Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/20

20 ed, as they had done when he was about to shoot Dane, before.

In the next moment they squeezed shut entirely, his face screwing up as a man's does when he is undergoing extreme agony. His fingers opened, quivering, to let the gun drop on the floor. Dane could see, now, the smooth hole burned in his breast, as if a two-inch drill had bored through him. The nauseating stench of scorched flesh reached his nostrils.

Jeffrey Anson slumped to the floor. The golden man pivoted swiftly, motioning Dane to rise.

With his shocked gaze on the man's face, Dane slowly got to his feet. He saw a long face with piercing amber-colored eyes. The mouth was sensitive; the features almost spiritual in their delicate molding.

The man spoke as he put his gun into a sheath.

"What madness possessed you to come here at a time like this?" he demanded. "You knew they watch you night and day!"

"But—what—I mean—who—are you?" Dane creaked.

"Never mind that! Come closer."

Dane found himself moving toward the golden man. Found himself in the grip of those hypnotic eyes as they came face to face. The whole visage of the man seemed to become hard and glittering, like polished brown granite. Dane was helpless to move.

"I have watched you for many months, and I have not been pleased with what I have seen. You have let your heart interfere with your work. You are far superior to the irresponsible drones who compose most of the American people, but you have done no more toward completing Mortimer Cabot's work than they have."

A shameful flush dyed the chemist's cheeks.

"I—know," he muttered. "They—well, it's hard to work, knowing the secret police are watching you all the time."

"It was hard for Mortimer Cabot to work, too, but he didn't let the Vedette frighten him!" Dane squirmed; then the golden-clad man went on. "There is another who is not pleased with you. Samuel Cabot, your father!"

"My father!" The words were in Dane's mouth, but they were never uttered. The tall man raised his hands and placed a forefinger against each of Dane's temples. All at once the walls of the cavern rolled back, and he seemed to be standing on an eminence at the center of a deep, round valley almost like a crater.

TEEP cliffs shot up on every side. At the bases of these cliffs were immense taluses of broken rubble; just clear of the taluses, the buildings began. They covered every square foot of the valley floor, with only narrow alleys between them. All of them were of stone, makeshift-looking affairs hastily thrown up.

Dane slowly turned to look behind him. What he saw deepened the puzzled scowl on his face. A great, brass bowl rested on stone columns fifteen feet off the ground, a series of pipes running from the bottom of it. There were a score of glass vats filled with red liquid and connected with the pipes. Then Dane saw the little group by one of the stone columns.

They numbered about ten. There were five men who resembled the golden man, clothed the same and alike translucent. There were several women, in the midst of them a tall, fair-haired girl who was smiling at Dane. And in front of them all Dane's father.

"Dad!" Dane hadn't said that word