Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/79

 walk until I can find some faster mode of travel. But I'll return as soon as I can."

The three men shook hands. Their eyes met. If they wondered whether they'd ever see each other alive again, they showed no signs of it. A moment later, Aaron Carruthers was alone in the giant metal tube on Thunder Mountain.

ORNING found him at the controls again, a little haggard and more than a little worried. No one had come up the mountain with food. Meanwhile the temperature had risen to 115 degrees.

The glowing Mass swam in the eastern sky, climbing slowly to the zenith of the heavens. And all that first full day the Annihilator bombarded it with billions upon billions of neutrons apparently without noticeable effect. At night the Mass sank triumphantly beyond the western horizon.

It returned again at dawn of the second day. But Aaron Carruthers was waiting for it with renewed determination. Once more he released the annihilating beams of neutrons. At noon that day the heat had become almost unbearable. Sweat poured from the young scientist's forehead and into his eyes. He wrapped a handkerchief around it and remained stubbornly at the controls.

The afternoon dragged endlessly. His ears ached with the humming of the annihilator beams as they streamed across the gap between the ends of the electro-carbonide rods and sped toward the hot, glowing Mass.

By nightfall, when Danzig still hadn't returned, Carruthers searched for him with the directional beam of the ether-vision machine. He found him alone in the isolated power-station. The plant was deserted. All the workers had fled. By now the temperature had risen to 125 degrees Farenheit.

Carruthers moistened his lips, turned the directional beam on random spots of the country, and saw nothing but turmoil and unrest. In the south there was little to be seen but dense clouds of forest fire smoke. Wherever he looked he saw jammed highways, and deserted communities.

On the northeast seaboard of the Atlantic he saw immense upheavals of thunder clouds, sheets of lightning and swollen rivers. Still farther north, clear beyond Labrador, were muddy torrents that had long since overflowed their banks.

Westward and still farther north probed the ether-vision beam across the wilds of northern Canada to Alaska and beyond. Stark pinnacles of rock were thrusting their serried ranks through what had once been everlasting ice peaks. The age-old glaciers were being thrust back under the intense heat.

Throughout the night the young scientist checked every spot on earth and the answer was the same. Even the Moon had lost some of its coldness, and was covered with vapor. A new magnetic point had developed which threw shipping and air transports into a panic. One by one the great hydro-electric plants went dead, as dams, weakened by the tremendous pounding of flood waters, were rent asunder.

The lone watcher's heart beat with compassion whenever the directional beam picked up groups of humans in attitudes of prayer. No longer did sweat pour into his eyes. His body ached, and his skin was dry as parchment. He searched around outside and found a corrugated iron can filled with warm water. From it he drank and sloshed his head and face with the blessed moisture.

Somehow, he got through the night, rational and sane.

HE third day of his silent battle dawned redly. He saw the Mass the moment it rose above the eastern horizon and into