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Title: When the atoms failed

Author: Jr. John W. Campbell

Illustrator: Hans Waldemar Wessolowski

Release date: May 24, 2024 [eBook #73680]

Language: English

Original publication: Jamaica, NY: E.P. Inc

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHEN THE ATOMS FAILED ***





                         When the Atoms Failed

                       By John W. Campbell, Jr.

    _Our new author, who is a student at the Massachusetts Institute
    of Technology, shows marvelous ability at combining science with
    romance, evolving a piece of fiction of real scientific and
    literary value. A careful perusal of this story should give the
    reader not only keen enjoyment, but a considerable amount of
    instruction, because most of our readers will want to confirm
    their views of cosmic topics, of atoms, of energy--atomic and
    material--and the other subjects that blend so well in the text of
    this tale. A great deal of interesting material may be found on
    these subjects in recent text books._

                         Illustrated by WESSO

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                     Amazing Stories January 1930.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


                           Author's Foreword


When the events of which I am to tell took place all the world was
interested solely in their final outcome, but when that last awful day
was ended, and time enough had passed to give our world a chance to
find a way to apply and use the awful forces it had had forced upon it,
or, indeed, had even found how to control their immense energies, men
began to wonder about the true story of the Invasion.

I had always been a writer, first newspaper work, then a book or two.
Perhaps because of this the world expected that an account would soon
be presented. But had those millions seen that awful battle, seen
those mighty wrecks on the hot sands, even then might they understand
my dread of telling of that titanic conflict--a conflict in which
the weaker was a million times more powerful than any force man had
previously seen! It still burns in my memory, that awful scene in its
desolate setting--the vast rolling desert below, seared, blasted, fused
in great streaks where the intense, stabbing heat rays had cut it,
mighty craters blasted in its surface where the terrific explosions
of the shells had heaved thousands of tons of sand into great mounds,
and those ghastly wrecks that lay crushed and broken on the hot sands
below, bathed in the ruddy light of the sun of sunset, now slowly
sinking behind the distant purple hills, as the last of the Invaders
crashed on the packed sands below.

Two men of all Earth's billions saw that scene--but those two will
never forget--as Stephen Waterson and I can testify.

Ten years have passed, ten years of stupendous change, readjustment,
and cosmic conquest. Ten years in which a world has been added to man's
domain, yet still sharp and clear in my memory is the picture of those
shapeless masses, those lumps of glowing metal, that lay on the sands
beneath us, the sole vestiges of the mighty ships of Mars.

Never have I wanted to think long on that scene of titanic destruction,
destruction such as man never before knew, but friends have convinced
me that it is my duty as one who lived in closest contact with the
facts, and one of the two men who saw that last struggle, to tell the
story as it unrolled itself before me.

Brief it is. The entire event, for all its consequences, lasted but two
days--days that changed the history of a Universe!

But in this march of mighty events, I was but a spectator, and as
a spectator I shall tell it. And I shall try to depict for you the
character of the greatest man of all the System's history--Stephen
Waterson.

                                                  Waterson Laboratories
                                                              May, 1957

                                                            David Gale.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was late afternoon in May, 1947, and the temperature had climbed
to unbelievable heights during the day. It seemed impossible to work
with that merciless sun beating down on the roof. It is odd that
a temperature of 95 in May should seem far higher than a similar
temperature in July. On the top floors of the great apartments it was
stifling. The great disadvantage of roof landings for planes had always
been the tendency of the roofs to absorb heat in summer, yet on the
top-most floors of those apartments people were living, and in one of
those apartments a man was trying to work. Heat was a great trouble,
but he found thoughts of hunger in the not too distant future an even
greater inspiration to work. The manuscript he was correcting was
lengthy, but this was the final revision, which was some comfort. Still
the low buzz of the telephone annunciator was a relief. It was so much
easier to talk. He took up the telephone.

"Gale speaking."

"Hello Dave, this is Steve. I hear you are having a bit of hot weather
in New York today. I have a suggestion for you--I'm coming to pick you
up in an hour and a half, and if you will be ready on your roof then,
in a camp suit, and with camp clothes for about a month packed, I can
guarantee you some fun, providing, of course, that you're still the man
I knew. But I can't guarantee to return you! Meet me on your roof in an
hour and a half."

"Well, I'll--now what's up? So he isn't sure I'll get back--and he
calls that a 'suggestion'! Anyhow it sounds interesting and I'll have
to hurry. I wish he'd get into the habit of warning a fellow when he
is going to start one of his expeditions! And I may not come back--I
wonder where on Earth he's going now--and where he was then. The only
reason he gives me an hour and a half is because it will take him that
long to get here. He would drop in on me without any notice otherwise.
In that case he must be about three hundred miles from here. But where?"

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour and a half later he was on the roof, watching the darting
planes, there were a good many, but by far the larger part of the
world's business and pleasure was on the ground in those days. Still
the crimson and gray special of Waterson's ought to be easily visible.
He was late--unusual for Steve. Gale hadn't seen him in more than a
year--probably been working on one of his eternal experiments, he
decided.

Still he searched the skies in vain. Only the regular planes, and one
dirigible--tiny in the distance--it seemed to be coming toward him--and
it certainly was coming rapidly--it couldn't be a dirigible--no gas bag
could go that fast--then he saw the crimson and the gray band around
it--it was Steve.

And now as it darted down and landed gracefully on the roof beside
him, he saw that the machine was but thirty-five feet long, and ten or
so in diameter. Suddenly a small round hatchway opened in its curved,
windowless side of polished metal, and a moment later Stephen Waterson
forced his way out. The door was certainly small, and forcing that
six-foot-two body in and out through it must have been a feat worthy of
a magician. Gale noticed that he would just about fit it, but the giant
Waterson must have intended to use it very infrequently to make it that
size.

"Hello, Dave--how do you like my new boat? But get in, we're going.
There, your bag's in already."

"Good Lord, Steve, what is this? I gather you invented it. Certainly I
never saw nor heard of it before," said Gale.

"Well Dave, I suppose you might say I invented it, but the truth is
that a machine invented it--or at least discovered the principles on
which it is based."

"A machine! A machine invented it? What do you mean? A machine can't
think, can it?"

"I'm not so sure they can't, Dave, but get in--I'll tell you later.
I promised Wright I would be back in three hours, and I've lost ten
minutes already. Also, this machine weighs three thousand tons--so
I don't want to leave it on this roof longer than is absolutely
necessary."

"But, Steve--let me look at it. Man, it is beautiful. What is that
metal?"

"Try the inside, Dave--there!"

Dave Gale was rather good sized--five feet ten, and weighing over
one hundred and sixty pounds, but Waterson was in perfect physical
condition, two hundred and ten pounds of solid muscle, and Gale had
been popped into the hatch like a bag of meal, so quickly was it done.

Now he turned to look at the tiny room in which he found himself. It
was evidently the pilot room, and around the front of the room there
ran a clear window, curved to fit the curve of the ship's walls, and
about three feet high, the center coming at about the level of the
eye of a person sitting in either of the two deeply cushioned chairs
directly facing it. The chairs were evidently an integral part of the
machine, and from the heavy straps attached to them it was obvious
that the passengers were expected to need some support. The arms of
each chair were fully two feet broad, and many small instruments and
controls were arranged on their polished black surfaces. Waterson had
seated himself in the right hand chair and strapped himself in. Gale
hastened to secure himself in the left chair.

"Take it easy Dave, and be prepared for a shock when we start."

"I'm ready Steve, let's go!"

Waterson moved his right hand a bit, and a tiny red bulb showed on
his left instrument panel; many of his instruments began to give
readings and several on Gale's board did so also. Another movement,
and there was a muffled hum of an air blower. Then Waterson looked
at Gale and turned a small vernier dial--Gale had been watching
intently--but suddenly the look left his face--and was replaced by a
look of astonished pain. The entire car had suddenly jerked a bit,
then that peculiarly unpleasant sensation connected most intimately
with a rapid elevator or helicopter starting from rest had made itself
unpleasantly pronounced. Gale's pained and somewhat sick expression
caused Waterson's smile to broaden.

"Whew--Steve--what is this--why don't you warn a fellow of what's
coming!"

"I did warn you, Dave," answered Waterson, "and if you will look out, I
think you will understand this."

       *       *       *       *       *

The car was rising, at first slowly, but ever faster and faster, from
the roof, not as a helicopter rises, not as a dirigible rises, but
more as a heavy body falls, with high acceleration ever faster and
faster. Soon it was rising quite rapidly, straight up. Then another
tiny red bulb flashed into life on Waterson's switchboard, and the ship
suddenly tilted at an angle of thirty degrees. Then it shot forward,
and continually accelerated an already great speed, till New York lay
far behind, and then the sky became dark and black, and now the stars
were looking in at them, not the winking, blue stars of Earth, but the
blazing, steady stars of infinite space, and they were of every color,
dull reds, greenish, and blue. And now as they shot on across the
face of Earth far below, Gale watched in rapture the magnificent view
before him, seeking the old friends of Earth--Mars, Venus, Jupiter,
and the other familiar, gleaming points. Then he turned his gaze
toward the Sun, and cried out in astonishment, for the giant sphere
was a hard, electric blue, like some monster electric arc, and for
millions of miles there swept from it a great hazy, glowing cloud, the
zodiacal light, almost invisible from Earth, but here blazing out in
indescribable beauty.

"We're in space! But, Steve, look at the sun! What makes it look blue?
The glass of the window isn't blue, is it?" said Gale excitedly.

"We're in space all right--but it isn't glass you're looking through;
it is fused quartz. Glass that thick would crack in a moment under the
stress of temperature change it has to undergo. The sun looks blue
because, for the first time in your life, you are seeing it without
having more than half its light screened off. The atmosphere won't pass
blue light completely and it cuts off the ultra-violet transmission
very shortly after we leave the visible region of the spectrum. The
reason the sun has always looked yellow is that you could never see
that blue portion of its spectrum. Remember, a thing gets bluer and
bluer as it gets hotter. First we have red hot, bright red, yellow,
white, then the electric arc is so hot that it gives blue light. But
the sun is nearly two thousand degrees centigrade hotter than the
electric arc. Naturally it is blue. Also, I'll bet you haven't found
Mars, have you?"

"No, Steve, I haven't. Where is it?"

"Right over there. See it?"

"But that can't be Mars. It's green, green as the Earth."

"But it is Mars. The reason Mars looks red from Earth is that the light
that reaches us from Mars has had to go through both its own atmosphere
and through ours, and by the time it reaches us, it is reddened, just
as a distant plane beacon is. You know how a light in the distance
looks red. That is what makes Mars look red."

"Mars is green. Then it is possible that the life on Mars may be the
same as that of Earth!"

"Right, Dave. It probably is. Remember that the chlorophyll that gives
the planets their color is also the material that can convert sunlight
energy into fixed energy of starches and sugars for the plant, and
probably the same material is serving in that capacity all over the
universe, for carbon is the only element of the more than a hundred
that there are that can possibly permit life's infinitely complicated
processes to progress."

"But I thought there were only ninety-two elements."

       *       *       *       *       *

"There are ninety-two different types of atoms, but if you have half a
dozen men all doing exactly the same thing, can you call them 'a man'?
They have found more than six different kinds of lead, two different
kinds of chlorine, several different kinds of argon, and many of the
other elements are really averages of several kinds of atoms, all of
which do exactly the same thing, but have different weights. They are
called isotopes. We say the atomic weight of chlorine is 35.457, but
really there is no atom that has that weight. They have weights of 35
and 37, and are jumbled together so that the average is 35.457. Really
there are over a hundred different kinds of atoms. In my work on this
ship I found it made quite a difference which kind of chlorine atom I
had."

"Well, how does this machine work, and what do you mean by saying that
a machine invented it?"

"Dave, you know that for a number of years the greatest advances in
physics have been made along the lines of mathematical work in atomic
structure. Einstein was the greatest of the mathematicians, and so the
greatest of the atomicists. Now as you well know, I never was too good
at mathematics but I did love atomic structure, and I had some ideas,
but I needed someone to work out the mathematics of the theory for me.

"You remember that back in 1929 in the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology they had a machine they called the integraph, an electrical
machine that could do calculus too complex for Einstein himself to work
out, and problems it would take Einstein months to solve, the machine
could solve in a few minutes. It could actually do mathematics beyond
the scope of the human brain. The calculus is a wonderful tool with
which man can dig out knowledge, but he has to keep making his shovel
bigger and bigger to dig deeper and deeper into the field of science.
Toward the end of this decade, things got so the tail was wagging
the dog to a considerable extent, the shovel was bigger than the
man--we couldn't handle the tool. When that happened in the world once
before they made a still bigger shovel, and hitched it to an electric
motor. All the integraph did was to hitch the calculus to an electric
motor--and then things began to happen.

"I developed that machine further in my laboratory, and carried it far
beyond the original plans. I can do with it a type of mathematics that
was never before possible, and that mathematics, on that machine, has
done something no man ever did. It has found the secret of the atom,
and released for us atomic energy. But that wasn't all, the machine
kept working at those great long equations, reducing the number of
variables, changing, differentiating, integrating, and then I saw
where it was leading! I was scared when I saw what those equations
meant. I was afraid that the machine had made an error, I was deathly
afraid to test that last equation, the equation which the machine was
absolutely unable to change. _It had been working with the equations
of matter, and now it had reached the ultimate, definitive equation
of all matter!_ This final equation gave explicit instructions to the
understanding; it told just how to _completely destroy matter_! It
told how to release such terrific energy, I was afraid to try it. The
equations of atomic energy I had tested and found good, I had succeeded
in releasing the energy of atoms.

"But the energy of matter has been known for many years; simple
arithmetic can calculate the energy in one gram of matter. One gram
is the equivalent of about ten drops of water and that much matter
contains 900,000,000,000,000,000,000 ergs of energy, all this in ten
drops of water! Mass is just as truly a measure of energy as ergs, as
foot-pounds or as kilo-watt hours. You might buy your electricity by
the pound. If you had five hundred million dollars or so, you could buy
a pound. You have heard of atomic energy, of how terrifically powerful
it is. It is just about one million times as great as the energy of
coal. But that titanic energy is as little compared to the energy of
matter itself, as the strength of an ant is compared to my strength.
Material energy is ten thousand million times as great as the energy
of coal. Perhaps now you can see why I was afraid to try out those
equations. One gram of matter could explode as violently as seven
thousand tons of dynamite!

"But the machine was right. I succeeded in releasing that awful energy.
I happened to release it as a heat ray, and the apparatus had been
pointed in the direction of an open window luckily. Beyond that was
just sand. The window was volatilized instantly, and the sand was
melted to a great mass of fused quartz. It is there, and will be there
for centuries, a two-mile streak of melted sand fifty feet broad! It
makes a wonderful road of six foot thick glass! The machine showed me
a thousand ways to apply it. I am driving this ship by means of an
interesting bit of apparatus that the calculating machine designed. You
remember Einstein's general relativity theory said that mass, gravity,
bent space; but as it didn't fall in, as it would if attracted and not
resisting, it must be that it is elastic. The field theory that he
brought out back in 1929 showed that gravity and electrostatic fields
were at least similar. I found, with the aid of my machine, that they
were very closely related. I charge the walls of my ship strongly
negative, then I have a piece of apparatus here that will distort that
electrostatic field so it cuts off gravity--and the ship has no weight.
The propulsion is simple also. I told you that space was elastic. I
have a projector, or series of projectors all around the ship which
will throw a beam of a ray which tends to bend space toward it. The
space resists, and since the mountain won't come to Mahomet, Mahomet
goes to the mountain--and the ship sails along nicely.

"The only theoretical limit to my speed is, of course, the velocity
of light. At that speed any body would have infinite mass, and as you
can't produce an infinite force, you certainly can't go any faster,
and you can't go that fast in fact. If I accelerated one of the little
five gram bullets I use in that machine gun to the speed of an alpha
particle such as radium shoots off, not a very high speed in space, it
would require as much energy to get it up to that speed, 10,000 miles
a second, as five thousand fast freights, each a thousand tons apiece,
would require to get up a speed of a mile a minute. You see that there
is no possibility of getting up any speed like that even with material
energy--it is too expensive even with that cheap energy--for it costs
just as much to slow down again!

"The interesting thing about this energy is that scientists have known
about it for a good many years, and while hundreds of people told about
atomic energy, no one outside of the scientists ever spoke of the far
greater energy of matter. The scientists said that the sun used that
energy to maintain its heat--forty million degrees on the interior of
the sun. They said man could never duplicate that temperature nor that
pressure that prevails at the interior of the sun. They therefore said
that man would never be able to release that energy. But the sun had to
raise thousands of tons of water, and blow that vapor many miles, and
do a lot of other complicated things before there was any lightning.
Man would never be able to reproduce those conditions, and he would
never be able to make lightning. Besides, if he did, what good would
his electricity do him; it would be so wild, and so useless.

"But man discovered other ways of releasing his energies and converting
it into electricity in a way that did not exist in nature. Manifestly
it is possible to do the same with the energy of matter, and I have
done it.

"The object of this trip, Dave, is exploration. I am going to the other
planets, and I want you to come along. I believe I am prepared for
any trouble we may meet there. That machine gun shoots bullets loaded
with a bit of matter that will explode on impact. There is only a dust
grain of it there, but it is as violent as ten tons of dynamite. If
I exploded the entire shell, remember I would get the equivalent of
thirty-five thousand tons of dynamite--which is manifestly unsafe.
There are also a series of projectors around the car that project
heat rays. These rays are capable of volatilizing anything that will
absorb them. The projectors of all the rays have a separate generator
unit directly connected. The unit is built right into the projector,
but controlled from here. They are small, but tremendously more
powerful than any power plant the Earth has ever seen before--each
one can far outdo the great million and a half horse power station in
San Francisco. They can develop in the neighborhood of fifty million
horsepower each!"

"Lord, Steve, I'm no scientist, and when you speak glibly of power
sources millions, billions of times more powerful than coal, I'm
not only lost, I'm scared. And you have a couple dozen of those
fifty-million-horse-power-generators around this ship. What would
happen if they got short-circuited or something?"

"If they did, which I don't believe they will, they would either
explode the entire ship, and incidentally make the Earth at least
stagger in its orbit, or fuse it instantaneously and so destroy
themselves. I might add that we would not survive the calamity."

"No, I rather guessed that. But, Steve, here in the utter cold and
utter vacuum of space I should think that it would be hard to heat the
ship. How do you do it?"

"The first thing to do in any explanation is to point out that space
is neither empty nor cold. In the second place, a vacuum couldn't
be either hot or cold. Temperature is a condition of matter, and if
there is no matter, there can be no temperature. But space is quite
full--about one atom per cubic inch. There is so much matter between
us and the fixed stars that we can actually detect the spectrum of
space superposed on the spectrum of the star. The light that the stars
send us across the intervening spaces comes to us laden with a message
of the contents of space--and tells of millions of tons of calcium
and sodium. Even the tiny volume of our solar system contains in its
free space about 125,000,000,000 grams of matter. That doesn't mean
much to an astronomer--but when you remember that every gram of that
can furnish as much energy as 10,000,000,000 grams of coal, we see
that it isn't so little! And as space does have matter, it can have a
temperature, and does. It has a temperature of about 15,000 degrees.
Most of the atoms of that space have escaped from the surface of stars
and have a temperature about the same as that of the surface of the
stars. So you see that space utterly cold--is hotter than anything
on Earth! The only difficulty is that it takes a whale of a lot of
space to contain enough atoms to weigh a gram, and so the average
concentration of heat is so low that we can say that space is cold.
Similarly a block of ice may contain far more heat than a piece of
red-hot iron. Nevertheless; I would prefer to sit on the ice."

"Quite so, I see your point, and I believe I'd prefer the ice myself.
But that's interesting! Space isn't empty, it's not cold, in fact it is
unusually hot!"

"Now we've started this let's finish it, Dave. It is hot, but not
unusually hot--if anything it is unusually cold! The usual, or
average temperature of all the matter in the universe is about one
million degrees, so space at 15,000 is really far below the average,
and so we can say that it is unusually cold. The temperature of the
interior of the stars is uniformly forty million degrees, which
brings the average up. But it is the unthinkably great quantities of
matter in interstellar space that brings the average down. Remember
that the nearest star is four and a half light years from us, and
between the stars there is such a vast space in which the matter is
thinly distributed that the few pinpoint concentrations of matter
have to be extremely hot if they are to bring the average up any
appreciable amount. But here and there in this vast space there are
a few tiny bits of matter that have cooled down to terrifically
frigid temperatures--temperatures within a few degrees of absolute
zero, only two or three hundred degrees above; spots of matter so cold
that hydrogen and oxygen can unite; so cold that this compound can
even condense to a liquid; so cold that life can exist. We call those
pinpoints planets.

"In the interstellar range of temperatures we have everywhere from
absolute zero to forty million above. Life can exist between the
temperatures absolute, of about two hundred and three hundred and
twenty--a range of one hundred degrees in a range of forty million.
That means that the temperature of this planet must be maintained with
an allowable inaccuracy of one part in four hundred thousand! Do you
see what the chances of a planet's having a 'habitable' temperature are?

"But we are near my laboratory now, Dave, and I want to introduce
you to Wright, my laboratory assistant, a brilliant student, and
an uncannily clever artisan. He made Bartholemew, as I call the
mathematics machine, and most of the parts of this ship. He had heat
rays to work with, and had iridium metal as his material, and plenty
of any element. He had a fine time working out the best alloy, and the
best treatment. The shell of the car is made of an alloy of tungsten,
iridium and cobalt. It is exceedingly tough, very strong, and very
hard. It will scratch glass, is stronger than steel, and is as ductile
and malleable as copper--if you have sufficient force. Iridium used
to sell for about 250 dollars an ounce, but these powers allow me to
transmute it, which renders it cheap for me. After this, sodium metal
will be cheaper than sodium compounds!"

"I wish that that trip had not been so short, Steve. There were a
lot of things I wanted to ask you. Where are we now? I don't seem to
recognize this country."

"We are over Arizona--see there is the laboratory now--off there."

"What, Arizona! How fast were we going?"

"We were going slowly, considering we were in space, but considering
our proximity to the Earth we are going rapidly. The actual speed is
difficult to determine--remember we had cut loose all ties of gravity,
and I had to follow the Earth in its orbit, and the whole solar system
along through space. From here to New York City is about three thousand
miles, and as we made the trip in just under one hundred minutes, we
traveled at a speed of thirty miles a minute, or half a mile a second."

"Well, the airplane speed record was about four hundred and twenty,
wasn't it--I mean an hour--you have to specify now! You set a new
record, I guess!"

       *       *       *       *       *

They were slanting down through the atmosphere toward the distant low
building that had seen the construction of that first of Earth's space
cruisers. The long gentle glide slowly flattened out and the car at
last glided slowly, gently through the open hangar doors. Wright was
there to greet them, but Waterson called out that he would stay in the
ship a few minutes to show Gale around.

"Steve, you sure picked a desolate place to work in. Why did you go way
out here?"

"For two reasons. First I wanted a place that was quiet; and second
I wanted a place where I could safely work with atomic energy--where
explosions, premeditated or accidental, would not blow up an entire
city. Did you notice that crater off to one side as we came in? That
is where I tried out my first bullet. I hadn't gotten a small enough
charge in it. I had nearly a milligram--a hundredth of a drop of water.
But come, I guess you saw the pilot room. I'll show you how to run the
ship tomorrow."

He led the way to the rear end of the pilot room, where a small door
opened in the smooth, windowless metal partition. It too gleamed with
that strangely iridescent beauty of metallic iridium.

"This bunk room should appeal to an apartment house addict. I had about
eleven feet I could use to make it, and it is just a bit crowded."

Considering Waterson's six-feet-two, a room eleven feet long, ten
feet high, and about as wide, would certainly be crowded if there was
anything or anyone else in the room. As the bunk room was also dining
room, gallery, and chart room, it was decidedly crowded. One thing that
particularly interested Gale was a small screen on which were a series
of small lights, projected from the rear.

"What is that, Steve?" he inquired.

"That is my chart. It is the only kind of a chart you could well expect
on board a space ship. The lights are really moving and maintain the
relative positions of the planets. I think we will go to Mars first,
because it is now as close as it will be for some time. I want to go to
Venus soon, but that is on the other side of the sun. I will find that
there are detours even in space when I go there!"

"That's quite a chart! I suppose you have more accurate ones too?"

"No, I have no need of more accurate ones. I start for my objective,
and it is so big I can't miss it!"

"That's true too! But I haven't seen any apparatus for taking care of
your air. I suspect that door over there hides something."

"It does. It leads to the store room and the apparatus room. There are
all the tools I carry, the air purifier and water renewer. Remember
that the break-up of the atomic energy gives me unlimited amounts of
electricity, so I have all the electric power I can use. I find that
there is a way to electrolyse carbon dioxide to carbon and oxygen. In
this manner I recover the oxygen for the air--at least part of the
necessary oxygen--and at the same time remove the menace of the CO_{2}.
There is considerable oxygen fixed as H_{2}O, however, so I installed
an electrolyser to take care of that. The moisture of the air is in
this way kept down to a comfortable maximum. The same apparatus is
useful for reducing the water. All the water I have I must carry in
tanks, which require space. I am able to make them considerably smaller
by taking the water, passing it through this electrolyser, reducing it
to hydrogen and oxygen, burning them to water again, and thus getting
pure H_{2}O. The one difficulty is in getting rid of the heat. Remember
that all the heat I lose I must lose by radiation. But the sun is
radiating to me. I receive heat at exactly the same rate the Earth
does and I have no protective atmosphere, so the tendency is to reach
a super-tropical temperature. The easiest solution of this problem is
to go with the ship at such an angle to the sun that the shadow of
the exposed surface shades the greater portion of the ship, then by
adjusting the angle of the ship, I can adjust the ratio of radiating to
receiving area to any value I wish, and get almost any temperature I
need."

"That is an idea, I never heard of electrolysing carbon dioxide,
though. Tell me--how do you do it?"

"That is a process I developed. It requires considerable explaining.
However, I am doubtful whether it wouldn't have been easier to convert
the stuff directly to oxygen by transmutation."

"Steve, I notice you have plenty of light, but why not have windows?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"I have no windows except in the main pilot room. The trouble with
windows is that they reduce the strength of the shell. Also, as this
is a sleeping room, and there will be no night in space, why not have
it this way? I need considerable strength in the walls of the ship,
because the accelerations that I use in starting and turning and
stopping are really rather a strain on any material. The outer wall
is a six-inch iridio-tungsten alloy shell, with two openings in it,
the window, and the door. The rest is absolutely seamless, one solid
casting. The window is so designed, in connection with the placement of
the ray projectors that it doesn't weaken the shell. There is no frame
work, but the two partitions across the ship are each six inches thick,
and act as braces. The inner wall is a thin one-inch layer of metal,
supported by the outer shell, and separated from it by small braces
about two inches high. This intervening space has been evacuated by
the simple process of going out into space and opening a valve, then
closing it before returning to Earth."

"That one-inch layer of metal of yours is bothering me. There is
something strange about it, and all the trim and mouldings in here.
The green I suppose is to relieve eye strain, but it is not the color
itself that seems strange. It is the impression I have that the metal
itself is of that beautiful leaf green shade, and that it is the metal
in the chairs, table, and racks that gives them that color."

"Quite right Dave, it is."

"But Steve, I thought that there were no more elements to be
discovered. In the collection at the Museum in New York they had all
ninety-two, and I saw no colored metals."

"In the first place, remember I told you there really were more than
ninety-two elements, if we treat the isotopes as elements, and I don't
believe they had all the ninety-two there, for there are several
elements that disintegrate inside of a few days. They couldn't keep
those. But these metals are compounds."

"Compounds! Do you mean alloys?"

"No, chemical compounds, just as truly as salt or sulphuric acid. They
are related to tetra ethyl stibine, Sb(C_{2}H_{5})_{4}, which is a
compound that acts like a metal physically and chemically. It is too
soft to be any good, but there are hundreds of these organic compounds
of carbon. There are red ones, green ones, blue ones, and a thousand
different ones, soft, brittle, liquid, solid; some are even gaseous."

"Colored metals! What a boon to artists! Think what fun they will have
working in that stuff!"

"Yes, but it is also useful for decorative purposes, although the large
molecule makes it too soft to be used as a wearing surface."

"Well Steve, you sure have a mighty fine little ship! What do you call
it? You said that you called the mathematics machine 'Bartholemew.'
What do you call this?"

"As yet it has not been named. I wanted you to suggest some name for
it."

"That's a sudden order, Steve. What have you thought of?"

"Well, I thought of calling it fluorine, for the chemical element which
is so active that it can not be displaced by any other, but will, on
the other hand, force any other non-metal out of its compound. Then I
thought of Niña, the name of Columbus' ship which first touched a new
world, and Wright reminded me that Eric, the Red's son Lief landed here
in about 1000 and suggested Eric as a name."

"Well, that's a good assortment. Why pick on me?"

"We thought you ought to be good at inventing names, since you had
written several books."

"That is a fine excuse! I get mine from old magazines! But I might
suggest 'The Electron.' It sounds well, and I remember that you said
that you charged it negatively to cut out the gravity of the Earth and
an electron--or is it a proton that has a negative charge?"

"'The Electron'--sounds good--and the idea is good. An electron has
a negative charge. Wright also suggested the 'Terrestrian,' as it
would be the first ship of Earth to visit other worlds. It is between
'Electron' and 'Terrestrian' now. Which do you like better?"

"I prefer 'Terrestrian.' It has more meaning."

"Well, we'll tell Wright about it. In the mean time, come in to the
laboratory and meet Bartholemew."

       *       *       *       *       *

Bartholemew was at the moment engaged in tracing a very complicated
curve, the integral of a half dozen or so other curves. Wright was
carefully watching the thin line left by the pencil. There was a
low steady humming coming from the machine, and a bank of small
transformers on the other side of the room connected to it. Wright
turned off the machine as they entered, and after greeting Waterson,
and meeting Gale, proceeded at once with an enthusiastic description
of the machine. He was obviously proud of the machine, and of the
man who had developed it. The entire machine had been enclosed in a
metal case when Gale entered, but now Wright opened this, and Gale was
decidedly surprised to see the interior. He really had had no reason to
form any opinion of the machine, but he had expected a maze of gears,
shafts, levers, chains and every sort of mechanical apparatus. Somehow
the mention of a machine for doing mathematics conveyed to him that
impression. The actual machine seemed quite simple--merely a small
cable leading from the separate "graph interpreters," as Wright called
them, to the central integrater, and hence a small motor carried the
integrated result into practice and put it on paper.

This machine made possible a type of mathematics hitherto unknown.
This new calculus was to the previous integration what integration
was to addition. Integration is an infinite summation of very small
terms, and this new mathematics was an integration in an infinite
number of dimensions. The beginner first learns to integrate in two
dimensions. Then come three. Einstein had carried his mathematics to
four. The machine seemed to work in an infinite number of dimensions,
but the conditions of the problem really chose the four out of infinity
that were under discussion. An infinite number of dimensions has no
physical meaning. It might be put this way, Wright said: there are
an infinite number of solutions to the equation x=2+y, and as such
it has no meaning. But if for example you say also that 2y=x, then
auto-mathematically you choose two of an infinite number of values
that fit the problem in hand. A man might have done all this machine
did, had he lived long enough and been patient enough. This machine
could do in an hour a problem that would have taken a man a lifetime.
Thus it had been able to develop the true mathematical picture of the
atom.

       *       *       *       *       *

Over the supper table that night they had a final discussion as to the
name of the ship. It was decided that the name should be "Terrestrian,"
and plans were made to christen it in as scientific a manner as
possible. Considering that the shell was made of iridium, and therefore
highly inert to chemical action, they decided on a bottle of aqua
regia which dissolves gold and platinum, and does not attack iridium.
A bottle was prepared, and they were ready for the christening in the
morning. Just as they decided to call the day done, the telephone rang.
It was Dr. Wilkins of Mt. Wilson calling Waterson. The conversation
was rather lengthy, and Wright, who had answered, told Gale that Dr.
Wilkins had called before, about two months ago, on a question in
astro-physics, and Waterson had been able to give the answer. This
time however, Dr. Wilkins, it seemed, was greatly agitated. Just then
Waterson returned.

"Gale, it seems we chose our name well. Also I am lucky in having you
here. I must go to Mt. Wilson at once, I'll be back about dawn, and
I'll tell you two all about it then. I've got to hurry. So long."

A moment later the two men heard the hum of the motor as the hangar
doors were opened. Another moment and the entire countryside was
flooded with a blaze of bluish white light, that illuminated the
desolate dry desert for miles, and for all those weary miles it was an
unending, rolling surface of sand. In the glow of sudden light, great
strange shadows which started up by the buildings gave weird effects on
the sand, but with it all there was a rugged and compelling beauty to
the little world which the light had cut from the darkness. There was a
sudden whistle of air, and the light faded as the car shot off toward
Mt. Wilson.

"What a mass of sand there is around here! It would seem almost like a
dried up ocean bed," said Gale.

"I suppose there is a lot of sand in the world--there should be though,
it is the direct compound of the two most abundant elements on Earth,
silicon and oxygen."

"Wright, I've often wondered why it is that oxygen, which combines with
almost anything, should be found free in nature. Why is it?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. At that I suppose one reason is that there is
so much of it. Just a very small fraction less than half of the Earth's
surface layers is oxygen. It forms over forty-nine per cent of it to
a depth of ten miles at least. It is the second most active element
on Earth--in the universe for that matter, and of the active elements
there is only one with which it can't combine, namely, fluorine. Of
course it can't combine with the inert gases, so I say the active
elements. I suppose it is left free principally because there was
nothing else to do. Apparently there weren't enough partners to go
around. At that it did a mighty good job of it! Forty-seven per cent.
of the solid crust is oxygen, 85% of the water is oxygen, and 20% of
the air is free oxygen. Well, let's not look so favorable a gift horse
in the mouth. If it hadn't been left free, where would we be?"

The discussion soon died down and the men retired for the night, each
wondering what it was that had called Waterson away so suddenly, and
each determined to be on hand when he returned in the morning.

The coming of the light of dawn had, perforce, put an end to the
activities at Mt. Wilson, so it was shortly after sunrise that the two
men heard the hangar doors open. And it was very shortly after sunrise
that they had dressed and gone down to greet Waterson. The worried look
on his face told a great deal, for both men knew him well, and when
Waterson looked worried there was something of tremendous import under
way.

"Hello. Had a good night Dave? I have something that is going to
interest you--and two and a half billion other human beings. They have
discovered something at the Mt. Wilson observatory that is going to
change our plans quite a bit. We had intended going to other planets
to visit the inhabitants, but we won't have to go. They are coming
to us; furthermore, twenty ships are coming, and I have an idea
they are good sized ships. But Wright, I think you had better start
breakfast. We can discuss it at the table. I'm going to wash, and if
you will help Wright, Dave, I think we will be at work pretty soon."
Waterson left the room, and the two men looked at his retreating
figure with astonishment and wonder. An announcement that our planet
was to be invaded from space is a bit hard to take in all at once, and
particularly when it is given in the matter of fact way that Waterson
had presented it, for he had known it now for over ten hours, and had
been working on it during all that time.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the table the explanation was resumed.

"The ships were first sighted in the big telescope when they turned
it toward Mars last night. You remember that Mars is at its closest
now, and they are taking a good many pictures of it. When they saw
these spots of light on the disc of Mars they were at once excited and
started immediate spectroscopic and radiometric observations. The fact
that they showed against the disc of Mars meant that they were nearer
than the planet, and by measuring the amount of energy coming from them
they tried to calculate their size. The results at once proved that
they could not be light because of reflection, for the energy that they
emitted would require a surface of visible dimensions, and these were
points. Their temperature was too low to be incandescent, so they were
violating all the laws of astro-physics. By this time they had shifted
sufficiently to make some estimate of their distance, shifted because
of the movement of the Earth in its orbit, Dave, and so they were
covering a different spot on the disc of Mars. Allowing that they were
going in a straight line, they were some ten and a half million miles
away. The spectroscope showed by displacement of one of the spectral
lines that they were coming toward us at about 100 miles a second. The
line of their flight was such that they would intercept the Earth in
its orbit in about thirty hours. That means that we have about twenty
to work in.

"It doesn't take any alarmist to guess that this means trouble. They
would not be coming in twenty ships if they were coming on a peaceful
mission. Also considering that they come in only twenty ships it shows
that they have considerable confidence in those twenty. Since they
are coming here without first sending a scouting party of one or two
ships, I suspect that they already know that the conditions of Earth
are suitable to them. To determine our conditions would require
exceedingly powerful telescopes, but they are helped by the thin air
of their planet. I believe that they can actually see our machines
and weapons, and that they know just about what we have. I think that
they are counting on cleaning up the world very easily--as indeed they
would but for one factor, for they have atomic energy. Wright, do you
remember that we decided to use electronic rockets to drive the car,
once we discovered atomic energy? And that having discovered material
energy, we naturally decided not to? Well, they have electronic
rockets. This makes me feel sure that that means that they have atomic
energy, but have no material energy."

"Fine Steve. Your reasoning is most admirable--but will you please
translate 'electronic rocket' and a few of those other terms into
English? And otherwise make yourself clear to the layman?"

"Well, I suppose I have no right to call a cathode ray tube an
electronic rocket, but when a cathode ray tube gets that big it really
needs a new name. The idea is the same as that of a rocket. You know
the experiments the Germans, the millionaire Opel, and others carried
out in 1927 with rocket automobiles? They had a terrible time with
their rockets because the heat of one set off the next. The result was
a disastrous explosion--and they had a whole ocean of air to cool them!
What would a rocket do in free space? Also remember the principle of a
rocket is that you shoot particles out of the rear at a very high speed
and thus impart the kick to the ship. The electronic rocket does the
same thing--but instead of shooting molecules of hot gas, it shoots
electrons, a giant cathode ray tube such as Coolidge had in 1927, but
his was so small that the kick was immeasurable. Remember that as the
velocity of the electrons approaches that of light, the mass increases
and so the electrons as shot from a cathode ray rocket may weigh as
much as a milligram. The problem of propulsion then is not hard with
atomic energy to supply the terrific voltages needed to run the tube.
But the cathode rays are going to be their first weapon. Cathode rays
are absorbed by any object they hit, and their terrific energy is
converted to heat. They are deadly in themselves, and the heat is of
course deadly. They will also have heat rays. I can make a heat ray
with atomic energy, though mine is derived from material. The only way
we can fight them is to know beforehand what we are to meet. This is to
be a war for a world, and the war will be a battle of titanic forces.
The weaker of the forces will be a million times greater than anything
man has ever known before, and either of these two forces would, if
fully applied, blast our planet from its place around the sun! Such
forces can not be withstood. They must be annulled, deflected, or
annihilated by some greater force. Only when we know what to expect can
we fight them, and live. Remember, if they once succeeded in getting
one weak spot in our armor, we can never have another chance, and the
world can never hope to fight them--mere armies and a navy or two, with
a couple of air forces thrown in--what would they amount to? The energy
of atoms could destroy them like paper in a blow-torch--think what
would happen to one of those beautifully absorbing grey battleships
if a heat ray touched it! Their eighteen-inch steel armor would not
melt--it would boil away! A submarine would be no safer--they could
explode the water about it into steam and crush it. The effect of a
heat ray in water is just that--the water is converted to steam so
suddenly that there is a terrific explosion. The cathode rays could
sweep an army out of existence as hose might wash away an army of mud
soldiers. They won't have gases. They will have no use for them. They
could wipe a city off the map, leave only a great crater in the scarred
Earth, while men were getting ready to lay a gas barrage. A shell would
certainly just bounce off of the armor of my ship and I suspect that
it would do the same with the Martian ships. Earth has only one weapon
that can even bother them! And that one weapon is the one factor they
did not figure on! It is the 'Terrestrian.' But now, if we want to make
that one factor upset the whole equation, we have to calculate how to
make its value a maximum, and to do that we have to know every other
factor in the equation. I have suggested two weapons they will have,
the cathode rays and the heat ray. They will, of course, have others;
they will have atomic bombs, and I am sure that they will find us so
dangerous that they will be willing to lose a ship and crash us. This
gives us something else to avoid. Can any of you think of something
else?"

"Good Lord Steve, haven't you thought of enough?"

"Plenty, Dave, but it isn't considered good form in military
proceedings to permit the enemy to surprise you. In fact, it is highly
probable that if he does, you will get a new form, one more adapted to
aerial transit."

"Yes, that's true, too. But I remember reading once that ultra-violet
light was invisible, and very dangerous to the body. I wonder if they
will use that?"

"They may, but I greatly doubt it. Air is very nearly opaque to
ultra-violet light, above a certain limit, and below that limit it is
not very harmful. The infra-red heat rays, though, are going to be a
very great menace. I can't think of any way to make them harmless. Of
course, the polished iridium shell of the ship will protect us from the
sides, as the heat will all be reflected. The difficulty will be that
the heat will fuse the window, and thus attack us. The quartz glass is
nearly opaque to heat rays, as is all glass. Being opaque, it absorbs
it, 'cuts it out' as we say. The result will be that the glass will
melt instantly, whereupon we will go very quickly. The idea of putting
a polished metal shutter before the window is the one we will have to
adopt, but we must modify it somehow. The heat rays will be turned back
all right--and so will the light rays. The question is to shut out heat
and let in light. Any suggestions?"

"I wonder if there isn't some selective reflector that we could use,
Dr. Waterson?"

"That is a good idea, Wright--but I don't know of any that will pass
all the light and reflect all the heat!"

"What is a selective reflector, Steve?"

"There are lots of things that have that property Dave, gold leaf is
one, it can transmit green light--that is you can see green light
through it, but it reflects yellow light--the complement of the
green it transmits. There are a great many organic dyes that are one
color when you look at them and the complement of that color when
you look through them. The trouble is we need one that transmits the
visible portion of the spectrum and--boy--that's it, Wright, that's
it--spectrum--take a totally reflecting diffraction grating, reflect
out all that part of the spectrum that we don't want, take what we do,
pass it through a prism to recombine it to white light, then through
lenses so we can see as if through a telescope! We will have absolutely
cold light!"

"Again it sounds good, but I'd like to hear it in English, Steve."

"The idea is to take a diffraction grating, a piece of metal with,
usually, 14,438 lines to the inch ruled on it, and previously highly
polished, so that it reflects most of the light that hits it. Now it
is reflected at different angles, so that we have a spectrum. The
spectrum spreads out light and heat waves as well--I use the reflection
grating as no material will pass the heat rays, and it then is possible
to reflect out of the car again those rays we do not want. The light,
which we do want, we will pass through a prism which will recombine
it to white light. A prism can either split up light into different
colors, or recombine them to white. Lenses then will be needed to make
the images clear. The effect will be much the same as a telescope.
And that takes care of the heat waves. The cathode rays, luckily
won't bother us for the car is already charged strongly negative, and
negatively charged electrons will be strongly repelled, as they are in
the grid of a vacuum tube, so will never hit us. The bombs constitute
the worst menace. The only defense we have against them is the very
doubtful one of not being there when they are. That is a good policy in
any case.

"As a last precaution--a bit grim--I will arrange it so that if the
'Terrestrian' is damaged to the point of utter helplessness we can, by
pushing a single button, explode the entire car--as material energy. It
will utterly destroy everything within a radius of a hundred miles, and
damage everything within a much greater radius. I believe it will not
be serious enough to change the Earth's orbit, though."

"Good--cheerful man, aren't you, Steve! Now what have we to meet that
delightful array?"

"We have things even more delightful. Our heat ray is considerably more
powerful, I imagine. It is generated by a force ten thousand times as
great. Our bombs will be worse. Wright, I wish you would make about a
hundred shells that will explode with the full thirty-five thousand ton
equivalent of dynamite. And then we will have everything they have that
is going to be effective, and have it in a more concentrated form. Can
any of you suggest anything else?"

"Steve, you said that your car was nearly pure iridium on the outside,
and that is very inert. The outside of their ship will be polished too,
won't it?"

"Probably--though I don't believe they were expecting to meet a heat
ray."

"Well, I wonder if there isn't some chemical you could spray out that
would tarnish their ship, without hurting your iridium ship? Then it
wouldn't be polished and would absorb your heat rays."

"That's a good idea, Dave. I might use a sulphide--nearly all sulphides
are colored, and form very easily and rapidly. Or I might use liquid
ozone. That will tarnish almost anything to an oxide, which is also
apt to be colored. I could certainly heat the ship that way, but I
wonder--I'm afraid that the oxide or sulphide would break down too
easily. There is only one metal that they might use on which that
would work, namely steel. Iron sulphide is black, stable, and will not
decompose readily. The oxide forms readily, is highly colored, and
will not decompose before the metal is incandescent, or even melted.
The only difficulty is that steel is so readily attacked, that they
wouldn't use it. They would probably coat it with an inert metal,
silver for instance. That forms a black sulphide very readily. I'm
afraid that won't work Dave. But Wright, I think that it would be
a good idea to develop a few of those field theory equations in a
different way. Try integrating number two-six-thirty-nine--I think
that's it--and between the limits of equation one-four-twenty-three
and zero. I have an idea that a little development of that idea will
give us a beam that will be very useful. We haven't time to make much
apparatus, but I think the result will be near enough to the space
curving projector to allow us to change the extra projectors we have in
the laboratory to fit. Also, try calculating the arrangement we will
need for the heat eliminator, please. I'm going to give Dave his first
lesson in space navigation. We'll be back about noon--if at all!" But
Gale caught the wink, so the effect was lost.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ten thousand miles out in free space the practice began. As Waterson
pointed out, it would require some mighty poor handling to hit the
Earth now. For the first time in Gale's life he could practice with a
machine with no fear of hitting anything.

When the ship slanted down in a long graceful glide, to enter the
hangar doors that noon, Gale was in control. The controls of the ship
were remarkably easy to master and extremely simple. The one thing
that was hard to master was the tremendous range of power. It could be
changed in a smooth climb from a fraction of a horsepower to billions!
The first attempts had been a bit hard on the passengers, the seat
straps coming in for their share of use.

When they returned to the laboratory, they found Wright had just
prepared a light lunch, and at once began to demolish it. Six hours
between breakfast and lunch is conducive to a husky appetite.

Wright had finished the integration on the machine, and had calculated
the mathematics of the heat eliminator in a little less than four
hours. The results were very satisfactory, and in the remaining time
he had converted six of the extra projectors to their new use, and
had them ready for installation. After lunch the men began on the
construction of the heat eliminators. Two were to be installed, one
for the observer as well as one for the pilot. The heavier work of
installing the projectors and the iridium shield was reserved for later
in the afternoon.

By six that evening, the new projectors were completely installed and
the connections made, and the great iridium shield was cooling from
blinding incandescence in its mold. It would be installed that night,
but now they felt that a rest and a meal were due them. They had been
working under a great strain that afternoon, for they knew that they
must get that machine ready before the Martians reached Earth, and
there was a great deal to do. After the brief dinner they went out to
the shining "Terrestrian." As yet, the new projectors had not been
tried.

Gracefully the great shining shell backed out into the ruddy glory
of the sinking sun, the red light had turned the desert to a sea of
rolling fire, with here and there a wave that showed dark--a mound.
In the far distance the purple hills of Nevada seemed like distant
islands in this burning sea, and above it rode this lone, shining
ship, magnificently iridescent in the setting sun. Now it stopped,
hovered, then suddenly a pile of metal ingots that lay to one side of
the laboratory leaped into the air and shot toward it--then paused in
mid-air, hung poised for an instant, then sank lightly to the ground.
Now the sand of the desert began to roll into some strange wave that
began just beneath the ship, then sped away--further--till it died in
the far distance, by means of an invisible beam. A wall of sand thirty
feet high had been built in an instant, and it extended as far as the
eye could reach! Now the ship settled, and slowly, light as a feather
for all its three thousand tons of metal, it glided into the hangar.

[Illustration: _Now the sand of the desert began to roll into
some strange wave that began just beneath the ship, then sped
away--further--till it died in the far distance._]

"Man Steve, that works! How long a range has it? And please tell me
about it now you are sure it works!"

"I don't know just how long a range it has--it affected the sand as
far as we could see, and we were using very little power. It is just
a modification of the space curving apparatus. It projects a beam of
gravity, and theoretically at least it has an infinite range; and it
certainly has a whale of a lot of power. I can use a good deal of the
power too, for the strain of the attraction is taken off the mountings
and the ship, and put on space itself! The gravity projector is double
and projects a beam of the gravity ray forward and an equally powerful
beam of the space curve behind. The two rays are controlled by the same
apparatus, and so are always equal. The result is that no matter how
great a load I put on it, the entire load is expended in trying to bend
space!"

That night work was carried on under the floodlighting from the ship's
great light projectors. The entire region was illuminated, and work was
easy. Waterson had been instructed to take a rest when he seemed bent
on continuing his work. Even his great body could not keep up that hard
labor forever, and forty-eight hours of work will make any man nervous.
With a crisis such as this facing him, he certainly needed rest. He
agreed, provided they would call him in two hours. Two hours later Gale
walked about a mile from the laboratory, and called. He then returned
and continued his work on the placement of the shield. It had been
placed, polished, and tiny holes bored in it for the heat eliminator
inside of four hours. It was operated by an electric motor, controlled
from within. It could be lowered and leave the window clear, but when
in position its polished surface made it perfectly safe against heat
rays. The work had just been completed, when Waterson reappeared
looking decidedly ruffled.

"Say, I thought you two promised to call me in two hours! It's been
just four, and I woke up myself!"

"But Steve, I did call you and you didn't hear me. I didn't say I'd
wake you in two hours."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was shortly afterwards that news of the coming invasion was made
public. And with the news came the wild panics, even mad, licentious
outbreaks all over the world. Man saw himself helpless before mighty
enemies whom he could not resist. Never had such a complete disruption
of business taken place in so short a time. Things were done that
night in a terrible spirit of "we die tomorrow, we play today." The
terrible jams in the cities caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
They wanted to flee the cities, get into the woods and hide like some
animal. Within an hour no news could reach most of them, and though
Waterson had told of his ship, told immediately, given every government
official announcements concerning it, still the mad dance went on.
But to those that had stayed near the radio sets, this news brought
relief. No television pictures of it could be broadcast for many hours,
as there was no portable equipment within several hundreds of miles,
and the men were working on the ship.

That night the three men took turns watching by the radio set for news.
The Martians were due to land somewhere on Earth that morning. It would
probably be a temporary landing in some land that was just at dawn. And
it was so. But the "Terrestrian" must not be taken by surprise.

Waterson was to have the morning watch. Unlike the others, he did not
sit by the radio set. He answered the few messages he received, but
the entire four hours of his watch he spent working with Bartholemew.
The equations he was working with seemed new, strange, and they had
terrific import to the understanding. It was but a few minutes before
the Martians landed when he had gotten the final result. At once he
called the two others.

"Wright, if that equation means what I think it does, we have something
that will give us a tremendous advantage! I feel sure that the Martians
have actually worked out the problem of the atom by pure brain
power--no machines aided them, else they too would have discovered the
secret of matter. That machine has made it possible for us to work
out problems to meet them. But as they may land any minute now, let's
begin on this. We need two of these projectors in front, and two at
the stern. If you will start on the actual projectors, I'll start the
instrument end. Come on Dave."

And so all three heard the announcement that the Martians had landed.
Twenty mighty ships had settled down in the arid land of Nevada. The
ships were a bare five hundred miles from them! The dry air of the
desert was probably best suited for Martian lungs. Army planes had
been cruising about all night waiting for the enemy, waiting to learn
definitely what they were to face. It was Lt. Charles H. Austin who
sighted them. He first saw them while still on the very outskirts of
our atmosphere, and reported them at once, turning his television
finder on them. Great balls of purple fire they seemed as they sank
rapidly through our atmosphere. The great ships floated down and as
they came within a mile or so of him, he was able to see that the
great flaming globes of light were beneath them, seemingly supporting
them. A breeze was blowing from them to him, and the air, even at that
distance, was chokingly impregnated with oxides of nitrogen and ozone,
from the forty mighty glowing spheres. They were fully an hundred
and fifty feet in diameter, but the ships themselves, illuminated by
the weird light of the glow of their sister ships, were far greater.
Each was three thousand feet long, and two hundred and fifty feet in
diameter. Hundreds of thousands of tons those mighty machines must
have weighed, and the fiery globes of ionized air that shone under the
impact of the cathode rays alone told how they were supported. Now, two
by two they sank, and came to rest on the sands below, and as they came
near the ground the glowing ray touched the sand, and for that moment
it glowed incandescent, then quickly cooled as the ray was shut off. At
last the mighty armada of space had settled on the packed sands, and
now there sprang from each a great shaft of light that searched the
heavens above for planes. By luck the plane of the observer was missed,
and the television set clicked steadily on as the questing beams were
reduced to five, and now the ground was flooded with blinding light. A
moment later the side of one of the great ships opened, and from it a
gangplank thrust itself. Then from it there came a stream of men, but
men with great chests, great ears, thin arms and legs; men that must
have stood ten feet high. Painfully they scrambled down the plank,
toiling under the greater gravity of Earth. But what a thrill must
have been theirs! They were the first men of this system to ever have
set foot on two planets! And some of those men were to step forth on a
third--the first men to visit it too!

Painfully now they were coming from their huge interplanetary cruisers,
slowly they plodded across the intervening space to their comrades,
pouring from their sister ships.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then suddenly the television screen was white--a blinding searchlight
had at last picked up the plane. Wildly the pilot dived, and now there
came a picture of all those men looking upward, their first glimpse
of the works of man perhaps. But the beam that had been eluded was
reinforced in a moment--then there came a dull red beam--a flash--and
the screen was smoothly dark.

Waterson and his friends feverishly worked at their tasks. There was
no doubt about the inimical intentions of the Martians now. They had
destroyed a man without reason. And the projectors were rapidly taking
shape under the practiced hands of Wright. Dawn broke, and the men
stopped for breakfast, but still the work on the projectors was not
done. Many parts were so similar to those of the other projectors that
they could use the spare projectors for parts, many others were new.
It was shortly after breakfast that the news of the Martians' landing
came. They had started now on the famous Day of Terror. But still the
men in the laboratory worked at their tasks. The "Terrestrian" had been
christened according to plan, and was now ready to start at any moment,
but the new projectors were an additional weapon--a mighty weapon.

All matter is made of atoms, grouped to form molecules, combinations
of atoms, or a molecule may contain but one atom, as is the case
of helium. The atoms within the molecule are held to each other by
electrostatic attraction. The molecules of substances like wood are
very large, and hold to each other by a form of gravity between the
molecules. These are called amorphous substances. Water is a liquid,
a typical liquid, but we have many things that we do not recognize as
liquids. Asphalt may be so cold that it will scarcely run, yet we can
say it is a liquid. Glass is a liquid. It is a liquid that has cooled
till it became so viscous it could not run. Glass is not crystalline,
but after very many years it does slowly crystallize. The molecules
of a liquid are held together by a gravitational attraction for each
other. But in crystals we have a curious condition. The atoms of salt,
sodium chloride, do not pair off one sodium and one chlorine atom when
they crystallize; perhaps a million sodium atoms go with a million
chlorine atoms, and give a crystal of sodium chloride. Thus we have
that a crystal is not _n_(NaCl) but it is Na_n_Cl_n_. Thus a crystal of
salt is one giant molecule. This means then that the crystal is held
together by electrostatic forces and not gravitational forces. The
magnitude of these forces is such that if equivalent weights of sodium
and chlorine atoms could be separated and placed at the poles, the
chlorine atoms at the north and, eight thousand miles to the south, the
sodium, over all that distance the twenty-three pounds of sodium would
attract the thirty-five pounds of chlorine atoms with a force of forty
tons!

So it is that in all crystals the atoms are mutually balancing, and
balanced by perhaps a dozen others. The electrostatic forces hold the
crystals together, and the crystals then hold together by gravity in
many cases; otherwise they don't hold together at all. A block of steel
is made of billions of tiny crystals, each attracting its neighbor, and
thus are held together. But this force is a gravitational force.

Now what would happen if the force of gravity between these crystals
were annihilated? Instantly the piece of metal would cease to have any
strength; it would fall to a heap of ultra-microscopic crystals, a mere
heap of impalpably fine dust! The strongest metal would break down to
nothing!

Such was the ray that Waterson had developed. It would throw a beam of
a force that would thus annul the force of gravity, and the projector
had been made of a single crystal of quartz. Its effects could be
predicted, and it would indeed be a deadly weapon! The hardest metals
fell to a fine powder before it. Wood, flesh, liquids, any amorphous
or liquid substance was thrown off as single molecules. It would cause
water to burst into vapor spontaneously, without heat, for when there
is no attraction between the molecules, water is naturally a gas. Only
crystals defied this disintegration ray, and only crystals could be
used in working with it.

But while the men in the lonely laboratory in Arizona were finishing
the most terrible of their weapons, the Martians were going down the
Pacific coast.

When morning dawned on our world, it found a wild and restless
aggregation of men fleeing wildly from every large city, and with dawn
came the news that the Martian armada had risen, taking all its ships,
and was heading westward. Straight across Nevada they sailed in awful
grandeur, the mighty globes of blazing cathode rays bright even in the
light of the sun.

Across the eastern part of California, and with an accuracy that told
of carefully drawn maps, they went directly to the largest city of
the West Coast, San Francisco. There they hung, high in air, their
mighty glowing spheres a magnificent sight, motionless, like some
mighty menace that hangs, ever ready to fall in terrible doom on the
victim beneath. For perhaps an hour they hung thus, motionless, then
there dropped from them the first of the atomic bombs. Tiny they were.
No man saw them fall; only the effects were visible, and they were
visible as a mighty chasm yawned in sudden eruption where solid earth
had been before. One landed in the Golden Gate. After that it looked
as a child's dam might look--a wall of mud and pebbles. But pictures
and news reels of the destruction of that city tell far more than any
wordy description can. Once it had been destroyed by earthquake and
fire, and had been built up again, but no phenomenon of Nature could
be so terrible as was that destruction. Now it was being pulverized by
titanic explosions, fused by mighty heat rays, and disintegrated by
the awful force of the cathode rays. We can think only of that chaos
of slashing, searing heat rays, the burning violet of pencil-like
cathode rays, and the frightful explosions of the atomic bombs. It took
them just sixteen minutes to destroy that city, as no city has been
destroyed in all the history of the Earth. Only the spot in desert
Nevada where the last battle was fought was to be more frightfully
torn. But in all that city of the dead there was none of the suffering
that had accompanied the other destruction; there were none to suffer;
it was complete, instantaneous. Death itself is kind, but the way to
death is thorny, and only those who pass quickly, as did these, find it
a happy passing.

And then for perhaps a half hour more the great ships hung high above
the still glowing ruins, supported on those blazing globes of ionized
air. Then suddenly the entire fleet, in perfect formation, turned and
glided majestically southward. The thousands of people of Los Angeles
went mad when this news reached them. All seemed bent on escaping
from the city at the same time, and many escaped by death. It took
the Martians twelve minutes to reach Los Angeles, and then the mighty
shadows of their hulls were spread over the packed streets, over the
thousands of people that struggled to leave.

But the Martians did not destroy that city. For two hours they hung
motionless above, then glided slowly on.

       *       *       *       *       *

All that day they hung over the state of California, moving from point
to point with such apparently definite intention, it seemed they must
be investigating some already known land. No more damage did they do
unless they were molested. But wherever a gun spoke, a stabbing beam
of heat reached down, caressed the spot, and left only a smoking,
glowing pit of molten rock. A bombing plane that had climbed high in
anticipation of their coming landed a great bomb directly on the back
of one of the great ships. The explosion caused the mighty machine to
stagger, but the tough wall was merely dented. An instant later there
was a second explosion as the remaining bombs and the gasoline of the
plane were set off by a pencil of glowing cathode rays. But when no
resistance was offered, the Martian fleet soared smoothly overhead,
oblivious of man, till at last they turned and started once more for
the landing place in Nevada.

The last work on the projectors had been finished by noon that day, and
they were installed in the ship immediately. Then came the test.

Again the "Terrestrian" floated lightly in the air outside the hangar,
and again the pile of ingots leaped into the air to hang motionless,
suspended by the gravity beam. Then came another beam, a beam of pale
violet light that reached down to touch the bars with a caressing bath
of violet radiance--a moment they glowed thus, then their hard outlines
seemed to soften, to melt away, as still glowing, they expanded, grew
larger. Inside of ten seconds the ingots of tungsten, each weighing
over two hundred pounds, were gone. They had gone as a vapor of
individual crystals; so gone that no eye could see them! The ray was a
complete success, and now as the "Terrestrian" returned to its place
under Waterson's skilful guidance, the men felt a new confidence in
their weapon! The projectors of the disintegration ray had not yet been
fitted with the polished iridium shields, and without these they would
be vulnerable to heat rays.

It was during the installation of these that the accident happened.
Wright had already put the left front projector shield in place, and
was beginning on the right, but the small ladder from which he worked
rested against the polished iridium surface of the car, and as this
was rounded, he did not have a very secure perch. The shield weighed
close to a hundred pounds, for iridium is the heaviest known metal, and
it was constructed of inch-thick plates. While trying to swing one of
these heavy shields into place, the changed direction of the force on
the ladder caused it to slip, and a moment later Wright had fallen to
the floor.

The heavy shield had landed beneath him, and his weight falling on top,
had broken his right arm. Wright would be unable to operate any of the
mechanism of the "Terrestrian," which required all eyes, arms and legs
to work successfully. While Waterson installed the remaining shields,
Gale hurried Wright to the nearest town in Waterson's monoplane.

It was three-thirty by the time he returned, and Waterson had mounted
the shields. His great strength and size made the task far easier for
him, and the work had been completed, and the shields finally polished,
and welded in place.

The entire afternoon the radio had been bringing constant reports of
the progress of the Martians. As they were doing no damage now, and
were over a densely populated district, where any battle such as would
result should the "Terrestrian" attack them would surely destroy a
considerable amount of valuable property, Waterson decided to wait till
they had left California. To the west was the ocean, and a conflict
there would do no damage. To the east was the desert, and to the
south was the sparsely settled regions of low property value. Only to
the north would the value of the property be prohibitive to a final
encounter.

When, at about five, news came that the Martians were returning to the
desert landing spot in Nevada, Waterson at once set out to intercept
them, and as his tiny car was prepared and waiting, the Martian armada
came in sight, at first mere glistening points far off across the
purple desert hills, but approaching hundreds of miles an hour.

Yet it seemed hours while those glowing points neared, grew and became
giant ships, though still miles away. When at last the leader of the
Martian fleet came within about a half mile of its tiny opponent,
without slowing its rapid flight, there sprang from its nose a glowing
violet beam that reached out like a glowing finger of death to touch
the machine ahead. But that machine was strongly charged with a
tremendous negative potential, and the cathode ray was deflected and
passed harmless, far to one side.

[Illustration: _ ... but three great hulks dived, and in a dive that
ended in flaming wreckage on the packed sands, ten miles below._]

And now the "Terrestrian" went into action, retreating before the
bull-like rush of its mighty opponents. The twenty great ships were
drawn up in a perfect line formation, a semicircle, that each might be
able to use its weapons with the greatest effect without interfering
with its neighbor. Now from the gleaming ship ahead there sprang
out a dull red beam, a beam that reached out to touch and caress
the advancing ships. Six mighty ships it touched, and those six
mighty ships continued their bull rush without control, spreading
consternation in the ordered rank, for in each the pilot room had
instantly become a mass of flame and glowing metal under the influence
of the heat ray. The other fourteen ships had swerved at once, diving
wildly lest that beam of red death reach them, but three great hulks
dived, and in a dive that ended in flaming wreckage on the packed
sands, ten miles below. The other three ships that had felt that deadly
ray regained control before touching the earth, but those three that
went down, mighty cathode rays streaming, struck and formed great
craters in the sand.

       *       *       *       *       *

But again that ray of death stabbed out, for one Martian had
incautiously exposed his control room, and in an instant it too was
diving. The mighty ray tubes forcing it on, it plunged headlong, with
ever greater velocity to the packed sands below. An instant later there
was a titanic concussion, an explosion that made the mighty Martians
rock, and stagger drunkenly as the blast of air rushed up, and a great
crater, a full half mile across, yawned in the earth's surface. Every
atomic bomb in that ship had gone off!

The three ships that had been rayed retreated now, and left thirteen
active ships to attack the "Terrestrian." The shield had been placed
long before, and now as the Martians concentrated their heat rays on
the glistening point before them, it was unaffected. While they were
practically blind, they could not risk an exposure to that heat ray.

"Steve, I thought that heat ray was entirely cut out by the heat
eliminator. How is it I could see your beam?"

"You can't see heat anyhow--and it does cut out all the infra-red rays.
The reason you can see that beam is that I send a bit of red light with
it so I can aim it."

Again the Martians had drawn up into a semicircle, with the
"Terrestrian" at the centre, and now there suddenly appeared at the bow
of each a flash of violet light. At the same instant the ship before
them shot straight up with a terrific acceleration--and it was well
it did! Almost immediately there was an explosion that made even the
gargantuan Martian ships reel, though they were over ten miles from the
spot where the explosion occurred.

"Nice--they use a potassium salt in their explosive, Dave. See the
purple color of the cannon flame?"

"Yes, but why not use the atomic energy to drive the shells as well as
to explode them?"

"They couldn't make a cannon stand that explosion--but move--he's
trying to crash us."

The Martians seemed intent on ramming the tiny ship that floated so
unperturbed before them. Now three great ships were coming at them.
Suddenly there was a sharp rattle of the machine gun, then as that
stopped, the "Terrestrian" shot away, backed away from the Martians at
a terrific speed. Gale had never seen the explosive bullets work, and
now when the three leading Martian ships seemed suddenly, quietly, to
leap into a thousand ragged pieces, giant masses of metal that flew off
from the ruptured ship at terrific speed, and with force that made them
crash through the thick walls of their sister ship, it seemed magic.
Those great ships seemed irresistible. Then suddenly they flew into a
thousand great pieces. But all was quiet. No mighty concussion sounded.
Only the slight flash of light as the ships split open. Titanic ships
had been there--a deadly menace that came crashing down at them--then
they were not there! And more, another ship had been crushed by a great
flying piece of metal. Only the fact that these three had been well in
front of the rest had saved the main part of the Martian fleet. The
atomic generators of the one ship must have been utterly destroyed,
for the great, glowing spheres of ionized air that showed the cathode
rays to be working, had died, and the great ship was settling, still
on an even keel, held upright by the gyroscopes that stabilized it, but
falling, falling ever faster and faster to the earth, over twelve miles
below.

"Steve--did--did I do that? Why didn't I hear the explosion?"

"You sure did, Dave, and made a fine job of it--three hits out of three
shots--in fact four hits with three shots. The sound of the explosion
can travel through air, but we are in free space."

But nine ships still remained active of the original twenty of the
Martian Armada, and these nine seemed bent on an immediate end to
this battle. This tiny thing was deadly! Deadly beyond their wildest
dreams--if it continued to operate, they wouldn't--it must be destroyed.

Again they attacked, but now the cathode rays were streaming before
them, a great shield of flaming blue light. Again the thin red beam
of death reached out, caressed the ships--and the pilot room became a
mass of flames. But they had learned that the ships were controlled
from some other part; they were coming smoothly on! Again came the
sputtering pop of the machine gun. But it, too, seemed useless--the
mighty explosions occurred far from their goal--the cathode rays were
setting off the shells. And now one of the nine left the rank and shot
at the "Terrestrian" with a sudden burst of speed. On it came at a
terrific speed--one mile--three quarters--a half----

       *       *       *       *       *

Then there came a new ray from the bow of the tiny glistening ship. It
seemed a tiny cathode ray, as it glowed blue in the ionized air, but,
like the ship, it was strangely an iridescent violet--and as it touched
the hurtling Martian, the great ship glowed violet, the color seemed
to spread and flow over it, then it stopped. The ship was no longer
glowing--and the strange ray ceased. But where the titanic, hurtling
ship had been a moment before, was a slight clouding--and a few solid
specks--small--the ship was utterly destroyed!

The other Martians withdrew. Here was something they could not
understand. Heat they knew--explosions they knew--but this dissolution
of a titanic ship--thousands of tons of matter--and in a fraction of a
second--it was new; it seemed incredible.

But now again they formed themselves--this time they made a mighty
cube, the eight ships, each at one corner--and five miles on a side
the mighty cube advanced, till the "Terrestrian" formed a center to
it. Now the great ships slowly closed in--but still the glistening
ship remained in the center. There was plenty of room to escape--then
suddenly, as the cube contracted to a three mile side, it moved.
Instantly there came from all the great ships around it, a low but
tremendously powerful hum--such a hum as one could hear around a
power sub-station in the old days--the hum of transformers--and
the tiny ship suddenly stopped--then reversed, shot back to the
center of that mighty cube, and hung there! Now swiftly the cube was
contracting--and still the tiny car hung there! It was jerking--but it
moved only a few hundred feet each time--then suddenly it started--went
faster--faster--then there was a distinct jar as it slowed down--almost
reversed--but again it continued. At last it shot outside the wall of
that cube and shot away with a terrific acceleration.

"Whew--Dave, they almost got us that time! That was a stunt I
had never thought of--though I can see how it is done. They have
tremendously powerful alternating current magnets on each of those
ships. This car is non-magnetic, but a conductor, so there are induced
in it powerful currents. You notice how hot it has grown in here--you
can scarcely breathe--they induced terrific currents in our outer as
well as in our inner shell. The result was that we were repelled from
the powerful magnets. They were placed at the corners of a cube, so the
only place that we could stay in equilibrium was in the exact center.
When I tried to escape, I had to go nearer one of the poles, and the
repelling force became greater. Then the ships on the far side shut
off their magnets, so that they no longer repelled me--and I started
to fall back--but I was able to pull out. The terrific acceleration
I got just after leaving the cube was due to the repulsion of their
magnets. You see it was very sizable! Had I had atomic energy only,
I would never have gotten out of that field of force. I can, because
of my material energy, escape every time. See--they are going to try
again--let them--when they get close, we can turn on the disintegration
ray and pick off the top ships. Then the bottom ships!"

Again the "Terrestrian" was held in that titanic field of force--that
field was so great that all magnetic compasses all over the Earth were
deflected, and the currents induced in the telephone lines, telegraph
lines, power transformers and all other apparatus were so great that
many lines in the vicinity were melted. The cube contracted to a mile
dimension before the glowing, iridescent ray of death reached out to
dissolve that first ship--then a second--a third--a fourth--and the
Martians were in the wildest confusion--the cathode rays prevented
the "Terrestrian's" bombs from striking, but it also made their own
projectiles useless. They had been sent to conquer this new planet
for their race--and they were failing. They could not rush that tiny
ship--for the deadly disintegration ray would only destroy the ship
before they had had a chance to crash into the "Terrestrian." It seemed
hopeless, but they tried once more.

Now from every side the ships of the Martians came at their tiny
opponent, mighty hurtling hulks of hundreds of thousands of tons--it
seemed they must get that tiny ship--there seemed no opening. The
three damaged ships had joined in this last attempt--and as the seven
gargantuan ships charged down at the "Terrestrian," there sprang from
it again the pale beam of disintegration--and one of the four remaining
undamaged ships ceased to exist. The gap was closed--another ship
was gone--and a third flashed into nothingness as the tiny opponent
swung that deadly beam--then it was free--and turning to meet the four
remaining Martians.

But now they turned--and started up--up--up. They were leaving Earth!
And now, as the blazing sun sank below the far horizon of distant
purple hills, one faltered, the burning violet spheres went dark, and
it plunged faster and faster into the darkness below--down from the
glowing light of the ruddy sun into the deep shadow far below--down to
the shadow of Death--for the damaged generators had failed. And as that
last great ship crashed on the far sands, the violet globes of light of
the others were dying in the rare air far from Earth. The Martians had
come, had seen and had been conquered!

"Steve--they are going--we have won. This planet is ours now--man has
proven it. But they may bring reinforcements--are you going to let them
go?"

"No, Dave, I have one more thing I want to do. I want to give an object
lesson."

The tiny ship set off in the wake of the defeated giants--faster and
faster. It was overhauling them--and at last it did--just beyond the
orbit of the Moon. The undamaged ship was leading the train of four
ships as they went back. Their world must have been watching--must have
seen that battle--must have known. And now they were returning.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the tiny ship came up to them the Martians turned at bay it
seemed--and waited. Then from the tiny ship before them there came a
new ray--invisible here in space--but a ray that caught and pulled the
great ship it touched--the undamaged ship. In an instant it was falling
toward the "Terrestrian"--then its great cathode tubes were turned
on--invisible here in space also. Now it stopped, started away--but
greater and greater became the force on it. It was a colossal tug of
war! The giant seemed an easy victor--but the giant had the forces of
atoms--and the smaller had the energy of matter to drive against it. It
was a battle of Titanic forces, with space itself the battleground, and
the great ship of the Martians was pulling, not against the small ship,
but against space itself, for the equalizing space distorting apparatus
took all tension from the "Terrestrian" itself. The great cathode
ray tubes were working at full power now, yet still, inexorably,
the Martian was following the "Terrestrian!" Faster they were going
now--accelerating--despite the mighty cathode rays of the Martians!

Of that awful trip through space and the terrible moments we had in
the depths of space, you know. At times it seemed we must annihilate
our giant prisoner, but always Waterson's skilful dodging avoided the
bull rushes of the Martian. He would strain back with all available
tubes, then suddenly turn all his force the other way--try to crash
into us. It was a terrible trip--but toward the end he had decided to
follow--and came smoothly. The strain of expecting some treachery kept
us in suspense. Two weeks that long trip to Venus took. Two of the most
awful weeks of my life. But two weeks in which I learned to marvel at
that ship--learned to wonder at the terrific and constantly changing
tugs it received--terrific yanks to avoid the hurtling tons of the
Martian. I thought it must surely weaken under that continued strain,
but it held. We had to get whatever sleep we could in the chairs. No
food could be cooked, the sudden jerks threw us in all directions when
we least expected it--but at last we reached the hot, steaming planet.
Glad I was to see it, too!

The "Terrestrian" left its giant prisoner there, and as it rose through
the hot, moist air it rose in a blaze of glowing color, for every
available projector on its tiny surface had been turned on as a light
projector--it was a beautiful salute as we left, red, blue, orange,
green--every color of the spectrum blazed as a great, glowing finger of
colored light in the misty air.

It took us but three days to return--Waterson admitted he went at a
rate that was really unsafe--he had to put in another charge in the
fuel distributer--water--and it held nearly a pint, too.

When at last we reached Arizona again, Wright was there to greet
us--and so were delegates of every nation. It was supposed to be a
welcoming committee, but every one of the delegates had something to
say about why the secret of material energy should really be given to
his country.

Waterson refused to give out the secret of that energy though. He
demanded that the nations scrap every instrument of war, and then meet
in the first Terrestrial Congress and write laws that might apply
material energy to the ends of man, not to the ending of man!

It seems strange, the persistence with which the governments of the
world held fast to those old battleships and guns! They were hopelessly
useless now, yet they would not agree to that term of the agreement! It
required Waterson's famous ultimatum to bring action.

"To the Governments of the Earth:

"For centuries and millenniums man has had wars. One reason has been
that he has had the tools of war. The tools of war are going to be
abolished now. Every armored cruiser, battleship, destroyer, submarine,
aircraft carrier and all other types of war craft will be taken to
the nearest port, and every gun, cannon or other weapon of more than
one mile range loaded on those ships. They will then be taken to the
nearest ocean, and sunk in water of a depth of at least one mile.

"In the first place the weapons would be useless. The ship I now have,
has shown that. There will be no economic loss as the type of power
they use is now obsolete. The iron and other materials they contain can
be produced directly by new methods that are simpler than salvaging
that metal. They are, however, curiosities that the future will be
interested in. The navy department of Japan will select the finest ship
of each type from each of the navies of any other country, and I will
then transport that ship to a selected spot well toward the center of
the Sahara desert where they will be set up as museums of naval history.

"This is to be done within seven days, or the 'Terrestrian' will do it
more completely. It must be done for the good of our race, and at last
there is a power that can get it done--the 'Terrestrian!'"

Needless to say, it was done. We all know the result. No armies meant
no national spirit--no race jealousies can exist unless there is some
one to stir them up, and now it is to the benefit of no one to do so!

The laws that made possible the application of Waterson's new energies
are well known--and this manuscript is not the place for quotation
of international and interplanetary law. It was a great problem, and
we must acknowledge the aid of the Martians in solving it. Their
experience in the application of atomic energy was immensely valuable.
The light beam communication that Waterson made possible has done as
much for us as have the energies he released.

And the peace that exists between these two races must always exist,
for they are the only neighbors Earth can ever have. And they did not
damage us much. We still feel a bit of dread of them I suppose, but
statistics have shown that the trouble man himself caused in his wild
panics did far more damage than did the Martian heat rays.

May God help these twin races, so close both in bodily form and place
of birth, to climb on in friendly rivalry toward better things through
the æons, as long as our sun can yet support life on the globes that
wheel around it, migrating from planet to planet as the race grows,
and the planets cool, settling on them as the Martians have settled on
Venus.

And thanks to Stephen Waterson's foresight and vision in establishing
the Supreme Council of Solar System Scientists, we dare hope this may
come true.


                                The End





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