Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 Part 46

Another development which sounds promising for bashful suitors and other timid souls, enables a person to store within himself electrically a message he desires to deliver and then to deliver it without speaking, simply by putting a finger to the ear of the person for whom the message is intended.

This Mr. Grace demonstrated. He spoke into a telephone transmitter and his words were clearly heard by all in the audience, by means of amplifiers. At the same time a part of the electrical current from the amplifier, representing the sentence he voiced, was stored in a "delay circuit," another recent invention of the laboratories.

After being stored four and a half seconds this current was transformed to a high voltage and pa.s.sed into Mr. Grace's body. He then put his finger against the ear of a member of the audience, who heard in his brain the same sentence. The ear drum and surrounding tissues are made to act as one plate of a condenser-receiver, Mr. Grace explained, with the vibrations of the drum interpreted by the brain.

A new magnetic metal, "perminvar," and a new insulating material, "para gutta," which make possible construction of a telephone cable across the Atlantic to supplement the radio systems, were also described. Actual construction of the cable is expected to be started in 1930, Mr. Grace said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The flight was hovering above the first fire-ball._]

Earth, the Marauder

CONCLUSION OF A THREE-PART NOVEL

_By Arthur J. Burks_

CHAPTER XIX

_Desolation_

Stranger, more thrilling even than had been the flight of the Earth after being forced out of its...o...b..t, was the flight of those dozen aircars of the Moon, bearing the rebels of Dalis' Gens back to Earth.

[Sidenote: Martian fire-b.a.l.l.s and the terrific Moon-cubes wreak tremendous destruction on helpless Earth in the final death struggle of the warring worlds.]

For the light which glowed from the bodies of the rebels, which had been given them by their pa.s.sage through the white flames, was transmitted to the cars themselves, so that they glowed as with an inner radiance of their own--like comets flas.h.i.+ng across the night.

Strange alchemy, which Sarka wondered about and, wondering, looked ahead to the time when he should be able, within his laboratory, to a.n.a.lyze the force it embodied, and thus gain new scientific knowledge of untold value to people of the Earth.

As the cars raced across outer darkness, moving at top speed, greater than ever attained before by man, greater than even these mighty cars had traveled, Sarka looked ahead, and wondered about the fearful report his father had just given him.

That there was an alliance between Mars and the Moon seemed almost unbelievable. How had they managed the first contact, the first negotiations leading to the compact between two such alien peoples? Had there been any flights exchanged by the two worlds, surely the scientists of Earth would have known about it. But there had not, though there had been times and times when Sarka had peered closely enough at the surface of both the Moon and of Mars to see the activities, or the results of the activities, of the peoples of the two worlds.

Somehow, however, communication, if Sarka the Second had guessed correctly, had been managed between Mars and the Moon; and now that the Earth was a free flying orb the two were in alliance against it, perhaps for the same reason that the Earth had gone a-voyaging.

Side by side sat Sarka and Jaska, their eager eyes peering through the forward end of the flas.h.i.+ng aircar toward the Earth, growing minute by minute larger. They were able, after some hours, to make out the outlines of what had once been continents, to see the shadows in valleys which had once held the oceans of Earth....

And always, as they stared and literally willed the cubes which piloted and were the motive power of the aircars to speed and more speed, that marvelous display of interplanetary fireworks which had aroused the concern of Sarka the Second.

What were those lights? Whence did they emanate? Sarka the Second had said that they came from Mars, yet Mars was invisible to those in the speeding aircars, which argued that it was hidden behind the Earth.

There was no way of knowing how close it was to the home of these rebels of Dalis' Gens.

And ever, as they flashed forward, Sarka was recalling that vague hint on the lips of Jaska, to the effect that Luar, for all her sovereignty of the Moon, might be, nonetheless, a native of the Earth. But....

How? Why? When? There were no answers to any of the questions yet. If she were a native of Earth, how had she reached the Moon? When had she been sent there? Who was she? Her name, Luar, was a strange one, and Sarka studied it for many minutes, rolling the odd syllables of it over his tongue, wondering where, on the Earth, he had heard names, or words, similar to it. This produced no result, until he tried subst.i.tuting various letters; then, again, adding various letters. When he achieved a certain result at last, he gasped, and his brain was a-whirl.

Luar, by the addition of the letter _n_, between the _u_ and the _a_, became Lunar, meaning "of the Moon!" Yet Lunar was unmistakably a word derived from the language of the Earth! It was possible, of course, that this was mere coincidence; but, taken in connection with the suspicions of Jaska, and the incontrovertible fact that Luar resembled people of the Earth, Sarka did not believe in this particular whim of coincidence.

Who was Luar?

His mind went back to the clucking sounds which, among the Gnomes of the Moon, pa.s.sed for speech. He pondered anew. He shaped his lips, as nearly as possible, to make the clucking sounds he had heard, and discovered that it was very difficult to manage the letter _n_!

The conclusion was inescapable: This woman, Luar, had once been _Lunar_, the _n_, down the centuries, being dropped because difficult for the Gnomes to p.r.o.nounce.

"Yes, Jaska," he said suddenly, "somewhere on Earth, when we reach it, we may discover the secret of Luar--and know far more about Dalis than we have ever known before!"

Jaska merely smiled her inscrutable smile, and did not answer. By intuition, she already knew. Let Sarka arrive at her conclusion by scientific methods if he desired, and she would simply smile anew.

Sarka thought of the manner in which Jaska and he had been transported to the Moon; of how much Dalis seemed to know of the secrets of the laboratory of the Sarkas. Might he not have known, two centuries ago, of the Secret Exit Dome, and somehow managed to make use of it in some ghastly experiment? And still the one question remained unanswered: Who was Luar?

The Earth was now so close that details were plainly seen. The Himalayas were out of sight, over the Earth, and by a mental command Sarka managed to change slightly the course of the dozen aircars. By pa.s.sing over the curve of the Earth at a high alt.i.tude, he hoped also to see from above something of the result of the strange aerial bombardment of which his father had spoken.

In their flight, which had been, to them a flight through the glories of a super-heavenly Universe, they had lost all count of time. Neither Sarka nor Jaska, nor yet the people in those other aircars, could have told how long they had been flying, when, coming over the curve of the Earth, at an elevation of something like three miles, they were able at last to see into the area which had once housed the Gens of Dalis.

A gasp of horror escaped the lips of Sarka and of Jaska.

The Gens of Dalis had occupied all the territory northward to the Pole, from a line drawn east and west through the southernmost of what had once been the Hawaiian Islands. Upon this area had struck the strange blue light from the deep Cone of the Moon.

Here, however, the light was invisible, and Sarka flew on in fear that somehow his aircars would blunder into it, and be destroyed--for that the blue light was an agent of ghastly destruction became instantly apparent.

The dwellings of the Gens of Dalis were broken and smashed into chaotic ruins. Over all the area, and even into the area of the Gens southward of that which had been Dalis, the blind G.o.ds of destruction had practically made a clean sweep. Sarka had opportunity to thank G.o.d that, at the time the blue column had struck the Earth, it had struck at the spot which had been almost emptied of people, and realized that blind chance had caused it. For, in order for the Gens of Dalis to be in position to launch their attack against the Moon, he had managed, by manipulating the speed of the Beryls, to bring that area into position directly opposite the Moon.

Had it been otherwise, the blue column might have struck anywhere, and wiped out millions of lives!

"G.o.d, Jaska," murmured Sarka. "Look!"

Think of a sh.o.r.eline, once lined with mighty buildings, after the pa.s.sage of a tidal wave greater than ever before known to man. The devastation would be indescribable. Multiply that sh.o.r.eline by the vast area which had housed the Gens of Dalis, and the mental picture is almost too big to grasp. Chaos, catastrophe, approaching an infinity of destruction.

The materials of which the vast buildings, set close together, had been made, had been twisted into grotesque, nightmarish shapes, and the whole fused into a burned and gleaming ma.s.s--which covered half of what had once been a mighty ocean--as though a bomb larger and more devastating than ever imagined of man, a bomb large enough to rock the Earth, had landed in the midst of the area once occupied by the Gens of Dalis!

Yet, Sarka knew, remembering the murmuring of the blue column as it came out of the cone, all this devastation had been caused in almost absolute silence. People could have watched and seen these deserted buildings slowly fuse together, run together as molten metal runs together, like the lava from a volcano of long ago under the ponderous moving to and fro of some invisible, juggernautlike agency.

Sarka shuddered, trying to picture in his mind the ma.s.sing of the minions of Mars, who thus saw a new country given into their hands--if they could take it. Had the Earth been taken by surprise? Had Sarka the Second been able to prepare for the approaching catastrophe?

"Father," he sent his thoughts racing on ahead of him, "are those lights which are striking the Earth causing any damage?"