Page:Wonder Stories Quarterly Volume 2 Number 2 (Winter 1931).djvu/8



N another moment the great Hersovitch-Chang planet-plane had docked in a shallow bowl between two low wooded hills, and before opening an air port the little crew took an atmospheric test of the strange scarlet world on which they had arrived. To their astonishment and gratification they found the atmosphere very similar to that of the middle lands of the temperate zone of the earth in early spring.

"A land-leave, little corporal!" cried Bailee. "A three hour land-leave! I'm so ship-sour my liver feels like hell's vacuum cleaner."

"Amen to that," growled Hal-Al. "What's three hours when we've nothing to do here but grease a chair with our own fat."

Davidson considered the situation. Hal-Al, Bailee and himself, were all that remained of a crew of ninety. The others, with one exception, had perished on the planet Kopex located about a half x-ometer distant, where this unit had gone in search of a suitable world to which to send a colony of Arctic Americans from the overflowing earth. Davidson had accompanied this expedition-unit in a minor position as corporal, on condition that he should be allowed the privilege of making certain scientific notes for the Bolivia Geographical Society, that was then engaged at the difficult task of mapping the little known third myriad; but his real purpose for joining the party was to run down a rumor that the Master Criminal C-X had been seen on the planet Kopex. At the last balloting of the secret Ninety-Nine, Davidson had drawn Circle 27, and as Kopex fell just within this circle it was his great privilege and danger to search on that planet for the Master Criminal of the cosmic universe The removal of C-X by death or capture would serve to promote Davidson to the front ranks of that noble organization. Here was a prize worthy of his attention.

But the annihilation of the entire expedition-unit, except four of its members, and the imminent danger of death to the latter, had caused Davidson to abandon Kopex and turn back for reinforcements towards Xea. A chance remark by Bailee that the planet on which they had just landed was as scarlet as 4-X-Olite had aroused the corporal's curiosity and he had docked the plane for a brief inspection of the soil of this strange, colossal world floating in the emptiness of cosmic space.

Since the supreme scientific mind of the earth, Thor Maximus, had discovered the salts of 4-X-Olite early in the thirty-second century, the color scarlet had become the predominant color in the minds of all men, for the salts of 4-X-Olite, the proper use of which increases the life of man almost indefinitely, are of a warm, passionate scarlet.

The fancy had seized Davidson that this scarlet planet might derive its color from some crude form of 4-X-Olite in its soil. This super-precious substance was becoming yearly rarer on all the