Page:Astounding Stories of Super Science (1930-03).djvu/95

 tests with Carson seem to indicate that it is a success. I should have called you to-morrow, for further tests. Nearly five years of damned hard work to a successful conclusion, Taylor, and then this mermaid comes along and makes my experiment appear about as important as one of those breakers rolling in out there!"

"And what do you plan to do now?" I asked eagerly, glancing down at the beautiful pale face that glimmered up at me through the clear water of the pool.

HY, try it on her!" exclaimed Mercer with mounting enthusiasm. "Don't you see, Taylor? If it will work on her, and we can direct her thoughts, we can find out her history, the history of her people! We'll add a page to scientific history—a whole big chapter!—that will make us famous. Man, this is so big it's swept me off my feet! Look!" And he held out a thin, aristocratic brown hand before my eyes, a hand that shook with nervous excitement.

"I don't blame you," I said quickly. "I'm no savant, and still I see what an amazing thing this is. Let's get busy. What can I do?"

Mercer reached around the door into the laboratory and pressed a button.

"For Carson," he explained. "We'll need his help. In the meantime, we'll look over the set-up. The apparatus is strewn all over the place."

He had not exaggerated. The set-up consisted of a whole bank of tubes, each one in its own shielding copper box. On a much-drilled horizontal panel, propped up on insulators, were half a score of delicate meters of one kind and another, with thin black fingers that pulsed and trembled. Behind the panel was a tall cylinder wound with shining copper wire, and beside it another panel, upright, fairly bristling with knobs, contact points, potentio-meters, rheostats and switches. On the end of the table nearest the door was still another panel, the smallest of the lot, bearing only a series of jacks along one side, and in the center a switch with four contact points. A heavy, snaky cable led from this panel to the maze of apparatus further on.

HIS is the control panel," explained Mercer. "The whole affair, you understand, is in laboratory form. Nothing assembled. Put the different antennae plug into these jacks. Like this."

He picked up a weird, hastily built contrivance composed of two semi-circular pieces of spring brass, crossed at right angles. On all four ends were bright silvery electrodes, three of them circular in shape, one of them elongated and slightly curved. With a quick, nervous gesture, Mercer fitted the thing to his head, so that the elongated electrode pressed against the back of his neck, extending a few inches, down his spine. The other three circular electrodes rested on his forehead and either side of his head. From the center of the contrivance ran a heavy insulated cord, some ten feet in length, ending in a simple switchboard plug which Mercer fitted into the uppermost of the three jacks.

"Now," he directed, "you put on this one"—he adjusted a second contrivance upon my head, smiling as I shrank from the contact of the cold metal on my skin—"and think!"

He moved the switch from the position marked "Off" to the second contact point, watching me intently, his dark eyes gleaming.

Carson entered, and Mercer gestured to him to wait. Very nice old chap, Carson, impressive even in his bathing suit. Mercer was mighty lucky to have a man like Carson

OMETHING seemed to tick suddenly, somewhere deep in my consciousness.

"Yes, that's very true: Carson is a most decent sort of chap." The words were not spoken. I did not hear them, I knew them. What—I glanced at Mer-