CHAPTER II

The Menace of the Mist

The little Camel-back plane was a wonder. The soft whispering hum of the turbine engine belied its tremendous power. The slender, white metal wings cut the air at the rate of two and a half miles per minute. Presently we saw a smudge of smoke where the blue sea met the bluer sky ahead, and soon the little machine had dropped on the deck of a destroyer.

The sister vessel was four or five miles to starboard. The two ships were plowing deliberately along, at about ten knots, keeping some twenty-five miles behind the tramp steamer they were shadowing. One of the officers took us up on the little bridge, and we learned that the little ships were keeping track of the tramp with their radio equipment.

The radio man took us in and let us listen to the calls between the tramp and some point far ahead. Those were the strangest sounds I have ever heard. Thin, stuttering, stridulating squeaks and squeals! Even allowing for distortion in transmission, it was hard to imagine what might make them.

"That's something talking," Bill said. "And human beings don't make noises like that."

"It may be," the operator said, "that what we hear is just an ordinary conversation, 'scrambled' to keep us from understanding it, and 'unscrambled' by the receiver. Such devices have been in use for years."

But there was no conviction in his voice. And certainly, those strange noises sounded to me like the communication of some alien beings. But what might they be?

Later in the day, Bill and I took turns in going up with the Camel-back to keep tab on the movements of the tramp, since the radio calls had ceased. The day passed, and the white sun sank back of the glittering western waves. During the hot, moonless night, the ether was still, and we could do nothing but steam on in the same direction. I went up twice, but the tramp was showing no lights, and I failed to locate her. At midnight Bill came on deck, and I went below to a bunk.

It was just after dawn that the alarm was sounded. I was awakened by the roar of the little ship's forward gun. It was firing steadily as I went on deck, and I heard a confusion of sounds--the siren was blowing, and there was a medley of shouts, orders, and curses, punctuated with the reports of small arms.

I saw that the Camel-back was gone from the deck. Bill was up again.

As I stepped on deck there was a great clanging roar from below. The propellers had been lifted from the water! The engines raced madly for a minute, and then were stopped. I ran to the rail to see what had happened to throw the organization of the crew into such confusion. And indeed it was an amazing sight that met my eyes!

The ship was floating in the air, a hundred feet above the waves! The air was still, the sea was smooth and black.... The eastern sky was lit by the silver curtain of the dawn, with the old moon hanging in it. Before us, and below, two hundred yards away, was a queer luminous hill--a shining cloud of red-purple vapor that rolled spread heavily upon the black water. I saw two similar twisting mounds of gas astern, gleaming with a painful radiance.

And the ship was rising into the air!

It was drifting swiftly up, through the still air, so that a wind seemed to blow down upon us. I saw a rifle hanging in the air ten feet above me, and a steel boat rising a dozen feet over the mast. Suddenly it came to me that something had negated the gravity of the metal parts of the ship. I thought of the story of the gravity-destroying bombs used in the raid of the night before upon the thorium stores.

The forward gun was still firing steadily, though the terrorized men had deserted the others. I saw a man point above us, and looked. A red airplane, with thick fuselage and short wings, was flying silently and swiftly across our bows. As it passed, something fell from it. It was a dark object that fell and exploded just above us, bursting into a thick, roily cloud of shining purple mist. The light of it hurt my eyes. And the ship plunged upward faster.

In view of what happened later, there can be no doubt that the luminous gas was a radioactive element derived by the forced acceleration of the decomposition of thorium. It was similar to the inert radioactive gas niton, or "radium emanation," which is formed by the expulsion of an alpha particle from the radium atom. And there can be no doubt that its emanations affected the magnetic elements, iron, nickel, cobalt, and oxygen in such a manner as to reverse the pull of gravity. With the invention of permalloy and other similar substances in the past decade, such a thing is much less incredible than it might have seemed ten years ago.

In a few moments the red ship had passed out of sight. Looking dazedly to the west, I saw a number of bright points of purple fire against the deep blue of the sky--radioactive clouds sending out the gravity-nullifying radiations. The dark shape of the other destroyer, upside down, was floating up among them. It must have been almost a mile up, already.

As I stood there astounded, the officers seemed to be making a furious attempt to restore order. Then men were running about, babbling and cursing in utter confusion. I saw one man don a life belt and jump insanely over the rail--to plunge like a plummet to the water five hundred yards below. A dozen more poor fellows followed him before the mate could stop the rush. And perhaps their fate is as good as that of the others.

Suddenly a wild-eyed seaman sprang at my throat. In spite of my amazement, I was able to stop him with a punch at the jaw. In a moment I realized what he was after. The parachute that I had worn on my last flight in the Camel-back was strapped to me. As the fellow got up to charge again, the deck tilted (probably the ship was upset by the recoil of the gun).

Presently I found the rip-cord and jerked it. The white silk bellowsed out behind me, while my unfortunate shipmates fell, dwindling dark specks, to make white splashes in the sea below. The ill-fated ship must have been half a mile high then. I glimpsed it once or twice, a vanishing black dot--driven out into space!

By the time I had struck the chill water I almost wished that I had fallen with the others. I contrived to cut the harness loose, and to get rid of my coat and shoes; and set myself to the task of keeping afloat as long as possible.

On to the Mine

It must have been an hour later that I heard the hum of the Camel-back's propeller, and saw the little machine skimming low over the waves. Bill leaned out and waved a hand in greeting. In a few minutes he had brought the machine down lightly in the water beside me, and hauled me aboard.

"I went up at three o'clock," he said, "to see if I could locate the Jap. I was coming down when the red machines began to let loose their shining clouds. The plane went up. I stopped the engine, and still it went up. Its weight was gone. I almost froze before it started falling."

"Those ships may go on to the moon! They may become minor satellites themselves!"

"You saw the red machines dealing out the dope?"

"One of them. Who could it--"

"It's our job to find out. We better head back for the mine, to see what's happened there."

The trim little machine skimmed smoothly over the level sea, and easily took the air. We flew southwest. It was not many hours before we sighted land that must have been the lower tip of Lower California. In an hour more we were flying over Mexico, the most ancient, and paradoxically, the least known country on the continent.

We flew over a broad plain checkered with the bright green of fields, over ancient cities and mean adobe villages, and over the vast forests of pine, cut with twisting canyons, that cover the slopes of the mighty mountains that rose before us. As we went on, the green valleys of the rushing mountain streams grew narrower; and the grim wild peaks that rimmed them, higher and more frequent. Sheer jagged summits rose above steep, forest-covered slopes. We were reaching the heart of the Sierra Madre range.

At last the vast bare conical mountain loomed up to the north of us, that Bill told me was Mocolynatal--the place of the hidden radio station. Its sheer black slopes tower fifteen thousand feet above the sea. From its appearance, it was not hard to guess that it had a crater of considerable dimensions.

The mountain crept around to our left, as we flew on toward the mine. Suddenly Bill shouted and pointed toward the peak. I looked. Above the dark outline of the cone, a huge globe of blue light was rising, flaming with an intense brilliance that gave a ghastly tint of blue to all that desert wilderness of peaks! Like a great moon of blue fire, it rose swiftly into the sky! It dwindled, faded, was gone!

I felt the hair rise on my neck. I was glad that our plane was swift and far away. If it was a human power with which we had to deal, I thought, it must have made strange advances. And then I remembered the strange noises upon the ether--sounds more like the stridulations of great insects than the voices of men!

"That has happened twice before," Bill said. "But I didn't tell anybody about it in the States. It's too damned unbelievable."

At the Thorium Mine

In half an hour we were fifty miles south of Mocolynatal, circling over the mine. El Tigre Mine is near the center of a rocky, triangular plateau. Northwest and southwest, the Sierra Madre rises. On the east side of the triangle is the river, a tributary of the Nazas, in a canyon deep enough to hold the stream a hundred times. Perhaps a dozen square miles are so enclosed. It is a desert of sand and rocks, cut up with dry arroyos, scantily covered with yucca, mesquite, and cactus.

The mine buildings stand on the little stream that cuts a track of vivid green across the neutral gray of the waste to the canyon below. Sitting there on the dull-hued plain, with the Cordillerras rising so abruptly a few miles back, the buildings looked very tiny and insignificant. Across the stream from the shaft-house, the shops, and the quarters of the men is a square, fortress-like two story residence of rough gray stone.... The narrow-gauge railroad track runs from it down toward the canyon like thin black threads.

As we flew over the buildings, a trim white figure appeared on the roof of the residence, and waved a slender arm. I knew that it must be Ellen, and I felt oddly excited at the thought of seeing her again.

Bill touched the button that released the rotor, and the machine settled lightly to earth near the main building. A short waddling person and a slender active one--the Doctor and Ellen--came out of the house and hurried toward us.

"Why h-h-h-h-hello, Bob, I'm s-sur-surprised to see you," the Doctor rattled off. I have always had the opinion that he wouldn't stammer if he would take time to talk, but he is always in a hurry. "You're w-w-w-welcome, though. Looks like a new m-ma-ma-machine you have, Bill. The red ship c-c-c-came again while you were gone. I've got something to t-t-t-t-tell you. But get out and come in to the shade."

He hurried us toward the house. He was just as I remembered him--a short man, a little stout, with a perpetual grin on his moon-face, and movements as short and jerky as his speech. He was panting with excitement, and very glad to see us.

Ellen Vernon was, if possible, even more beautiful than she had been to my boyish eyes. Her dark eyes still held the flame of restless mischief that had brought me the icy plunge. I believe a recollection of the incident passed through her mind as she saw me, for her eyes suddenly met mine engagingly, and then were briefly turned away, while a quick soft flush spread over her glowing, sun-colored cheek. I got a subtle intoxication even out of watching the smooth grace of her movements.

We shook hands with the Doctor, and Ellen offered me her strong cool hand.

"I'm glad to see you, Bob," she said simply. "I've often thought of you. And you've come in at an interesting time. Dad turned loose his ray yesterday, and brought down one of the red machines. I guess Bill has told you--"

"Yes," the Doctor interrupted, "the th-th-th-thing had come sneaking around here once too often. I tried the tube on it and it fell about a mile up the creek. Funny thing about it. The red ship struck the ground, and then something left it and went b-b-b-b-back into the air!"

"Something like a bright blue balloon carried the thing up in the air," Ellen added. "It saved itself with that, just like a man wrecked in the air uses a parachute. But it was not a man that sailed up under that ball of blue light! It was a queer twisting purple thing! I used the field glasses--"

"It's not m-m-m-men that fly the red ships," the Doctor said. "It's c-cre-cre-creatures of the upper air!"

We stepped up on the broad, shady verandah, and Bill and the Doctor stopped by the steps, comparing notes. Ellen gave me a welcome drink of icy water from the wind-cooled earthen _olla_ hanging from the roof. Straight, and tanned, she looked very beautiful against the desert background. She was the same girl she had always been--bright, daring, and alluring. Neither she nor the Doctor seemed unduly excited over the astounding news they had just delivered.

The desert lay away to the eastward, undulating in the heat like a windswept lake. Gray or dully green with the yucca and manzanita upon it, it was sharply cut by the rich green mark of the wandering stream. Its vastness tired the eyes, like a limitless weird dead sea. North and south the mountains rose, gripping the plain in a grim and ancient grasp. The hills were still tinted with the blues and purples of the morning shades, save where some higher peak caught the sunlight and reflected it in a fiercer, redder gleam. Far in the north, above the nearer peaks, I made out the distantly mysterious, dull blue outline of Mocolynatal--the mountain of the hidden menace.

In such a wild and primitive setting, human civilization seemed a distant, unimportant issue. The menace of the desert, of naked nature, alone seemed real. No wild tale was incredible there.

And the wonderful girl before me, smiling, cool and resourceful, seemed to fit in with that rough scenery, seemed almost a part of it. Ellen was the kind of woman who can master her environment.

"Coming down here was a pretty severe change for a campus queen, wasn't it?" I asked her.

"The royal blood never flowed too freely in my veins," she said. "I rather like it here. The ore train from Durango brings the mail twice a week, and I read a lot. Then, I'm beginning to love the desert and the mountains. Sometimes I feel almost like worshipping old Mocolynatal. They say the Indians did."

"I wonder if it's ever been climbed?"

"I think not. Unless by the owners of the red airplanes. Dad thinks they are things that have come down out of the upper air to attack the earth. I've always been sorry I wasn't here when the tiger was killed, but this promises a bigger adventure yet! And I'll be right in the middle of it!" She laughed.

The Death Ray

"I hadn't heard of the tiger's misfortune," I said, a little amused at her eagerness for adventure.

"You know Uncle Jake had a ranch down on the Nazas. Once he trailed a tiger up here with his hounds. He killed him right here, and happened to see the glitter of gold in the blood-stained quartz. He named the mine El Tigre--The Tiger. Along with the gold ore are deposits of _monazite_--thorium ore. Dad began to work them when we came to get thorium to use in his experiments."

"Say, Bob," the Doctor called, "I want to sh-sh-sh-show you something. Come on in the lab." The little man took my arm and hurried me down the long cool hall, and up a flight of steps to a great room on the second floor. It suggested an astronomical observatory; it was circular, and the roof was a great glass dome. In the center and projecting through the dome was a huge device that resembled a telescope. About the walls a variety of scientific equipment.

"That's my r-r-r-ray machine," he said. "Modified adaptation of the old Coolidge tube, with an electrode of molten _Vernonite_. _Vernonite_ is my invention--an alloy of thorium with some of the alkaline earth metals. When the alloy is melted there is a comparatively rapid atomic disintegration of the radioactive thorium, and the radiation is modified by passages through a powerful magnetic field, and by polarization with quartz prisms. The Vernon Ray has characteristics controllable by the adjustment of the apparatus, generally resembling those of the ultra-violet or actinic rays of sunlight, but intensified to an extreme degree.

"The chemical effects are marvelous. The Vernon Ray will bleach indigo, or the green of plant leaves. It stimulates oxidation, and has a tendency to break up the proteins and other complex molecules.

"This tube has a range of five miles, and will penetrate a foot of lead. I have killed animals with it by breaking up the haemoglobin in the blood. By special adjustment, its effects would be fatal at even greater range. It might be set to break the body proteins into the split protein poisons--there are a thousand ways it might kill a man, quickly or by hideous lingering death.

"Used in war, the Vernon Ray would not only kill men, but destroy or ignite such useful chemicals as fuels and explosives. It would destroy vegetation and food supplies. In fact, it would make war impossible, and it is my hope that it will end war altogether!"

"But what if the wrong fellow gets hold of it?"

He nodded to a safe at the wall. "Plans locked up there. And nobody knows about it. Even if someone had the plans, he could hardly secure the large quantities of thorium required without attracting attention." I thought of the raid on the gas mantle factory.

"I mean to turn it over to the American government pretty soon, but I hope to make another development. Ordinary heat and light waves set up molecular disturbances in matter; in fact, heat is merely molecular vibration. I hope to discover a frequency in the spectrum that will stimulate atomic vibration to such an extent as to break down the electronic system. Objects upon which such a ray is directed will explode with incredible violence. In my earlier experiments with _Vernonite_, the molten alloy in the tube, I almost had a catastrophe from the atomic explosion of the electrode. It would have blown El Tigre off the map! The radioactivity of thorium is slight; I must increase it vastly. The adjustment is delicate."

He let me look into the apparatus. It was plainly electrical. There were motors, generators, coils, transformers, mirrors and lenses in a lead housing, vast condensers, and a huge vacuum tube which seemed to have a little crucible of glowing liquid for the anode. Back of it was a great parabolic reflector which must have sent out the beam of destruction.

"The idea of atomic force as a d-d-d-d-destructive agency is not new," he went on, again almost too enthusiastic to talk. "The sun is thought to ob-ob-ob-obtain its boundless energy from the process of atomic disintegration, and m-m-m-m-m-men of science long since agree that any instrument using intra-atomic energy would be a t-t-t-t-terrible weapon!"