by Jerry
The cabin in which he found himself was large, and comfortably, even luxuriously furnished. A heavy rug was on the floor. A shelf of books stood against one wall. There were upholstered seats in rich brown leather, pictures, mirrors, a table covered with magazines, a sideboard on which stood glasses, decanters, a box of cigars. Undoubtedly this was the Commander’s lounging room, a part of his suite. Within a curtained recess was a wide bunk. Another door gave entrance to a dressing-room and bath. Beyond a narrow passage was a cabin from which came voices. Regretting the fact that he had dropped the steel bar when dragging the mechanic’s body into the first cabin, yet not caring to risk the retrieving of it, Ragnar drew his automatic and silently advanced. The door, from beyond which came the sound of voices, was ajar, and he could see as well as hear. His heart leaped into his throat. Standing back of a chair was Helen Lasser, while in the foreground Franz Josef glowered, his back to the door. The girl’s tawny hair was rumpled, her lovely face pale, but hatred and defiance gleamed from her blue eyes.
“You villain,” she was saying, “I hate you, hate you!”
Franz Joseph laughed, his husky laugh.
“Hate away, my beauty,” he said in perfect English. “It will be a pleasure to tame your pride, chasten your spirit—a pleasure I promise myself when this voyage is finished, when I have turned your father over to the proper authorities and have you to myself. I like,” he said coolly, “my women mettlesome. It adds piquancy,” he informed her, “to the situation.”
The girl gripped the chair for support, her face paled.
“Come,” cried the Commander, “give me a kiss. Just a foretaste of the sweets I shall garner later.”
Ragnar waited for no more. The blood seethed in his veins, murder beat at his heart. Through the door he sprang, sending it open with a crash. The girl gave a little cry and stared incredulously. Franz Josef turned with a roar.
“You!” he gasped, his green eyes bulging.
“Yes, me!” cried Ragnar. “You thought you had me trapped, doomed, but I’ve escaped your trap. Damn you . . .” he levelled the automatic. “Put your hands up! Put them up—quick!”
But Franz Josef, villain though he might be, was no coward. Quick as lightning he dropped to his knees and from that position hurled himself forward with inconceivable quickness. His legs swept from under him, Ragnar went to the floor with a crash, dropping the weapon. Then commenced an Homeric battle. Over and over the two men rolled, punching, gouging. Franz Josef made no attempt to call for help. Perhaps he thought to overpower Ragnar himself. Perhaps he knew help to be beyond the sound of his voice. Whatever the reason he fought with only a growl in his throat, the growl of a bulldog that has come to grips.
Abnormally strong though he was, Ragnar sensed that the Commander of the Taurog was stronger still. Once Franz Josef had been an amateur wrestler of note and had downed a professional champion in a private match. No wonder he was willing to accept battle with Ragnar. His seeming fat was so much hard brawn, muscle, rigid, like iron; and he was bigger, heavier . . . heavier by some thirty pounds than the American. Only Ragnar’s knowledge of a certain Jiu-jitsu trick enabled him to fight his way clear of a deadly tangle and regain his feet. Boxing was his forte. He must keep clear of the other’s bear-like hugs or speedily be crushed into submission. He dazed the Commander with a left to the chin, staggered him with a right to the solar plexus, but a wild swing of the latter’s caught him over the heart and drove him back—over the heart where once before that day he had been hit by the terrible impact of a bullet. Sick with pain, Ragnar’s senses reeled, his body sagged, and with a grunt of triumph, Franz Josef rushed in for a body hold. If that hold were obtained, Ragnar was done for. He knew it, and calling on every ounce of his failing strength, he side-stepped, brought across his right to the jaw, his left to the short-ribs. Franz Josef gasped. Back Ragnar drove him, back, with a series of blows to the head, fighting purely on his nerve, the instinct of the great fighter. But again a flailing blow caught him on the chest, another smashed to the face. He was in agony, his head swimming, going down, sinking, and the Commander, with beast-like face, was diving in to finish him off.
AND finished off Ragnar would have been but for the girl.
Horrified, she had crouched in a corner, watching the terrific battle. But hers was no puny terror, though terror she felt. Her heart sang when Ragnar staggered his enemy, and contracted with fear when she saw him beaten back, going down.
“Oh!” she moaned, “oh!” and flung out her hands. They struck the over-turned chair Franz Josef had jerked aside. The contact galvanized her into action. Suddenly she was an Amazonian, a woman of the Vikings. With a strangled cry she surged to her feet, caught up the chair, and as the snarling Commander dove in to end the fight, brought it down with sickening force upon his unprotected head. As if pole-axed, Franz Josef went down. Only the leather housing of the chair had saved his skull from being caved in. Ragnar staggered to his feet and turned to where the girl stood staring, with wide-stricken eyes, wringing her hands in an agony of apprehension.
“God,” she prayed, “don’t let him be dead!” And in a whisper: “I—I didn’t kill him. Don’t tell me I killed him?”
“No,” said Ragnar weakly—though he wasn’t sure of it—“he’s only knocked out.”
And then wonderfully enough she was in his arms, clinging to him, sobbing hysterically, and he was smoothing back her tawny hair, kissing her brow.
“There, little girl, there,” he said softly; “don’t let it worry you. Your hitting him over the head saved my life.”
“I thought you were murdered,” she said breathlessly, “back there at the house, shot. . . .”
“No,” he said, “No. The bullet missed me. But I’ve no time for explanations now. Where’s your father?”
“Locked in the cabin next to this. He has the keys.” She pointed to the man on the floor.
Ragnar secured them, and the automatic lying to one side.
He lurched and almost fell, but it was not himself swaying, it was the ship. Suddenly she was pitching, groaning. Outside he heard a noisy clamor, the sound of men shouting. All wonder as to why none of the crew had been attracted to the cabin by the noise of the fight left him. Something more drastic was claiming the men’s attention. There came a thundering rat-tat at the door of the lounging cabin where the mechanic’s body still lay, dead to the world.
“Commander,” cried a voice, “Commander!”
Franz Josef twitched, groaned.
“Quick!” hissed Ragnar, “we must be moving.” Along the passage he ran, at the girl’s heels.
“Come!” he cried, flinging open the door of the Doctor’s prison. “No time to answer questions, sir; follow us.”
Bewildered, the Doctor obeyed.
A man, evidently a steward, came into the passage, and Ragnar shoved the automatic between his startled eyes.
“Silence,” he warned in Martian, “or I’ll blow out your brains.” And then: “What’s happening forward?”
“I don’t know, sir,” stuttered the steward. “Not exactly. But they say a new machine’s beyond control—can’t be shut off. . . .” Abject terror showed in the man’s cat-like eyes.
The resistant rays! Ragnar started. They were pushing everything before them, crushing, rending, and if they couldn’t be stopped. . . .
A low screech, like that of a live thing in agony, ran through the hull of the Taurog. The floor was slanting beneath their feet. Never had Ragnar’s brain functioned more smoothly. It was like that with him; he always thought more clearly in the face of danger, when quick action was needed.
“Where are the emergency parachutes?” He prodded the steward.
“Forward, sir; there are none in this section at all.”
“The life-jackets, then?”
“In that locker, sir.”
With an oath he hurled the steward into the cabin and locked the door. He tore open the locker and hauled out its contents.
&
nbsp; “Cork-metal life-jackets,” he panted. “Here, put them on.”
Hastily he fastened one on the girl and helped the Doctor strap his own. Silencing the latter’s attempt to utter a word, he led the way along a narrow connecting passage aft, away from the clamor forward. The passage turned, gave access to the open deck, hardly more than a cat-walk. Even as they reached it, an ominous groaning and tearing shook the length of the cruiser. Glancing forward, Ragnar saw slender supports buckling, crumpling. Above him the vast expanse of gleaming metal twisted, sagged; below lay four thousand feet of empty space and a steel-blue sea. Someone was shouting, and from further aft rushed menacing figures. From the entrance of the passage they had just quitted, staggered a huge man whose gross, puffy-jowled face was black and blue and smeared with blood. The girl screamed. A bullet sang past Ragnar’s ear. He thanked God for the forethought that had made him fasten the mail-plane’s flat parachute to his back. It was now or never.
“All right,” he cried, grabbing the girl under one arm and the Doctor under the other, “over we go!”
The air was a whistling hurricane through which they shot at express speed. Would the parachute open? It was designed to be fool-proof—a recent invention—but perhaps its automatic releasing device had been injured in the fight with Franz Josef, perhaps it was jammed. . . . All these thoughts ran through Ragnar’s mind in the seconds he was falling; and then, just as he had given up hope, there was a sudden jolt, a sensation of going deaf, and dangling at the end of a vast umbrella of silk, the three of them were floating easily to the water below!
Looking up, Ragnar located the Taurog, and even as he did so, he was stunned by a dull explosion. There was a blinding flash of light, a searing blast of heat that scorched them even where they swung; then, wrapped in sheets of flame, the giant cruiser of the air came hurtling oceanwards to strike the water and disappear in a cloud of steam!
Horrified, sick at heart, Ragnar understood only too well what had happened, what he had leaped to avoid. Reaching the fuel-oil tanks used when the cruiser was inside the stratosphere, the resistant rays had somehow ignited the oil with their pressure—had blown it up!
Prince Franz Josef was gone, the crew of the Taurog, save for several that had leaped in parachutes, wiped out, slain by the invention they had tried to steal.
Ragnar shuddered. And yet it was better so. The tragedy would be listed as another regrettable accident of the air—as indeed it was. Only a few high government officials need ever be told the truth.
As for the rest, the enemy was foiled, the resistant rays invention would become the property of his own Government’s War Department, and he himself. . . .
Already he could discern the smoke of tugs and steamers speeding to the scene of the disaster. Soon they would be picked up. Meantime he was floating on the water between the Doctor and the woman he loved, her tawny hair like seaweed drifting against his mouth.
THE END
A SCIENTIST RISES
Harry Bates
“The face of the giant was indeed that of a god . . .”
ON that summer day the sky over New York was unflecked by clouds, and the air hung motionless, the waves of heat undisturbed. The city was a vast oven where even the sounds of the coiling traffic in its streets seemed heavy and weary under the press of heat that poured down from above. In Washington Square, the urchins of the neighborhood splashed in the fountain, and the usual midday assortment of mothers, tramps and out-of-works lounged listlessly on the hot park benches.
As a bowl, the Square was filled by the torrid sun, and the trees and grass drooped like the people on its walks. In the surrounding city, men worked in sweltering offices and the streets rumbled with the never-ceasing tide of business—but Washington Square rested.
And then a man walked out of one of the houses lining the square, and all this was changed.
He came with a calm, steady stride down the steps of a house on the north side, and those who happened to see him gazed with surprised interest. For he was a giant in size. He measured at least eleven feet in height, and his body was well-formed and in perfect proportion. He crossed the street and stepped over the railing into the nearest patch of grass, and there stood with arms folded and legs a little apart. The expression on his face was preoccupied and strangely apart, nor did it change when, almost immediately from the park bench nearest him, a woman’s excited voice cried:
“Look! Look! Oh, look!”
The people around her craned their necks and stared, and from them grew a startled murmur. Others from farther away came to see who had cried out, and remained to gaze fascinated at the man on the grass. Quickly the murmur spread across the Square, and from its every part men and women and children streamed towards the center of interest—and then, when they saw, backed away slowly and fearfully, with staring eyes, from where the lone figure stood.
THERE was about that figure something uncanny and terrible. There, in the hot midday hush, something was happening to it which men would say could not happen; and men, seeing it, backed away in alarm. Quickly they dispersed. Soon there were only white, frightened faces peering from behind buildings and trees.
Before their very eyes the giant was growing.
When he had first emerged, he had been around eleven feet tall, and now, within three minutes, he had risen close to sixteen feet.
His great body maintained its perfect proportions. It was that of an elderly man clad simply in a gray business suit. The face was kind, its clear-chiselled features indicating fine spiritual strength; on the white forehead beneath the sparse gray hair were deep-sunken lines which spoke of years of concentrated work.
No thought of malevolence could come from that head with its gentle blue eyes that showed the peace within, but fear struck ever stronger into those who watched him, and in one place a woman fainted; for the great body continued to grow, and grow ever faster, until it was twenty feet high, then swiftly twenty-five, and the feet, still separated, were as long as the body of a normal boy. Clothes and body grew effortlessly, the latter apparently without pain, as if the terrifying process were wholly natural.
The cars coming into Washington Square had stopped as their drivers sighted what was rising there, and by now the bordering streets were tangled with traffic. A distant crowd of milling people heightened the turmoil. The northern edge was deserted, but in a large semicircle was spread a fear-struck, panicky mob. A single policeman, his face white and his eyes wide, tried to straighten out the tangle of vehicles, but it was infinitely beyond him and he sent in a riot call; and as the giant with the kind, dignified face loomed silently higher than the trees in the Square, and ever higher, a dozen blue-coated figures appeared, and saw, and knew fear too, and hung back awe-stricken, at a loss what to do. For by now the rapidly mounting body had risen to the height of forty feet.
AN excited voice raised itself above the general hubbub.
“Why, I know him! I know him! It’s Edgar Wesley! Doctor Edgar Wesley!”
A police sergeant turned to the man who had spoken.
“And it—he knows you? Then go closer to him, and—and—ask him what it means.”
But the man looked fearfully at the giant and hung back. Even as they talked, his gigantic body had grown as high as the four-storied buildings lining the Square, and his feet were becoming too large for the place where they had first been put. And now a faint smile could be seen on the giant’s face, an enigmatic smile, with something ironic and bitter in it.
“Then shout to him from here,” pressed the sergeant nervously. “We’ve got to find out something! This is crazy—impossible! My God! Higher yet—and faster!”
Summoning his courage, the other man cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted:
“Dr. Wesley! Can you speak and tell us? Can we help you stop it?”
The ring of people looked up breathless at the towering figure, and a wave of fear passed over them and several hysterical shrieks rose up as, very slowly, the huge head shook
from side to side. But the smile on its lips became stronger, and kinder, and the bitterness seemed to leave it.
There was fear at that motion of the enormous head, but a roar of panic sounded from the watchers when, with marked caution, the growing giant moved one foot from the grass into the street behind and the other into the nearby base of Fifth Avenue, just above the Arch. Fearing harm, they were gripped by terror, and they fought back while the trembling policemen tried vainly to control them; but the panic soon ended when they saw that the leviathan’s arms remained crossed and his smile kinder yet. By now he dwarfed the houses, his body looming a hundred and fifty feet into the sky. At this moment a woman back of the semicircle slumped to her knees and prayed hysterically.
“Someone’s coming out of his house!” shouted one of the closest onlookers.
THE door of the house from which the giant had first appeared had opened, and the figure of a middle-aged, normal-sized man emerged. For a second he crouched on the steps, gaping up at the monstrous shape in the sky, and then he scurried down and made at a desperate run for the nearest group of policemen.
He gripped the sergeant and cried frantically:
“That’s Dr. Wesley! Why don’t you do something? Why don’t—”
“Who are you?” the officer asked, with some return of an authoritative manner.
“I work for him. I’m his janitor. But—can’t you do anything? Look at him! Look!”
The crowd pressed closer. “What do you know about this?” went on the sergeant.
The man gulped and stared around wildly. “He’s been working on something—many years—I don’t know what, for he kept it a close secret. All I knew is that an hour ago I was in my room upstairs, when I heard some disturbance in his laboratory, on the ground floor. I came down and knocked on the door, and he answered from inside and said that everything was all right—”
“You didn’t go in?”
