that one.... One man—and the other is a beast like no livin' man on the face of the earth! He knows—he and the devils he's brought with him!"

It was an unsatisfactory interview that Danny had with the Chief. "You're crazy!" was the verdict of that A. F. F. official when Danny had finished. "You're crazy, or else—or else—" His voice trailed off; his eyes were on the moving letters that flashed their message of disaster in an ever changing procession across the scanning screen on the wall.

I

"... outbreaks have ceased ... tremendous destruction ... no rational explanation ... meteors, perhaps ... thousands of lives ... no estimate...."

There seemed no end to the tale of disaster, and the Chief's voice died away into silence. If Danny was right he had no words to fit the unbelievable truth.

"Get into your new ship," the Chief ordered brusquely, "and take the Infant with you. I'll send a relief man to his station. Go east—lay your course for Washington; you'll get other orders on the way!"

And a half hour later the first rocket ship of the A. F. F. was blasting its way through the thin gases of the stratosphere eastward bound. But by now Danny O'Rourke had a more sympathetic listener than before.

"In big puddles it was, and lakes! 'Twas still melted, some of it, in that valley."

"Why not?" asked the Infant casually. "Radiant heat moves with the speed of light. We wouldn't think anything of focusing ten million candle power of light energy into a spot like that. Why not heat? Just because we haven't learned to generate it—focus it—shoot it out in a stream like water from a hose—there's no use in denying that someone else has beat us to the punch."

The Infant's calm blue eyes were upon the luminous plates of the ship's microscope where the swift moving terrain beneath them was pictured clearly. The mountains were behind them now; endless miles of ripening grain made the land a sea of yellow and brown and, across that ocean, like the lines of foam that mark the wake of ships, lay three straight lines of black.

"Meteors!" sneered the Infant. "Yet if you'd tell your story to some of these wise men they would die of laughing—and maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea, either; they will be dying in a way that's a damned sight more unpleasant unless someone finds how to catch these birds."

 Prev. P 11/24 next