The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life

by Homer Eon Flint

PART I

THE DISCOVERY

I

THE SKY CUBE

The doctor, who was easily the most musical of the four men, sang in a
cheerful baritone:

"The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful, pea-green boat."

The geologist, who had held down the lower end of a quartet in his
university days, growled an accompaniment under his breath as he
blithely peeled the potatoes. Occasionally a high-pitched note or two
came from the direction of the engineer; he could not spare much wind
while clambering about the machinery, oil-can in hand. The architect,
alone, ignored the famous tune.

"What I can't understand, Smith," he insisted, "is how you draw the
electricity from the ether into this car without blasting us all to
cinders."

The engineer squinted through an opal glass shutter into one of the
tunnels, through which the anti-gravitation current was pouring. "If you
didn't know any more about buildings than you do about machinery,
Jackson," he grunted, because of his squatting position, "I'd hate to
live in one of your houses!"

The architect smiled grimly. "You're living in one of 'em right now,
Smith," said he; "that is, if you call this car a house."

Smith straightened up. He was an unimportant-looking man, of medium
height and build, and bearing a mild, good-humored expression. Nobody
would ever look at him twice, would ever guess that his skull concealed
an unusually complete knowledge of electricity, mechanisms, and such
practical matters.

"I told you yesterday, Jackson," he said, "that the air surrounding the
earth is chock full of electricity. And--"

"And that the higher we go, the more juice," added the other,
remembering. "As much as to say that it is the atmosphere, then, that
protects the earth from the surrounding voltage."

The engineer nodded. "Occasionally it breaks through, anyhow, in the
form of lightning. Now, in order to control that current, and prevent it
from turning this machine, and us, into ashes, all we do is to pass the
juice through a cylinder of highly compressed air, fixed in this wall.
By varying the pressure and dampness within the cylinder, we can
regulate the flow."

The builder nodded rapidly. "All right. But why doesn't the electricity
affect the walls themselves? I thought they were made of steel."

The engineer glanced through the dead-light at the reddish disk of the
Earth, hazy and indistinct at a distance of forty million miles. "It
isn't steel; it's a non-magnetic alloy. Besides, there's a layer of
crystalline sulphur between the alloy and the vacuum space."

"The vacuum is what keeps out the cold, isn't it?" Jackson knew, but he
asked in order to learn more.

"Keeps out the sun's heat, too. The outer shell is pretty blamed hot on
that side, just as hot as it is cold on the shady side." Smith seated
himself beside a huge electrical machine, a rotary converter which he
next indicated with a jerk of his thumb. "But you don't want to forget
that the juice outside is no use to us, the way it is. We have to change
it.

"It's neither positive nor negative; it's just neutral. So we separate
it into two parts; and all we have to do, when we want to get away from
the earth or any other magnetic-sphere, is to aim a bunch of positive
current at the corresponding pole of the planet, or negative current at
the other pole. Like poles repel, you know."

"Listens easy," commented Jackson. "Too easy."

"Well, it isn't exactly as simple as all that. Takes a lot of apparatus,
all told," and the engineer looked about the room, his glance resting
fondly on his beloved machinery.

The big room, fifty feet square, was almost filled with machines; some
reached nearly to the ceiling, the same distance above. In fact, the
interior of the "cube," as that form of sky-car was known, had very
little waste space. The living quarters of the four men who occupied it
had to be fitted in wherever there happened to be room. The architect's
own berth was sandwiched in between two huge dynamos.

He was thinking hard. "I see now why you have such a lot of adjustments
for those tunnels," meaning the six square tubes which opened into the
ether through the six walls of the room. "You've got to point the juice
pretty accurately."

"I should say so." Smith led the way to a window, and the two shaded
their eyes from the lights within while they gazed at the ashy glow of
Mercury, toward which they were traveling. "I've got to adjust the
current so as to point exactly toward his northern half." Smith might
have added that a continual stream of repelling current was still
directed toward the earth, and another toward the sun, away over to
their right; both to prevent being drawn off their course.

"And how fast are we going?"

"Four or five times as fast as mother earth: between eighty and ninety
miles per second. It's easy to get up speed out here, of course, where
there's no air resistance."

Another voice broke in. The geologist had finished his potatoes, and a
savory smell was already issuing from the frying pan. Years spent in the
wilderness had made the geologist a good cook, and doubly welcome as a
member of the expedition.

"We ought to get there tomorrow, then," he said eagerly. Indoor life did
not appeal to him, even under such exciting circumstances. He peered at
Mercury through his binoculars. "Beginning to show up fine now."

The builder improved upon Van Emmon's example by setting up the car's
biggest telescope, a four-inch tube of unusual excellence. All three
pronounced the planet, which was three-fourths "full" as they viewed it,
as having pretty much the appearance of the moon.

"Wonder why there's always been so much mystery about Mercury?" pondered
the architect invitingly. "Looks as though the big five-foot telescope
on Mt. Wilson would have shown everything."

"Ask doc," suggested Smith, diplomatically. Jackson turned and hailed
the little man on the other side of the car. He looked up absently from
the scientific apparatus with which he had been making a test of the
room's chemically purified air, then he stepped to the oxygen tanks and
closed the flow a trifle, referring to his figures in the severely exact
manner of his craft. He crossed to the group.

"Mercury is so close to the sun," he answered the architect's question,
"he's always been hard to observe. For a long time the astronomers
couldn't even agree that he always keeps the same face toward the sun,
like the moon toward the earth."

"Then his day is as long as his year?"

"Eighty-eight of our days; yes."

"Continual sunlight! He can't be inhabited, then?" The architect knew
very little about the planets. He had been included in the party
because, along with his professional knowledge, he possessed remarkable
ability as an amateur antiquarian. He knew as much about the doings of
the ancients as the average man knows of baseball.

Dr. Kinney shook his head. "Not at present, certainly."

Instantly Jackson was alert. "Then perhaps there were people there at
one time!"

"Why not?" the doctor put it lightly. "There's little or no atmosphere
there now, of course, but that's not saying there never has been. Even
if he is such a little planet--less than three thousand, smaller than
the moon--he must have had plenty of air and water at one time, the same
as the Earth."

"What's become of the air?" Van Emmon wanted to know. Kinney eyed him in
reproach. He said:

"You ought to know. Mercury has only two-fifths as much gravitation as
the earth; a man weighing a hundred and fifty back home would be only a
sixty-pounder there. And you can't expect stuff as light as air to stay
forever on a planet with no more pull than that, when the sun is on the
job only thirty-six millions miles away."

"About a third as far as from the Earth to the sun," commented the
engineer. "By George, it must be hot!"

"On the sunlit side, yes," said Kinney. "On the dark side it is as cold
as space itself--four hundred and sixty below, Fahrenheit."

They considered this in silence for some minutes. The builder went to
another window and looked at Venus, at that time about sixty million
miles distant, on the far side of the sun. They were intending to visit
"Earth's twin sister" on their return. After a while he came back to the
group, ready with another question:

"If Mercury ever was inhabited, then his day wasn't as long as it is
now, was it?"

"No," said the doctor. "In all probability he once had a day the same
length as ours. Mercury is a comparatively old planet, you know; being
smaller, he cooled off earlier than the earth, and has been more
affected by the pull of the sun. But it's been a mighty long time since
he had a day like ours; before the earth was cool enough to live on,
probably."

"But since Mercury was made out of the same batch of material--"
prompted the geologist.

"No reason, then, why life shouldn't have existed there in the past!"
exclaimed the architect, his eyes sparkling with the instinct of the
born antiquarian. He glanced up eagerly as the doctor coughed
apologetically and said:

"Don't forget that, even if Mercury is part baked and part frozen, there
must be a region in between which is neither." He picked up a small
globe from the table and ran a finger completely around it from pole to
pole. "So. There must be a narrow band of country where the sun is only
partly above the horizon, and where the climate is temperate."

"Then--" the architect almost shouted in his excitement, an excitement
only slightly greater than that of the other two--"then, if there were
people on Mercury at one time--"

The doctor nodded gravely. "There may be some there now!"

II

A DEAD CITY

From a height of a few thousand miles Mercury, at first glance, strongly
reminded them of the moon. The general effect was the same--leaden disk,
with slight prominences here and there on the circumference, and large,
irregular splotches of a darkish shade relieved by a great many
brilliantly lighted areas, lines, and spots.

A second glance, however, found a marked difference. Instead of the
craters, which always distinguished the moon, Mercury showed ranges of
bona fide mountains.

The doctor gave a sigh of regret, mixed with a generous amount of
excitement. "Too bad those mountains weren't distinguishable from the
earth," he complained. "We wouldn't have been so quick to brand Mercury
a dead world."

The others were too engrossed to comment. The sky-car was rapidly
sinking nearer and nearer the planet; already Smith had stopped the
current with which he had attracted the cube toward the little world's
northern hemisphere, and was now using negative voltage. This, in order
to act as a brake, and prevent them from falling to destruction.

Suddenly Van Emmon, the geologist, whose eyes had been glued to his
binoculars, gave an exclamation of wonder. "Look at those faults!" He
pointed toward a region south of that for which they were bound; what
might be called the planet's torrid zone.

At first it was hard to see; then, little by little, there unfolded
before their eyes a giant, spiderlike system of chasms in the strange
surface beneath them. From a point almost directly opposite the sun,
these cracks radiated in a half-dozen different directions; vast,
irregular clefts, they ran through mountain and plain alike. In places
they must have been hundreds of miles wide, while there was no guessing
as to their depth. For all that the four in the cube could see, they
were bottomless.

"Small likelihood of anybody being alive there now," commented the
geologist skeptically. "If the sun has dried it out enough to produce
faults like that, how could animal life exist?"

"Notice, however," prompted the doctor, "that the cracks do not extend
all the way to the edge of the disk." This was true; all the great
chasms ended far short of the "twilight band" which the doctor had
declared might still contain life.

But as the sky-car rushed downward their attention became fixed upon the
surface directly beneath them, a point whose latitude corresponded
roughly with that of New York on the Earth. It was a region of low-lying
mountains, decidedly different from various precipitous ranges to be
seen to the north and east. On the west, or left-hand side of this
district, a comparatively level stretch, with an occasional peak or two
projecting, suggested the ancient bed of an ocean.

By this time they were within a thousand miles. Smith threw on a little
more current; their speed diminished to a safer point, and they scanned
the approaching surface with the greatest of care. The architect, who
was a New Yorker, was strongly reminded of the fall aspect of the
Appalachians; but Van Emmon, who was born and raised on the Pacific
coast, declared that the spot was almost exactly like the region north
of San Francisco. "If I didn't know where I was," he declared, "I'd be
trying to locate Eureka right now."

The engineer smiled tolerantly. He had spent several years in Scotland,
and he felt sure, he obligingly told the others, that this new locality
was far more like the Ben Lomond country than any other spot on earth.
He was so positive, he made the doctor, a New Zealander, smile quite
broadly.

"It is just like the hills near my home," he stated, with an air of
finality which made further discussion useless.

"There's a river!" the architect suddenly exclaimed, pointing; then
added, before the others could comment, "I mean, what was once a river."
They saw that he was right; an irregular but well-defined streak of
sandy hue trickled down the middle of their chosen destination--a long,
L-shaped valley, surrounded by low hills.

"That's the most likely place, outside of the twilight zone, for life to
be found," remarked the doctor. "Neither mountainous nor dead level."

He added: "The spectroscope has plainly shown that there's water vapor
in what little air there is. Must be precious little. If the air was as
humid as the earth's, we couldn't see the surface at all from this
height."

The inviting-looking valley was now less than a hundred miles below.
Inviting, however, only in outline; in color it was a grayish buff,
scorched and forbidding. The hills were yellower, and an alkali white on
their summits.

"Do either of you fellows see anything GREEN?" demanded the engineer, a
little later. They were silent; each had noticed long before, that not
even near the poles was there the slightest sign of vegetation.

"No chance unless there's foliage," muttered the doctor, half to
himself. The builder asked what he meant. He explained: "So far as we
know, all animal life depends upon vegetation for its oxygen. Not only
the oxygen in the air, but that stored in the plants which animals eat.
Unless there's greenery--"

He paused at a low exclamation from Smith. The engineer's eyes were
fixed, in wonder and excitement, upon that part of the valley which lay
at the joint of the "L" below them. It was perhaps six miles across; and
all over the comparatively smooth surface jutted dark projections.
Viewed through the glasses, they had a regular, uniform appearance.

"By Jove!" ejaculated the doctor, almost in awe. He leaned forward and
scrubbed the dead-light for the tenth time. All four men strained their
eyes to see.

It was the architect who broke the silence which followed. The other
three were content to let the thrill of the thing have its way with
them. Such a feeling had little weight with the expert in archeology.

"Well," he declared jubilantly in his boyish voice, "either I eat my hat
or that's a genuine, bona fide city!"

As swiftly as an elevator drops, and as safely, the cube shot straight
downward. Every second the landscape narrowed and shrunk, leaving the
remaining details larger, clearer, sharper. Bit by bit the amazing thing
below them resolved itself into a real metropolis.

Within five minutes they were less than a mile above it. Smith threw on
more current, so that the descent stopped; and the cube hung motionless
in space.

For another five minutes the four men studied the scene in nervous
silence. Each knew that the others were looking for the same thing--some
sign of life. A little spot of green, or possibly something in motion--a
single whiff of smoke would have been enough to cause a whoop of joy.

But nobody shouted. There was nothing to shout about. Nowhere in all
that locality apparently was there the slightest indication that any
save themselves were alive.

Instead, the most extraordinary city that man had ever laid eyes upon
was stretched directly beneath. It was grouped about what seemed to be
the meeting-point of three great roads, which led to this spot from as
many passes through the surrounding hills. And the city seemed thus
naturally divided into three segments, of equal size and shape, and each
with its own street system.

For they undoubtedly were streets. No metropolis on earth ever had its
blocks laid out with such unvarying exactness. This Mercurian city
contained none but perfect equilateral triangles, and the streets
themselves were of absolutely uniform width.

The buildings, however, showed no such uniformity. On the outskirts of
this brilliantly tan mystery the blocks seemed to contain nothing save
odd heaps of dingy, sun-baked mud. On the extreme north, however, lay
five blocks grouped together, whose buildings, like those in the middle
of the city, were rather tall, square-cut and of the same dusty, cream-
white hue.

"Down-town" were several structures especially prominent for their
height. They towered to such an extent, in fact, that their upper
windows were easily made out. Apparently they were hundreds of stories
high!

Here and there on the streets could be seen small spots, colored a
darker buff than the rest of that dazzling landscape. But not one of the
spots was moving.

"We'll go down further," said the engineer tentatively, in a low tone.
There was no comment. He gradually reduced the repelling current, so
that the sky-car resumed its descent.

They sank down until they were on a level with the top of one of those
extraordinary sky-scrapers. The roof seemed perfectly flat, except for a
large, round, black opening in its center. No one was in sight.

When opposite the upper row of windows, at a distance of perhaps twenty
feet, Smith brought the car to a halt, and they peered in. There were no
panes; the windows opened directly into a vast room; but nothing was
clearly visible in the blackness save the outlines of the opening in the
opposite walls.

They went down further, keeping well to the middle of the space above
the street. At every other yard they kept a sharp lookout for the
inhabitants; but so far as they could see, their approach was entirely
unobserved.

When within fifty yards of the surface, all four men made a search for
cross-wires below. They saw none; there were no poles, even. Neither, to
their astonishment, was there such a thing as a sidewalk. The street
stretched, unbroken by curbing, from wall to wall and from corner to
corner.

As the cube settled slowly to the ground, the adventurers left the
deadlight to use the windows. For a moment the view was obscured by a
swirl of dust, raised by the spurt of the current; then this cloud
vanished, settling to the ground with astounding suddenness, as though
jerked down by some invisible hand.

Directly ahead of them, distant perhaps a hundred yards, lay a
yellowish-brown mass of unusual octagonal shape. One end contained a
small oval opening, but the men from the Earth looked in vain for any
creature to emerge from it.

The doctor silently set to work with his apparatus. From an air-tight
double-doored compartment he obtained a sample of the ether outside the
car; and with the aid of previously arranged chemicals, quickly learned
the truth.

There was no air. Not only was there no oxygen, the element upon which
all known life depends, but there was no nitrogen, no carbon dioxide;
not the slightest trace of water vapor or of the other less known
elements which can be found in small amounts in our own atmosphere.
Clearly, as the doctor said, whatever air the astronomers had observed
must exist on the circumference of the planet only, and not in this sun-
blasted, north-central spot.

On the outer walls of the cube, so arranged as to be visible through the
windows, were various instruments. The barometer showed no pressure. The
thermometer, a specially devised one which used gas instead of mercury,
showed a temperature of six hundred degrees, Fahrenheit.

No air, no water, and a baking heat; as the geologist remarked, how
could life exist there? But the architect suggested that possibly there
was some form of life, of which men knew nothing, which could exist
under such circumstances.

They got out three of the suits. These were a good deal like those worn
by divers, except that the outer layer was made of non-conducting
aluminum cloth, flexible, air-tight, and strong. Between it and the
inner lining was a layer of cells, into which the men now pumped several
pints of liquid oxygen. The terrific cold of this chemical made the
heavy flannel of the inner lining very welcome; while the oxygen itself,
as fast as it evaporated, revitalized the air within the big, glass-
faced helmet.

Once safely locked within the clumsy suits, Jackson, Van Emmon, and
Smith took their places within the vestibule; while the doctor, who had
volunteered to stay behind, watched them open the outer door. With a
hiss all the air in the vestibule rushed out; and the doctor earnestly
thanked his stars that the inner door had been built very strongly.

The men stepped out on to the ground. At first they moved with great
care, being uncertain that their feet were weighted heavily enough to
counteract the reduced gravitation of the tiny planet. But they had been
living in a very peculiar condition, gravitationally speaking, for the
past three days; and they quickly adapted themselves. After a little
shifting about, the three artificial monsters gave their telephone wires
another scrutiny; then, keeping always within ten feet of each other, so
as not to throw any strain on the connections, they strode in a matter-
of-fact way toward the nearest doorway.

For a moment or two they stood outside the queer, peaked archway, their
glimmering suits standing out oddly in the blinding sunlight. Then they
advanced boldly into the opening; in a flash they vanished from the
doctor's sight, and the inklike blackness of the opening again stared at
him from that dazzling wall.

III

THE HOUSE OF DUST

The geologist, strong man that he was, and by profession an investigator
of the unknown--Van Emmon--took the lead. He stalked straight ahead into
a vast space which, without any preliminary hallway, filled the entire
triangular block.

Before their eyes were accustomed to the shadow--"Pretty cold," murmured
the architect into the phone transmitter; it was fastened to the inside
of the helmet, directly in front of his mouth, while the receiver was
placed beside his ear. All three stopped short to adjust each other's
electrical heating apparatus. To do this, they did not use their fingers
directly; they manipulated ingenious non-magnetic pliers attached to the
ends of fingerless, insulated mittens.

Before they had finished, the builder, who had been puzzling over the
extraordinary suddenness with which that cloud of dust had settled,
received an inspiration. He was carrying note-book and camera. With his
pliers he tore out a sheet from the former, and holding book in one hand
and the leaf in the other, he allowed them to drop at the same instant.

They reached the ground together.

"See?" The architect repeated the experiment. "Back home, where there's
air, the paper would have floated down; it would have taken three times
as long for it to fall as the book."

Smith nodded, but he had been thinking of something else. He said
gravely: "Remember what I told you--it's air that insulates the earth
from the ether. If there's no air here--" he glanced out into the
pitiless sunlight--"then I hope there's no flaw in our insulation. We're
walking in an electrical bath."

They looked around. Objects were pretty distinct now. They could easily
see that the floor was covered with what appeared to be machines, laid
out in orderly fashion. Here, however, as outside, everything was coated
with that fine, cream-colored dust. It filled every nook and cranny; it
stirred about their feet with every step.

The geologist led the way down a broad aisle, on either side of which
towered immense machinery. Smith was for stopping to examine them one by
one; but the others vetoed the engineer's passion, and strode on toward
the end of the triangle. More than anything else, they looked for the
absent population to show itself.

Suddenly Van Emmon stopped short. "Is it possible that they're all
asleep?" He added that, even though the sun shone steadily the year
around, the people must take time for rest.

But Smith stirred the dust with his foot and shook his head. "I've seen
no tracks. This dust has been lying here for weeks, perhaps months. If
the folks are away, then they must be taking a community vacation."

At the end of the aisle they reached a small, railed-in space, strongly
resembling what might be seen in any office on the earth. In the middle
of it stood a low, flat-topped desk, for all the world like that of a
prosperous real-estate agent, except that it was about half a foot
lower. There was no chair. For lack of a visible gate in the railing,
the explorers stepped over, being careful not to touch it.

There was nothing on top of the desk save the usual coat of dust. Below,
a very wide space had been left for the legs of whoever had used it; and
flanking this space were two pedestals, containing what looked to be a
multitude of exceedingly small drawers. Smith bent and examined them;
apparently they had no locks; and he unhesitatingly reached out, gripped
the knob of one and pulled.

Noiselessly, instantaneously, the whole desk crumbled to powder.
Startled, Smith stumbled backwards, knocking against the railing. Next
instant it lay on the floor, its fragments scarcely distinguishable from
what had already covered the surface. Only a tiny cloud of dust arose,
and in half a second this had settled.

The three looked at each other significantly. Clearly, the thing that
had just happened argued a great lapse of time since the user of that
desk officiated in that enclosure. It looked as though Smith's guess of
"weeks, perhaps months," would have to be changed to years, perhaps
centuries.

"Feel all right?" asked the geologist. Jackson and Smith made
affirmative noises; and again they stepped out, this time walking in the
aisle along the outer wall. They could see their sky-car plainly through
the ovals.

Here the machinery could be examined more closely. They resembled
automatic testing scales, said Smith; such as is used in weighing
complicated metal products after finishing and assembling. Moreover,
they seemed to be connected, the one to the other, with a series of
endless belts, which Smith thought indicated automatic production. To
all appearances, the dust-covered apparatus stood just as it had been
left when operations ceased, an unguessable length of time before.

Smith showed no desire to touch the things now. Seeing this, the
geologist deliberately reached out and scraped the dust from the nearest
machine; and to the vast relief of all three, no damage was done. The
dust fell straight to the floor, exposing a brilliantly polished streak
of greenish-white metal.

Van Emmon made another tentative brush or so at other points, with the
same result. Clean, untarnished metal lay beneath all that dust. Clearly
it was some non-conducting alloy; whatever it was, it had successfully
resisted the action of the elements all the while that such presumably
wooden articles as the desk and railing had been steadily rotting.

Emboldened, Smith clambered up on the frame of one of the machines. He
examined it closely as to its cams, clutches, gearing, and other details
significant enough to his mechanical training. He noted their
adjustments, scrutinized the conveying apparatus, and came back carrying
a cylindrical object which he had removed from an automatic chuck.

"This is what they were making," he remarked, trying to conceal his
excitement. The others brushed the dust from the thing, a huge piece of
metal which would have been too much for their strength on the earth.
Instantly they identified it.

It was a cannon shell.

Again Van Emmon led the way. They took a reassuring glance out the
window at the familiar cube, then passed along the aisle toward the
farther corner. As they neared it they saw that it contained a small
enclosure of heavy metal scrollwork, within which stood a triangular
elevator.

The men examined it as closely as possible, noting especially the
extremely low stool which stood upon its platform. The same unerodable
metal seemed to have been used throughout the whole affair.

After a careful scrutiny of the two levers which appeared to control the
thing--"I'm going to try it out," announced Smith, well knowing that the
others would have to go with him if they kept the telephones intact.
They protested that the thing was not safe; Smith replied that they had
seen no stairway, or anything corresponding to one. "If this lift is
made of that alloy," admiringly, "then it's safe." But Jackson managed
to talk him out of it.

When they returned to the heap of powdered wood which had been the desk,
Smith spied a long work-bench under a nearby window. There they found a
very ordinary vise, in which was clamped a piece of metal; but for the
dust, it might have been placed there ten minutes before. On the bench
lay several tools, some familiar to the engineer and some entirely
strange. A set of screw-drivers of various sizes caught his eye. He
picked them up, and again experienced the sensation of having wood turn
to dust at his touch. The blades were whole.

Still searching, the engineer found a square metal chest of drawers,
each of which he promptly opened. The contents were laden with dust, but
he brushed this off and disclosed a quantity of exceedingly delicate
instruments. They were more like dentists' tools than machinists', yet
plainly were intended for mechanical use.

One drawer held what appeared to be a roll of drawings. Smith did not
want to touch them; with infinite care he blew off the dust with the aid
of his oxygen pipe. After a moment or two the surface was clear, but it
offered no encouragement; it was the blank side of the paper.

There was no help for it. Smith grasped the roll firmly with his pliers
--and next second gazed upon dust.

In the bottom drawer lay something that aroused the curiosity of all
three. These were small reels, about two inches in diameter and a
quarter of an inch thick, each incased in a tight-fitting box. They
resembled measuring tapes to some extent, except that the ribbons were
made of marvelously thin material. Van Emmon guessed that there were a
hundred yards in a roll. Smith estimated it at three hundred. They
seemed to be made of a metal similar to that composing the machines.
Smith pocketed them all.

It was the builder who thought to look under the bench, but it was Smith
who had brought a light. By its aid they discovered a very small
machine, decidedly like a stock ticker, except that it had no glass
dome, but possessed at one end a curious metal disk about a foot in
diameter. Apparently it had been undergoing repairs; it was impossible
to guess its purpose. Smith's pride was instantly aroused; he tucked it
under his arm, and was impatient to get back to the cube, where he might
more carefully examine his find with the tips of his fingers.

It was when they were about to leave the building that they thought to
inspect walls and ceiling. Not that anything worth while was to be seen;
the surfaces seemed perfectly plain and bare, except for the inevitable
dust. Even the uppermost corners, ten feet above their heads, showed
dust to the light of Smith's electric torch.

Van Emmon stopped and stared at the spot as though fascinated. The
others were ready to go; they turned and looked at him curiously. For a
moment or two he seemed struggling for breath.

"Good Heavens!" he gasped, almost in a whisper. His face was white; the
other two leaped toward him, fearful that he was suffocating. But he
pushed them away roughly.

"We're fools! Blind, blithering idiots--that's what we are!" He pointed
toward the ceiling with a hand that trembled plainly, and went on in a
voice which he tried to make fierce despite the awe which shook it.

"Look at that dust again! How'd it get there?" He paused while the
others, the thought finally getting to them, felt a queer chill striking
at the backs of their necks. "Men--there's only one way for the dust to
settle on a wall! It's got to have air to carry it! It couldn't possibly
get there without air!

"That dust settled long before life appeared on the Earth, even! It's
been there ever since the air disappeared from Mercury!"

IV

THE LIBRARY

"I thought you'd never get back," complained the doctor crossly, when
the three entered. They had been gone just half an hour.

Next moment he was studying their faces, and at once he demanded the
most important fact. They told him, and before they had finished he was
half-way into another suit. He was all eagerness; but somehow the three
were very glad to be inside the cube again, and firmly insisted upon
moving to another spot before making further explorations.

Within a minute or two the cube was hovering opposite the upper floor of
the building the three had entered; and with only a foot of space
separating the window of the sky-car and the dust-covered wall, the men
from the earth inspected the interior at considerable length. They
flashed a search-light all about the place, and concluded that it was
the receiving-room, where the raw iron billets were brought via the
elevator, and from there slid to the floor below. At one end, in exactly
the same location as the desk Smith had destroyed, stood another, with a
low and remarkably broad chair beside it.

So far as could be seen, there were neither doors, window-panes, nor
shutters through the structure. "To get all the light and air they
could," guessed the doctor. "Perhaps that's why the buildings are all
triangular; most wall surface in proportion to floor area, that way."

A few hundred feet higher they began to look for prominent buildings.
Only in forgetful moments did either of them scan the landscape for
signs of life; they knew now that there could be none.

"We ought to learn something there," the doctor said after a while,
pointing out a particularly large, squat, irregularly built affair on
the edge of the "business district." The architect, however, was in
favor of an exceptionally large, high building in the isolated group
previously noted in the "suburbs." But because it was nearer, they
maneuvered first in the direction of the doctor's choice.

The sky-car came to rest in a large plaza opposite what appeared to be
the structure's main entrance. From their window the explorers saw that
the squat effect was due only to the space the edifice covered; for it
was an edifice, a full five stories high.

The doctor was impatient to go. Smith was willing enough to stay behind;
he was already joyously examining the strange machine he had found. Two
minutes later Kinney, Van Emmon, and Jackson were standing before the
portals of the great building.

There they halted, and no wonder. The entire face of the building could
now be seen to be covered with a mass of carvings; for the most part
they were statues in bas relief. All were fantastic in the extreme, but
whether purposely so or not, there was no way to tell. Certainly any
such work on the part of an earthly artist would have branded him either
as insane or as an incomprehensible genius.

Directly above the entrance was a group which might have been labeled,
"The Triumph of the Brute." An enormously powerful man, nearly as broad
as he was tall, stood exulting over his victim, a less robust figure,
prostrate under his feet. Both were clad in armor. The victor's face was
distorted into a savage snarl, startlingly hideous by reason of the
prodigious size of his head, planted as it was directly upon his
shoulders; for he had no neck. His eyes were set so close together that
at first glance they seemed to be but one. His nose was flat and African
in type, while his mouth, devoid of curves, was simply revolting in its
huge, thick-lipped lack of proportion. His chin was square and
aggressive; his forehead, strangely enough, extremely high and narrow,
rather than low and broad.

His victim lay in an attitude that indicated the most agonizing torture;
his head was bent completely back, and around behind his shoulders. On
the ground lay two battle-axes, huge affairs almost as heavy as the
massively muscled men who had used them.

But the eyes of the explorers kept coming back to the fearsome face of
the conqueror. From the brows down, he was simply a huge, brutal giant;
above his eyes, he was an intellectual. The combination was absolutely
frightful; the beast looked capable of anything, of overcoming any
obstacle, mental or physical, internal or external, in order to assert
his apparently enormous will. He could control himself or dominate
others with equal ease and assurance.

"It can't be that he was drawn from life," said the doctor, with an
effort. It wasn't easy to criticize that figure, lifeless though it was.
"On a planet like this, with such slight gravitation, there is no need
for such huge strength. The typical Mercurian should be tall and flimsy
in build, rather than short and compact."

But the geologist differed. "We want to remember that the earth has no
standard type. Think what a difference there is between the mosquito and
the elephant, the snake and the spider! One would suppose that they had
been developed under totally different planetary conditions, instead of
all right on the same globe.

"No; I think this monster may have been genuine." And with that the
geologist turned to examine the other statuary.

Without exception, it resembled the central group; all the figures were
neckless, and all much more heavily built than any people on earth.
There were several female figures; they had the same general build, and
in every case were so placed as to enhance the glory of the males. In
one group the woman was offering up food and drink to a resting worker;
in another she was being carried off, struggling, in the arms of a
fairly good-looking warrior.

Dr. Kinney led the way into the building. As in the other structure,
there was no door. The space seemed to be but one story in height,
although that had the effect of a cathedral. The whole of the ceiling,
irregularly arched in a curious, pointed manner, was ornamented with
grotesque figures; while the walls were also partially formed of squat,
semi-human statues, set upon huge, triangular shafts. In the spaces
between these outlandish pilasters there had once been some sort of
decorations, A great many photos were taken here.

As for the floor, it was divided in all directions by low walls. About
five and a half feet in height, these walls separated the great room
into perhaps a hundred triangular compartments, each about the size of
an ordinary living room. Broad openings, about five feet square,
provided free access from one compartment to any other. The men from the
earth, by standing on tiptoes, could see over and beyond this system.

"Wonder if these walls were supposed to cut off the view?" speculated
the doctor. "I mean, do you suppose that the Mercurians were such short
people as that?" His question had to go unanswered.

They stepped into the nearest compartment, and were on the point of
pronouncing it bare, when Jackson, with an exclamation, excitedly
brushed away some of the dust and showed that the presumably solid walls
were really chests of drawers. Shallow things of that peculiar metal,
these drawers numbered several hundred to the compartment. In the whole
building there must have been millions.

Once more the dust was carefully removed, revealing a layer of those
curious rolls or reels, exactly similar to what had been found in the
tool chest in the shell works. A careful examination of the metallic
tape showed nothing whatever to the naked eye, although the doctor
fancied that he made out some strange characters on the little boxes
themselves.

His view was shortly proved. Finding drawer after drawer to contain a
similar display, varying from one to a dozen of the diminutive ribbons,
Van Emmon adopted the plan of gently blowing away the dust from the
faces of the drawers before opening them. This revealed the fact that
each of the shallow things was neatly labeled!

Instantly the three were intent upon this fresh clue. The markings were
very faint and delicate, the slightest touch being enough to destroy
them. To the untrained eye, they resembled ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphics; to the archeologist, they meant that a brand-new system
of ideographs had been found.

Suddenly Jackson straightened up and looked about with a new interest.
He went to one of the square doorways and very carefully removed the
dust from a small plate on the lintel. He need not have been so careful;
engraved in the solid metal was a single character, plainly in the same
language as the other ideographs.

The architect smiled triumphantly into the inquiring eyes of his
friends. "I won't have to eat my hat," said he. "This is a sure-enough
city, all right, and this is its library!"

Smith was still busy on the little machine when they returned to the
cube. He said that one part of it had disappeared, and was busily
engaged in filing a bit of steel to take its place. As soon as it was
ready, he thought, they could see what the apparatus meant.

The three had brought a large number of the reels. They were confident
that a microscopic search of the ribbons would disclose something to
bear out Jackson's theory that the great structure was really a
repository for books, or whatever corresponded with books on Mercury.

"But the main thing," said the doctor, enthusiastically, "is to get over
to the 'twilight band.' I'm beginning to have all sorts of wild hopes."

Jackson urged that they first visit the big "mansion" on the outskirts
of this place; he said he felt sure, somehow, that it would be worth
while. But Van Emmon backed up the doctor, and the architect had to be
content with an agreement to return in case their trip was futile.

Inside of a few minutes the cube was being drawn steadily over toward
the left or western edge of the planet's sunlit face. As it moved, all
except Smith kept close watch on the ground below. They made out town
after town, as well as separate buildings; and on the roads were to be
seen a great many of those octagonal structures, all motionless.

After several hundred miles of this, the surface abruptly sloped toward
what had clearly been the bed of an ocean. No sign of habitations here,
however; so apparently the water had disappeared AFTER the humans had
gone.

This ancient sea ended a short distance from the district they were
seeking. A little more travel brought them to a point where the sun cast
as much shadow as light on the surface. It was here they descended,
coming to rest on a sunlit knoll which overlooked a small, building-
filled valley.

According to Kinney's apparatus, there was about one-fortieth the amount
of air that exists on the earth. Of water vapor there was a trace; but
all their search revealed no human life. Not only that, but there was no
trace of lower animals; there was not even a lizard, much less a bird.
And even the most ancient-looking of the sculptures showed no creatures
of the air; only huge, antediluvian monsters were ever depicted.

They took a great many photos as a matter of course. Also, they
investigated some of the big, octagonal machines in the streets, finding
them to be similar to the great "tanks" that were used in the war,
except that they did not have the characteristic caterpillar tread;
their eight faces were so linked together that the entire affair could
roll, after a jolting, slab-sided, flopping fashion. Inside were curious
engines, and sturdy machines designed to throw the cannon-shells they
had seen; no explosive was employed, apparently, but centrifugal force
generated in whirling wheels. Apparently these cars, or chariots, were
universally used.

The explorers returned to the cube, where they found that Smith,
happening to look out a window, had spied a pond not far off. The three
visited it and found, on its banks, the first green stuff they had seen;
a tiny, flowerless salt grass, very scarce. It bordered a slimy, bluish
pool of absolutely still fluid. Nobody would call it water. They took a
few samples of it and went back.

And within a few minutes the doctor slid a small glass slide into his
microscope, and examined the object with much satisfaction. What he saw
was a tiny, gelatinlike globule; among scientists it is known as the
amoeba. It is the simplest known form of life--the so-called "single
cell." It had been the first thing to live on that planet, and
apparently it was also the last.

V

THE CLOSED DOOR

As they neared Jackson's pet "mansion" each man paid close attention to
the intervening blocks. For the most part these were simply shapeless
ruins; heaps of what had once been, perhaps, brick or stone. Once they
allowed the cube to rest on the top of one of these mounds; but the sky-
car's great weight merely sank it into the mass. There was nothing under
it save that same sandy dust.

Apparently the locality they were approaching had been set aside as a
very exclusive residence district for the elite of the country. Possibly
it contained the homes of the royalty, assuming that there had been a
royalty. At any rate the conspicuous structure Jackson had selected was
certainly the home of the most important member of that colony.

When the three, once more in their helmets and suits, stood before the
low, broad portico which protected the entrance to that edifice, the
first thing they made out was an ornamental frieze running across the
face. In the same bold, realistic style as the other sculpture, there
was depicted a hand-to-hand battle between two groups of those half
savage, half cultured monstrosities. And in the background was shown a
glowing orb, obviously the sun.

"See that?" exclaimed the doctor. "The size of that sun, I mean! Compare
it with the way old Sol looks now!"

They took a single glance at the great ball of fire over their heads;
nine times the size it always seemed at home, it contrasted sharply with
the rather small ball shown in the carvings.

"Understand?" the doctor went on. "When that sculpture was made, Mercury
was little nearer the sun than the earth is now!"

The builder was hugely impressed. He asked, eagerly: "Then probably the
people became as highly developed as we?"

Van Emmon nodded approvingly, but the doctor opposed. "No; I think not,
Jackson. Mercury never did have as much air as the earth, and
consequently had much less oxygen. And the struggle for existence," he
went on, watching to see if the geologist approved each point as he made
it, "the struggle for life is, in the last analysis, a struggle for
oxygen.

"So I would say that life was a pretty strenuous proposition here, while
it lasted. Perhaps they were--" He stopped, then added: "What I can't
understand is, how did it happen that their affairs came to such an
abrupt end? And why don't we see any--er--indications?"

"Skeletons?" The architect shuddered. Next second, though, his face lit
up with a thought. "I remember reading that electricity will decompose
bone, in time." And then he shuddered again as his foot stirred that
lifeless, impalpable dust. Was it possible?

As they passed into the great house the first thing they noted was the
floor, undivided, dust-covered, and bare, except for what had perhaps
been rugs. The shape was the inevitable equilateral triangle; and here,
with a certain magnificent disregard for precedent, the builders had
done away with a ceiling entirely, and instead had sloped the three
walls up till they met in a single point, a hundred feet overhead. The
effect was massively simple.

In one corner a section of the floor was elevated perhaps three feet
above the rest, and directly back of this was a broad doorway, set in a
short wall. The three advanced at once toward it.

Here the electric torch came in very handy. It disclosed a poorly
lighted stairway, very broad, unrailed, and preposterously steep. The
steps were each over three feet high.

"Difference in gravitation," said the doctor, in response to Jackson's
questioning look. "Easy enough for the old-timers, perhaps." They
struggled up the flight as best they could, reaching the top after over
five minutes of climbing.

Perhaps it was the reaction from this exertion; at all events each felt
a distinct loss of confidence as, after regaining their wind, they again
began to explore. Neither said anything about it to the others; but each
noted a queer sense of foreboding, far more disquieting than either of
them had felt when investigating anything else. It may have been due to
the fact that, in their hurry, they had not stopped to eat.

The floor they were on was fairly well lighted with the usual oval
windows. The space was open, except that it contained the same kind of
dividing walls they had found in the library. Here, however, each
compartment contained but one opening, and that not uniformly placed. In
fact, as the three noted with a growing uneasiness, it was necessary to
pass through every one of them in order to reach the corner farthest,
from the ladderlike stairs. Why it should make them uneasy, neither
could have said.

When they were almost through the labyrinth, Van Emmon, after standing
on tiptoes for the tenth time, in order to locate himself, noted
something that had escaped their attention before. "These compartments
used to be covered over," he said, for some reason lowering his voice.
He pointed out niches in the walls, such as undoubtedly once held the
ends of heavy timbers. "What was this place, anyhow? A trap?"

Unconsciously they lightened their steps as they neared the last
compartment. They found, as expected, that it was another stairwell. Van
Emmon turned the light upon every corner of the place before going any
further; but except for a formless heap of rubbish in one corner, which
they did not investigate, the place was as bare as the rest of the
floor.

Again they climbed, this time for a much shorter distance; but Jackson,
slightly built chap that he was, needed a little help on the steep
stairs. They were not sorry that they had reached the uppermost floor of
the mansion. It was somewhat better lighted than the floor below, and
they were relieved to find that the triangular compartments did not have
the significant niches in their walls. Their spirits rose perceptibly.

At the corner farthest from the stairs one of the walls rose straight to
the ceiling, completely cutting off a rather large triangle. The three
paid no attention to the other compartments, but went straight to what
they felt sure was the most vital spot in the place. And their feelings
were justified with a vengeance when they saw that the usual doorway in
this wall was protected by something that had, so far, been entirely
missing everywhere else.

It was barred by a heavy door.

For several minutes the doctor, the geologist, and the architect stood
before it. Neither would have liked to admit that he would just as soon
leave that door unopened. All the former uneasiness came back. It was
all the more inexplicable, with the brilliant sunlight only a few feet
away, that each should have felt chilled by the place.

"Wonder if it's locked?" remarked Van Emmon. He pressed against the
dust-covered barrier, half expecting it to turn to dust; but evidently
it had been made of the time-defying alloy. It stood firm. And to all
appearances it was nearly air-tight.

"Well!" said the doctor suddenly, so that the other two started
nervously. "The door's got to come down; that's all!" They looked
around; there was no furniture, no loose piece of material of any kind.
Van Emmon straightway backed away from the door about six feet, and the
others followed his example.

"All together!" grunted the geologist; and the three aluminum-armored
monsters charged the door. It shook under the impact; a shower of dust
fell down; and they saw that they had loosened the thing.

"Once more!" This time a wide crack showed all around the edge of the
door, and the third attempt finished the job. Noiselessly--for there was
no air to carry the sound--but with a heavy jar which all three felt
through their feet, the barrier went flat on the floor beyond.

At the same instant a curious, invisible wave, like a tiny puff of wind,
floated out of the darkness and passed by the three men from the earth.
Each noticed it, but neither mentioned it at the time. Van Emmon was
already searching the darkness with the torch.

Apparently it was only an anteroom. A few feet beyond was another wall,
and in it stood another door, larger and heavier than the first. The
three did not stop; they immediately tried their strength on this one
also.

After a half dozen attempts without so much as shaking the massive
affair--"It's no use," panted the geologist, wishing that he could get a
handkerchief to his forehead. "We can't loosen it without tools."

Jackson was for trying again, but the doctor agreed with Van Emmon. They
reflected that they had been away from Smith long enough, anyhow. The
cube was out of sight from where they were.

Van Emmon turned the light on the walls of the anteroom, and found, on a
shelf at one end, a neat pile of those little reels, eleven in all. He
pocketed the lot. There was nothing else.

Jackson and Kinney started to go. They retreated as far into the main
room as their telephone wires would allow. Still the geologist held
back.

"Come on," said the doctor uneasily. "It's getting cold."

Next second they stopped short, nerves on edge, at a strange exclamation
from Van Emmon. They looked around to see him pointing his light
directly at the floor. Even in that unnatural suit of mail, his attitude
was one of horror.

"Look here," he said in a low, strained voice. They went to his side,
and instinctively glanced behind them before looking at what lay in the
dust.

It was the imprint of an enormous human foot.

The first thing that greeted the ears of the explorers upon taking off
their suits in the sky-car, was the exultant voice of Smith. He was too
excited to notice anything out of the way in their manner; he was almost
dancing in front of his bench, where the unknown machine, now
reconstructed, stood belted to a small electric-motor.

"It runs!" he was shouting. "You got here just in time!" He began to
fumble with a switch.

"What of it?" remarked the doctor in the bland tone which he kept for
occasions when Smith needed calming. "What will it do if it does run?"

The engineer looked blank. "Why--" Then he remembered, and picked up one
of the reels at random. "There's a clamp here just the right size to
hold one of these," he explained, fitting the ribbon into place and
threading its free end into a loop on a spool which looked as though
made for it. But his excitement had passed; he now cautiously set a
small anvil between himself and the apparatus, and then, with the aid of
a long stick, he threw on the current.

For a moment nothing happened, save the hum of the motor. Then a
strange, leafy rustling sounded from the mechanism, and next, without
any warning, a high-pitched voice, nasal and plaintive but distinctly
human, spoke from the big metal disk.

The words were unintelligible. The language was totally unlike anything
ever heard on the earth. And yet, deliberately if somewhat cringingly,
the voice proceeded with what was apparently a recitation. There were
modulations, pauses, sentences; but seemingly the paragraphs were all
short and to the point.

As the thing went on the four men came closer and watched the operation
of the machine. The ribbon unrolled slowly; it was plain that, if the
one topic occupied the whole reel, then it must have the length of an
ordinary chapter. And as the voice continued, certain dramatic qualities
came out and governed the words, utterly incomprehensible though they
were. There was a real thrill to it.

After a while they stopped the thing. "No use listening to this now," as
the doctor said. "We've got to learn a good deal more about these people
before we can guess what it all means."

And yet, although all were very hungry, on Jackson's suggestion they
tried out one of the "records" that was brought from that baffling
anteroom. Smith was very much interested in that unopened door, and Van
Emmon was in the midst of it when Jackson started the motor.

The geologist's words stuck in his throat. The disk was actually shaking
with the vibrations of a most terrific voice. Prodigiously loud and
powerful, its booming, resonant bass smote the ears like the roll of
thunder. It was irresistible in its force, compelling in its assurance,
masterful and strong to an overpowering degree. Involuntarily the men
from the earth stepped back.

On it roared and rumbled, speaking the same language as that of the
other record; but whereas the first speaker merely USED the words, the
last speaker demolished them. One felt that he had extracted every ounce
of power in the language, leaving it weak and flabby, unfit for further
use. He threw out his sentences as though done with them; not boldly,
not defiantly, least of all, tentatively, he spoke with a certainty and
force that came from a knowledge that he could compel, rather than
induce his hearers to believe.

It took a little nerve to shut him off; Van Emmon was the one who did
it. Somehow they all felt immensely relieved when the gigantic voice was
silenced; and at once began discussing the thing with great earnestness.
Jackson was for assuming that the first record was worn and old, the
last one, fresh and new; but after examining both tapes under a glass,
and seeing how equally clear cut and sharp the impressions all were,
they agreed that the extraordinary voice they had heard was practically
true to life.

They tried out the rest of the records in that batch, finding that they
were all by the same speaker. Nowhere among the ribbons brought from the
library was another of his making, although a great number of different
voices was included; neither was there another talker with a fifth the
volume, the resonance, the absolute power of conviction that this
unknown colossus possessed.

Of course this is no place to describe the laborious process of
interpreting these documents, records of a past which was gone before
earth's mankind had even begun. The work involved the study of countless
photos, covering everything from inscriptions to parts of machinery, and
other details which furnished clue after clue to that superancient
language. It was not deciphered, in fact, until several years after the
explorers had submitted their finds to the world's foremost
lexicographers, antiquarians and paleontologists. Even today some of it
is disputed.

But right here is, most emphatically, the place to insert the tale told
by that unparalleled voice. And incredible though it may seem, as judged
by the standards of the peoples of this earth, the account is fairly
proved by the facts uncovered by the expedition. It would be but begging
the question to doubt the genuineness of the thing; and if,
understanding the language, one were to hear the original as it fell,
word for word from the iron mouth of Strokor [Footnote: Translator's
note--In the Mercurian language, stroke means iron, or heart.] the
Great-hearing, one would believe; none could doubt, nor would.

And so it does not do him justice to set it down in ordinary print. One
must imagine the story being related by Stentor himself; must conceive
of each word falling like the blow of a mammoth sledge. The tale was not
told--it was BELLOWED; and this is how it ran:

PART II

THE STORY

I

THE MAN

I am Strokor, son of Strok, the armorer. I am Strokor, a maker of tools
of war; Strokor, the mightiest man in the world; Strokor, whose wisdom
outwitted the hordes of Klow; Strokor, who has never feared, and never
failed. Let him who dares, dispute it. I--I am Strokor!

In my youth I was, as now, the marvel of all who saw. I was ever robust
and daring, and naught but much older, bigger lads could outdo me. I
balked at nothing, be it a game or a battle; it was, and forever shall
be, my chief delight to best all others.

'Twas from my mother that I gained my huge frame and sound heart. In
truth, I am very like her, now that I think upon it. She, too, was
indomitable in battle, and famed for her liking for strife. No doubt
'twas her stalwart figure that caught my father's fancy.

Aye, my mother was a very likely woman, but she boasted no brains. "I
need no cunning," I remember she said; and he who was so unlucky in
battle as to fall into her hands could vouch for the truth of it--as
long as he lived, which would not be long. She was a grand woman, slow
to anger and a match for many a good pair of men. Often, as a lad, have
I carried the marks of her punishment for the most of a year.

And thus it seems that I owe my head to my father. He was a marvelously
clever man, dexterous with hand and brain alike. Moreover, he was no
weakling; perchance I should credit him with some of my agility, for he
was famed as a gymnast, though not a powerful one. 'Twas he who taught
me how to disable my enemy with a mere clutch of the neck at a certain
spot.

But Strok, the armorer, was feared most because of his brain, and his
knack of using his mind to the undoing of others. And he taught me all
that he knew; taught me all that he had learned in a lifetime of
fighting for the emperor, of mending the complicated machines in the
armory, of contact with the chemists who wrought the secret alloy, and
the chiefs who led the army.

Some of this he taught me when I was not yet a man. Why he should have
done so, I know not, save that he seemed to value my affection, and
liked not my mother's demands that I heed her call, not his. At all
events, I oft found his shop a place of refuge from her wrath; and I
early came to value his teachings.

When I became a man he abruptly ended the practice. I think he saw that
I was become as dexterous as he with the tools of the craft, and he
feared lest I know more than he. Well he might; the day I realized this
I laughed long and loud. And from that time forth he taught me, not
because he chose to, but because I bent a chisel in my bare hands,
before his eyes, and told him his place.

Many times he strove to trick me, and more than once he all but caught
me in some trap. He was a crafty man, and relied not upon brawn, but
upon wits. Yet I was ever on the watch, and I but learned the more from
him.

"Ye are very kind," I mocked him one morning. When I had taken my seat a
huge weight had dropped from above and crushed my stool to splinters,
much as it would have crushed my skull had I not leaped instantly aside.
"Ye are kinder than most fathers, who teach their sons nothing at all."

He foamed at his mouth in his rage and discomfiture. "Insolent whelp!"
he snarled. "Thou art quick as a cat on thy feet!"

But I was not to be appeased by words. I smote him on the chest with my
bare hand, so that he fell on the far side of the room. "Let that be a
warning," I told him, when he had recovered, some time later. "If ye
have any more tricks, try them for, not on, me." Which I claim to be a
neat twist of words.

It was not long after that when I saw a change in my father. He no
longer tried to snare me; instead, he began, of his own free will, to
train my mind to other than warlike things. At first, I was suspicious
enough. I looked for new traps, and watched all the closer. I told him
that his next try would surely be his last, and I meant it.

But the time came when I saw that my father was reconciled to his
master. I saw that he genuinely admitted my prowess; and where he
formerly envied me, he now took great pride in all I accomplished, and
claimed that it was but his own brains acting through my body.

I let him indulge in the conceit. I grudged it not to him, so long as he
taught me. In truth, he was so eager to add to my store of facts, so
intent upon filling my head with what filled his, that at times I was
fairly compelled to stop him, lest I tire.

My mother opposed all this. "The lad needs none of thy wiles," she
gibed. "He is no stripling; he is a man's man, and a fit son of his
mother."

"Aye," quoth my father slyly. "He has thy muscle and thy courage. Thank
Jon, he hath not thy empty head!"

Whereat she flew at him. Had she caught him, she would have destroyed
him, such was her rage; and afterwards she would have mourned her folly
and mayhap have injured herself; for she loved him greatly. But he
stepped aside just in the nick of time, and she crashed into the wall
behind him with such force that she was senseless for a time. I remember
it well.

And yet, to give credit where credit is due, I must admit that I owe a
great deal to that gray-beard, Maka, the star-gazer. But for him,
perchance, the name of Strokor would mean but little, for 'twas he who
gave me ambition.

Truly it was an uncommon affair, my first meeting with him. Now that I
shake my memory for it, it seems that something else of like consequence
came to pass on the same occasion. Curious; but I have not thought on it
for many days.

Yes, it is true; I met Maka on the very morn that I first laid eyes on
the girl Ave.

I was returning from the northland at the time. A rumor had come down to
Vlama that one of the people in the snow country had seen a lone
specimen of the mulikka. Now these were but a myth. No man living
remembers when the carvings on the House of Learning were made, and all
the wise men say that it hath been ages since any being other than man
roamed the world. Yet, I was young. I determined to search for the thing
anyhow; and 'twas only after wasting many days in the snow that I cursed
my luck, and turned back.

I was afoot, for the going was too rough for my chariot. I had not yet
quit the wilderness before, from a height, I spied a group of people
ascending from the valley. Knowing not whether they be friends or foes,
I hid beside the path up which they must come; for I was weary and
wanting no strife.

Yet I became alert enough when the three--they were two ditch-tenders,
one old, one young, and a girl--came within earshot. For they were
quarreling. It seemed that the young man, who was plainly eager to gain
the girl, had fouled in a try to force her favor. The older man chided
him hotly.

And just when they came opposite my rock, the younger man, whose passion
had got the better of him, suddenly tripped the older, so that he fell
upon the ledge and would have fallen to his death on the rocks below had
not the girl, crying out in her terror, leaped forward and caught his
hand.

At once the ditch-tender took the lass about the waist, and strove to
pull her away. For a moment she held fast, and in that moment I,
Strokor, stood forth from behind the rock.

Now, be it known that I am no champion of weaklings. I have no liking
for the troubles of others; enough of my own, say I. I was but angered
that the ditch-tender should have done the trick so clumsily, and upon
an old man, at that. I cared not for the gray beard, nor what became of
the chit. I clapped the trickster upon the shoulder and spun him about.

"Ye clumsy coward!" I jeered. "Have ye had no practice that ye should
trip the old one no better than that?"

"Who are ye?" he stuttered, like the coward he was. I laughed and helped
the chit drag Maka--for it was he--up to safety.

"I am a far better man than ye," I said, not caring to give my name.
"And I can show ye how the thing should be done. Come; at me, if ye are
a man!"

At that he dashed upon me; and such was his fear of ridicule--for the
girl was laughing him to scorn now--he put up a fair, stiff fight. But I
forgot my weariness when he foully clotted me on the head with a stone.
I drove at him with all the speed and suddenness my father had taught
me, caught the fellow by the ankle, and brought him down atop me.

The rest was easy. I bent my knee under his middle, and tossed him high.
In a flash I was upon my feet, and caught him from behind. And in
another second I had rushed him to the cliff; and when he turned to save
himself, I tripped him as neatly as father himself could have done it,
so that the fellow will guard the ditch no more, save in the caverns of
Hofe.

I laughed and picked up my pack. My head hurt a bit from the fellow's
blow, but a little water would do for that. I started to go.

"Ye are a brave man!" cried the girl. I turned carelessly, and then,
quite for the first time, I had a real look at her.

She was in no way like any woman I had seen. All of them had been much
like the men: brawny and close-knit, as well fitted for their work as
are men for war. But this chit was all but slender; not skinny, but
prettily rounded out, and soft like. I cannot say that I admired her at
first glance; she seemed fit only to look at, not to live. I was minded
of some of the ancient carvings, which show delicate, lightly built
animals that have long since been killed off; graceful trifles that
rested the eye.

As for the old man: "Aye, thou art brave, and wondrous strong, my lad,"
said he, still a bit shaky from his close call. I was pleased with the
acknowledgment, and turned back.

"It was nothing," I told them; and I recounted some of my exploits,
notably one in which I routed a raiding party of men from Klow, six in
all, carrying in two alive on my shoulders. "I am the son of Strok, the
armorer."

"Ye are Strokor!" marveled the girl, staring at me as though I were a
god. Then she threw back her head and stepped close.

"I am Ave. This is Maka; he is my uncle, but best known as a star-gazer.
My father was Durok, the engine-maker." She watched my face.

"Durok?" I knew him well. My father had said that he was quite as brainy
as himself. "He were a fine man, Ave."

"Aye," said she proudly. She stepped closer; I could not but see how
like him she was, though a woman. And next second she laid a hand on my
arm.

"I am yet a free woman, Strokor. Hast thou picked thy mate?" And her
cheeks flamed.

Now, 'twas not my first experience of the kind. Many women had looked
like that at me before. But I had always been a man's man, and had ever
heeded my father's warning to have naught whatever to do with women.
"They are the worst trick of all," he told me; and I had never forgot.
Belike I owe much of my power to just this.

But Ave had acted too quickly for me to get away. I laughed again, and
shook her off.

"I will have naught to do with ye," I told her, civilly enough. "When I
am ready to take a woman, I shall take her; not before."

At that the blood left her face; she stood very straight, and her eyes
flashed dangerously. Were she a man I should have stood on my guard. But
she made no move; only the softness in her eyes gave way to such a
savage look that I was filled with amaze. And thus I left them; the old
man calling down the blessing of Jon upon me for having saved his life,
and the chit glaring after me as though no curses would suffice.

A right queer matter, I thought at the time. I guessed not what would
come of it; not then.

II

THE VISION

'Twas a fortnight later, more or less, when next I saw Maka. I was
lumbering along in my chariot, feeling most uncomfortable under the eyes
of my friends; for one foot of my machine had a loose link, and 'twas
flapping absurdly. And I liked it none too well when Maka stopped his
own rattletrap in front of mine, and came running to my window. Next
moment I forgot his impertinence.

"Strokor," he whispered, his face alive with excitement, "thou art a
brave lad, and didst save my life. Now, know you that a party of the men
of Klow have secreted themselves under the stairway behind the emperor's
throne. They have killed the guards, and will of a certainty kill the
emperor, too!"

"'Twould serve the dolt right," I replied, for I really cared but
little. "But why have ye come to me, old man? I am but a lieutenant in
the armory; I am not the captain of the palace guard."

"Because," he answered, gazing at me very pleasingly, "thou couldst
dispose of the whole party single handed--there are but four--and gain
much glory for thyself."

"By Jon!" I swore, vastly delighted; and without stopping to ask Maka
whence he had got his knowledge, I went at once to the spot. However,
when I got back, I sought the star-gazer--I ought to mention that I had
no trouble with the louts, and that the emperor himself saw me finishing
off the last of them--I sought the star-gazer and demanded how he had
known.

"Hast ever heard of Edam?" he inquired in return.

"Edam?" I had not; the name was strange to me. "Who is he?"

"A man as young as thyself, but a mere stripling," quoth Maka. "He was a
pupil of mine when I taught in the House of Learning. Of late he has
turned to prophecy; and it is fair remarkable how well the lad doth
guess. At all events, 'twas he, Strokor, who told me of the plot. He saw
it in a dream."

"Then Edam must yet be in Vlama," said I, "if he were able to tell ye.
Canst bring him to me? I would know him."

And so it came about that, on the eve of that same day, Maka brought
Edam to my house. I remember it well; for 'twas the same day that the
emperor, in gratitude of my little service in the anteroom, had relieved
me from my post in the armory and made me captain of the palace guard. I
was thus become the youngest captain, also the biggest and strongest;
and, as will soon appear, by far the longest-headed.

I was in high good humor, and had decided to celebrate with a feast. So
when my two callers arrived, I sat them down before a meal such as cost
a tenth [Footnote: Since Mercury had no moon, its people never coined a
word to correspond with our "month," and for the same reason they never
had a week. Their time was reckoned only in days, years, and fractions
of the two.] of my year's salary.

I served not only the usual products of the field, variously prepared,
but as a special gift from the emperor's own stock, a piece of mulikka
meat, frozen, which had been found in the northland by some geologists a
few years aback. It had been kept in the palace icing-room all this
time, and was in prime condition. Maka and I enjoyed it overmuch, but
Edam would touch it not.

He was a slightly built lad, not at all the sturdy man that I am, but of
less than half the weight. His head, too, was unlike mine; his forehead
was wide as well as tall, and his eyes were mild as a slave's.

"Ye are very young to be a prophet," I said to him, after we were
filled, and the slaves had cleared away our litter. "Tell me: hast
foretold anything else that has come to pass?"

"Aye," he replied, not at all boldly, but what some call modestly. "I
prophesied the armistice which now stands between our empire and
Klow's."

"Is this true?" I demanded of Maka. The old man bowed his head gravely
and looked upon the young man with far more respect than I felt. He
added:

"Tell Strokor the dream thou hadst two nights ago, Edam. It were a right
strange thing, whether true or no."

The stripling shifted his weight on his stool, and moved the bowl
closer. Then he thrust his pipe deep into it, and let the liquid flow
slowly out his nostrils. [Footnote: A curious custom among the
Mercurians, who had no tobacco. There is no other way to explain some of
the carvings. Doubtless the liquid was sweet-smelling, and perhaps
slightly narcotic.]

"I saw this," he began, "immediately before rising, and after a very
light supper; so I know that it was a vision from Jon, and not of my own
making.

"I was standing upon the summit of a mountain, and gazing down upon a
very large, fertile valley. It was heavily wooded, dark green and
inviting. But what first drew my attention was a great number of animals
moving about IN THE AIR. They were passing strange affairs, some large,
some small, variously colored, and all covered with the same sort of
fur, quite unlike any hair I have ever seen."

"In the air?" I echoed, recovering from my astonishment. Then I laughed
mightily. "Man, ye must be crazy! There is no animal can live in the
air! Ye must mean in the water or on land."

"Nay," interposed the star-gazer. "Thou hast never studied the stars,
Strokor, or thou wouldst know that there be a number of them which,
through the enlarging tube, show themselves to be round worlds, like
unto our own.

"And it doth further appear that these other worlds also have air like
this we breathe, and that some have less, while others have even more.
From what Edam has told me," finished the old man, "I judge that his
vision took place on Jeos, [Footnote: The Mercurian word for earth.] a
world much larger than ours according to my calculations, and doubtless
having enough air to permit very light creatures to move about in it."

"Go on," said I to Edam, good-humoredly. "I be ever willing to believe
anything strange when my stomach is full."

The dreamer had taken no offense. "Then I bent my gaze closer, as I am
always able, in visions. And I saw that the greenery was most remarkably
dense, tangled and luxuriant to a degree not ever seen here. And moving
about in it was the most extraordinary collection of beings that I have
ever laid these eyes upon.

"There were some huge creatures, quite as tall as thy house, Strokor,
with legs as big around as that huge chest of thine. They had tails, as
had our ancient mulikka, save that these were terrific things, as long
and as big as the trunk of a large tree. I know not their names.
[Footnote: Probably the dinosaur.]

"And then, at the other extreme, was a tiny creature of the air, which
moved with a musical hum. It could have hid under thy finger-nail,
Strokor, yet it had a tiny sharp-pointed bill, with which it stung most
aggravatingly. And between these two there were any number of creatures
of varying size and shape.

"But nowhere was there a sign of a man. True, there was one hairy,
grotesque creature which hung by its hands and feet from the tree-tops,
very like thee in some way, Strokor; but its face and head were those of
a brainless beast, not of a man. Nowhere was a creature like me or thee.

"And the most curious thing was this: Although there were ten times as
many of these creatures, big and little, to the same space as on our
world, yet there was no great amount of strife. In truth, there is far
more combat and destruction among we men than among the beasts.

"And," he spoke most earnestly, as though he would not care to be
disbelieved, "I saw fathers fight to protect their young!"

I near fell from my stool in my amaze. Never in all my life had I heard
a thing so far from the fact. "What!" I shouted. "Ye sit there like a
sane man, and tell me ye saw fathers fight for their young?"

He nodded his head, still very gravely. I fell silent for want of words,
but Maka put in a thought. "It would appear, Strokor, that it be not so
much of an effort for beings to live, there on Jeos, as here. Perchance
'tis the greater amount of vegetation; at all accounts, the animals need
not prey upon one another so generally; and that, then, would explain
why some have energy enough to waste in the care of their young."

"I can understand," I said, very slowly. "I can understand why a mother
will fight for her babes; 'tis reasonable enough, no doubt. But as for
fathers doing the same--Edam, dost mean to say that ALL creatures on
Jeos do this?"

"Nay; only some. It may be that fewer than half of the varieties have
the custom. Howbeit, 'tis a beautiful one. When the vision ended I was
right loath to go."

"Faugh!" I spat upon the ground. "Such softness makes me ill! I be glad
I were born in a man's world, where I can take a man's chances. I want
no favoring. If I am strong enough to live, I live; if not, I die. What
more can I ask?"

"Aye, my lad!" said Maka approvingly. "This be a world for the strong.
There is no room here for others; there is scarce enough food for those
who, thanks to their strength, do survive." He slipped the gold band
from off his wrist, and held it up for Jon to see. "Here, Strokor, a
pledge! A pledge to--the survival of the fittest!"

"A neat, neat wording!" I roared, as I took the pledge with him. Then we
both stopped short. Edam had not joined us. "Edam, my lad," spake the
old man, "ye will take the pledge with us?"

The stripling's eyes were troubled. Well he knew that, once he refused
such an act, he were no longer welcome in my house, nor in Maka's. But
when he looked around it were bravely enough.

"Men, I have neither the strength of the one nor the brains of the other
of ye. I am but a watchmaker; I live because of my skill with the little
wheels.

"I have no quarrel with either of ye." He got to his feet, and started
to the door. "But I cannot take the pledge with ye.

"I have seen a wondrous thing, and I love it. And, though I know not
why--I feel that Jon has willed it for Jeos to see a new race of men, a
race even better than ours."

I leaped to my feet. "Better than ours! Mean ye to say, stripling, that
there can be a better man than Strokor?"

I full expected him to shrink from me in fear; I was able to crush him
with one blow. But he stood his ground; nay, stepped forward and laid a
hand easily upon my shoulder.

"Strokor--ye are more than a man; ye are two men in one. There is no
finer--I say it fair. And yet, I doubt not that there can be, and will
be, a better!"

And with that such a curious expression came into his face, such a glow
of some strange land of warmth, that I let my hand drop and suffered him
to depart in peace--such was my wonder.

Besides, any miserable lout could have destroyed the lad.

Maka sat deep in thought for a time, and when he did speak he made no
mention of the lad who had just quit us. Instead, he looked me over,
long and earnestly, and at the end he shook his head sorrowfully and
sighed:

"Thou art the sort of a son I would have had, Strokor, given the wits of
thy father to hold a woman like thy mother. And thou didst save my
life."

He mused a little longer, then roused himself and spake sharply: "Thou
art a vain man, Strokor!"

"Aye," I agreed, willingly enough. "And none has better cause than I!"

He would not acknowledge the quip. "Thou hast everything needful to
tickle thy vanity. Thou hast the envy of those who note thy strength,
the praise of them who love thy courage, and the respect of they who
value thy brains. All these thou hast--and yet ye have not that which is
best!"

I thought swiftly and turned on him with a frown: "Mean ye that I am not
handsome enough?"

"Nay, Strokor," quoth the star-gazer. "There be none handsomer in this
world, no matter what the standard of any other, such as Edam's Jeos.

"It is not that. It is, that thou hast no ambition."

I considered this deeply. At first thought it was not true; had I not
always made it a point to best my opponent? From my youth it had been
ever my custom to succeed where bigger bodies and older minds had
failed. Was not this ambition?

But before I disputed the point with Maka, I saw what he meant. I had no
FINAL ambition, no ultimate goal for which to strive. I had been content
from year to year to outdo each rival as he came before me; and now,
with mind and body alike in the pink of condition, I was come to the
place where none durst stand before me.

"Ye are right, Maka," I admitted, not because I cared to gratify his
conceit, but because it were always for my own good to own up when
wrong, that I might learn the better. "Ye are right; I need to decide
upon a life-purpose. What have ye thought?"

The old man was greatly pleased. "Our talk with Edam brought it all
before me. Know you, Strokor, that the survival of the fittest is a rule
which governs man as well as men. It applies to the entire population,
Strokor, just as truly as to me or thee.

"In fine, we men who are now the sole inhabitants of this world, are
descended from a race of people who survived solely because they were
fitter than the mulikka, fitter than the reptiles, the fittest, by far,
of all the creatures.

"That being the case, it is plain that in time either our empire, or
that of Klow's, must triumph over the other. And that which remains
shall be the fittest!"

"Hold!" I cried. "Why cannot matters remain just as they now are--and
forever?"

"That" he said rapidly, "is because thou knowest so little about the
future of this world. But I am famed as a student of the heavens; and I
tell thee it is possible, by means of certain delicate measuring
instruments, together with the highest mathematics, to keep a very close
watch upon the course of our world. And we now know that our year is
much shorter than it was in the days of the mulikka."

I nodded my head. "Rightly enough, since our days are become steadily
longer, for some mysterious reason."

"A reason no longer a mystery," quoth Maka. "It is now known that the
sun is a very powerful magnet, and that it is constantly pulling upon
our world and bringing it nearer and nearer to himself. That is why it
hath become slightly warmer during the past hundred years; the records
show it plain. And the same influence has caused the lengthening of our
day."

He stopped and let me think. Soon I saw it clearly enough; a time must
come when the increasing warmth of the sun would stifle all forms of
vegetable life, and that would mean the choking of mankind. It might
take untold centuries; yet, plainly enough, the world must some day
become too small for even those who now remained upon it.

Suddenly I leaped to my feet and strode the room in my excitement. "Ye
are right, Maka!" I shouted, thoroughly aroused. "There cannot always be
the two empires. In time one or the other must prevail; Jon has willed
it. And--" I stopped short and stared at him--"I need not tell ye which
it shall be!"

"I knew thou wouldst see the light, Strokor! Thou hast thy father's
brains."

I sat me down, but instantly leaped up again, such was my enthusiasm.
"Maka," I cried, "our emperor is not the man for the place! It is true
that he were a brave warrior in his youth; he won the throne fairly. And
we have suffered him to keep it because he is a wise man, and because we
have had little trouble with the men of Klow since their defeat two
generations agone.

"But he, today, is content to sit at his ease and quote platitudes about
live and let live. Faugh! I am ashamed that I should even have given ear
to him!"

I stopped short and glared at the old man. "Maka--hark ye well! If it be
the will of Jon to decide between the men of Klow and the men of
Vlamaland, then it is my intent to take a hand in this decision!"

"Aye, my lad," he said tranquilly; and then added, quite as though he
knew what my answer must be: "How do ye intend to go about it?"

"Like a man! I, Strokor, shall become the emperor!"

III

THE THRONE

A small storm had come up while Maka and I were talking. Now, as he was
about to quit me, the clouds were clearing away and an occasional stroke
of lightning came down. One of these, however, hit the ground such a
short distance away that both of us could smell the smoke.

My mind was more alive than it had ever been before. "Now, what caused
that, Maka? The lightning, I mean; we have it nearly every day, yet I
have never thought to question it before."

"It is no mystery, my lad," quoth Maka, dodging into his chariot, so
that he was not wet. "I myself have watched the thing from the top of
high mountains, where the air is so light that a man can scarce get
enough to fill his lungs; and I say unto you that, were it not for what
air we have, we should have naught save the lightning. The space about
the air is full of it."

He started his engine, then leaned out into the rain and said softly:
"Hold fast to what thy father has taught thee, Strokor. Have nothing to
do with the women. 'Tis a man's job ahead of thee, and the future of the
empire is in thy hands.

"And," as he clattered off, "fill not thy head with wonderings about the
lightning."

"Aye," said I right earnestly, and immediately turned my thoughts to my
new ambition. And yet the thing Maka had just told me kept coming back
to my mind, and so it does to this very day. I know not why I should
mention it at all save that each time I think upon Maka, I also think
upon the lightning, whether I will or no.

I slept not at all that night, but sat [Footnote: It seems to have been
the custom among the soldiers never to lie down, but to take their sleep
sitting or standing; a habit not hard to form where the gravitation was
so slight. No doubt this also explains their stunted legs.] till the
dawn came, thinking out a plan of action. By that time I was fair
convinced that there was naught to be gained by waiting; waiting makes
me impatient as well. I determined to act at once; and since one day is
quite as good as the next, I decided that this day was to see the thing
begun.

I came before the emperor at noon and received my decorations. Within
the hour I had made myself known to the four and ninety men who were to
be my command; a picked company, all of a height and weight, with bodies
that lacked little of my own perfection. Never was there a finer guard
about the palace.

My first care was to pick a quarrel with the outgoing commander. Twere
easy enough; he was green with envy, anyhow. And so it came about that
we met about mid afternoon, with seconds, in a well-frequented field in
the outskirts.

Before supper was eaten my entire troop knew that their new captain had
tossed his ball-slinger away without using it, had taken twenty balls
from their former commander's weapon, and while thus wounded had charged
the man and despatched him with bare hands! Needless to say, this
exploit quite won their hearts; none but a blind man could have missed
the respect they showed me when, all bandaged and sore, I lined them up
next morning. Afterward I learned that they had all taken a pledge to
"follow Strokor through the gates of Hofe itself!"

'Twere but a week later that, fully recovered and in perfect fettle, I
called my men together one morn as the sun rose. By that time I had
given them a sample of my brains through ordering a rearrangement of
their quarters such as made the same much more comfortable. Also, I had
dealt with one slight infraction of the rules in such a drastic fashion
that they knew I would brook no trifling. All told, 'tis hard to say
whether they thought the most of me or of Jon.

"Men," said I, as bluntly as I knew, "the emperor is an old man. And, as
ye know, he is disposed to be lenient toward the men of Klow; whereas,
ye and I well know that the louts are blackguards.

"Now, I will tell ye more. It has come to me lately that Klow is
plotting to attack us with strange weapons." I thought best, considering
their ignorance, not to give them my own reasons. "Of course I have told
the emperor of it; yet he will not act. He says to wait till we are
attacked."

I stopped and watched their faces. Sure enough; the idea fair made them
ache. Each and every one of these men was spoiling for a fight.

"Now, tell me; how would ye like to become the emperor's body-guard?" I
did not have to wait long; the light that flared in their faces told me
plainly. "And--how would ye like to have me for your emperor?"

At that their tongues were loosed, and I hindered them not. They yelled
for pure joy, and pressed about me like a pack of children. I saw that
the time was ripe for action.

"Up, then!" I roared, and, of course, led the way. We met the emperor's
guard on the lower stairs; and from that point on we fair hacked our way
through.

Well, no need to describe the fight. For a time I thought we were gone;
the guards had a cunningly devised labyrinth on the second floor, and
attacked us from holes in a false ceiling, so that we suffered heavily
at first. But I saw what was amiss, and shouted to my men to clear away
the timbers; and after that it was clear work. I lost forty men before
the guard was disposed of. The emperor I finished myself; he dodged
right spryly for a time, but at last I caught him and tossed him to the
foot of the upper stairs. And there he still lies for none of my men
would touch him, nor would I. We covered him with quicklime and some
earth.

As soon as we had taken care of those who were not too far gone, I
called the men together and caused a round of spirits to be served. Then
we all feasted on the emperor's store, and soon were feeling like
ourselves.

"Men," I said impressively, "I am proud of ye. Never did an emperor have
such a dangerous gang of bullies!"

At that they all grinned happily, and I added: "And 'tis a fine staff of
generals that ye'll make!"

Need I say more? Those men would have overturned the palace for me had I
said the word. As it was, they obeyed my next orders in such a spirit
that success was assured from the first.

First, using the dead emperor's name, I caused the various chiefs to be
brought together at once to the court chamber. At the same time I
contrived, by means I need not go into here, to prevent any word of our
action from getting abroad. So, when the former staff faced me the next
morning, they learned that they were to be executed. I could trust not
one; they were all friends of the old man.

With the chiefs out of the way, and my own men taking their commands,
the whole army fell into my hands. True, there were some insurrections
here and there; but my men handled them with such speed and harshness
that any further stubbornness turned to admiration. By this time the
fame of Strokor was spread throughout the empire.

And thus it came about that, within a week of the night that old Maka
first put the idea into my head, Strokor, son of Strok, reigned
throughout Vlamaland. And, to make it complete, the army celebrated my
accession by taking a pledge before Jon:

"To Strokor, the fittest of the fit!"

IV

THE ASSAULT

Now, out of a total population of perhaps three million, I had about a
quarter-million first-class fighters in my half of the world. Klow, by
comparison, had but two-thirds the number; his land was not a rich one.

But he had the advantage of knowing, some while in advance, of the new
ruler in Vlama; and shortly my spies reported that his armories were
devising a new type of weapon. 'Twas a strange verification of my own
fiction to my men. I could learn nothing, however, about it.

Meanwhile I caused a vast number of flat-boats to be built, all in
secret. Each of them was intended for a single fighter and his supplies;
and each was so arranged, with side paddle wheels, that it would be
driven by the motor in the soldier's chariot, and thus give each his own
boat.

Again discarding all precedent, I packed not all my forces together, as
had been done in the past, but scattered them up and adown the coast
fronting the land of Klow; and at a prearranged time my quarter-million
men set out, a company in each tiny fleet. Some were slightly in advance
of the rest, who had the shorter distance to travel. And, just as I had
planned, we all arrived at a certain spot on Klow's coast at practically
the same hour, although two nights later.

'Twas a brilliant stroke. The enemy looked not for a fleet of water-
ants, ready to step right out of the sea into battle. Their fleet was
looking for us, true, but not in that shape. And we were all safely
ashore before they had ceased to scour the seas for us.

I immediately placed my heavy machines, and just as all former
expeditions had done, opened the assault at once with a shower of the
poison shells. I relied, it will be seen, upon the surprise of my attack
to strike terror into the hearts of the louts.

But apparently they were prepared for anything, no matter how rapid the
attack. My bombardment had not proceeded many moments before, to my
dismay, some of their own shells began to fall among us. Soon they were
giving as good as we.

"Now, how knew they that we should come to this spot?" I demanded of
Maka. I had placed him in my cabinet as soon as I had reached the
throne.

The old man stroked his beard gravely. "Perchance it had been wrong to
come to the old landing. They simply began shelling it as a matter of
course."

"Ye are right again," I told him; and forthwith moved my pieces over
into another triangle. (Previously, of course, all my charioteers had
gone on toward the capital). However, I took care to move my machines,
one at a time, so that there was no let-up in my bombardment.

But scarce had we taken up the new position before the enemy's shells
likewise shifted, and began to strike once more in our midst. I swore a
great oath and whirled upon Maka in wrath.

"Think ye that there be a spy among us?" I demanded. "How else can ye
explain this thing? My men have combed the land about us; there are none
of the louts secreted here; and, even so, they could not have notified
Klow so soon. Besides, 'tis pitch dark." I were sorely mystified.

All we could do was to fling our shells as fast as our machines would
work and dodge the enemy's hail as best we could. Thus the time passed,
and it were near dawn when the first messengers [Footnote: Messengers;
no telegraph or telephone, much less wireless. In a civilization as
strenuous as that of Mercury, there was never enough consideration for
others to lead to such socially beneficial things as these, no more than
railroads or printing presses. Civilization appears to be in exact
proportion to the ease of getting a living, other conditions being
equal.] returned.

"They have stopped us just outside the walls of the city," was the
report. It pleased me that they should have pushed so far at first; I
climbed at once into my chariot.

"Now is the time for Strokor to strike!" I gave orders for the staff to
remain where it was. "I will send ye word when the city is mine."

But before I started my engine I glanced up at the sky, to see if the
dawn were yet come; and as I gazed I thought I saw something come
between me and a star. I brushed the hair away from my eyes, and looked
again. To my boundless surprise I made out, not one, but three strange
objects moving about swiftly in the air!

"Look!" I cried, and my whole staff craned their necks. In a moment all
had seen, and great was their wonder. I blamed them not for their fears.

'Twas Maka who spoke first. "They are much too large to be creatures of
Jon," he muttered. "They must be some trick of the enemy.

"Dost recall Edam's vision of the creatures in the air of Jeos?" he went
on, knowing that I would not hinder him. "Now, as I remember it, he said
they flew with great speed. Were it not possible, Strokor, for suitable
engines to propel very light structures at such high speed as to remain
suspended in the air, after the manner of leaves in a storm? I note
these strangers move quite fast."

It was even so; and at that same instant one of them swung directly
above our heads, so close that I could hear the hum of a powerful
engine. So it was only a trick! I shook myself together.

"Attention!" My staff drew up at the word. "They are but few; fear them
not! We waste no more time here! Pack up the machines, and follow!"

And thus we charged upon Klow.

I found that my men had entirely surrounded the city. Klow's men were
putting up a plucky fight, and showing no signs of fearing us. Seeing
this, I blew a blast on my engine's whistle, so that my bullies might
know that I had come.

Immediately the word ran up and down the line, so that within a few
minutes Klow was facing a roaring crowd of half-mad terrors. I myself
set the example by charging the nearest group of the enemy, all of whom
were mounted within the rather small and perfectly circular chariots
which they preferred. They were quick, but slippery. Also, they could
not stand before a determined rush, as several of them learned after
vainly trying to slip some balls through my windows and, failing in
that, striving to get away from me.

But I ran them down, and toppled them over, and dropped suffocation
bombs into their little cages with such vigor and disregard of their
volleys that my men could not resist the example. We charged all along
that vast circular line, and we cheered mightily when the whole front
broke, turned tail, and ran before us.

But scarce had they got away before a queer thing happened. A flock of
those great air-creatures, some eight altogether, rose up from the
middle of the city. It was now fairly light, and we could see well. One
of them had some sort of engine trouble, so that it had to return at
once; but the other seven came out to the battle-line and began to
circle the city.

As they did so they dropped odd, misshapen parcels, totally unlike
materials of war; but when they struck they gave off prodigious puffs of
a greenish smoke, of so terribly pungent a nature that my men dropped
before it like apples from a shaken tree. 'Twas a fearful sight; lucky
for us that the louts had had no practice, else few of us should be
alive to tell the tale.

And so they swept around the great circle, many triangles in area; and
everywhere the unthinkable things smote the hearts of my men with a fear
they had never known. Only one of the devices suffered; it was brought
down by a chance fling of a poison shell. The rest, after loosing their
burdens, returned to the city for more.

I am no fool. I saw that we could do nothing against such weapons, but
must use all our wits if we escaped even.

"Return!" I commanded, and instantly my staff whistled the code. The men
obeyed with alacrity, making off at top speed with the men of Klow in
hot pursuit, although able to do little damage.

Aye, it were a sorrowful thing, that retreat. The best I could do was to
remain till the very last, having to deal with a number of persistent
louts who all but suffocated me, at that. But I managed to empty my
slinger into some of them and to topple the rest. I was mainly angry
that Klow had not showed himself.

By the time I had reached the seashore, most of my men were in their
boats. Again I stayed till the last, although I could see the enemy's
fleet bearing down hard upon us from the north. In truth we would have
all been lost, had we come in the manner of former campaigns, all
together in big transports. But because we could scatter every which
way, the fleet harmed us little; and four-fifths of us got safely back.

Happily, none of the air-machines had range enough to reach Vlamaland.
As soon as I could get my staff together, I gave orders such as would
insure discipline. Then, reminding my hearties that Klow, knowing our
helplessness, would surely attack as soon as fully equipped, I made this
offer:

"To the man who shall suggest the best way of meeting their attack, I
shall give the third of my empire!"

So they knew that the case was desperate. As for myself, I slept not a
bit, but paced my sleep-chamber and thought deeply.

Now, a bit of a shell, from an enemy slinger, had penetrated my arm.
Till now, I had paid no attention to it. But it began to bother me, so I
pulled the metal from my arm with my teeth. And quite by chance I placed
the billet on the table within a few inches of the compass I had carried
on my boat.

To my intense surprise the needle of the compass swung violently about,
so that one end pointed directly at the fragment of metal. I moved them
closer together; there was no doubt that they were strongly attracted.
The enemy's shells were made of mere iron!

The moment I fully realized this, I saw clearly how we might baffle the
men of Klow. I instantly summoned some men gave the orders much as
though I had known for years what was to be done, and in a few moments
had the satisfaction of seeing my messengers hurrying north and south.

And so it came about that, within three days of our shameful retreat, a
tenth of my men were at work on the new project. As yet there was no
word from my spies across the sea; but we worked with all possible
haste. And this, very briefly, is what we did:

We laid a gigantic line of iron clear across the empire. From north to
south, from snow to snow; one end was bedded in the island of Pathna,
where the north magnetic-pole is found, while the other stopped on the
opposite side of the world, in a hole dug through the ice into the solid
earth of the South Polar Plain. And every foot of that enormous rod--
'twas as big around as my leg--was insulated from the ground with pieces
of our secret non-magnetic alloy!

Not for nothing had our chemists sought the metal which would resist the
lightning. And not for nothing did my bullies piece the rod together,
all working at the same time, so that the whole thing were complete in
seven days. That is, complete save for the final connecting link; and
that lay, a loglike roll of iron, at the door of my palace, ready to be
rolled into place when I were but ready.

And on the morrow the Klow reached our shores.

V

THE VICTORY

My first intent was to let them advance unhampered; but Maka pointed out
that such a policy might give them suspicions, and so we disputed their
course all the way. I gave orders to show no great amount of resistance;
and thus, the louts reached Vlama in high feather, confident that the
game was theirs.

I stood at the door of the palace as Klow himself rolled up to the edge
of the parade-ground. My men, obeying orders, had given way to him; his
crews swarmed the space behind and on all sides of him, while my own
bullies were all about and behind the palace. Never did two such giant
armies face one another in peace; for I had caused my banner to be
floated wrong end to, in token of surrender.

First, a small body of subordinates waited upon me, demanding that I
give up the throne. I answered that I would treat with none save Klow
himself; and shortly the knave, surrounded by perhaps fifty underlings,
stepped up before me.

"Hail, Stroker!" he growled, his voice shaking a bit with excitement;
not with fear, for he were a brave man. "Hail to thee and to thine, and
a pleasant stay in Hofe for ye all!"

"Hail, Klow!" replied I, glancing up meaningly at the air monsters
wheeling there. "I take it that ye purpose to execute us."

"Aye," he growled savagely. "Thou didst attack without provocation. Thy
life is forfeit, and as many more as may be found needful to guarantee
peace."

"Then," I quoth, my manner changing, "then ye have saved me the trouble
of deciding what shall be thy fate. Execution, say you? So be it!"

And I strode down to the great log of iron which lay ready to fill the
gap. Klow looked at me with a peculiar expression, as though he thought
me mad. True, it looked it; how could I do him harm without myself
suffering?

But I kicked the props which held the iron, and gave it a start with my
foot. The ends of the pole-to-pole rod lay concealed by brush, perchance
fifty yards away. In ten seconds that last section had rolled completely
between them; and only a fool would have missed seeing that, the last
ten feet, the iron was fair jerked through the air.

As this happened we all heard a tremendous crackling, like that of
nearby lightning, while enormous clouds of dust arose from the two
concealed ends, which were now become connections. And at the same time
a loud, steely click, just one and no more, sounded from the intruding
host.

For a moment Klow was vastly puzzled. Then he snarled angrily: "What
means this foolery, Strokor? Advance, and give up thy ax!"

For answer I turned me about, so as to face my men, and held up my hand
in signal. Instantly the whistles sounded, and my hearties came bounding
into the field.

"Treachery!" shouted Klow; and his officers ran here and there,
shouting: "To arms! Charge and destroy! No quarter!"

But I paid little attention to the hubbub. I were gazing up at those
infernal creatures of the air; and my heart sang within me as I saw
them, circling erratically but very surely down to the earth. And as
they came nearer, my satisfaction was entire; for their engines were
silent!

At the same time consternation was reigning among our visitors. Not a
man of all Klow's thousands was able to move his car or lift a weapon.
Every slinger was jammed, as though frozen by invisible ice; all their
balls and shells were stuck together, like the work of a transparent
glue. Even their side arms were locked in their scabbards; and all their
tugging could budge them not!

But none of my men were so handicapped. Each man's chariot was running
as though naught had happened; they thundered forward, discharging their
balls and shells as freely as they had across the sea. Their charge was
a murderous one; not a man of Klow's was able to resist, save with what
force he could put into his bare hands.

Klow saw all this from the middle of his group of officers. None were
able to more than place his body 'twixt us and their chief. In a very
few moments they saw that the unknown magic had made them as children in
our hands; they were utterly lost; and Klow turned away from the sight
with a black face. Again he faced me.

"What means this, ye huge bundle of lies? What mean ye by tricking us
with yon badge of surrender, only to tie our hands with thy magic of
Hofe? Is this the way to fight like a man?"

I had stood at ease in my door since rolling the iron. Now, I looked
about me still more easily; my men were running down the louts, who had
jumped from their useless chariots and taken to their heels. 'Twere but
a matter of time before the army of Klow would be no more, at that rate.

"Klow," I answered him mildly; "ye are right; this is not the way to
fight like a man. Neither," I pointed out one of the fallen air-cars;
"neither is that the way, flitting over our heads like shadows, and
destroying us with filthy smoke! Shame on ye, Klow, for stooping to
such! And upon thy own head be the blame for the trick I have played
upon ye!"

"You attacked us without provocation," he muttered, sourly.

"Aye, and for a very good reason," I replied. "Yet I see thy viewpoint,
and shalt give thee the benefit of the doubt." I turned to my whistlers
and gave an order; so that presently the great slaughter had stopped. My
men and Klow's alike struggled back to see what were amiss.

I handed Klow an ax. "Throw away thine own, scabbard and all," I told
him. "It is useless, for 'tis made of iron. Ours, and all our tools of
war, are formed of an alloy which is immune from the magic."

He took the ax in wonderment. "What means it, Strokor?" asked he again,
meanwhile stripping himself in a businesslike fashion that it were good
to see.

"It means," said I, throwing off my robe, "that I have unchained the
magnetism of this world. Know you, Klow, that all of the children of the
sun are full of his power; it is like unto that of the tiny magnet which
ye give children for to play; but it is mighty, even as our world is
mighty."

"Good Jon!" he gasped; for his was not a daring mind. "What have ye
done, ye trifler?"

"I have transformed this empire into one vast magnet," I answered
coolly. Then I showed him a boulder on the summit of a distant hill;
through the tube, Klow could see some of my men standing beside it.

"Place one of thy own men on the roof of the palace," I told Klow, "and
give him orders to lower my banner should ye give him the word.

"For upon the outcome of this fight 'twixt me and thee, Klow, hinges the
whole affair! If thou dost survive, down comes my banner; and my men on
the hill shall topple the boulder which shall rush down the slope and
burst the iron rod and break the spell. Stand, then, and defend
thyself!"

And it did me good to see the spirit fly into his eyes. He saw that his
empire lived or died as he lived or died, and he fought as he had never
fought before. Small man that he was beside myself, he were wondrous
quick and sure in his motions; before I knew it, he had bit his ax deep
into my side.

And in another moment or two it was over. For, as soon as I felt the
pain of that gash, I flung my own blade away; and with a roar such as
would have shaken a stouter heart than his, I charged the man, took a
second fearful blow full on my chest and heeding it not at all I
snatched the ax from his hands. Then, as he turned to run, I dropped
that tool also.

And I ran him down, and felled him, and broke his head with my hands.

VI

THE FITTEST

[Footnote: This chapter was originally as long as the others, but an
unfortunate accident of Mr. Smith's, before he was thoroughly familiar
with the machine, mutilated a large portion of the tape so badly that it
was made worthless. This explains why something appears to be missing
from the account, and also why this chapter begins in the middle of a
sentence.]

slaves; but the most were slain. Neither could we bother with their
women and others left behind.

Now, by this time the empire was as one man in its worship of me. I had
been emperor but a year, and already I had made it certain that only the
men of Vlamaland, and no others, should live in the sight of Jon. So
well thought they of me, I might fair have sat upon my reputation, and
have spent my last days in feasting like the man before me.

But I was still too young and full of energy to take my ease. I found
myself more and more restless; I had naught to do; it had all been done.
At last I sent for old Maka.

"Ye put me up to this, ye old fraud," I told him, pretending to be
wrathful. "Now set me another task, or I'll have thy head!"

He knew me too well to be affrighted. He said that he had been
considering my case of late.

"Strokor, thy father was right when he told thee to have naught to do
with women. That is to say, he were right at the time. Were he alive
today"--I forgot to say that my father was killed in the battle across
the sea--"he would of a certainty say that it were high time for thee to
pick thy mate.

"Remember, Strokor; great though thou art, yet when death taketh thee
thy greatness is become a memory. Methinks ye should leave something
more substantial behind."

It took but little thought to convince me that Maka were right once
more. Fact; as soon as I thought upon it, it were a woman that I was
restless for. The mere notion instantly gave me something worth while to
look forward to.

"Jon bless thee!" I told the old man. "Ye have named both the trouble
and the remedy. I will attend to it at once."

He sat thinking for some time longer. "Has thought of any woman in
special, Strokor?" said he.

I had not. The idea was too new to me. "The best in the world shall be
mine, of course," I told him. "But as for which one--hast any notion
thyself?"

"Aye," he quoth. "'Tis my own niece I have in mind. Perchance ye
remember her; a pretty child, who was with me when thou didst save my
life up there on the mountainside."

I recalled the chit fairly well. "But she were not a vigorous woman,
Maka. Think you she is fit for me?"

"Aye, if any be," he replied earnestly. "Ave is not robust, true, but
her muscles are as wires. It is because of what lies in her head,
however, that I commend her. I have taught her all I know."

"So!" I exclaimed, much pleased. "Then she is indeed fit to be the
empress. And as I recall her, she were exceedingly good to look at."

"Say no more. Ave shall be the wife of Strokor!" And so it was arranged.

Well, and there ye have the story of Strokor, the mightiest man in the
world, and the wisest. More than this I shall not tell with my own lips;
I shall have singers recite my deeds until half the compartments in the
House of Words is filled with the records thereof. But it were well that
I should tell this much in mine own way.

My ambition is fulfilled. Let the hand of Jon descend upon our world, if
it may; I care not if presently the sun come nearer, and the water dry
up, and the days grow longer and longer, till the day and the year
become of the same length. I care not; my people, such as be left of
them, shall own what there is, and shall live as long as life is
possible.

I shall leave behind no race of weaklings. Every man shall be fit to
live, and the fittest of them all shall live the longer. And he, no
matter how many cycles hence, shall look back to Strokor, and to Ave,
his wife, and shall say:

"I am what I am, the last man on the world, because Strokor was the
fittest man of his time!"

Aye; my fame shall live as long as there be life. Tonight, as I speak
these things into the word machine, my heart is singing with the joy of
it all. Thank Jon, I were born a man, not a woman!

Tomorrow I go to fetch Ave. I shall not send for her; I cannot trust her
beauty to the hands of my crew. The more I think of her, the more I see
that mine whole life hath been devised for this one moment. I see that,
insignificant though she be, Ave is a needed link in the chain. I have
come to want her more than food; I am become a lovesick fool!

Aye! I can afford to poke fun at myself. I can afford anything in this
world; for I be its greatest man.

Its greatest man! Here is the place to stop. There is no more I can say,
the story is done; the story of Strokor, the greatest man in the whole
world!

VII

THE GOING

'Tis several years since last I faced this machine, many and many a day
since I said that my story was done, and placed the record on the shelf
of my anteroom, my heart full of satisfaction. And today I must needs
add another record, perhaps two, to the pile.

When I set out for the highlands on the morn following what I last
related I took with me but two or three men; not that I had any need for
guards, but because it looketh not well for the emperor to travel
without retainers, however few. Practically, I was alone.

I reached the locality as the sun went down. The sky was a brilliant
color; I remember it well. Darkness would come soon, though not as
quickly as farther south. Commonly, I think not upon such trifles; but I
were nearing my love, and tender things came easily to my mind.

My chariot kept to the road which lay alongside the irrigating flume, a
stone trough which runs from the snow-covered hills to the dry country
below. I had already noted this flume where it emptied into the basin in
the valley below; for it had h