Page:Amazing Stories Volume 17 Number 06.djvu/103

Rh talked, the more he seemed to be in earnest. Kirk gave up trying to identify the expressions of intelligence which his friend attributed to these animals. But Kirk saw more than he had seen in the first place.

Most of the beasts continued with their gentle motions, and if one watched them closely, it did seem that they were particular which of their several arms they chose to move. So soft was their skin that these fan motions were made in complete silence.

"Do you see those men across the way?" Allison asked. "They are the new caretakers. They used to work for Ubruff's. We had a little tussle with one of them at the Haycox Institute."

"Champ," said Kirk. "I remember him. And that taller fellow looks like Bill Kite. Do the boys know you?"

"Oh, we are quite buddies. They have what they want, and they don't mind letting me sit around like a schoolboy at a circus."

The manager of the Ohio Zoo came to the pen a few minutes later, and he and the group of caretakers fell into a noisy argument.

"We have got to get rid of them," the manager asserted. "It costs too much to feed them."

There was considerable quarreling, and it continued until Allison and Kirk strolled over and called the manager aside.

"How much?" Allison asked, "would it take to keep feeding these monsters for another month?"

"Too much. The Zoo Board says we have to get rid of them."

"If I could collect a five thousand dollar donation," suggested Allison, "would you go on with them?"

"These are not times to be throwing money into dumb beasts. We can't even collect taxes. When we got them in here, we thought we could bring the crowd back. But everyone's too busy building. We're losing money."

Allison repeated, "Would five thousand dollars change your mind?"

"Well, at the rate they eat it won't take them long to run through it, but if you know where we can get five thousand dollars—"

To Kirk's bewilderment, Allison wrote a check for the entire sum.

"There. Treat them right. Don't let them go hungry."

OMEWHERE on the outer limits of the universe the Earth came to a gradual stop.

This was a strange experience indeed for the denizens of this solar planet. No one could get used to the idea of days without a succession of light and darkness. But now there was a soft white light on all sides of the planet. The shell which had once given a yellowish cast to the sunlight was still hovering round the Earth, but the swift race through space had transformed it into something clearer. People could gaze through it as if it were a thin pane of purest glass—an endless window curving three thousand miles above the Earth's surface.

Astronomers thought that their telescopes could discern signs of their own lost universe. But all this new outlook was so vague that the Earth had lost its sense of direction.

The new objects which loomed up were huge shadows like heads as large as little moons. Sometimes these shadows came quite close to the outer shell, and it could be seen that they were not only heads but also bodies. In size they compared with the largest continents. Under certain light these