Page:Amazing Stories Volume 07 Number 08.djvu/12

Rh what the developments might be in this extraordinary episode.

The first faint streaks of dawn sent a new quiver of suppressed agitation through the assembled multitude. Aware that something startling was sure to happen at sunrise, thousands more came from miles about to swell the vast throngs that had remained about the scene throughout the entire day and on into the night. The police lines were forced back to a greater distance, so as to clear an even larger circle around the fateful shell. The aggregation of scientists and investigators drew back in groups of hushed tenseness. Everyone knew what was about to happen—the cryptic message, in the strange box that came with the projectile, had announced what the program was to be at sunrise. And there was not a soul in the vast assemblage who doubted for a moment the fulfilment of the schedule—there was something about the whole mystifying procedure that denoted scientific precision—harsh, cold, cruel methodicalness.

"Gosh, this is giving me the creeps!" Fletcher's hard breathing revealed his extreme agitation.

"Hold still! here's where something's going to happen!" Hale gripped his chum's arm. Yes! there it was! the first dazzling flash of light over the long Jersey City ridge to the east the first slanting rays of the sun touching the closely packed meadows with beams of cherry and yellow—glinting menacingly from the metallic thing that reared its height on the level plane.

And, as if the magical touch of these rays had actuated some invisible mechanism, the sliding panel began to move—slowly at first, and then more rapidly, as though the huge shell possessed life—as though it wanted to be off and away, bearing in its empty interior a wordless message of negation, failure and defeat.

The panel slid tight with a deliberate click. A myriad horrified eyes were upon it as the projectile quivered slightly, and then suddenly began to ascend, leaving behind it, half buried in the ground, the three feet-like appendages. Vertically upward the glistening double-nosed shell swiftly rose, its brassy surface catching and scattering the rays of the rising sun. Straight up with thousands of necks craning, and thousands of eyes straining to follow it in its flight. In less than a half minute the strange shell, still maintaining that accurately vertical path, was completely swallowed up by the mist and haze of the atmosphere above.

So ended that mystifying episode—for the time being at least. The whole incident might well be considered a bad dream, if not for those tangible proofs that this esoteric visitor left behind it—the three metallic supports that had held the shell in an upright position, the small hinged box with its queer designs, and the tersely worded message that it contained.

The tripod and box, apparently of the same metal as the torpedo, were subjected to chemical analysis. But the tests never got beyond the first stage, for the simple reason that the metal was soon found to be inert to all known chemical reagents. Further, it was infusible even in the intense heat of the oxy-hydrogen flame. Microscopic and spectroscopic tests yielded no more information than did the chemical tests. The metal remained just as profound an enigma as the shell and its purpose.

Comment and discussion were everywhere rife—what was this mysterious race out there in the interstellar void? Why did they require terrestrial scientists? Why had they picked on the earth? What means had they employed to propel and guide their space messenger? Had they aimed at any particular spot on earth or were they shooting at random? What automatic mechanism controlled the return trip through a trackless emptiness? Would this race of intelligent beings accept our wordless refusal as final, or should we expect a second chapter to this tense drama?

Debate interrogation  conjectures  perplextiyperplexity [sic]

HOSE dirty rats! I'd like to lay my hands on one of them this very minute!"

Ray Fletcher's fists clenched, and his eyes blazed with a fire that his chum had never seen there before. Hale made no answer, but turned once more to the newspapers spread out on the table before them. They contained all the blood-chilling details of the latest visitation from the sky.

On Tuesday at sunrise the Jersey shell had taken its mysterious departure into space under circumstances that Hale and Fletcher would not soon forget. For two days an expectant world had lived through a period of extreme tension. Something was going to "break"—that was a dead certainty—but what was it going to be? No one had the temerity to venture even a guess. Two days of anxiety and dread and then had come the horrible "break"

Yesterday, Thursday, Shell No. 4 had been sighted over the little village of Lake George, east of the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. Without any ado, it had fallen in the very midst of the motor tourist camp on the outskirts of the village, had detonated with terrific violence, and had converted a peaceful little vacation community into a horrible shambles.

" [sic]There, in the newspaper before them, were all the blood-curdling facts of the atrocity, the eye-witness stories, the harrowing tales of survivors and injured, the vivid news photos that told more than words could of the horror that had suddenly stricken a peaceful locality.

"What if that shell had landed in the heart of New York?" exclaimed Fletcher "Can you picture the awful consequences?”

"It's bad enough as it is," mused Hale, "without trying to picture anything worse."

"But," returned his chum, "it's altogether possible that this one is only a beginning. There's no doubt that we're in for something—something too terrible to imagine. That crazy pack of scientific lunatics up there, wherever they are, have run amuck. We ignored their demands to come across with our two scientists and now they are showing us that they mean business."

"Something drastic will have to be done," was Hale's gloomy rejoinder—"but what?"

And his interrogation was echoed around the world in the discussions that raged feverishly as a result of the latest atrocity.

Again a flock of officials and scientists gathered at the scene of the new outrage. Fragments of shell were retrieved from the chaos of wreckage at the scene of the explosion. The metal proved to be that same resistant material, with which, at least superficially, the American chemists were now acquainted. The appearance of these fragments attested the terrific violence of the explosive used, as did the awful extent of destruc-