Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 07.djvu/89

664 should be sufficient exposure," he remarked, setting the electric, split-second automatic stop.

"Stand back, please!"

As the little group moved slightly to one side of the path of the ray, Stevens closed the primary circuit of the transmitter.

A weird, horrific screech filled the room, as though an invisible Twentieth Century Limited express train had applied its brakes suddenly to screaming steel rails. All the Jinnis of Hell together could hardly equal the terror of it, thought Mason.

ND then silence descended, broken only by the faint, rattling, tinkle of broker, glass falling somewhere inside the box on the carriage.

Stevens smiled.

"That was the swan-song of the transmitting tube. Tubes always collapse under the strain when used for a full exposure. We exhaust their three years of possible usefulness in a few, hectic seconds, and their elements shriek in protest as they disintegrate."

"Hurray!" interrupted Johnssen. "Bring the slide back before our subject freezes to death. I'll have to warm it with a light bath and give it oxygen."

The slide was immediately and deftly transferred back to its seat under the microscope lens, and treated to a bath of light directed at it laterally, and the cover glass lifted for an instant.

"You shall be the first to look, Gary," directed Doctor Santurn. "I think you know from observation how to focus the microscope. It is simply the old type worked out to almost absolute perfection."

Mason's eyes were affixed to the stereoscopic attachment, the milli-vernier adjustment screw turning slowly between his fingers.

Back and forth, back and forth, he turned the adjustment screw, raising and lowering the tube columns until the field cleared. Then Mason's hand drew slowly away from the super-microscope.

He gave a startled cry.

"Good God, Oliver! Something's moving! Skimming about here and there in the drop of fluid! It can't be—it's impossible!"

"Is it?" asked the Doctor testily. "I thought you inspected every step of the process yourself."

"I did—I did!" cried Mason excitedly, still watching the unicellular bit of life moving about in its element. "Only this—" he turned and looked at the silent group, with his arms stretched to them appealingly.

"This is no hoax, gentlemen? It isn't an elaborate farce at my expense? It's true? Is it?"

One by one they gravely nodded affirmation of the genuineness of what he had seen, and at last he faltered a little, and breathing with difficulty turned to the Doctor.

"I—I'm not well, Oliver. I'd like to rest a bit. This thing has struck me all of a heap!"

T seemed incredible to Mason that only twenty-four hours' earlier he had been seated with the proprietor of The Travelers' Hotel in the village, laughing and conversing light-heartedly over the whimsical absurdities, suspicions and superstitions of the natives, as related by the host.

That was another world, another existence as far as the Poles away from this atmosphere of deadly, calm, fixity of purpose with the destruction of mankind's beloved and familiar beliefs as its goal.

Again in the library, resting from the shock of what he had witnessed in the laboratory, Mason sat tête-à-tête with the biologist and listened with strained absorption to his friend's remarks. ("Friend? I'm not certain!" thought Mason,)

"What you saw performed, this evening," the Doctor was saying, "was the achievement of a goal we have already reached by a slightly different and easier method. You saw a single cell created. We have gone further—much further.

"Every one of the fish and mammals in Johnssen's care was born in a similar manner. Only we didn't create them cell by cell. We merely obtained the unfertilized fish roe, or reptilian eggs, or mammalian ova from various private aquaria and zoological collections all over the country, wherever a female specimen had freshly expired or been killed.

"It is easier to start with the unfertilized primary cell, actuate it in the laboratory, and permit its gestation and growth thereafter in a natural manner.

"Again—we have gone beyond even this. We know the composition of the eggs and ova of more than fifty varieties of organisms. We have duplicated them successfully and actuated them with vibratory impulses equivalent to the fertilization and germination processes of 'Nature'. We control the sex at will by limitation of the chromosomes of the primary cell. In most respects, this method is the simpler of the two we have worked out.

"The other method, of which you saw an example tonight, is a step toward creating the individual tissues of the grown body. We have already duplicated the main, or parenchyme elements of several varieties of connective tissue—namely, areolar, fibrous, elastic, reticular, and the like.

"Blood, however, presents a difficult problem, and is taking longer to duplicate, because of the various cellular elements in it which exist in changing proportions. We're getting there, though!"

"And if you do?" asked Mason, hanging on each word of the highly technical description of the Doctor's work.

And when we do', you should have said," rejoined Doctor Santurn.

"When we do," he continued, "we'll use the human ovum now in Johnssen's incubator, and artificially create a human being!"

"Damn your matter-of-fact confidence!" thought Mason.

"Just now," resumed the Doctor, "we want to be able to duplicate every variety of human blood we encounter in order to prepare for any emergency we may encounter that may arise after the birth of our subject. Transfusion, for instance."

Mason shivered slightly.

N his reverent delving into the archives of the past, 'midst African sand dunes and buried Greek and Roman cities, he had come across the records of unspeakable practices, horrific and re-