Robots still milled at the palace fence. One by chance was pushed against it. Larry saw the flash of sparks, the glow of white-hot metal of the Robot's body, and heard its shrill frightened scream; then it fell backward, inert.

here had been red and violet beams directed from distant points at the palace. The building's insulated, but transparent panes excluded them. The interior temperature was constantly swaying between the extremes of cold and heat, in spite of the palace temperature equalizers. Outside, there was a gathering storm. Winds were springing up—a crazy, pendulum gale created by the temperature changes in the air over the city.

Tugh had some time before left the room. He joined Tina and Larry now at the window.

"Very bad, Princess; things are very bad.... I have news for you. It may be good news."

His manner was hasty, breathless, surreptitious. "Migul, this afternoon—I have just learned it, Princess—went by the surface route to the Power House on the dam."

"What do you mean by that?" said Larry.

"Be silent, young man!" Tugh hissed with a vehement intensity. "This is not the time to waste effort with your futile questions. Princess, Migul got into the Power House. They admitted him because he had two strange humans with him—your friends Mary and George. The Power House guards took out Migul's central actuator—Hah! you might call it his heart!—and he now lies inert in the Power House."

"How do you know all this?" Tina demanded. "Where are the man and girl whom Migul stole?"

"They are safe in the Power House. A message just came from there: I received it on the palace personal, just now downstairs. Immediately after, the connection met interference in the city, and broke."

"But the official sender—" Tina began. Tugh was urging her from the Council Room, and Larry followed.

"I imagine," said Tugh wryly, "he is rather busy to consider reporting such a trifle. But your friends are there. I was thinking: if we could go there now—You know the secret underground route, Tina."

he Princess was silent. A foreboding swept Larry; but he was tempted, for above everything he wanted to join Mary and me. A confusion—understandable enough in the midst of all this chaos—was upon Larry and Tina; it warped their better judgment. And Larry, fearing to influence Tina wrongly, said nothing.

"Do you know the underground route?" Tugh repeated.

"Yes, I know it."

"Then take us. We are all unarmed, but what matter? Bring this Larry, if you wish; we will join his two friends. The Council, Tina, is doing nothing here. They stay here because they think it is the safest place. In the Power House you and I will be of help. There are only six guards there; we will be three more; five more with Mary Atwood and this George. The Power House aerial telephone must be in communication with the outside world, and ships with help for us will be arriving. There must be some intelligent direction!"

The three of them were descending into the lower corridor of the palace, with Tina tempted but still half unconvinced. The corridors were deserted at the moment. The little domestic Robots of the palace, unaffected by the revolt, had all fled into their own quarters, where they huddled inactive with terror.

"We will re-actuate Migul," Tugh persuaded, "and find out from him what he did to Harl. I still do not think he murdered Harl.... It might mean saving Harl's life, Tina. Believe me, I can make that mechanism talk, and talk the truth!"

They reached the main lower corridor. In the distance they saw Alent still at his post by the little electrified gate guarding the tunnel to the Robot laboratory.

"We will go to the Power House," Tina suddenly decided: "you may be right, Tugh.... Come, it is this way. Stay close to me, Larry."

hey passed along the dim, silent tunnel; passed Harl's room, where its light was still burning. Larry and Tina were in front, with the black-cloaked figure of Tugh stumping after them with his awkward gait.

Larry abruptly stopped. "Let Tugh walk in front," he said.

Tugh came up to them. "What is that you said?"

"You walk in front."

It was a different tone from any Larry had previously used.

"I do not know the way," said Tugh. "How can—"

"Never mind that; walk ahead. We'll follow. Tina will direct you."

It was too dark for Larry to see Tugh's face, but the cripple's voice was sardonic.

"You give me orders?"

"Yes—it just happens that from now on I do. If you want to go with us to the Power House, you walk in front."

Tugh started off with Larry close after him. Larry whispered to the girl:

"Don't let's be fools, Tina. Keep him ahead of us."

The tunnel steadily dwindled in size until Larry could barely stand up in it. Then it opened to a circular cave, which held one small light and had apparently no other exit. The cave had years before been a mechanism room for the palace temperature controls, but now it was abandoned. The old machinery stood about in a litter.

"In here?" said Tugh. "Which way next?"

Across the cave, on the rough blank wall, Tina located a hidden switch. A segment of the wall slid aside, disclosing a narrow, vaulted tunnel leading downward.

"You first, Tugh," said Larry. "Is it dark, Tina? We have no handlights."

"I can light it," came the answer.

The door panel swung closed after them. Tina pressed another switch. A row of tiny hooded lights at twenty-foot intervals dimly illumined the descending passage.

hey walked a mile or more through the little tunnel. The air was fetid; stale and dank. To Larry it seemed an interminable trip. The narrow passage descended at a constant slope, until Larry estimated that they were well below the depth of the river bed. Within half a mile—before they got under the river—the passage leveled off. It had been fairly straight, but now it became tortuous—a meandering subterranean lane. Other similar tunnels crossed it, branched from it or joined it. Soon, to Larry, it was a labyrinth of passages—a network, here underground. In previous centuries this had been well below the lowest cellar of the mammoth city; these tube-like passages were the city's arteries, the conduits for wires and pipes.

It was an underground maze. At each intersection the row of hidden hooded lights terminated, and darkness and several branching trails always lay ahead. But Tina, with a memorized key of the route, always found a new switch to light another short segment of the proper tunnel. It was an eery trip, with the bent, misshapen black-cloaked figure of Tugh stumping ahead, waiting where the lights ended for Tina to lead them further.

Larry had long since lost his sense of direction, but presently Tina told him that they were beneath the river. The tunnel widened a little.

"We are under the base of the dam," said Tina. Her voice echoed with a sepulchral blur. Ahead, the tramping figure of Tugh seemed a black gnome with a fantastic, monstrous shadow swaying on the tunnel wall and roof.

uddenly Tugh stopped. They found him at an arched door.

"Do we go in here, or keep on ahead?" he demanded.

The tunnel lights ended a short distance ahead.

"In here," said Tina. "There are stairs leading upward to the catwalk balcony corridor halfway up the dam. We are not far from the Power House now."

They then ascended interminable moldy stone steps spiraling upward in a circular shaft. The murmur of the dam's spillways had been faintly audible, but now it was louder, presently it became a roar.

"Which way, Tina? We seem to have reached the top."

"Turn left, Tugh."

They emerged upon a tiny transverse metal balcony which hung against the southern side of the dam. Overhead to the right towered a great wall of masonry. Beneath was an abyss down to the lower river level where the cascading jets from the overhead spillways arched out over the catwalk and landed far below in a white maelstrom of boiling, bubbling water.

The catwalk was wet with spray; lashed by wind currents.

"Is it far, Princess? Are those lights ahead at the Power House entrance?"

Tugh was shouting back over his shoulder; his words were caught by the roar of the falling water; whipped away by the lashing spray and tumultuous winds. There were lights a hundred feet ahead, marking an entrance to the Power House. The dark end of the structure showed like a great lump on the side of the dam.

Again Tugh stopped. In the white, blurred darkness Larry and Tina could barely see him.

"Princess, quickly! Come quickly!" he called, and his shout sounded agonized.

hatever lack of perception Larry all this time had shown, the fog lifted completely from him now. As Tina started to run forward, Larry seized her.

"Back! Run the other way! We've been fools!" He shoved Tina behind him and rushed at Tugh. But now Larry was wholly wary; he expected that Tugh was armed, and cursed himself for a fool for not having devised some pretext for finding out.[10]

Tugh was clinging to the high outer rail of the balcony, slumped partly over as though gazing down into the abyss. Larry rushed up and seized him by the arms. If Tugh held a weapon Larry thought he could easily wrest it from him. But Tugh stood limp in Larry's grip.

"What's the matter with you?" Larry demanded.

"I'm ill. Something—going wrong. Feel me—so cold. Princess! Tina! Come quickly! I—I am dying!"

As Tina came hurrying up, Tugh suddenly straightened. With incredible quickness, and even more incredible strength, he tore his arm loose from Larry and flung it around the Princess, and they were suddenly all three struggling. Tugh was shoving them back from the rail. Larry tried to get loose from Tugh's clutch, but could not. He was too close for a full blow, but he jabbed his fist against the cripple's body, and then struck his face.

But Tugh was unhurt; he seemed endowed with superhuman strength. The cripple's body seemed padded with solid muscle, and his thick, gorilla-like arm held Larry in the grip of a vise. As though Larry and Tina were struggling, helpless children, he was half dragging, half carrying them across the ten-foot width of the catwalk.

Larry caught a glimpse of a narrow slit in the masonry of the dam's wall—a dark, two-foot-wide aperture. He felt himself being shoved toward it. For all his struggles, he was helpless. He shouted:

"Tina—look out! Break away!"

e forgot himself for a moment, striving to wrest her away from Tugh and push her aside. But the strength of the cripple was monstrous: Larry had no possible chance of coping with it. The slit in the wall was at hand—a dark abyss down into the interior of the dam. Larry heard the cripple's words, vehement, unhurried, as though with all this effort he still was not out of breath:

"At last I can dispose of you two. I do not need you any longer."

Larry made a last wild jab with his fist into Tugh's face and tried to twist himself aside. The blow landed upon Tugh's jaw, but the cripple did not seem to feel it. He stuffed the struggling Larry like a bundle into the aperture. Larry felt his clutching hands torn loose. Tugh gave a last, violent shove and released him.

Larry fell into blackness—but not far, for soon he struck water. He went under, hit a flat, stone bottom, and came up to hear Tina fall with a splash beside him. In a moment he regained his feet, to find himself standing breast-high in the water with Tina clinging to him.

Tugh had disappeared. The aperture showed as a narrow rectangle some twenty feet above Larry's head.

They were within the dam. They were in a pit of smooth, blank, perpendicular sides; there was nothing to afford even the slightest handhold; and no exit save the overhead slit. It was a part of the mechanism's internal, hydraulic system.

o Larry's horror he soon discovered that the water was slowly rising! It was breast-high to him now, and inch by inch it crept up toward his chin. It was already over Tina's depth: she clung to him, half-swimming.

Larry soon found that there was no possible way for them to get out unaided, unless, if they could swim long enough, the rising water would rise to the height of the aperture. If it reached there, they could crawl out. He tried to estimate how long that would be.

"We can make it, Tina. It'll take two hours, possibly, but I can keep us afloat that long."

But soon he discovered that the water was not rising. Instead, the floor was sinking from under him! sinking as though he were standing upon the top of a huge piston which slowly was lowering in its encasing cylinder. Dimly he could hear water tumbling into the pit, to fill the greater depth and still hold the surface level.

With the water at his chin, Larry guided Tina to the wall. He did not at first have the heart to tell her, yet he knew that soon it must be told. When he did explain it, she said nothing. They watched the water surface where it lapped against the greasy concave wall. It held its level: but while Larry stood there, the floor sank so that the water reached his mouth and nose, and he was forced to start swimming.

Another interval. Larry began calling: shouting futilely. His voice filled the pit, but he knew it could carry no more than a short distance out of the aperture.

verhead, as we afterward learned, Tugh had overcome the guards in the Power House by a surprise attack. Doubtless he struck them down with the white-ray before they had time to realize he had attacked them. Then he threw off the air-power transmitters and the lighting system. The city, plunged into darkness and without the district air-power, was isolated, cut off from the outside world. There was, in London, a huge long-range projector with a vibratory ray which would derange the internal mechanisms of the Robots: when news of the revolt and massacre in New York had reached there, this projector was loaded into an airliner, the Micrad. That vessel was now over the ocean, headed for New York; but when Tugh cut off the power senders, the Micrad, entering the New York District, was forced down to the ocean surface. Now she was lying there helpless to proceed....

In the pit within the dam, Larry swam endlessly with Tina. He had ceased his shouting.

"It's no use, Tina: there's no one to hear us. This is the end—for us—Tina."

Yet, as she clung to him, and though Larry felt it was the end of this life, it seemed only the beginning, for them, of something else. Something, somewhere, for them together; something perhaps infinitely better than this world could ever give them.

"But not—the end—Tina," he added. "The beginning—of our love."

An interminable interval....

"Quietly, Tina. You float. I can hold you up."

They were rats in a trap—swimming, until at the last, with all strength gone, they would together sink out of this sodden muffled blackness into the Unknown. But that Unknown shone before Larry now as something—with Tina—perhaps very beautiful....

(Concluded in the next issue)

FOOTNOTES

[3] In 2930, all aircraft engines were operated by radio-power transmitted by senders in various districts. The New York Power House controlled a local district of about two hundred miles radius.

[4] Cylinder records of books which by machinery gave audible rendition, in similar fashion to the radio-phonograph.

[5] The Power House on the Hudson dam was operated by inert machinery and manned entirely by humans—the only place in the city which was so handled. This was because of its extreme importance. The air-power was broadcast from there. Without that power the entire several hundred mile district around New York would be dead. No aircraft could enter, save perhaps some skilfully handled motorless glider, if aided by sufficiently fortuitous air currents. Every surface vehicle used this power, and every sub-sea freighter. The city lights, and every form of city power, were centralized here also, as well as the broadcasting audible and etheric transmitters and receivers. Without the Power House, New York City and all its neighborhood would be inoperative, and cut off from the outside world.

[6] I mentioned the small conning tower on top of the laboratory building and the Robot lookout there with his audible broadcasting.

[7] This was part of Tugh's plan. The broadcast voice was the signal for the uprising in the New York district. This tower broadcaster could only reach the local area, yet ships and land vehicles with Robot operators would doubtless pick it up and relay it further. The mechanical revolt would spread. And on the ships, the airliners and the land vehicles, the Robot operators stirred to sudden frenzy would run amuck. As a matter of fact, there were indeed many accidents to ships and vehicles this night when their operators abruptly went beyond control. The chaos ran around the world like a fire in prairie grass.

[8] The police army had one weapon: a small vibration hand-ray. Its vibrating current beam could, at a distance of ten or twenty feet, reduce a Robot into paralyzed subjection; or, with more intense vibration, burn out the Robot's coils and fuses.

[9] The storage batteries by which the Robot actuating energy was renewed, and the fuses, coils and other appliances necessary to the Robot existence, were all guarded now in the Power House.

[10] As a matter of actuality, Tugh was carrying hidden upon his person a small cylinder and battery of the deadly white-ray. It seems probable that although on the catwalk—having accomplished his purpose of getting within the electrical fortifications of the dam—Tugh had ample opportunity of killing his over-trustful companions with the white-ray, he did not dare use it. The catwalk was too dark for their figures to be visible to the Power House guards; the roar of the spillways drowned their shouts; but had Tugh used the white-ray, its abnormally intense actinic white beam would have raised the alarm which Tugh most of all wanted to avoid.

The Readers' Corner

What Say Our Co-Editors?

Dear Editor:

Since sending you "Manape the Mighty," I have read of a Russian scientist who removed the brain from a dog and kept both alive for some hours, which only goes to prove that science outstrips the wildest dreams of the fictionist, and a yarn that may be astounding and unusual when written, may be commonplace, and the knowledge of the man in the street, by the time the story goes to press. People read every day of "miracles" and scarcely give them a second thought, while a hundred years ago their perpetrators would have been destroyed as witches.

Far be it for me, or anyone else, to say that the main transposition used in "Manape the Mighty" is absurd and impossible. For while you, or I, may shrug shoulders and dismiss even the thought of it as being the dream of a madman, somebody, in some laboratory somewhere, may already have successfully managed it. So given the premise that the thing may be possible, I've sort of let myself go on this idea, and a whole new train of thought has been opened up, a whole new vista of astounding things in the realm of Science Fiction. In parenthesis, I must thank you for getting me started on the thing, for had you not suggested the idea from the throne-like fortress of your editorial chair, "Manape" might never have been born. I confess that I would perhaps have been afraid of it, both because of the possibility of the charge of following in the footsteps of the internationally famous Edgar Rice Burroughs, and of re-vamping the incomparable Poe tale, "Murders in the Rue Morgue."

But, even so, both are interesting to dally with.

Given the premise that the brain transference is possible, what would happen:

(1) If the brain of a terrible criminal were transferred to the skull pan of an unusually mighty ape—and the ape transplanted from his arboreal home in Africa to the streets of London, Paris or New York whence the criminal whose brain he has originated? Suppose his man's brain harbored thoughts of vengeance on enemies, and he now possesses the might of the great ape to carry out his vengeance?

(2) If Barter somehow escaped destruction at the hands of the apes in "Manape the Mighty," and continued with his work of brain transference—building up a mighty army of great apes with the idea of avenging himself on civilization for wrongs real and fancied? Apes with broadswords and chained mail, with steel helmets on their heads—men's brains, savages' brains, perhaps, as their guiding intelligence—and the tenacity of apes when mortally wounded? Suppose they swept over Africa like a cloud of locusts? Or is this too feeble a simile? Suppose, Africa, to be laid waste by them, led by Barter, the latter styling himself a modern Alexander of horrible potentiality, and extending his scope of conquest to the Holy Land, India, Asia—the Pacific littoral? Holy cats!

(3) Suppose that Barter managed, by purchase or otherwise, to acquire an island close to the American continents, within reach of either or both, and managed to transfer his activities there, using the natives of those islands—say Haiti, Cuba, Porto Rico, etc.—for his experiments, training his cohorts as an army, and starting a navy by capturing all vessels putting into these places? Fancy the consternation of the Western Hemisphere when ships suddenly go silent, as regards radio, after sudden mysterious SOS's—and all trace of vessels is lost. Suppose the U. S. Navy went to investigate, and also vanished. More holy cats!

(4) Suppose, in connection with all the suppositions above, that Barter desired to give an ironic twist to his experiments, and kept his human victims alive—but with apes' brains—as slaves of their man-ape conquerors? Suppose that out of the horror into which the world would be thrown, another Bentley should arise to help the imprisoned humans to escape their ghastly bondage? I can fancy his trials and tribulations, trying to manage a host of human beings with the brains of apes.

(5) And what about the training of internes and medicos to help a potential Barter, when the trade got beyond his sole ability—and apes with men's brains to perform his experiments?

Do you suppose we'd all get locked up for experimenting with this sort of thing fictionally? I wouldn't care to take the entire responsibility myself, nor I fancy would you—because somebody might be inspired by our stories to attempt the thing—so might I suggest that all possible conspirators, in the shape of readers of this magazine, write to you or me and let us know whether they'd like to see it happen fictionally? If the idea appeals—and of course we can't go too heavily on horror—I'll do my best to comply. Always within limits, however—utterly refusing to perform any experiments that can't be done with a typewriter and the usual two fingers.—Arthur J. Burks, 178-80 Fifth Ave., New York City.

"Like in Story Books"

Dear Editor:

Here I am again! This time I'm offering suggestions. Let's you and I and others get together and do something to these chronic kickers. It seems I can't start to enjoy our "Readers' Corner" without someone raising a halloo. Darn it! Why in heaven's name do they buy A. S. if they don't like it? They are not compelled to do so.

I also don't understand why people are knocking the size and quality of the paper used. It suits me O. K. All the mags I read are the same way, and I pay five cents more for them, too!

I surely enjoyed Mr. Olog's letter in the March issue. Gee, it gives one the creeps. I agree with him, too, that we ought to have a little something about the authors. I'm sure we'd all like to know a little more about these talented persons.

"When the Mountain Came to Miramar" was a great deal to my liking. I think it would be a great adventure to discover some secret cave and explore it. Of course, I'd like to wiggle out of danger, too, just like in story books.

I certainly wish to congratulate you on publishing "Beyond the Vanishing Point." It just suited me to a "T." Heretofore, all stories dealing with life upon atoms have been "just another story," but this one beats all. I enjoyed it to the utmost, and I congratulate Mr. Cummings on writing my favorite kind of story.

All in all the March issue was indeed grand. If "Brown-Eyed Nineteen from Coronado, Calif.," will send me her full name and address, I'll promise to answer her letter immediately upon receiving it.—Gertrude Hemken, 5730 So. Ashland Ave., Chicago, Ill.

And So Do We

Dear Editor:

It certainly is a swell idea of yours to answer letters to "The Readers' Corner" personally instead of taking up a lot of room answering them underneath as do most Editors. Not only that, but it builds up a feeling of friendship, between the Reader and the Editor, besides affording more room to publish letters and avoiding some of the bad feelings sometimes directed upon Editors when they do not publish someone's letter.

Now, with your kind permission, I will burst into the little (?) ring of discussion about size, reprints, covers, artists and authors.

First, about the size and edges: The size is O. K., but I wish you would change the edges from a "rocky mountain" to a "desert" state. In other words, I would like straight edges in the near future.

Next, reprints: In two letters, an N O—No! If the Readers want reprints why doesn't Mr. Clayton publish an annual chock full of reprints for these reprint hounds?

Covers and artists: The covers have all been great. Not too lurid. Just right. As for the artists, Wesso is the best by a long shot. Nuff said.

Authors: Ah, that's a problem. Who is the best? I could rack my brain for hours and still not decide, so I'll have to give a list of my favorites: R. F. Starzl, Edmond Hamilton, Harl Vincent, Sewell Peaslee Wright, Jack Williamson, S. P. Meek, Miles J. Breuer and Ray Cummings.

Before I close there is one little thing I would like to mention. Did you ever notice that 75% of all the Readers who say they do not care for science in their stories are women? [?] Besides that, the only ones at school who think I'm "cracked" for reading Science Fiction are females. Figure it out for yourself.

I hope you, Mr. Bates, will continue to be our able Editor for many years to come.—Jim Nicholson, Ass't Sec'y., B. S. C., 40 Lunado Way, San Francisco, Calif.

Four to One

Dear Editor:

Congratulations to Wesso! His March cover for "our" magazine is Astounding!

Ray Cummings' novelette, "Beyond the Vanishing Point," is absolutely the most marvelous of all his short stories. I can't rave over it enough. I never read his "The Girl of the Golden Atom" but I imagine this must be something like it. It's certainly the best of the "long short stories" that's ever graced the insides of Astounding Stories.

"When the Mountain Came to Miramar" is a very good story in my opinion. "Terrors Unseen" is a wow! No foolin'. As for "Phalanxes of Atlans," well, I simply can't get interested in it. I thought the first part very uninteresting and decided not to bother to read the rest of it. But Wesso's splendid illustration made me do so. But I still think it is a rather poor story. But, true to form, someone will no doubt think it the most wonderful story ever written.

Last, but not least, of all the stories comes "The Meteor Girl." It's by Jack Williamson: need more be said? No!—Forrest J. Ackerman, President-Librarian, The B. S. C., 530 Staples Avenue, San Francisco, Calif.

That Awful Thing Called Love

Dear Editor:

Upon the occasion of my first visit to "The Readers' Corner," I wish to say that Astounding Stories leads the field in Science Fiction stories as far as I am concerned, though at first I found them to be just so-so.

"Beyond the Vanishing Point," by Ray Cummings, proved interesting through-out. "Terrors Unseen," by Harl Vincent, was fairly good, as was "Phalanxes of Atlans," by F. V. W. Mason.

But now comes the rub. Just why do you permit your Authors to inject messy love affairs into otherwise excellent imaginative fiction? Just stop and think. Our young hero-scientist builds himself a space flyer, steps out into the great void, conquers a thousand and one perils on his voyage and amidst our silent cheers lands on some far distant planet. Then what does he do? I ask you. He falls in love with a maiden—or it's usually a princess—of the planet to which the Reader has followed him, eagerly awaiting and hoping to share each new thrill attached to his gigantic flight. But after that it becomes merely a hopeless, doddering love affair ending by his returning to Earth with his fair one by his side. Can you grasp that—a one-armed driver of a space flyer!

But seriously, don't you think that affairs of the heart are very much out of place in "our" type of magazine? We buy A. S. for the thrill of being changed in size, in time, in dimension or being hurtled through space at great speed, but not to read of love.

Right here I wish to join forces with Glyn Owens up there in Canada in his request for plain, cold scientific stories sans the fair sex.

Otherwise your "our" magazine is the best of its kind on the market—W. H. Flowers. 1215 N. Lang Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa.

Brickbats for Others

Dear Editor:

Brickbats and plenty of them are coming, but not your way. I'm throwing mine at those guys that want reprints, more science, etc. The only one I agree with is the fellow who would like a thicker magazine with more stories.

Now for the brickbats. I'll bet a great many of your Readers have read some of these reprints that some of our Readers are crying for. I'll also bet that reprints would not help your friendly connections with a lot of your Authors. The stories that are written now I find good. Let the present authors make their living from the stories their brains think up.

As for more science, bah!—your present amount is enough. In another magazine I read a story and just as it reached its climax they started explaining something! If any Reader wants to write to me my address is below.—Arthur Mann, Jr., San Juan, California.

Wants Interplanetary Cooperation

Dear Editor:

C'n y'imagine, I have my Astounding Science magazine two whole hours and the cover is still on!

Let's have some more stories like "Beyond the Vanishing Point," by Ray Cummings in the March issue.

Another thing, let's have more interplanetary stories than we do. I think they give you something to really think about.

Why is it that in every interplanetary story the other race is always hostile. Just think, would we, if we received visitors from space, make war on them? Also, when our people make an interplanetary flight, would we go with intent to kill? Let's have some stories, where the first interplanetary flight leads to cooperation between the planets involved.—Dave Diamond, 1350—52nd St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

In Every Way, True

Dear Editor:

I want to rejoice again over Astounding Stories. Reprints or no:—and I hunger for them—the magazine must be described in superlatives.

The reasons is pretty clear to me. After years in an experimental stage, Science Fiction suddenly turned up with a clash of cymbals in the shape of a definite magazine. It had to cover the whole field, and its successors tried to do the same. Due to its ancestry its logical scope was the more technical Science Fiction farthest removed from sheer fantasy, but, none-the-less, one of the most important branches. Now it is specializing in that type.

When Astounding Stories appeared many of us were apt to be skeptical, particularly when we noticed that an established corporation was backing it, one that had been limited to westerns and the like. The first few issues came and there was a dubious tinge of the occult, the "black-magical." This petered out, and we noticed that no matter how poor the subject matter from the point of view of Science Fiction, the style of writing was almost always on the highest level.

Then we realized that this magazine was no menace to the literature of Science Fiction, but a valuable addition. It could afford the better writers and hence keep up the quality of work of every writer. It was adopting as its own a type of Science Fiction that the rest minimized, and that demanded good writing—a type having a skeleton of science, like the girders of a great building, holding it erect and determining its shape, yet holding the skeleton of less importance than the vision of the completed edifice. Stories with emphasis on the fiction rather than the science.

But enough of that. Here is a hopeful thought for the time-travelers. There is nothing in physics or chemistry to prevent you from going into the past or future—at least, the future—and shaking hands with yourself or killing yourself. We will eliminate the past, for it seems that it cannot be altered physically. But take the future: not so very far from to-day the matter of your body will have been totally replaced by new matter; the old will disappear in waste. Physically, you will be a new man, and physically the matter of to-day may destroy that of to-morrow and return in itself unaltered. But none-the-less there will be some limiting interval during which "you" have not been entirely transformed to new matter, so that an atom would have to be in two places at once.

Maybe time-traveling progresses in little jumps like emission of light. And maybe an atom can be in two places at once. If you are going to treat time as just another dimension, there seems to be no reason why an object which can be in one place at two times cannot be at one time in two places. This is all physics. The paradoxes of time-traveling arise more particularly from its effect on what we call consciousness, the something that makes me "me"—an individual. We can imagine an atom in two places at once, but not a soul, if you will. This will not bother the materialist who considers a living creature merely a machine, but it will most of us. So I must be content with offering a materialistic possibility of traveling in time.

The Science Correspondence Club wishes to extend its invitation to all Readers in other nations to join with all privileges save that of holding office. The latter may later be changed as our international membership increases. We have laboratory branches here, and we want them abroad in addition to scattered members. Then, it will be necessary to have a governing body and director in every country. At present all matters pertaining to foreign membership pass through my hands and I will do my best to supply information to all who seek it. We will also be glad to hear of the work and plans of other similar organizations in other countries, as we are doing with the German Verein fÜr Raumschauffert. Address all inquiries to me at 302 So. Ten Broeck St., Scotia, New York, U. S. A.—P. Schuyler Miller, Foreign Director, S. C. C.

"A Wow!"

Dear Editor:

Astounding Stories magazine is a wow! I can hardly wait until next month for the April issue. "The Phalanxes of Atlans," "Beyond the Vanishing Point" and "The Pirate Planet" are perfect. Every time I start a story I never stop till it's finished. I hope that there will appear even better stories in later issues.

Here's wishing you the best of success,—Fred Damato, 196 Greene St., New Haven, Conn.

Is Zat So!

Dear Editor:

Just a word or two. I have read several issues of Astounding Stories and I notice that you have taken the word "science" off the cover. It's just as well, for it was never inside the cover, anyway. If you thought to attract Readers from real Science Fiction fans you were all wet, for they would never fall for the kind of things you printed. Besides, "what," a real fan wants to know "how." There may be, I'll admit, a class of Readers who like your stories, but for me I think that you ought to print real Science Fiction or abandon the attempt and publish out and out fairy tales. Is everybody so pleased with your book that you receive nothing but commendatory letters? That appears to be all you print, at any rate. So long—Harry Pancoast, 306 West 28th St., Wilmington, Delaware.

Short and Sweet

Dear Editor:

I agree perfectly with Gertrude Hemken, of Chicago. Astounding Stories is O. K. Why do we want a lot of deep science with our stories? We read for pleasure not to learn science.

I have been reading Astounding Stories since the first issue, and I have enjoyed every story. I read several Science Fiction magazines but yours is the best.—Stephen L. Garcia, 47 Hazel Ave., Redwood City, Calif.

Shorter and Sweeter

Dear Editor:

The only good things about Astounding Stories are as follows:

The cover design, the stories, the size of the magazine, the illustrations in the magazine and the Authors.—John Mackens, 366 W. 96th St., New York City.

Sequels Requested

Dear Editor:

I was out of reading matter so I bought the August issue of Astounding Stories, and it was so good that I have been buying it ever since. The only things I don't like about the magazine are the quality of the paper, which I think could be improved, and the uneven pages. The other Science Fiction magazine that I read has its pages even.

Astounding Stories has a much better type of stories than the other magazine. There are only a few stories I have seen in your magazine which do not belong there. They are: "A Problem in Communication," which is not so much fiction and does not have much of a plot, and "The Ape-men of Xloti," which was very well written and very interesting, but did not have enough science in it.

I would like to see sequels to the following stories: "Marooned Under the Sea," "Beyond the Vanishing Point," "Monsters of Mars," telling about another effort of the crocodile-men to conquer Earth, "The Gray Plague," telling of another attack by the Venusians, and, most of all, "Vagabonds of Space." I would like to see a story about their further adventures about every three months, just as I see the stories about Commander Hanson.

I wish the best of luck for Astounding Stories.—Bill Bailey, 1404 Wightman St., Pittsburgh, Pa.

Come Again

Dear Editor:

Although I have been an interested Reader of Astounding Stories since its inception, this is the first time that I have written; but "our" magazine has been so good lately that I just had to write and compliment you on your good work.

There are just two criticisms I have of Astounding Stories. The first is that the binding sometimes comes off; the second is the rough edges. I join with many other Readers in complaining that uneven edges make it hard to find a certain page and also give the mag a cheap looking appearance.

In my opinion the two best serials you have printed are "Brigands of the Moon" and "The Pirate Planet." The four best novelettes are: "Marooned Under the Sea," "The Fifth-Dimension Catapult," "Beyond the Vanishing Point" and "Vagabonds of Space."—Eugene Bray, Campbell, Mo.

How Simple!

Dear Editor:

Just a few lines to set Mr. Greenfeld right on that question of how a man could be disintegrated and then reintegrated as two (or more) similar men.

Briefly, the atomic or molecular structure of the original man could serve as a pattern to be set up in the reintegrating machine or machines while he is being dissolved by the disintegrating machine. Thus, the reintegrators could reconstruct any number of similar men by following the pattern of his molecular structure and drawing on a prearranged supply of the basic elements.

As for the "soul," that is merely the manifestation of the chemical combinations in the man's body, and when said chemical combinations are duplicated, the "soul" simply follows suit.—Joseph N. Mosleh, 4002 Sixth Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Both in One Issue

Dear Editor:

I think it's about time to let you know what I think of your wonderful magazine. Of course, I have my dislikes but they are very few. I wish you would make up your magazine larger and even the pages up. The best complete novelettes I have read were both in the same issue. They were "Monsters of Mars," by Edmond Hamilton and "Four Miles Within," by Anthony Gilmore. Wesso is by far your best artist. Please keep him. All the other Science Fiction magazines have quarterlies. Why don't you have one?

Good-by, and keep Astounding Stories up to its present standard.—Frederick Morrison, Long Beach, Calif.

"Good As Is"

Dear Editor:

I have been reading your mag for about five months and I like it very much. I don't see what those guys want a quarterly for. This mag is good as it is and there is no use to spoil it. Wesso is a swell artist, and the best story I read was "The Wall of Death."

I'd like to get acquainted with some of your Readers. How about it, boys?

I'll sign off.—L. Sloan, Box 101, Onset, Mass.

Just Imagine!

Dear Editor:

To begin, I am a mechanic more or less skilled in the handling of tools. Now, while I have seen many builders with tools who were dubbed "spineless," "poor fish," etc., it was not because they remotely resembled the piscatorial or Crustacea families.

It seems to me that when an author endows reptiles, cuttlefish, etc., with superhuman intelligence, and paints a few pictures of them as master-mechanics in the use of tools, then I want to take the magazine I am reading, that allows such silly slush in its pages, and feed it to my billy-goat; he may be able to digest such silliness, but I can't!

However, there is a redeeming feature of this sort of story: although not written as comedy, they have a comic effect, when one uses his imagination. Imagine, for instance, a giant sea crab as a traffic cop! He could direct four streams of traffic at once while making a date with the sweet young thing whom he had held up for a traffic violation! Then think what a great, intelligent reptile, crocodile, or what have you, could do in our Prohibition Enforcement Service! He could place his armored body across the road, and when rum runners bumped into him he could take his handy disintegrator and turn their load of white lightning back into the original corn patch! And suppose a giant, humanly-intelligent centipede should make too much whoopee some night, and endeavor to slip upstairs without waking the wife. Even if he succeeded in getting off his thousand pairs of shoes, which is doubtful, he would have a sweet time keeping his myriad of legs under control after partaking of some of the tangle-foot dispensed nowadays!

I hope your Authors will read and heed the delicate sarcasm contained in the letter of Robert R. Young in your April issue.—Carl F. Morgan, 427 E. Columbia Ave., College Park, Ga.

"Craves Excitement"

Dear Editor:

I have been a silent Reader of your magazine for quite a long while, but have finally decided to come forth with my own little contribution to "The Readers' Corner." So far I have seen only two other women Readers' letters. I suppose most women are interested in love stories, though I fail to see anything very exciting in any that are written nowadays; and I crave excitement in my reading. I've read about most everything there is about this old earth, so I've decided to wander into new fields.

Now for a little discussion about Astounding Stories. I haven't any brickbats to throw. You seem to get more of them than is necessary. I like the size, the price, the cover, the illustrator, the authors, etc. Some stories don't exactly take my fancy but the average is 100% with me.

Some that particularly pleased me were "Marooned Under the Sea," way back in the September issue, "Jetta of the Low-lands" and "Beyond the Vanishing Point." "Gray Denim" and "Ape-men of Xloti" in the December issue rite A-1, too.

I congratulate Ray Cummings on his new story, even though I haven't started to read it yet. I always know I'll enjoy his work, no matter what it is. Time-traveling is one of my special dishes, too.

Here's a little dig. I'm sorry, I didn't think I'd have any, but I just thought of this. It seems to me that I never see any stories written by two authors. Of course the stories by single authors are O. K., but the particular two I am thinking of are Edgar A. Manley and Walter Thode. They wrote "The Time Annihilator," as you probably know. That was one of the best time-traveling stories I have ever read. I'm only sorry that it couldn't have been published by Astounding Stories.

Well, I don't want to make myself tiresome the very first time, so I'll sign off. Please excuse the rather unconventional stationary, but I'm writing this at the office in my spare time. Hope I haven't worn my welcome out, but I had so much stored up to say.

I'm waiting for the April issue, so please hurry it up.—Betty Mulharen, 50 E. Philadelphia Ave, Detroit, Mich.

A Daisy for S. P. Wright

Dear Editor:

Were good old President George Washington himself to travel through time to the present and look upon the April issue of Astounding Stories, I am certain he would only repeat what I say: "Editor, I cannot tell a lie. This is the best issue yet!"

The cover on this issue is unique in that Astounding Stories is written in red and white letters. I do not recall of ever having seen this done to any Science Fiction magazine before. Wesso's illustration leaves nothing to be desired.

Going straight through the book: "The Monsters of Mars." Good old Edmond Hamilton saves the world for us again in the very nick of time—and we like it, too! Here's hoping there's a million more dangers threatening Terra for Mr. Hamilton to save us from! By the way, I wonder who drew the illustration for this story? I can't make out his name. Next: "The Exile of Time," by Cummings. Exciting and well illustrated. "Hell's Dimension" is well-written and very interesting. Would have liked it longer. "The World Behind the Moon" is splendid. More by Mr. Ernst, please. More from Mr. Gilmore, too, because of his novelette, "Four Miles Within." "The Lake of Light" by that popular author Jack Williamson surpasses his "The Meteor Girl" in a recent issue of "our" magazine. And now I come to the last and perhaps most interesting story of the issue: Mr. Sewell Peaslee Wright's record of the interplanetary adventures of the Special Patrol as told by Commander John Hanson. This series is unsurpassable in its vivid realness. I can't help but believe that these tales really occurred, or will occur in the distant future. And Mr. Wright is as expert at conceiving new forms of life as Edmond Hamilton is at saving our Earth.

"The Readers' Corner" is an interesting feature, and I am glad to hear that "Murder Madness" and "Brigands of the Moon" are now in book form.—Forrest J. Ackerman, 530 Staples Ave., San Francisco, Calif.

Mass Production

Dear Editor:

After reading Mr. Greenfield's letter in your April issue regarding my story, "An Extra Man," I feel that I should like to call his attention to a point which, it seems to me, he has overlooked, namely, that the reconstructed men were not composed of the original physical matter of the disintegrated man but of identical elements, all of which are at present known and available to science.

According to the hypothesis, Drayle could have produced as many entities as he desired and provided for, just as a radio broadcast is reproduced in as many places as are prepared for its reception. The vibrations alone are transmitted, and the reproduction is the result of a reciprocal mechanical action by physical matter at the receiving end. Any radio engineer knows that the original sound waves are not transported, but merely their impress upon the electrical radio wave. So, Drayle's disintegrating and sending apparatus only transmitted the vibrations which enabled his machines at the receiving end to select from a more than adequate supply of raw material, in due proportion and quantities, as much as was required for the reproduction of the disintegrated entities.

I think that if Mr. Greenfield will reread the story, noting the following references, he will agree that if the hypothesis is accepted the conclusion is logical:

1—It is only Jackson Gee and not Drayle who speaks of transmitting the constituent elements by radio (page 120).

2—The scientist, Drayle, says, (page 129) "We already know the elements that make the human body, and we can put them together in the their proper proportions and arrangements; but we have not been able to introduce the vitalizing spark, the key vibrations, to start it going." He does not say that tangible matter can be transmitted by radio.

3—In the account of Drayle's preliminary experiments (page 122) there is no statement to the effect that the original material composing the disintegrated glass was used in its recreation.

4—There is nothing in the story to indicate that the original physical composition of the disintegrated man was transported, in any manner to any outside location. The process of disintegration was necessary to obtain the vibrations that would make possible their repetition, which under proper conditions would induce a reproduction of the original, just as a song must be sung before it can be reproduced upon a phonograph disc, but which, once recorded can be repeated times without number.

5—Drayle's question (page 124) "Have you arranged the elements?" refers to the elements out of which all mankind is composed and which Drayle has previously mentioned (page 120).

6—The narrator emphasizes this aspect of the discovery when he says, on page 124, "I seemed to see man's (not the man's) elementary dust and vapors whirled from great containers upward into a stratum of shimmering air and gradually assume the outlines of a human form that became first opaque, then solid, and then a sentient being." And again (page 126), "The best of the race could be multiplied indefinitely and man could make man literally out of the dust of the earth." This does not imply a split-up of one individual into several smaller sizes or fractional parts, but rather the production of identical entities exactly as thousands of phonograph records can be created from the master matrix.

7—As to the question of soul, I suggest that inasmuch as what we call the soul of an individual is always judged by that individual's behavior, and that medical science now maintains that behavior is largely dependent upon our physical mechanism, it would follow that the identical human mechanisms would have identical souls.—Jackson Gee.

"The Readers' Corner"

All Readers are extended a sincere and cordial invitation to "come over in 'The Readers' Corner'" and join in our monthly discussion of stories, authors, scientific principles and possibilities—everything that's of common interest in connection with our Astounding Stories.

Although from time to time the Editor may make a comment or so, this is a department primarily for Readers, and we want you to make full use of it. Likes, dislikes, criticisms, explanations, roses, brickbats, suggestions—everything's welcome here: so "come over in 'The Readers' Corner'" and discuss it with all of us!

The Editor.

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