Page:Amazing Stories Volume 02 Number 06.pdf/32

5 dungeon. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," yes, that was it, "In the midst of life we are in death," "Like a flower in the field—" What was that fleeting thought that seemed to break in on his reverie?

Radium! Radium! why had he not thought of it before? Were there not five pounds of it aboard the projectile? Would not five pounds of radium let loose, disintegrate enough water into gas to blow the projectile to the surface, or to kingdom come?

"Miss Morgan! Miss Morgan!" he called frantically into the little transmitter. "Can't you get some of that radium into your air blast compression chamber and some water along with it? There ought soon to be enough pressure to blow yourself out backwards?"

"I never thought of it," she exclaimed. "I'll just call up the Radium Institute, and ask them the best way to use it."

Within an hour Miss Morgan had let off the first blast, which shot the projectile fourteen feet backwards and that much nearer freedom. Breathlessly the world waited for the result of the next blast.

A wave of rejoicing spread over the earth when the next shot indicated twenty seven feet nearer liberty.

All eyes were fixed on the little patch of comparatively calm water in the centre of the great raft. Those standing on its heaving surface could feel the dull thuds as blast after blast was fired in the depths beneath. It was fortunate, indeed, that this projectile was shuttle shaped and rounded at the rear end, otherwise it might not have kept its direction, and it is very doubtful if Miss Morgan could have done anything in the way of steering, as the vanes would almost certainly have been torn off by its pressure through the mud and shale of the sea bottom.

At last the projectile shot to the surface with a mighty rush, and leaped fifty feet into the air. As it did so Miss Morgan left off a final blast that shot it up backwards several miles. Then, to the astonishment of all the watchers, and most of all the old world man, the great projectile came swooping down in a graceful curve, and turned up again as if to skim over the yacht suspended from the great air tug above. Would it actually go between the supporting cables? It did. The pilot lit on the deck of the yacht with her great weight of tempered steel without even displacing a deck chair. The yacht and air tug sank two hundred feet before the pilot speeded up his lifting propellors sufficiently to counteract the extra weight.

Real emotion now broke loose. Brilliant rockets were fired off in thousands, and countless, coloured balloons of every shape and size were thrown from machines doing the most extraordinary gyrations in the air. They were able to act together in perfect unity just as trained armies do after several years of drill and practice. A hundred machines acting together represented a great wheel rolling slowly across the sky. Others would rush into the sky in a group, and then suddenly spread out like a bursting rocket.

All this was performed above a roaring, tumbling sea that in the old days would have driven everything to shelter, if it could be reached, save the largest ocean ships.

HEN Miss Morgan swung open the balanced steel door and stepped out, the old world man was the first to grasp her by the hand. In the flesh, she was even more beautiful than her projected picture showed her to be. It was a case of love at first sight.

Later, she explained many puzzling things to him. The transmission of power—mostly tide and water power—could be directed through space by means of a sort of beam wave concentrated on the receptive point and kept there by a whole series of delicate relays. Of course, storage of electricity had greatly improved, liquid electrolyte having long been displaced by a heavy gas impregnated with radium salts; the grids were of the finest metal gauze. Every airship had not one but several sources of reserve power, so that they could travel for days independently of the central station. There was still another source of reserve power in everyday use that astonished the old-world man by its simplicity—just the ordinary coil spring that drove the watches and clocks and phonographs, and pressed up the street car trolley poles when they slipped off the wire. Even the children of this new age had little clockwork helicopters that when wound up at a free winding-station would carry them a couple of miles. They seemed to be perfectly safe, for when the spring ran down, they came slowly to the ground.

It was evening, the storm had died away, and the yacht was again floating on the slightly heaving surface of the ocean. The owner and his family had retired, and the ship was heading leisurely south for Bermuda. In the moonlight Miss Morgan and Roger Wells slowly paced the deck. They were not talking very much, but they were thinking a great deal. He was wondering if men proposed and got married in this age as they had in the beginning of the twentieth century. She was feeling the old rebellious feeling against the powers that made the laws. Here was a man whom she could really like, but she supposed he was rated at least in the fortieth division or higher.

At last she turned to him and said "Have you been rated by the doctor yet?"

His face fell, for he felt that his answer would mean the end of their friendship. The words of his host came forcefully back to him, "How do you expect a clever, high spirited girl to marry a man rated below 23?" And he was rated only twenty-one units of intelligence out of a possible hundred. And she had eighty-seven!

She saw the look of misery cross his face, and felt glad.

"He must like me," she thought, "for he is sad that our combined intelligence stands between us."

At last he replied with a deep sigh: "Twenty-one units."

She gazed at him in bewildered astonishment, and then—: "In that case there is nothing to stop us getting married at once," she replied.

"Nothing," he agreed, "if you can stand a husband of such low mentality."

She laughed joyously, "Intelligence tests and rating may be necessary in this age, but they have very little to do with real love. However we must hurry, for I feel sure that they will realize that a mistake has been