Earth, the Marauder

BEGINNING A THREE-PART NOVEL

By Arthur J. Burks


FOREWORD


_Despite the fact that for centuries the Secret of Life had been the
possession of children of men, the Earth was dying. She was dying
because the warmth of the sun was fading; because, with the obliteration
of the oceans in order to find new land upon which men might live, her
seasons had become stormy, unbearably cold and dreary: and the very fact
of her knowledge of the Secret of Life, in which men numbered their ages
by centuries instead of by years, was her undoing._

[Sidenote: Out of her orbit sped
the teeming Earth--a
marauding planet bent on starry
conquest.]

[Illustration]

_For when men did not die, they multiplied beyond all counting, beyond
all possibility of securing permanent abiding places. One man, in the
days when the earth was young, and man lived at best to the age of three
score years and ten, could have, given time and opportunity, populated a
nation. Now, when men lived for centuries, eternally youthful, their
living descendants ran into incalculable numbers._

_The earth--strange paradox--was dying because it had learned the Secret
of Life. Twenty centuries before, the last war of aggression had been
fought, in order that an over-populated nation might find room in which
to live. Now all the earth was one nation, speaking one tongue--and
there were no more lands to conquer._




CHAPTER I

_Sarka_


In his laboratory atop the highest peak in the venerable Himalayas,
lived Sarka, conceded by the world to be its greatest scientist, despite
his youth. His grandfather, who had watched the passing of eighteen
centuries, had discovered the Secret of Life and thoughtlessly, in the
light of later developments, broadcast his discovery to the world. The
genius of this man, who was also called Sarka, had been passed on to his
son, Sarka the Second, and by him in even greater degree to Sarka the
Third ... called merely Sarka for the purposes of this history.

Had Sarka lived in the days before the discovery of the Secret of Life,
people of that day would have judged him a young man of twenty. His real
age was four centuries.

Behind him as he sat moodily staring at the gigantic Revolving Beryl
stood a woman of most striking appearance. Her name was Jaska, and
according to ideas of the Days Before the Discovery, she seemed a trifle
younger than Sarka. Her hand, unadorned by jewelry of any kind, rested
on Sarka's shoulder as he studied the Revolving Beryl, while her eyes,
whose lashes, matching her raven hair, were like the wings of tiny
blackbirds, noted afresh the wonder of this man.

"What is to be done?" she asked him at last, and her voice was like
music there in the room where science performed its miracles for Sarka.

* * * * *

Wearily Sarka turned to face her, and she was struck anew, as she had
been down the years since she had known this man, every time their
glances met, at the mighty curve of his brow, which rendered
insignificant his mouth, his delicate nose of the twitching nostrils,
the well-deep eyes of him.

"Something must be done," he said gloomily, "and that soon! For, unless
the children of men are provided with some manner of territorial
expansion, they will destroy one another, only the strongest will
survive, and we shall return to the days when the waters covered the
earth, and monstrous creatures bellowed from the primeval slime!"

"You are working on something?" she asked softly.

For a moment he did not answer. While she waited, Jaska peered into the
depths of the Revolving Beryl, which represented the earth. It was fifty
feet in diameter, and in its curved surface and entrancing depths was
mirrored, in this latest development of teleview, all the earth and the
doings of its people. But Jaska scarcely saw the fleeting images, the
men locked in conflict for the right to live, the screaming,
terror-stricken women. This was now a century-old story, and the
civilization of Earth had almost reached the breaking point.

No, she scarcely saw the things in the Beryl, for she had read the hint
of a vast, awesome secret in the eyes of Sarka--and wondered if he dared
even tell her.

* * * * *

"If the people knew," he whispered, "they would do one of two things!
They would tear me limb from limb, and hurl the parts of me outward into
space forever--or they would demand that I move before I am ready--and
cause a catastrophe which could never be rectified; and this grand old
Earth of ours would be dead, indeed!"

"And this secret of yours?" Jaska now spoke in the sign language which
only these two knew, for there were billions of other Revolving Beryls
in the world, and words could be heard by universal radio by any who
cared to listen. And always, they knew, the legions of enemies of Sarka
kept their ears open for words of Sarka which could be twisted around to
his undoing.

"I should not tell even you," he answered, his fingers working swiftly
in their secret, silent language, which all the world could see, but
which only these two understood. "For if my enemies knew that you
possessed the information, there is nothing they would stop at to make
you tell."

"But I would not tell, Sarka," she said softly. "You know that!"

He patted her hands, and the ghost of a smile touched his lips.

"No," he said, "you would not tell. Some day soon--and it must be soon
if the children of men are not to destroy themselves, I will tell you!
It is a secret that lies heavily on my heart. If I should make a
mistake.... Chaos! Catastrophe! Eternal, perpetual dark, the children
of men reduced to nothingness!"

* * * * *

A little gasp from Jaska, for it was plain that this thing Sarka hinted
at was far and away beyond anything he had hitherto done--and Sarka had
already performed miracles beyond any that had ever been done by his
predecessors.

"When my grandfather," went on Sarka moodily, "perfected, in this
self-same laboratory, the machinery by which the waters of the oceans
could be disintegrated, our enemies called him mad, and fought their way
up these mountain slopes to destroy him! With the pack at his doors, he
did as he had told them he would do. Though they hurried swiftly into
the great valleys to colonize them--where oceans had been--they were
like ravening beasts, and gave my grandfather no thanks. Our people have
always fought against progress, have always been disparaging of its
advocates! When the first Sarka discovered the Secret they would have
destroyed him, though he made them immortal...."

"If only the Secret," interrupted Jaska, "could be returned to him who
discovered it! That would solve our problem, for men then would die and
be buried, leaving their places for others."

Again that weary smile on the face of Sarka.

"Take back the Secret which is known to-day to every son and daughter of
woman? Impossible! More nearly impossible than the attainment of my most
ambitious dream!"

"And that dream?" spoke Jaska with speeding fingers.

"I have wondered about you," said Sarka softly, while those eyes of his
bored deeply into hers. "We have been the best of friends, the best of
comrades; but there are times when it comes to me that I do not know you
entirely! And I have many enemies!"

"You mean," gasped the woman, for the moment forgetting the secret sign
manual, "you think it possible that I--I--might be one of your enemies,
in secret?"

"Jaska, I do not know; but in this matter in my mind I trust no one. I
am afraid even that people will read my very thoughts, though I have
learned to so concentrate upon them that not the slightest hint of them
shall go forth telepathically to my enemies! I do not mind death for
myself; but our people must be saved! It is hideous to think that we
have been given the Secret of Life, only to perish in the end because of
it! I am sorry, Jaska, but I can tell no one!"

But Jaska, one of the most beautiful and intelligent of Earth's
beautiful and intelligent women, seemed not to be listening to Sarka at
all, and when he had finished, she shrugged her shoulders slightly and
prepared to leave.

* * * * *

He followed her to the nearest Exit Dome, built solidly into the side of
his laboratory, and watched her as she slipped swiftly into the white,
skin-tight clothing--marked on breast and back with the Red Lily of the
House of Cleric. His eyes still were deeply moody.

He helped her don the gleaming metal helmet in whose skull-pan was set
the Anti-Gravitational Ovoid--invented by Sarka the Second, used now of
necessity by every human creature--and strode with her to the Outer
Exit, a door of ponderous metal sufficiently strong to prevent the inner
warmth of the laboratory getting out, or the biting cold of the heights
to enter, and studied her still as she buckled about her hips her own
personal Sarka-Belt, which automatically encased her, through contact
with her tight clothing, with the warmth and balanced pressure of the
laboratory, which would remain constant as long as she wore it.

With a nod and a brief smile, she stepped to the metal door and vanished
through it. Sarka turned gloomily back to his laboratory. Looking into
the depths of the Revolving Beryl and adjusting the enlarging device
which brought back, life size, the infinitesmal individuals mirrored in
the Beryl, he watched her go--a trim white figure which flashed across
the void, from mountain-top to her valley home, like a very white
projectile from another world. Very white, and very precious, but....

When she was home, and had waved to him that she had arrived safely, he
forgot her for a time, and allowed his eyes to study the inner workings
of this vast, crowded world whose on-rushing fate was so filling his
brain with doubt, with fear--and something of horror!




CHAPTER II

_The People of the Hives_


Moodily Sarka stared into the depths of the Beryl, which represented the
Earth, and in which he could see everything that earthlings did, after
visually enlarging them, through use of a microscope that could be
adjusted, with relation to the Beryl, to bring out in detail any section
of the world he wished to study. His face was utterly sad. The people at
last truly possessed the Earth--all of it that was, even with the aid of
every miracle known to science, habitable.

The surface of the Earth was one vast building, like a hive, and to each
human being was allotted by law a certain abiding place. But men no
longer died, unless they desired to do so, and then only when the
Spokesmen of the Gens saw fit to grant permission; and there soon would
be no place for the newborn to live. Even now that point had practically
been reached throughout the world, and in the greater portion it _had_
been reached, and passed, and men knew that while men did not die, they
could be killed!

The vast building, towering above what had once been the surface of the
earth, to heights undreamed of before the discovery, was irregular on
its top, to fit the contour of the earth, and its roof, constructed of
materials raped from the earth's core, was so designed as to catch and
concentrate the yearly more feeble rays of the sun, so that its
life-giving warmth might continue to be the boon of living people.

* * * * *

It had been found as Earth cooled that life was possible to a depth of
eight miles below the one-time surface, so that the one huge building
extended below the surface to this great depth, and was divided and
re-divided to make homes for men, their wives, and their progeny. But
even so, space was limited. Neighboring families outgrew their
surroundings, overflowed into the habitations of their neighbors--and
every family was at constant war against its neighbors.

Men did not die, but they could be slain, and there was scarcely a home,
above or below, in all the vast building, which had not planned and
executed murder, times and times--or which had not left its own blood in
the dwelling places of neighbors.

No law could cope with this intolerable situation, for men, down the
ages, had changed in their essential characteristics but little--and
recognized one law only in their extremity, that of self-preservation.

So there was murder rampant, and mothers who wept for children,
husbands, fathers or mothers, who would never return to their homes.

"My grandfather," whispered Sarka, his eyes peering deeply into a
certain area beyond that assigned by law to the House of Cleric, where
men of two neighboring families were locked in mortal, silent conflict,
"should not have frustrated the mad scheme of Dalis! It was slaughter,
wholesale and terrible, but it would have cleansed the souls of the
survivors!"

* * * * *

Mentally Sarka was looking back now to that red day when Dalis, the
closest scientific rival of Sarka the First, had come to Sarka the
First with his proposal which at the time had seemed so hideous. Sarka
remembered that interval in all its details, for he had heard it many
times.

"Sarka," Dalis had said in his high-pitched voice, staring at Sarka the
First out of red-rimmed, fiery eyes, "unless something is done the world
will rush on to self-destruction! Men will slay one another! Fathers
will kill their sons, and sons their fathers, if something is not done!
For always there is marrying and giving in marriage, and each family is
reaching out in all directions, seeking merely space in which to live.
Formerly there were wars which automatically took thought of the
overplus of men; but to-day the world is at peace, as men regard the
term--and every man's hand is against his neighbor! There will be no
more wars, when there should be! There is but one alternative!"

"And that?" Sarka the First had queried suspiciously.

"The segregation of the fittest! The destruction, swiftly, painlessly,
of all the others! And when the survivors have again re-populated the
earth to overflowing--a repetition of the same corrective! Men will die,
yes, by millions; but those who are left will be a stronger, sturdier
race, and by this process of elimination, century by century, men will
evolve and become super-men!"

"And this plan of yours?"

* * * * *

For a moment Dalis had paused, breathing heavily, as though almost
afraid to continue. Then, while Sarka the First had listened in frozen
terror, Dalis had explained his ghastly scheme.

"If it were not for the mountains and the valleys," said Dalis, "and the
world were perfectly round and smooth of surface, that surface would be
covered by water to the depth of one mile! Is that not correct! The
Earth, rotating on its axis, travels about the sun at the rate of
something like nineteen miles per second, so perfectly balanced that
the oceans remain almost quiescent in their beds! But, Sarka, mark me
well! If we could, together, devise a way to halt this rotation for as
much as a few seconds, what would happen?"

"What would happen?" repeated Sarka the First, dropping his own voice to
a husky, frightened whisper. "Why, the oceans would be hurled out of
their beds, and a wall of water a mile high or more--it is all
guesswork!--would rush eastward around the world, bearing everything
before it! It would uproot and destroy buildings, sweep the rocky
covering of the earth free of soil; and humanity, caught on the earth
below the highest level of the world's greatest tidal wave, would be
engulfed!"

"Exactly!" Dalis had said with a grin. "Exactly! Only--the people we
wish to survive could be warned, and these could either be aloft when
the tidal wave swept the face of the earth, or could be safely out of
reach of the waters on the sides of the highest mountains!"

* * * * *

Sarka the First, wanly smiling, catching his breath at last, now that he
realized the utter impossibility of this mad scheme, had been minded to
humor the fancies of a man whom he had believed not quite sane.

"Why not," he began, "take away from men the Secret of Life, so that
they will die, as formerly, when the world was young?"

"When all the world knows the Secret, when even children learn it before
they are capable of walking?" demanded Dalis sarcastically. "You could
only remove knowledge of the Secret from the brains of men by removing
those brains themselves! Your thought is more terrible even than mine,
because it leads to this inescapable conclusion!"

"But supposing for a moment your mad scheme were possible, who should
say whom, of all the earth's people, should be saved, whom sacrificed?"

"What better test could be given than that which I am proposing?" Dalis
had snarled. "Those worthy of being saved would save themselves! Those
who would perish would not be worth saving! As natural, as inescapable
as the law of the survival of the fittest, which has been an axiom of
life since men first crawled out of the slime and asked each other
questions as they caught their first glimpses of the stars and pondered
the reasons for them!"

"But where, then, was there any point in my giving to people the Secret
of Life?"

"Had you paused to think," snapped Dalis, "you would never have done so!
Your lust for power, and for fame, destroyed your foresight!"

* * * * *

"And is it not, Dalis," replied Sarka the First, softly, "for this,
really, that you have come to me? To berate me? To throw at my head mad
schemes impossible of accomplishment? I have always known you for an
enemy, Dalis, because you are envious of what I have accomplished, what
you sense that I will accomplish as time passes!"

"I do not love you, Sarka!" retorted Dalis frankly. "I despise you! Hate
you! But I need the aid of that keen brain of yours! You see, hate you
though I may, I do you honor still. I have something up here," tapping
the dome of his brow, only less lofty than that of Sarka, "which you
lack. You have something I have not, never can attain! But together we
are complements, each of the other, and to the two of us this scheme is
possible!"

"I am very busy, Dalis," Sarka the First had replied coldly. "I must ask
you to leave me! What you propose is impossible, unthinkable!"

"So," retorted Dalis, "you think me mad? You think me incapable of
perfecting this plan about whose details you have not even yet been
informed! You would show me the door as though you were a king and I a
slave--when kings and slaves vanished from the earth millenniums ago!
Then listen to me, Sarka! I know how to do this thing about which I have
told you. I can halt, for a brief moment only, the whirl of the earth
about its axis. And by so doing I can flood the earth with the waters of
the oceans! If you will not listen to me, I shall do it myself! You
shall have two days in which to give me an answer, for I admit that I
need you, who would balance me, make sure I made no fatal mistakes! But
if you do not, I will act ... along the lines I have hinted!"

* * * * *

Apparently as unconcerned as though he had not just listened to a scheme
for almost total depopulation of the world, the destruction of millions
upon millions of lives, Sarka the First had dismissed Dalis--who had
straightway used all his offices to arouse the world of science against
the first Sarka.

But, when the two days of grace given by Dalis had passed, there were no
oceans--for Sarka the First had been planning for a century against the
time when the earth must of necessity be over-populated, and had worked
and slaved in his laboratory against the contingency which had
developed.

He had smiled, though there was a trace of fear on his face after Dalis
had left, for _his_ scheme had been worked out--not to destroy, but to
save!

And from this same laboratory in which Sarka now sat and pondered on the
next step in man's expansion, Sarka the First had, in fear and trembling
at first, but with his confidence growing by leaps and bounds, worked
his own miracle. Untold millions and billions of rays, whose any portion
of which, coming in contact with water, immediately separated its
hydrogen and oxygen, thus disintegrating its molecules, were hurled
forth from their store-houses beneath the laboratory, across the faces
of the mighty oceans of Earth....

And when men saw the miracle, they rushed into the mighty valleys where
the oceans had been, and began to build new homes!

* * * * *

That had been centuries ago--scores of centuries.

Now all the earth, all the livable part of the earth, above its
surface--and below it to the depths of miles--was filled with people,
like bees in a monster hive, like ants of antiquity in their warrened
hills. And there was no place now that they could go.

So they fought among themselves for the right to live.

"But my grandfather was right!" Sarka almost screamed it, speaking aloud
in the silence of his laboratory. "My grandfather was right! Dalis was
wrong! Science should be the science of Life, not of Death! Yet whither
shall we go! Where now shall we find places for our people who are daily
being born in myriads, to live, and love and flourish?"

But there was no answer. Only the humming of the perpetually revolving
Beryl, which showed to the sad eyes of Sarka that the people of his
beloved earth were rushing onward to Chaos, unless....

"If only I could be sure about Jaska!" he moaned. "If only my courage
were as great as that of which I stand in need! For if I fail, even
Dalis, had he succeeded with that scheme of his in grandfather's time,
would be less a monster, less a criminal!"


CHAPTER III

_The Spokesmen of the Gens_

For a long moment Sarka looked broodingly out across the world beyond
the metalized glass which formed the curving dome of his laboratory
roof. There was little that could be seen, for always the mighty, cold
winds, ruffed with flurries of snow and particles of ice, swept over
this artificial roof of the world. Here and there huge portions of the
area within the range of his normal vision were swept clear and clean of
snow and ice--and looked bluely, bitterly cold and hostile.

Without the Sarka-Belts, people who ventured forth from their hives
would instantly freeze to the consistency of marble in those winds and
storms. For the people of Earth had built their monster habitation
toward the stars until they reached up into the altitude of perpetual
cold.

Only under that gleaming roof was there warmth. Many of the men, and
women, and children who had lost in the now century-old fight for
survival had merely been tossed out of the hives. A painless, swift
death--but each death, in a world so highly specialized that each grown
person fitted into his niche naturally and easily, was a distinct loss,
not much, perhaps, but enough for the loss to be felt.

* * * * *

Sarka, closing his eyes for a moment as though to shut out a horror
which in his mind he could visualize, turned back to the Revolving
Beryl, in which he kept in constant touch with all parts of the world at
will.

"It _must_ be done!" he muttered. "I must take action. It means the loss
of thousands, perhaps millions of lives, in such a war as the mind of
man has not hitherto conceived; but for a Cause greater than any which
has ever hitherto been an excuse for armed conflict. But I must discuss
it with the Spokesmen of the Gens!"

On the table before Sarka was a row of vari-colored lights, whose source
was beneath the floor of the laboratory, out of the heart of the
master-mountain, part of the intricate machinery of this laboratory
which had been almost twenty centuries in the perfecting. In the
dwelling place of each of the Spokesmen was a single light, colored like
one of the lights on Sarka's table. To speak with any one of the
Spokesmen Sarka had but to dim the properly colored light by covering it
with the palm of his hand. The light in the home of the thus signalled
Spokesman was dimmed, and the Spokesman would know that Sarka desired
to converse with him.

Sarka noted the blue light, and shuddered. For if he covered it with his
palm it would summon Dalis, a great scientist, but an erratic one, as
Sarka the First had so clearly shown.

Sarka turned again to the Beryl. The area of which Dalis was Spokesman
was, roughly speaking, that part of what had once been the Pacific
Ocean, north of a line drawn east and west through the southernmost of
the Hawaiian Islands, northward to the Pole. The home of Dalis was in
the heart of what had once been an island historians claimed had been
called Oahu, now a mountain peak still retaining a hint of the
pre-Discovery name: Ohi.

* * * * *

The total number of the Spokesmen, the oldest of earth's inhabitants,
was twelve, and the remainder of the Earth not under the tutelary rule
of Dalis was divided up among the other eleven Spokesmen. Cleric, for
example, father of Jaska, was Spokesman of that area which men had once
called Asia, the vast valleys of the once Indian Ocean and the
Mediterranean; while the youngest of the Spokesmen, in a manner serving
his apprenticeship, was tutelary head of the vast plateau once called
Africa. The name of this man was Gerd.

"He, at least," thought Sarka, thinking of each Spokesman in turn and
cataloguing each in his mind, "will be with me. I wonder about the
others, and especially Dalis. He has always hated us!"

Then, with the air of a man who has made up his mind and crosses his
particular Rubicon in a single step, Sarka rose to his feet and passed
along the row of vari-colored lights, covering each one with his hand in
rapid succession.

Then he sat down again, almost holding his breath, and waited. As he
stared at the row of lights his eyes lingered longest on two which were
almost golden in color--and his face was very gentle, almost reverent.
For those two lights were signals to Sarka the First and Sarka the
Second, his grandfather and his father!

* * * * *

It was Dalis, the irascible, the fiery tempered, the erratic, who first
made answer.

"Yes! What is it now?"

Sarka smiled a trifle grimly as he spoke a single word.

"Wait!"

The voice of Dalis, which Sarka had good cause to remember, had sounded
as loudly in the laboratory as though Dalis had been present there in
person, for men had learned to communicate by voice almost without the
aid of radio and its appurtenances though the principle upon which the
first crude beginnings of radio were fashioned still applied. Each man's
dwelling place was both a "sender" and a "receiver," and men could talk
and be talked to no matter where they lived--individuals telepathically
summoned at desire of anyone wishing verbal contact.

"Gerd is here!" came the voice of that Spokesman.

To him also Sarka spoke one word.

"Wait!"

"I am here, Sarka!" came a musical voice. "And Jaska is with me,
listening!"

That would be Cleric, loyal friend, master scientist, but always shy of
contact with people, though swift to anger and self-forgetfulness when
he knew himself right and was opposed. Sarka darted a look back at the
Revolving Beryl, adjusted swiftly the Beryl-microscope, and smiled into
the faces of Jaska and Cleric, who looked enough alike that they might
have been brother and sister, though Cleric had been born ten centuries
before his daughter Jaska. They smiled back at him.

* * * * *

He shifted the Beryl-microscope and stared for a second at Dalis, there
in the Beryl, and marked the antagonism Dalis was at no pains to hide.

One by one the Spokesmen reported.

Klaser, from the Americas; Durce from the valleys of the vanished
Atlantic; Boler from that part of the Artic Circle not included in the
wedge which the Gens of Dalis thrust northward to the Pole: Vardee;
Prull; Yuta; Aal; Vance and Hime. Each from his appointed area, each
from the official headquarters of his Gens, the name given to those
people who acknowledged the tutelage of a Spokesman. Each Spokesman,
therefore, was the mouthpiece of millions of men, women and children.
And over the Spokesmen, and not themselves Spokesmen, were three
scientists: The Sarkas, First, Second and Third.

When all twelve of the Spokesmen had reported and been bidden by Sarka
to wait, a smile touched the face of Sarka for an instant as two other
voices, so nearly alike they might have been the voice of a single
person, reported themselves.

"I am here, son! What is it?"

Oddly enough, Sarka's father and grandfather reported with exactly the
same words. Sarka smiled at a whimsical thought of his own. It had been
some time since the three scientist Sarkas had been together, and
despite the vast differences in their ages they might have been
triplets!

* * * * *

The reports were in and the Spokesmen were waiting; but for almost a
minute Sarka waited still. Then he spoke swiftly those words for which
there could be no recall:

"Gentlemen, the time is come when we must go to war!"

For a long moment after he had spoken there was no answer. Then it came,
in the jeering laughter of the antagonistic Dalis.

"War? Against whom? The Sarkas are always dreaming!"

"And Dalis," continued Sarka, "shall be one of the leaders of Earthlings
in this war which I am about to propose! You doubtless recall a proposal
you once made to Sarka the First? Your proposal to halt for a few
moments the headlong whirl of the earth about its axis, thus to
flood--"

"Stop!" interrupted Dalis. "Stop! Immediately!"

And Sarka stopped. He had forgotten, in the excitement of his urge to
explain his plans, that the millions of people who gave official
allegiance to Dalis had never been informed of the hideous proposal he
had made, back there centuries ago, as a corrective for a world rapidly
approaching over-population. Had his people known, never again would the
voice of Dalis be heard in life. The Spokesmen knew, and the Sarkas; but
no others. Sarka understood the protest of Dalis; honored it.

"Dalis," he went on, more softly, "after I have explained what I wish to
do, you will come to me here, prepared to explain to me exactly how you
planned doing what you proposed to my grandfather--for your knowledge
will be necessary to me...."

"Isn't it enough that your grandfather stole from me, and amplified, an
idea that would have made me forever famous, without his grandson also
stealing the fruit of my brains?"

"Your brains," said Sarka sharply, "belong to your people. What I plan
is for their betterment. But it means war, war which may last a century,
two centuries, in which lives of countless thousands may be lost."

* * * * *

Sarka's last words were almost drowned out by the humming sound that
came out of the Revolving Beryl, that perfected device which was the
ultimate in the evolution of television and vibration-transference.
Sarka's heart sank, for he knew the meaning of that sound. So did the
Spokesmen.

"You see?" came the rasping voice of Dalis. "You hear? Look into your
Beryl! See the clenched fists of the earth's myriads being shaken at
you! Listen to the protests of the millions who hear your every word!
See what Earthlings think of the prospect of war!"

For a moment Sarka spoke directly to the people.

"Be silent and listen! It will be war, yes; but not such a skulking,
hideous war as ye wage among yourselves for a place to live! You,
fathers, are guilty of slaying your sons! You, sons, of slaying your
fathers! Merely by thrusting them forth from the hives, into the Outer
Cold! This war I propose shall be a war that shall match your manhood,
if ye indeed be men! Listen to me, and I will find for you new lands to
conquer, new homes for your holding, if ye can take them!"

"But where," interrupted the sarcastic voice of Dalis, "are these new
lands of which you speak? Inside the Earth? Already our hives reach into
the Earth a distance of eight miles. Where else, then?"

"For shame, Dalis!" snapped Sarka, "and you a scientist! Every bit of
habitable land on this globe is some man's dwelling place! Spokesmen of
the Gens of Earth, look out your windows! Look out and upward--and read
Dalis' answer in the stars!"

* * * * *

For a full minute there was silence throughout the earth, and Sarka saw
that the Spokesmen were doing his bidding. He himself looked out, out
through the swirling storm which tore at the crest of the Himalayas, a
dark and forbidding Outside, in the starred dome of which rode the pale
orbed moon!

"It is obvious, son," came the voice of Sarka the First, "what you mean.
But how accomplish it?"

"Fifteen centuries ago, my father's father," cried Sarka, "Dalis told
you that he possessed the power to halt for a moment the headlong whirl
of the world on its axis about the sun! He could do it then--and no man,
whatever he may think of Dalis as a man, has ever known him to lie! If,
fifteen centuries ago, he could bring the whirling world to pause, why
can we not, now...."

And, even though he had thought of this for years upon end, had spoken
over and over to himself the words he was now using, rehearsing his
proposed argument to the Spokesmen of the Gens, Sarka found himself for
a moment almost afraid to continue and speak them.

"I understand, Sarka!" came the excited voice of Gerd, youngest of the
Spokesmen. "And I follow wherever you think it best to lead! You mean
... you mean...."

"Exactly!" Sarka managed at last. "If the Earth can be stayed on its
axis, it can be diverted from its orbit entirely! I know, for I have
found the manner of its doing, though I need the genius of Dalis to
check my work and my calculations! We have no new land on this Earth to
conquer; but the Universe is filled with countless other worlds! What
say ye, Spokesmen of the Gens? What say ye, Gens of Earth?"

But for the time of a thousand heartbeats neither the Spokesmen or the
Gens made answer to Sarka, and all the world fell utterly silent,
absorbing this unbelievable thing of which Sarka had hinted.

* * * * *

Over the metalized roof of the world the snows and storms, the winds and
the wraiths of the long dead moaned and screamed as with an icy voice of
abysmal warning.

And for the time of those thousand heartbeats, the world was pausing to
listen.

When realization came, the answer would come from the Spokesmen and from
the Gens; and here in the Sarka laboratory, his Rubicon crossed at last,
sat Sarka, staring through the Beryl-microscope into the depths of the
Revolving Beryl. His face was dead white, his eyes narrowed.

The first voice which came startled him.

"It is mad, Sarka! Mad! Mad! But I am with you, always!"

It was the voice of Jaska, daughter of Cleric!


CHAPTER IV

_The Earthlings Make Ready_

"I too, am with you!" came the voice of Gerd.

"Spoken like a child!" snapped Dalis. "For you are as much a child as
this third of the dreaming Sarkas! The scheme is mad, madder even than
Jaska intimates! The scheme I once proposed, in which I was cheated by
the grandfather of this madman, was times and times more feasible and
practicable!"

"Suppose," came the soft voice of Sarka the First, interrupting Dalis,
"that you put the matter up to your Gens, O wise and noble Dalis, and
see which scheme they would endorse if given the choice in the
matter--and were your scheme still possible!"

This quickly silenced the vituperation of Dalis, but in no wise
prevented his continuance as a rather loud antagonist of the plan.

"How," he demanded, "can you return the Earth to its orbit, even
granting you are able to take this initial step? How keep life on the
Earth during its flight on this rainbow-chasing voyage you propose?"

"All these things have been taken into consideration, O Dalis!" retorted
Sarka. "All of my scheme is practicable, as I think you will agree when
I have told you its details. What think you of the plan, Klaser? And
you, Durce? Boler? Vardee? Prull? Yuta? Aal? Vance? Hime?"

When the Spokesmen had answered, some of them hesitantly, for the people
all this time had remained silent--and none of the Spokesmen could be
sure how his own Gens would feel in the matter--it developed that seven
of the Spokesmen were for the scheme, if it should prove to be possible.

"If this is the voice of the majority of the Gens," snapped Dalis,
"given thus by their Spokesmen, then I vote with the majority! I shall
call upon you immediately, Sarka, for a conference!"

* * * * *

"I am glad," said Sarka softly, "that the majority of the Spokesmen are
with me. Especially am I glad that Dalis and Cleric vote with me. For
the others I have only this to say: I have thought this matter over for
almost a century, and I know that the time has come when we must act, to
save ourselves from self-destruction. Had you not decided with me, I
should have acted alone!"

"Yes?" snapped Dalis. "How?"

"I have, here in my laboratory," replied Sarka, "the power whereby to
accomplish the scheme of which I have told you! Had all the Gens defied
me, I would have nevertheless sent the Earth outward on its voyage,
bringing it within reach of the denizens, first of the Moon, second of
Mars--and you people of little courage would have been compelled to
fight to save yourselves!"

"You would have forced us into war?" came the quavering voice of Prull,
the first Spokesman aside from Dalis to take active part in the
discussion. "Then why, if you had the means in the beginning to enforce
your will upon us, confer with us at all?"

Sarka thrilled with satisfaction, for this question gave him the excuse
he sought. He had been wondering and scheming how to compel the
Spokesmen of the Gens to obey his will.

"I wanted your opinions," he said shortly. "But I also wish you to know
that I have the power to go on, whether you wish it or not--_and you
must obey me!_"

* * * * *

How would the twelve Gens take this ultimatum of Sarka? For breathless
moments after he had spoken he waited, and the Spokesmen with him. Then
came the voice of Cleric, addressing his people, yet leaving the
contacts open so that Sarka and the other Spokesmen might hear.

"What say you, O Gens of Cleric?" he cried, his voice an exultant,
clarioning paean of rejoicing. "Do we follow this man who promises us
life again? Do we follow this man who promises us that once again we
shall dwell in plenty, without the blood of relatives and neighbors on
our hands? Answer this man, O Gens--for I say unto you that wheresoever
he leads I would follow him!"

Silence for a heartbeat. Then a murmuring like the sound of the waves of
the long-vanished seas sounded in the laboratory, wherein all things
were seen, all sounds were heard. A monster voice, loud and savage, from
the Gens of Cleric.

"We follow Cleric wherever he leads!" Finally the words became
intelligible. "It matters not to us whom Cleric follows, so long as we
may follow Cleric!"

"Well spoken, O Gens of Cleric!" snapped Sarka when the murmuring died
down to a whisper, then faded out entirely. "Deck yourselves in the
white garments of Cleric! Emblazon upon your backs and breast the Red
Lily of his House! Prepare for war! These are your orders; the details I
leave to Cleric!"

There came the voice Dalis.

"Give your orders to my Gens direct, O Sarka!" rasped Dalis. "For I
leave this very moment to come to you!"

"Thank you," said Sarka, a great wave of exaltation sweeping over him.
He had expected Dalis to be the last and most difficult to manage. Then
to the Gens of Dalis, as the blue light on the table in the laboratory
showed Sarka that Dalis was already winging toward him: "Deck yourselves
in the green garments of Dalis! Wear as your insignia the yellow star of
his House, and prepare for war! Make new and modern Ray Directors!
Refurbish your rotting machines of destruction! Make ready, and make
haste! For the Gens of Dalis will be the first of all the Gens to move
in attack against the Dwellers Outside! When the time comes I shall tell
you where you shall dwell--if you win the land I shall show you!"

* * * * *

The humming of myriad voices inside the laboratory was now almost
continuous, but ever the words of Sarka went out to the Spokesmen and to
the Gens, though, save in the case of Cleric and of Dalis, he did not
speak to the Gens direct, because he did not wish in one iota to usurp
the authority of the Spokesmen themselves.

But when less than an hour had passed, he realized that the first step
had been successfully taken, and that from now on the success or failure
of the scheme rested in his own hands. Perspiration bedewed his
forehead, and for a second he prayed.

"God of our fathers! Grant that we be not mistaken! Grant that we be
right in what we plan! Grant that success attend our arms! Grant that
this scheme of mine lead us not to catastrophe--for if this should
develop, only I am guilty, and only I should be punished!"

"Amen!"

As one voice, the Spokesmen of the Gens spoke the word, and Sarka heard
it. He had forgotten for the moment that the Spokesmen still could hear
him.

"That is all," he said huskily. "Prepare your Gens, each of you, for
such battle as even our histories never have recorded! For we go against
foemen whose strength we do not know, whose manner of life we do not
know, and we must not fail! Make haste with your preparations! Your time
is short! And Spokesmen, counsel your Gens that they put aside at once
all personal differences, all family quarrels, all quarrels with their
neighbors! That each adult individual, each unmarried woman, and such
married woman as have all their children grown, and who no longer need
them, prepare to go forth to battle! From this laboratory, within a
brief space, Dalis and the Sarkas will give you further word!"

* * * * *

Then he dimmed the lights, and severed contact with the Spokesmen of the
Gens. Only two lights he did not dim, at the moment, and to two men he
spoke softly.

"My father and my father's father! Come to me at once! For there shall
be need of the combined genius of the Sarkas if my scheme is to
succeed!"

From both Sarkas, as though they had rehearsed the words against this
need of them, came answer:

"Aye, son, we come!"

From that moment on until Dalis and the Sarkas were ready to take the
most momentous step ever taken in the history of the world, the humming
within the laboratory did not cease. For the people, the millions and
billions of people of the hives, were busy, eagerly and feverishly busy,
preparing new armament, new engines of destruction, against the time
when there should be need of them. And for perhaps the first time in
centuries, the people were happy.

For not even the passage of a thousand centuries, or a thousand thousand
centuries, could flush from the warm hearts of men the love of conflict!

Sarka smiled wanly, his face very pale. He had spoken, his people were
busy with preparations, and now there could be no turning back. The
world, when he spoke the word, would rush outward to glorious
conflict--or to destruction!

A buzzer sounded near the Exit Dome. Sarka raced to give the "Enter"
Signal--and Dalis, he of the hawk-eyes, the sharp nose and sharper
tongue, entered the presence of the man who, in a twinkling, had made
himself master of the world.

"Well," he said harshly, "I am here! What do you wish of me?"

"We Sarkas," said Sarka easily, "wish to assure ourselves that you will
do nothing to obstruct our plans! Dalis, of the Gens of Dalis, you are
prisoner of the Sarkas until you have passed your word!"

"That I will never do!" said Dalis calmly. "I have passed my word to go
forward with you; but I meant, and you knew I meant, to go forward only
as far as to me seemed right and reasonable!"


CHAPTER V

_The Betrayal of Dalis_

And until the arrival of the other two Sarkas, Dalis said nothing. His
face flushed an angry red as Sarka the First received the "Enter" Signal
and stepped into the laboratory which had once been his--which he had
delivered into the capable hands of Sarka the Second, in order to find
new channels for his genius, as a worker for the betterment of the
world's people. This he had found in organization, so that the people
worked and labored, despite their personal quarrels, in closer harmony
than they ever had before. But now Sarka the Third had called, and the
two Sarkas responded. Dalis snarled at his ancient enemy, who looked to
be the image of Sarka the Third and not one whit older, though one had
preceded the other into the world by many centuries.

"Still the pleasant, congenial Dalis, I see!" smiled Sarka the First.

* * * * *

For the moment it seemed that Dalis would die there of his seething
anger; but he answered no word for all of a minute. Then:

"This mad grandson of yours has made me a prisoner, until such time as I
concur in all his plans!"

"If he says you are a prisoner, that you are!" snapped the elder Sarka
angrily. "Son, what is this thing you plan?"

"For almost a century," replied Sarka, "I have been planning this. I
knew, when father told me that Dalis had sworn he was able to halt for a
moment the headlong flight of the Earth in its orbit, that Dalis did not
lie or bluff! In your day, even, that was possible, and I continued with
the knotty problem until I deduced the manner of its doing. I, too, can
halt the Earth's rotation, or throw it out of its orbit! I took your
idea, Dalis, _independently_ of you, knowing you would never reveal
your secret to a Sarka, and amplified it until I can not only halt the
Earth in its orbit, but throw it out of its orbit entirely!"

For a moment Sarka studied the angry face of Dalis, and his own was very
thoughtful.

"Dalis," he said at last, "I wish you were not our enemy! For you are a
genius, and the world has need of all the knowledge of such genius as it
possesses. Why do you oppose us?"

"Because," snarled Dalis, "I guessed something of your plan that I do
not like! I do not like the Sarkas, never have; but neither have the
Sarkas any love for me! When you spoke to us all, I knew that somehow
you had discovered the secret! You spoke, when you delivered your
ultimatum, of attacking the Moon, and after it Mars! You also granted to
my Gens what would have seemed a great honor--to anyone who did not
fathom the tricky scheming of the Sarkas!--that of being the first into
the fray! If we are to be first, and the Moon is to be the first
attacked, then you plan to relieve the world forever of me, your
arch-enemy, by exiling me and all my Gens upon the Moon! A dead world,
covered with ashes, whose people dwell in dank caverns, like gnomes of
the underworld...."

* * * * *

"Stay!" snapped Sarka. "But I granted you a greater honor even than
that, Dalis! I planned on your Gens, led by you, making a successful
conquest of the Moon--because only such a genius as Dalis could force
from this dead world a living for his Gens! Because you are the wisest
of the Spokesmen, I planned for you the greatest task! Because I need
you ... I do not slay you!"

"I thank you," bowing low, with the deepest sarcasm, "but you honor me
too much! And tell me, pray, if it is not true that you plan for the
Sarkas their choice of the best and newest worlds of the Universe?"

Sarka did not answer for a second, while his sensitive nostrils quivered
with fury. The Sarkas had not noticed, but Jaska, daughter of Cleric,
had admitted herself through the Exit Dome, in a way known only to Sarka
and to herself, as she had entered many times before so as not to
disturb Sarka at his labors. She now stood silently there, divesting
herself of her Belt and outer clothing, beneath which was the golden
toga worn by all the women of the earth. Dalis, however, had seen her,
and his eyes narrowed craftily as he awaited the answer of Sarka.

"Dalis," said Sarka softly, "it is not for you to question me, but to
obey me! I have not undertaken this step without mastering all its
details, and I refuse to allow you to swerve me in a single one of them
from my plan."

* * * * *

Dalis straightened, standing stiffly at savage attention, and met the
angry eyes of Sarka without flinching. There was no fear in Dalis, as
all the world knew. But he was a schemer, and selfish.

"After all," he said, "I have known Sarkas to make promises they could
not keep! How do I know, how does the world know, that you can do what
you say you can do?"

"If," said Sarka, "I close all contact of this laboratory with the world
outside, so that none may hear what I say save we four, and I then
whisper here the secret you never told, Dalis, when my father's father
refused to help you--will you then believe?"

The face of Dalis went suddenly white, but he nodded, his eyes burning
redly. Jaska moved closer to the men, who stood near the table of the
vari-colored lights.

"You needed my father's father," said Sarka softly, "because the secret
of your scheme rested here in this laboratory, which is the highest
point in the world! You pretended to need him in your scheme; but you
did not need my father's father, though you _did_ need his laboratory,
and some of the facts of science that _he_ discovered. So you came to
him with your scheme, discovered that he believed, though he denied it,
your scheme was possible--because he refused to aid you in it! Then, as
an excuse to re-enter this laboratory, you told him you would return
within two days! Now, shall I tell you your secret?"

* * * * *

The lips of Dalis were moving soundlessly. His right hand started to
rise, as though he would make it signal the negative he was unable for a
moment to speak. But even as he stood there, swaying slightly on his
feet, Sarka dashed to the lights on the table, disconnecting them one by
one; to the Revolving Beryl, which then ceased to revolve for the first
time in centuries--whirled when he had finished, and stepped to the very
center of the room.

"Now," he whispered, "your secret, Dalis!"

Still the hand upraised, still Dalis tried to speak, and could not.

Sarka spoke, in a hoarse, almost terrified whisper, four words:

"The Beryl! The Ovoids!"

Gasps of surprise from the other two Sarkas, whose eyes for a second
flashed to the huge Beryl, which now was still, silent--and blind.
Dawning comprehension was evident in their faces.

"The success of the Revolving Beryl," whispered Sarka, "which sees all
that transpires in this world, depends on one fact: that its revolving
is proportionately timed to infinite exactness with the revolution of
the Earth about its axis! This Beryl is the Master Beryl of the Earth,
which was why Dalis needed this Beryl, and could use no other!"

* * * * *

"Suppose that for a period of two days, uniformly progressive, this
Beryl were forced to revolve in sharp jerks at an increasing rate of
speed! With all connections in place, and all the world's Beryls attuned
to the speed of this one--what would happen? What would happen if a
single Gens were marshalled in warlike array atop the area of the Gens,
and kept up a steady, rhythmic march for a period of hours?"

"In a few hours," whispered Sarka the First, "the roof of the Gens area
would begin to vibrate, to vibrate throughout all the area, and even
into all surrounding Gens areas--and in time the roof would collapse!"

"Exactly!" said Sarka, breathing heavily. "This Beryl, when attuned to
all other Beryls in the world, would have this vibratory effect, not
only on a certain area of the world--but upon the entire world!--Force
the speed of the Beryls to the uttermost limit, and you sway the world
to your will! As a marching horde would sway the roof of a vast section
of the world if the horde's commander willed!

"But that is not enough! The world would tremble, but nothing more! The
Earth's store of Ovidum, which is Anti-Gravitational, and used in minute
quantities in our Anti-Gravitational Ovoids, is evenly distributed
throughout the world. By vibration of the Beryls I can control it,
scatter it or gather it all together wherever I will! By shifting
through vibration this Anti-Gravitational material, I can disrupt, make
uneven, or nullify the pull of gravity on the Earth!"

"That would do it," said Dalis, finding his voice at last; "but how
would you control the course the Earth would take, thus thrown out of
its orbit?"

"That, my dear Dalis, is for the moment my secret!"

"But is it?" Dalis suddenly shouted.

* * * * *

Before the three Sarkas could recover from their surprise at the man's
sudden vehemence, he made a swift, terrifying move. He leaped away from
them to stand beside Jaska, daughter of Cleric.

"Sarka," he shrieked, "I know you love this woman! Note this little tube
I hold against her side. With it I can cause her to vanish for all time,
merely by a slight pressure of the fingers! And that will I do, unless
you immediately open all contacts with the world and remain silent while
I tell the people of Earth how you would betray them!"

The three Sarkas were petrified with amazement and horror, for they
recognized the slender tube in the hand of Dalis as a Ray Director, the
world's greatest engine of destruction, and knew that it would do
exactly as Dalis had said it would.

Automatically, because they were brave men, they had stepped a trifle
closer to Jaska and Dalis. Perspiration poured from their cheeks as they
stared at this rebel. But their fears were for Jaska, who now spoke for
the first time.

"Let him do as he wills," she said smilingly, "since for the good of the
world I do not fear to die! Refuse him, Sarka, and know that I go into
Death's Darkness loving you always, and knowing that you will succeed in
the end, in spite of the opposition of men like Dalis!"

* * * * *

A man of unexpected actions, this Dalis, for while the attentions of the
Sarkas were on the little tableau he had staged, his eyes had darted to
the Beryl, to the control which Sarka had touched to still its
revolving. Now he sprang away from Jaska, was free of her and the Sarkas
before any could move to intercept him.

He dashed to the Beryl. Instantly it swept into motion, while Dalis
whirled to face the Sarkas, and from his lips came a burst of triumphant
laughter. One hand was on the Beryl Control, the other still held the
Ray Director.

"Fools!" he cried. "Fools! Duped like children! And now it is Dalis who
is master of the world! Move closer to me, and I will turn my Ray
Director upon this Beryl, which you have so kindly informed me is master
of all the Beryls and of all Ovidum deposits! Be glad that I do not turn
it upon you; but for you I have a kinder, more honorable fate! I now am
master, and will direct the destiny of the world! But I will never
leave it, because I suspect that it is the most pleasant of all the
worlds! I will, however, choose for the Sarkas a world that shall be the
dreariest in all the Universe!"

The Sarkas whirled as soft laughter came from Jaska, daughter of Cleric.
Strange, lilting laughter. They turned in time to see her vanish through
the Exit Dome; but for a long moment her jeering laughter seemed to
sound in the laboratory she had left-and, to judge by her laughter, had
betrayed! For Dalis, arch-traitor, echoed her laughter!


CHAPTER VI

_The Beryls in Tune_

"Remember," said Dalis, as the Beryl began to revolve and its humming
mounted moment by moment to normal, "that you must concur in whatever I
say to the people of the Earth--for if you do not, I swear that I will
destroy this Master Beryl! Then what happens to your scheme, Sarka the
Third? You see, there is no change in the plans, save one: I am the
master, not you!"

Dalis was not a madman, for the world conceded him place in its list of
geniuses next below the three Sarkas, which was high honor indeed; but
Dalis possessed in abundance that most universal of all human
emotions--jealousy. For centuries he had been nursing it, watching the
Sarkas always in the niches just above him, yet never being able to
attain to their eminence. Now....

He had outwitted them. It might be for a moment only, but while his
mastery lasted he would drink deeply of personal satisfaction. Now,
however, there was no gloating in his face, for he realized, as Sarka
had realized, the infinite gravity of the whole situation. If a mistake
were made, the world would plunge to destruction--or go cooling forever
in a headlong race through space.

"I keep the Ray Director hidden," he whispered, while the murmuring of
the Master Beryl mounted as it gained speed again, "but know you,
Sarkas, that its muzzle points at the Master Beryl, always!"

* * * * *

Now the forms of Earth were appearing on the Beryl. Men in countless
hordes were maneuvering in myriads, legions and armies, across the face
of the globe. There was no marching, but an effortless, swift as light
almost, aerial maneuvering. For each human being possessed the
tight-fitting metalized cloth, with the gleaming helmet in whose
skull-pan was the Anti-Gravitational Ovoid, which was the "outside"
garment of earthlings. With the Ovoid sitting exactly against the skull,
man had but to will himself in any direction, at any livable height, and
the action took place. In the same way, one man, to whom others in an
organization gave allegiance by appointment, could will all his
underlings into whatever formation he desired.

As beautiful and effortless at the flight of those birds which had
vanished from the earth centuries before.

"Remember, Dalis," said Sarka, "that while the speed of the Earth in its
orbit is between eighteen and nineteen miles per second, once thrown out
of its orbit, and forced to follow a straight or nearly straight line,
the speed may be many times that-or much less!"

"The simplest facts of science," snarled Dalis, "were known to me a
thousand years before you were born! Now I shall tell the Spokesmen of
the Gens, and be sure that you second what I say!"

He paused. Then, raising his voice impressively, he spoke.

"O Spokesmen of the Gens, O Gens of Earth, hark ye to the words of Dalis
and of Sarka! The time has come to try the experiment of which Sarka
told you, and which I, Dalis, of the Gens of Dalis, have found good, and
hereby certify! See that all your Beryls are mathematically tuned to
catch every sound, every vibration, every picture, from this Beryl of
Sarka, henceforth to be known as the Master Beryl!

* * * * *

"No matter what happens, no matter what changes take place in the
temperature of your homes, no matter what storms may come, touch not
your Beryls until instructed from this laboratory! Tune your Beryls,
then leave them, and hasten faster with your preparations for war! Each
Spokesman of a Gens will at once instruct the members of his Gens that
all partitions between families shall immediately be removed, outward
from a common center in each case, until one hundred families occupy a
single dwelling place. Materials from destroyed partitions shall be
carefully hoarded, and the newer and bigger areas shall become
maneuvering places for the hundred families which will occupy each given
area!

"Facing a crisis as we are, no thought can be given to privacy, and
neighborly quarrels must be forgotten! This move is necessary because no
single dwelling place is large enough to be used as a place of
maneuver--and from now on until the command is given, maneuvers must not
be held Outside! For hark ye, O Spokesmen, O Gens of Earth, we are about
to start upon our voyage into outer space! Spokesmen, call in your
maneuvering myriads! You have five minutes!"

In five minutes not a flying man could be seen in all the cold, stormy
outside. Dalis spoke again.

"Tune your Beryls and remove partitions, taking care that in reducing
partitions you so estimate your stresses and strains that the roof of
the world be not endangered by weight that is unsupported, or improperly
supported!

"Food Conservers, redouble your production and rush your transportation
of Food Capsules!

"Mothers of men, take over the labors of your sons and your husbands!
Sisters and sweethearts of men, join the myriads in maneuvers, for you,
too, may require knowledge of fighting!"

* * * * *

In spite of himself, an ejaculation of admiration escaped the lips of
Sarka. Hearing it, Dalis turned to him, and a flush of pleasure tinged
his cheeks as Sarka shaped one word with his lips:

"Excellent!"

Then, after a pause, Sarka spoke directly to the Gens of Earth.

"Take heed of the words of Dalis, for they are also the words of the
Sarkas!"

Then an expression of surprise flashed across the face of Sarka as
Dalis' fingers began to move in a swift sort of pantomime--for the sign
manual he used was the secret manual of Jaska and Sarka! His heart cold
within him at this new proof of her betrayal, Sarka nevertheless noted
the words which dropped silently off the fingers of this enemy of the
Sarkas.

"You are wise to resist no further! Together we can do much, and if you
give your word not to oppose me, we can work together; but I will be the
master!"

"But, if we grant you the mastery, will you heed our advice if it is
good?"

"I will, but I alone will be the judge of its worth!"

"Then we work together henceforth. Let us begin! In the time required to
move from here to the Moon, our people will have ample opportunity to
perfect themselves in maneuvers! Are you ready, O my father, and
father's father?"

"Ready!" they said together.

* * * * *

But for a moment Dalis hesitated. "Your word!" he snapped, looking at
each Sarka in turn, and each in his turn nodded. They had given their
word, but not their love, to Dalis. Dalis bowed low to Sarka the
Youngest, who darted to the onyx base in which revolved the Master
Beryl, and pressed a small lever of metalized jade, set in a slot on the
southern side of the base of onyx. The humming sound within the Beryl
became perceptibly louder, and as the minutes passed, and Sarka stood,
arms folded, watching the Revolving Beryl, it continued to increase.

Here was the crisis, and as they watched its sure, certain approach,
they forgot their enmities, Dalis and the Sarkas, and watched the
whirling Beryl. Minute by minute its humming increased. The figures
still were plain to be seen within the Beryl, but were becoming blurred
of outline. Partitions had been removed all over the earth, increasing
the size of rooms a hundredfold, reducing their number a hundredfold.
The Gens of Earth, by hundred-families, were maneuvering under the Heads
of Hundreds. The depths of the Master Beryl, therefore, was a maze of
flying men, with their extremities slightly blurred, and becoming more
so as the Master Beryl increased its speed.

* * * * *

Here now was shown the value of the organization fostered by Sarka the
First--for in all the world there was no single Beryl out of tune with
the Master Beryl; and as the Master Beryl increased the speed of its
revolving, so increased at the same time the speed of all the other
Beryls. Minute by minute the humming of the Master, and with it the
others, increased in volume.

"Father!" spoke Sarka. "To the Observatory, behind the Beryl, please, to
watch the stars, and from them to note the direction we take when the
combined vibrations of the Beryls have affected the quiescence of
Earth's deposits of Ovidum and, through its shifting, disturbed the
flight of the Earth in its orbit!"

With a brief nod Sarka's father hurried around the Master Beryl to the
tiny Observatory beyond, from which, through the Micro-Telescopes, those
who knew could read the secrets of the planets, the stars--the Universe.
Sarka watched him go, wondering if Dalis might not forbid him. But Dalis
merely watched him go and said nothing.

* * * * *

Now that the time of Change was upon the world, Dalis realized his
responsibility. It was little wonder that he began to be for the first
time a little bit afraid.

"Note, Dalis!" snapped Sarka, and Dalis started nervously as his name
was spoken. "Feel the trembling of the laboratory, just as the same
trembling affects all the other buildings in the world in which Beryls
are located. As the minutes pass the trembling will go deeper and
deeper, and by to-morrow the first tremors will be reaching into the
Earth to several miles below the last habitable Inner Level! And
then....

"Then," repeated Sarka tersely, "my father will know by his study of the
stars in which new direction we are traveling! For within twenty-four
hours the Earth will have started on its voyage of conquest!"

"Is there no way, Sarka," queried Dalis, "by which we can control the
direction of our flight!"

"There _is_ a way, O wise and gallant Dalis! But since you do not know
it, who now is master?"

Dalis' face became as pale as chalk, and Sarka smiled a little as he
watched him. Then, wondering what new resolve stirred the depths of this
master egotist of the earth, he watched emotions flash to and fro across
the face of Dalis, watched the color return to his cheeks. The cold of
death gripped at his heart when Dalis spoke.

"I do not fear death, O wise and gallant Sarka!" he mocked. "For I have
lived fully and well, and for many, many centuries! You know that I do
not fear to slay people of the Earth, for did I not propose to your
father's father that a flood would be beneficial to unfit earthlings?
Hear, then! Keep your secret, and I shall allow the Earth to go outward
into space, out of control, in whatever direction it will. If any other
worlds happen to lie in our pathway...."

* * * * *

Dalis shrugged indifferently, turning his back on Sarka, to peer again
into the depths of the Master Beryl, whose voice had risen to a vaster
murmur, whose pictures were becoming moment by moment more blurred as
time fled irrevocably into eternity.

Sarka the First took advantage of his opportunity, and leaped at the
back of Dalis, hands extended to fasten them in the throat of his
ancient enemy. Dalis whirled, with a burst of laughter, and the muzzle
of his Ray Director covered the person of the First Sarka. In a flash
the spot where Sarka the First had been was vacant, and there was no
single sign to show that he had ever stood there!

Silence then in the laboratory, save for the mounting murmur of the
Master Beryl!


CHAPTER VII

_Outer Space_

"He only proved a belief I have entertained for centuries!" snarled
Dalis. "That all the male Sarkas are fools--and the females for bearing
them!"

Sarka said nothing, but within his breast a deep hatred was forming for
Dalis. He had disliked him before, and had been amused by him; but in
the busy life of Sarka there had been no time for hatred of anyone. Busy
people had no time for hatreds.

"You should be torn to pieces for that, Dalis!" was all he said. "We
needed my father's father in our efforts! But the loss to the world of
one super-genius cannot be balanced by slaying another--so you are safe!

"What he could do, I can do!" snapped Dalis.

Sarka turned away from him, seating himself beside the table of the
vari-colored lights, and his heart was heavy as lead in his breast. He
blamed Jaska for much of this, and his heart was burdened, despite her
treachery, by the fact that he loved her, always would love her. Love
was the one possession which made centuries of life desirable to men of
the Earth. For men could spend centuries in seeking a true mate, knowing
that there were other centuries still in which to enjoy her. Woman was
man's greatest boon, his excuse for living, as was man excuse for woman.
Through the centuries, when humankind remained forever young, the joy in
each other of those truly mated grew as their knowledge grew....

* * * * *

And now Jaska had failed Sarka, when for half a century they had loved
each other! Why had she done it? He had given her no reason to do so.
Had there been some other reason? Why had she laughed, and left them,
after the betrayal of the Master Beryl into the hands of Dalis?

"Before God," whispered Sarka, "I believe that you, Jaska, were playing
a game to dupe Dalis, as he played a game to dupe us!"

Down in his heart he was not sure. But somehow, just to whisper to
himself his faith in Jaska, gave it back to him in some measure, and by
so much lightened the weight upon his heart. For now his
responsibilities were greater than they had ever been before, and he had
need of all his faculties.

"She'll come back, or somehow communicate with me, and explain
everything," he told himself. But he refused to ponder on how Dalis the
betrayer had gained possession of the secret sign manual he had believed
known only to Jaska and himself. That, too, might be explained
satisfactorily, for Dalis was cunning.

From the side of the laboratory opposite the Revolving Beryl came a soft
tinkling sound, like the striking of a musical bell. Sarka rose wearily,
strode to the wall, where a narrow aperture opened, in which rested Food
Capsules sufficient for one meal for three men. He smiled wryly. They
knew then, the Food Conservers deep in the earth as they were, that
Sarka the First was no more--and sent food for three men! All the world
knew, perhaps, yet no single person had raised voice in protest--or if
any had, the mounting murmur of the Beryls had drowned it out.

* * * * *

"Sarka!" spoke Dalis suddenly. "At what time do you estimate that the
flight of the Earth in its orbit will be materially affected?"

"It is being affected this moment, Dalis, shifting the Ovidum store!"
said Sarka shortly. "Within twelve hours we will be in readiness to
start our journey!"

Remaining absolutely motionless within the domed laboratory, it was now
possible to feel the ever so slight motion, not only of the laboratory,
but of the mountain crest upon which it rested. Not so much a to-and-fro
motion as a round-about motion.

Just as the slightest sound flies outward through space endlessly, and
the slightest vibration moves outward until the end of time and of
space, Sarka knew that the vibration set up by the Beryl, slight though
it was, was already being felt at the Poles of the Earth. Not enough to
be noticed there, but existant, just the same.

"In twelve hours the world will be fighting against this combined
vibration and Anti-Gravitational Force we are starting, and second by
second accelerating," Sarka explained to Dalis: "fighting to remain on
its pathway about the Sun! But we will win against it, and with each new
vibration, each succeeding one being more strongly felt, we will force
the Earth that much more against the _pull_ which holds it in its
orbit!"

The laboratory was trembling. The mountain beneath it was trembling.
Both in accordance with scientific design. There was no element of
chance in it, for the mountain moved, and the laboratory on its crest
moved, as science willed. It was now difficult for Sarka to remain still
where he sat, for the trembling was exciting his heart action, and
causing the blood to rush to his cheeks, making him feverish. He rose
to his feet and began pacing the floor.

He strode to the jade lever, moved it ahead a fraction of a fraction of
an inch, and perceptibly the murmuring of the Beryl increased, as did
the trembling of the laboratory and of the mountain.

* * * * *

Twelve hours later exactly, Sarka shouted a single word to Dalis.

"Now!"

The laboratory was swinging about in a sort of circle in a way that made
one dizzy if one remained still for the merest second. Sarka, glancing
out into the Outside, across which blew the storms of the heights, and
noting that no cracks appeared in the surface of the world's vast roof,
knew that this swaying motion had been transmitted evenly to all the
Earth, and that, so far at least, his calculations had been correct.

But Dalis was in a cold sweat of fear, and deathly sick. The motion of
the laboratory, like the inside of a whirling top, made him ill, though
Sarka could tell that he fought against it with all his great will.

Sarka strode to him, looked him in the eyes for a moment. Dalis looked
back, glaring defiance.

"Are you afraid, Dalis?" he shouted, to be heard above the screaming of
the Master Beryl.

"I am not afraid," croaked Dalis. "Has the time arrived?"

Sarka paused, as though for dramatic effect, and raised his right hand
high, while his left hand dropped to the metalized jade lever. There
still was room in the slot in the onyx base for the lever to move
forward ever so little.

* * * * *

"We have reached the exact place," cried Sarka, "where the Earth can, by
pressure upon this lever, be continued on in its orbit--or forced out of
it--out into space! Which shall it be, Dalis? If I move the lever
forward we start our voyage, and may not be able to return!"

For a moment the nostrils of Dalis quivered as though with fear. His
face was white with his illness; but out of his eyes peered the fanatic
self-confidence of the man.

"Push it forward, O Sarka!" he managed.

Sarka, smiling slightly, pushed the lever to its uttermost limit, still
with his right arm upraised. For full five minutes he stood thus, and
then....

"Now!" he shouted, bringing down his arm. "We have begun our journey
into space! Come, let us look Outside, and await the first reports from
my father!"

The two men, forgetting again for a moment the fact of their enmity,
strode to the southern wall of the laboratory and looked out across the
roof of the world.

"You will note, Dalis," said Sarka conversationally, "that in a matter
of hours, the roaring of the Etheric winds will possess everything! We
will have passed into the infinite reaches of Outer Space, where, if I
may make so bold as to say so, it were better if Dalis, self-named
master of the world, knew whither he was going!"


CHAPTER VIII

_Moon Minions Prepare_

"It is time," said Sarka softly, "that we who have urged the world to
forget its quarrels should forget our own. What difference who is
master, so long as success attend our efforts?"

"Then tell me your secret of control of our flight!" snapped Dalis.

Before Sarka could answer, however, Sarka the Second entered the
laboratory area before the Master Beryl. He looked a question at his
son, and Sarka knew that his father was asking what had become of Sarka
the First. He shrugged his shoulders, and nodded his head toward Dalis.
Sarka the Second gave no more sign of perturbation than had his son, but
deep within his eyes were signal fires of fury which centuries of
penance on the part of Dalis would not erase. But now, with Sarka the
First gone, Dalis must live.

"We are headed," said Sarka's father softly, "in the general direction
of the Moon! If we could travel toward it in a straight line, we would
reach it, if we kept our pace of about eighteen miles per second, in
approximately four hours! But since we are out of control, I fear we
will pass it too far away for our fighters to fly across the intervening
space! Or we may be drawn against it, in planetary collision, which of
course means annihilation. We are traveling noticeably faster than while
in the earth's orbit. I am able to see something of the preparation of
Moon-men to receive us!"

* * * * *

Dalis turned to Sarka, and the perspiration bedewed his forehead. In
order to make this mad mission successful, he must know Sarka's secret
of control. Had he been in Sarka's place, _he_ would have kept his
secret, no matter what happened, and he believed in his heart that Sarka
would do the same. It never occurred to him that Sarka, no matter who
the master, would divulge his secret in order to save humanity from
destruction.

"We have approximately four hours, Dalis!" Sarka prompted the betrayer.
"I need at least an hour for my experiments! Do you, knowing as you do
that I have planned all this out, know exactly what course our voyage
should take, still insist on holding the reins yourself?"

"I agree, for this time, to listen to your advice, as I promised you!"

"Then let me suggest that you do some of the work which I had planned
should be done by my father's father! It is time that the world's
Induction Conduits be placed in operation, in order that our people be
supplied with equable temperature from the Earth's Core, as our
temperature changes due to our position with relation to the sun! Stand
back and give me the controls!"

* * * * *

For a moment Dalis stared at the two Sarkas. Would they seize power the
moment he moved away from the Beryl Control? In their places he knew he
would have done it. In their places he knew he would never have
submerged self in the good of the people. But, somewhat diffidently, he
moved away. Sarka the Second returned to the Observatory, behind the
Beryl, while Sarka stopped before the table where the lights were.

After a moment of thought-conversation with Sarka the Second in the
Observatory, he dimmed the light which connected his laboratory with the
headquarters of Klaser, in the Americas.

"Klaser," he barked, "for the period of one second cut the speed of
every Beryl within your Gens to half its present speed!"

"I obey, O Sarka!" came the voice of Klaser.

"Have we changed direction?" Sarka mentally questioned his father.

"Slightly, but we are curving away, instead of toward the Moon! Try
again!"

Sarka dimmed the light of Cleric, who instantly made answer.

"I am here, Sarka!"

"Stop the Beryls of your Gens for two seconds, but be prepared to speed
them up immediately afterward, if ordered, to the speed at which they
are now revolving! Klaser, hold the speed of your Beryls as they are!"

"I obey, O Sarka!" came the musical tones of Cleric.

"I hear, O Sarka!" replied Klaser.

"Now, my father," queried Sarka again, telepathically, "what direction
do we travel?"

"We are heading in a direction which will cause us to pass the Moon at a
distance of approximately fifty thousand miles!"

"From which point our fighters can reach the Moon in exactly two hours,
after they have passed through our atmosphere!" cried Sarka exultantly,
aloud.

"True, son!" replied Sarka the Second, mentally. "I suggest you hold
our course steady as it is!"

* * * * *

The motion of the earth now was as that of a steadily falling body, and
the shifting of the Ovidum store caused by vibrations set up by the
Beryls had set the Earth on its course toward the Moon. Sarka now gave
instructions to Klaser and to Cleric to return the speed of the Beryls
to that which they had attained at the moment the journey of the Earth
had begun--thus bringing them once more into harmony with the Master
Beryl, and rendering the Ovidum static.

Dalis re-entered the laboratory from the Wall Tube, near the Dome Exit,
by which he had passed down to the lowest Inner Level, and stared
suspiciously at the two Sarkas. He found them half-smiling their
satisfaction.

"We pass the Moon within fifty thousand miles!" exulted Sarka. "A flight
of two hours for the Gens which attacks the Moon! Do you refuse, O
Dalis, to send your Gens against the Moon?"

"Why not send the Gens of Gerd!" demanded Dalis. "He is the youngest of
the Spokesmen, and what better test is there for him than this?"

"It is because he is so young that we do not wish to send him," replied
Sarka coldly. "The colonization of the Moon by Earthlings requires the
guiding genius of a Spokesman who has the experience of a Dalis--or a
Sarka, else you would now be dead!"

"Then let it be a Sarka!" barked Dalis.

"Who, then, will control the further flight of the Earth?"

"You! Let your father lead my Gens against the Moon!"

"What will your Gens say, O Dalis? That their revered Spokesman feared
to lead them in person?"

"Enough of this squabbling," snapped Sarka the Second. "Do you not
realize that within a matter of hours, some Gens must be sent into
battle? Come with me to the Observatory, where you will be given
something beside squabbling with which to occupy your minds!"

* * * * *

Leaving the earth on its lonely flight through space, the three men
hurried to the Observatory, where they seated themselves before the
eye-pieces of the Micro-Telescopes, whose outer circles had been aimed
at the Moon.

For a moment the three stared breathlessly at the surface of this dead
sister of the Earth. They noted her valleys, her craters which seemed
bottomless, and saw that even as they watched, valleys and craters
became sharper of outline, proving that they were approaching the Moon
at a tremendous speed. It seemed, too, as though they were heading
toward sure collision, though Sarka the Second had said that they would
pass the Moon at a distance of fifty thousand miles.

"You will note activity at the very rims of the craters!" said the Elder
Sarka easily. "The craters are man-made, not volcanic, as some
scientists believe, and are shaped to converge the rays of the sun, as
our roof is created for the same purpose. But note the activity at the
rims of the craters!"

* * * * *

Closer the men peered, studying the rims as instructed by Sarka the
Second. All about them--and as they watched, activity became apparent on
the inner slopes of the craters--winged creatures seemed to be flying.
They looked like tiny oblate spheroids, and they were in swift action,
darting to and fro like bees which have been disturbed in their hives.

"Those spheres are of metal," said Sarka the Second, "and they are the
fighting Aircars of the Moon-men!"

Neither Dalis nor Sarka denied this statement, for they knew it to be
fact. It became apparent that the movement of the Aircars was not a
movement of chance, but as skillfully ordered as any maneuvers which
had, during the last few hours, been executed by any of the Gens of
Earth. That they were of metal became apparent when, through the
Micro-Telescopes, the watchers caught the glint of the sun on the
surfaces of the cars.

Sarka did a swift mental calculation, and announced the result.

"Those Aircars average something like four hundred feet in length, and
are doubtless filled with fighting Moon-men!"

"That's right," said Dalis, who also had been calculating this very
thing, "but our Ray Directors will disintegrate the Aircars as easily as
my Ray Director disintegrated Sarka the First!"

* * * * *

"The remaining Sarkas received this statement in silence, for Dalis'
choice of a comparison had been an unhappy one, to say the least.

"I am wondering," said Sarka, "if you, my father, and you Dalis, have
noted the peculiar appendages of the Aircars?"

"I saw them some minutes ago," said his father moodily, "and I am almost
afraid to guess their use! If they are what I fear they are, then the
Moon-men have been expecting this attack of ours for years and years,
and have been preparing for it! If they have known, and have been
preparing, then we are facing a race of super-Beings indeed--for we have
known but little of their activities!"

"What, then," said Dalis, "do you think is the purpose of those
appendages?"

"Those appendages, cilia, flagella, call them whatever you wish, are
man-made tentacles, created for the purpose of seizing, crushing and
destroying--then discarding...."

For a full two minutes the three men sat there, and horrible doubts
flooded their brains. For the conclusion was obvious. The Gens of Earth
would go into action flying, not as organizations, inside an Aircar, but
as individuals, in swarms, myriads, legions and hordes. In order to do
the utmost damage with their Ray Directors and Atom Disintegrators,
they must approach within a reasonable distance--and the picture of
those mighty tentacles, hurled like leashed lightning bolts into the
midst of the attackers, folding in individuals by scores and hundreds,
crushing them and dropping them contemptuously, was horrible in the
extreme to contemplate!

* * * * *

It was difficult to estimate the possible speed of the Aircars of the
Moon-men, at least at this distance. Besides, perhaps not a single one
of them was traveling at top speed, because of the fact of their crowded
traffic.

This thought passed through the minds of the three men.

"But we'll know," said Sarka dully, "when they get into action. For if I
am not mistaken, those Aircars are being mustered on the rims of those
craters to await orders, not to resist our attack, but to launch their
own attack before we are ready! Dalis, are you going to allow your Gens
to go into action against these Outsiders, without the inspiration of
your personal leadership?"

The nostrils of Dalis were quivering with the intensity of his emotion.
His vast egotism told him that he, Dalis, could successfully combat
these Aircars of the Moon-men, and he wished with all his heart to issue
the orders to his Gens. But, vain as he was, he did not even wish to
have the appearance of acceding to the original plan of Sarka! Sarka had
planned for Dalis to attack the dwellers of the Moon, and Dalis had
refused. Now, when this challenge of the Aircars was a direct challenge
to his genius as a potential warlord of earth and he wished to accept
the challenge, he was torn two ways.

Should he go ahead under the common leadership of the Sarkas? Or should
he still refuse battle--and perhaps see some lesser Spokesman go forth
to win glory and imperishable renown to himself?

* * * * *

A thought message, a command almost, impinged on the brains of the
three.

"I with to speak with you aloud!" The message was from Jaska!

The three men rose and darted into the room of the Master Beryl. They
had no sooner entered than the clear voice of Jaska sounded in the
laboratory.

"Sarka, I am no traitor! I am Jaska, who loves you! I am in the
headquarters of Dalis at Obi, and the Gens of Dalis has indicated its
allegiance to me, having been informed by me that it is the wish of
Dalis, whose presence is needed at the place of the Master Beryl!
Command us, O Sarka, for we are ready to attack!"

There the voice ended, while the two Sarkas turned again to face Dalis.

Sarka now was glad that Dalis knew the secret sign manual, and his
fingers worked swiftly as he spoke to the rebel.

"Will you, then, Dalis, allow your Gens to be led to glory by a woman? A
woman, moreover, who has duped you?"

"The woman is a fool!" said Dalis. "She will lead the Gens to
destruction!"

"Who, then, will be blamed if she does? Your Gens believe she is their
new Spokesman at your wish! If they are told otherwise, they will think
that Dalis himself is afraid to lead them!"

"We shall see," said Dalis, "if I could win honor by leading my Gens in
a successful attack against the Moon-men, how much greater will be my
glory if Jaska attacks, is repulsed--and I go in to turn defeat into
victory!"

Thus spake the colossal selfishness of Dalis, who took no thought of the
possible, nay, certain, loss of countless lives because of his
obstinancy.

"I suggest," he said, "that you instruct your beloved Jaska to make
ready; for if I am not mistaken, when we return to the Observatory we
will discover that the Aircars of the Moon-men have left their craters
and are racing outward from the Moon to meet us! Or perhaps you would
lead my Gens, to safeguard Jaska!"


CHAPTER IX

_The Attack of the Yellow Stars_

"Why should I safeguard Jaska?" asked Sarka quietly. "She is a true
daughter of Cleric! If Cleric does not fear for her to be Spokesman of a
Gens, why should I? He is her father. If she wins, the more glory will
be hers! If she loses, she will at least have tried!"

"Meaning," snarled Dalis, "that I have refused even to try!"

Sarka shrugged expressively, and the three stepped once more into the
Observatory, took their places before the Micro-Telescopes. For a moment
they could not see the outline of the Moon, for during their brief
sojourn in the laboratory the Moon seemed to have disintegrated, flying
into countless spheroidal pieces.

"You see?" said Dalis. "The Moon-men do not wait for us! They attack!"

It was all too true that the Aircars which had been mustered at the rims
of the Moon's craters had been hurled outward into space, outward toward
the on-rushing Earth, and the myriad numbers of them for a time shut out
all view of the surface of the Moon.

"God!" spoke Sarka, and it was like a prayer. His cheeks were pale as
death, for in a moment he would speak the word which would send the Gens
of Dalis, under the leadership of Jaska, out against these formidable
Aircars of the Moon-men, and the appearance of the on-rushing cars was
terrifying. That their flying radius, outward, was a great one, was
manifest by the fact that the Earth would not for another hour reach its
closest estimated point with the Moon.

* * * * *

Sarka, exchanging glances with his father, rose and stepped again into
the laboratory. Even as he entered the room of the Master Beryl,
Jaska's broken signal came through.

"I am ready, Sarka!" came her soft voice, vibrant with confidence. "The
Gens is ready, and the Gens believes in me!"

For a moment Sarka hesitated before taking the plunge. Then he spoke the
fatal words.

"Go, Jaska, and my love goes with you!"

As the Earth approached closer to the Moon, the revolving of the Beryls
had been decreased, so that the motion of the Master Beryl was almost
normal--normal being that speed with which it revolved when it was
necessary to use it for visual contact with the people of the Earth.

Out of the area of the Gens of Dalis darted the green specks which were
the flying people of Dalis! Sarka, staring in among them, focussing the
Beryl-microscope, sought for some way of identifying Jaska, who led
them. A thrill coursed through him when he made her out,
unmistakably--dressed still in the tight white clothing of her own Gens,
with the Red Lily of the house of Cleric on her breast and on her back!
The daughter of Cleric was leading the Gens of Dalis into combat under
her own colors and her father's insignia!

* * * * *

Sarka raced back to the Observatory, seated himself again to watch the
attack, which must of necessity be joined within a matter almost of
minutes. Those myriads of Aircars flying outward from the Moon, had
seemed invincible; but up until now he had never seen an entire Gens
mustered at one time. His whole being thrilled with the awesome grandeur
of the spectacle; it seemed that not an able-bodied individual of the
Gens of Dalis had failed to answer the muster of the Gens.

Millions upon millions of people, taking off the icy roof of that part
of the Earth lying between Ohi and the North Pole, from the heart of
what had once been part of the Pacific Ocean.

So many of them were there that when they were free of the Earth,
flashing outward at two thousand miles an hour, it was impossible to see
the Moon or those formidable Aircars--and still, out of the heart of the
area of the Gens of Dalis, came other myriads, each flight waiting only
for the preceding flight to clear!

The green, tight fitting clothing of the Gens of Dalis, each individual
wearing the yellow star of the Spokesman of the Gens! A marvelous,
awe-inspiring sight!

And this was but a single area, and the earth was divided into twelve
such areas, some smaller, none larger, which showed Sarka for the first
time a hint of the mighty man-power, and fighting woman-power which he
controlled. However, once free of the Earth, conduct of the fight would
be in the hands of the Spokesman--Jaska, acting for Dalis.

* * * * *

Sarka turned to Dalis, his eyes flashing.

"Does it not thrill you, O Dalis?" he demanded. "Do you not wish now
that you had gone out with your people as their leader?"

"They follow Jaska like sheep," he stated with a snort. "But wait! My
Gens seem invincible, because it bulks between us and the Aircars of the
Moon-Dwellers! Wait, see how the battle goes! The Gens may yet have need
of Dalis!"

Sarka studied those outgoing hosts, which were dwindling away to mere
specks with vast speed, for through the cordons and cordons of them he
could now see the Aircars more plainly. It was still possible, when one
looked through the Micro-Telescopes, to see the slim figure of Jaska
leading the attack. She was in the vanguard of the Gens of Dalis leading
her people onward as though she had been born to command--utterly
fearless.

"And I was small enough," whispered Sarka, "to doubt you! I even told
you that I doubted you! Forgive me, Jaska! Forgive me!"

And still, as Level after Level gave up its myriads, the Gens of Dalis
shot forth from the Gens area, and winged away, following the lead of
Jaska. Millions of people, armed with Ray Directors and Atom
Disintegrators. How tiny the individuals seemed, against the mighty bulk
of those Aircars of the Moon!

But Sarka did not fear, save for the safety of Jaska, as he was
realizing anew that he had scarcely skimmed the surface of the man-might
of the Earth.

* * * * *

Now, seen through the myriads of the Dalis Gens, he could see again the
on-rushing Aircars, and his heart misgave him for a moment as he could
tell, by estimation, that at least a hundred families were outlined
against each individual car, which moment by moment grew larger.

Those tentacles were now much in evidence, rising and falling under and
around the racing Aircars like serpents, or dragging ropes; but seeming
like living things in the sentient manner of their moving--eager to come
in contact with the first of the earthlings, and to wrap those tentacles
about them, crush them, hurl them into space.

Sarka went back into the laboratory only long enough to attune the
Beryls of the Earth to a point where the Earth would remain almost
stationary, comparatively speaking, taking a curving course about the
surface of the Moon, as it had for countless millions of years coursed
about the Sun.

Then, back to the Observatory, to see how went the battle. Through the
Micro-Telescopes the first meeting was plain to be seen. The Gens of
Dalis rushed headlong to meet the Aircars and many of them rushed
headlong to their destruction.

Sarka noted a group of perhaps a hundred people break forth from the
vanguard of the attackers, and mount to a safe height above the Aircars
against which the Gens were hurling themselves. A sigh of relief escaped
him, and he wished there were some way in which he could learn the
individual identities of the ninety and nine who had taken Jaska
forcibly out of danger! For her white clothing, and her Red Lily of
Cleric were plainly visible and recognizable! The men of the Gens of
Dalis might permit the leadership of a woman, but they would not permit
her to be needlessly endangered.

* * * * *

Sarka turned to Dalis, and noted that the face of the master egotist was
pale and drawn, his nostrils quivering with emotion, as he watched his
Gens go into battle, and a feeling of satisfaction coursed through Sarka
like a little white flame. Dalis was proud of his Gens, and now was
wishing that he, and not Jaska, were leading them onward.

"I would wager something," whispered Sarka to himself, "that Dalis will
not be able to stand it! That before battle has been joined for ten
minutes, he will have gone out to take over the leadership of the Gens!
Jaska must have guessed that, too! Wise, clever Jaska!"

With a fearless massing of forces, the people of the yellow stars joined
battle with the Aircars! The manner of men who flew the Aircars was
still unknown to the people of Earth.

But in a trice they would know.

In a matter of minutes Earth would realize the horror of what faced the
Gens of Dalis, whom Jaska led!

For with the sending out of their Aircars the Moon-men had given but the
merest hint of their ponderous, devastating might!


CHAPTER X

_Tentacles of Terror_

Dalis had always been a stormy petrel, but as he sat before his
Micro-Telescope, watching his Gens go into battle against the Moon-men,
not even Sarka the Second guessed the depth of infamy of which Dalis
was capable.

Dalis had given a hint, but Sarka had, in his sudden realization of the
fact that Jaska really loved him, and was no traitor, forgotten that
hint. How had Dalis learned the secret sign-manual of Jaska and Sarka?
Therein lay the hint.

Dalis, in common with all other Earth's scientists, possessed the
ability to think deeply, yet to so mask his thoughts that no one else
could grasp them telepathically--and it was well for the peace of mind
of the Sarkas that they could not read the black thought of the man, or
look into the future, even so far as a dozen years.

The Gens of the yellow stars moved into contact with the Aircars of the
Moon. Earth and Moon were gripped in the horror of war, the war between
worlds, where no quarter might be asked or given, because fought between
alien peoples who did not so much as comprehend each other's languages,
or even their signals.

The people of the Gens swarmed about the Aircars like myriad swarms of
angry bees, but it was only to Dalis that this simile came, for only
Dalis, of these three, had ever seen a swarm of bees.

* * * * *

Sweeping in closely, the Gens brought forth from their resting places in
their Sarka-Belts their Ray Directors and their Atom-Disintegrators, and
turned the blighting rays of them against the gleaming, ice-colored
sides of the aerial monsters.

But even as the Gens brought their instruments of destruction into play,
the mighty tentacles of the first hundred Aircars had got into action.
Down they whirled to catch at the flying bodies of the pigmylike
individuals of the Gens, and hundreds of Earthlings were caught in those
tentacles in the first moment of conflict.

Sarka studied the reaction of the people, thus captured. He could see
the expressions of unutterable agony on their faces, could see their
cheeks turn black with--what? There was no way of knowing; but all sorts
of guesses were possible. Those tentacles, from their action upon the
human beings which they encompassed, might be charged with electricity.
For the people they captured turned black, then shriveled slowly--and
were released by the tentacles....

They fell sluggishly away, through the great space which yet separated
the Earth and the Moon. But the people who fell, fell aimlessly, going
neither toward the Earth or the Moon, like black feathers in a vagrant
breeze.

"Great God, do you see father?" cried Sarka. "The--whatever it is--that
turns our people into cinders and drops them, has no effect on the
Anti-Gravitational Ovoids in the skull-pans of the helmets, and without
mental direction, the Ovoids neither rise nor fall but wander aimlessly!

"See? As the fight continues, those who still live, as they dart here
and there through the battle area, will be confronted continually by the
blackened faces and shriveled figures of their departed friends,
relatives and neighbors, and will see at first hand what will happen to
themselves if they are caught by the tentacles!"

* * * * *

From the lips of Dalis came one single burst of laughter, filled with
bitterness. No other word came from his lips, no other sign. He merely
sat and stared, and masked his hell-black thoughts so that neither of
the Sarkas might read them. But in the fertile mind of Dalis a plan was
being born--a plan that, he knew, had always been growing back in his
mental depths, somewhere, down the centuries, since first he had become
an enemy of the Sarkas. The Sarkas ruled the Earth, and....

But he would spring his surprise when he believed the time right, for
Dalis possessed a faculty which neither of the Sarkas possessed--an
example of it being his incomprehensible knowledge of the secret code
of moving fingers used by Sarka and Jaska.

The Gens of Dalis drew back in consternation at this wholesale taking
off of the first line of attack. Out of that first line, comprising
perhaps a thousand families, scarcely a hundred had escaped the groping
of those mighty tentacles of the Aircars--and the black, shriveled
things which had been men floated all about the Aircars which had
destroyed them, warnings to those who followed them into the fray. Those
who had somehow escaped the wrath of the tentacles in the first
engagement fled back into the heart of the next line of sky-skirmishers,
fear and horror in their faces.

Here, answering to the will of Jaska, a mile or so above the heart of
the conflict, they reformed with their people, and prepared again to
attack. But how to attack these formidable Aircars successfully?

* * * * *

That was the question. Ray Directors had been turned against them, but
something was decidedly wrong. The first car to feel the blast of even
one of those Ray Directors should have vanished, become as nothing, as
had the body of Sarka the First before the Ray Director of Dalis.

But apparently nothing had happened. Why?

Grimly Dalis and the two remaining Sarkas pondered the problem,
wondering at the same time what Jaska would now do, how reform her Gens,
how send it again to an attack that seemed hopeless.

"There they go again!" whispered Sarka.

The first two myriads of the Gens of Dalis had now crowded together
until they formed a veritable cloud which masked, for a moment, the
Aircars of the Moon. Then, as one person, answering to the will of
Jaska, they swept in to the attack again.

But as they approached the Aircars, they divided four ways--up, down,
to right and to left, and smashed into the Aircars from four directions
at once. Jaska, knowing that countless lives must be lost to destroy
these monsters of the Moon, was trying to down them by mass attack,
hoping that, while the inner groups gave their lives, those who followed
after them would get in close enough to use their Ray Directors and Atom
Disintegrators.

"She is wasting lives to no avail!" cried Dalis. "There is a way to beat
these people!"

"It is really your responsibility, O Dalis!" snapped Sarka. "Why do you
not go out and lead your Gens? If you know, why remain here and watch
the destruction of all the people of your Gens?"

"You know why our Ray Directors and Atom Disintegrators do not work, or
work but poorly? Because our fighters are within the gravitational pull
of the Moon, instead of the Earth, and machines which work perfectly on
Earth are thrown out of balance when under the influence of the Moon!"

"Then," cried Sarka, "we must sweep in close enough to our people...."

* * * * *

Without waiting to say another word, for thousands of men were dying
each breath-space, Sarka raced into the laboratory and gave the signal
to race up the speed of the Beryls, to attune them with the increasing
speed of the Master Beryl, whose jade lever now was set at the halfway
mark in the onyx slot.

When he returned to the Observatory, Dalis was gone, and Sarka the
Second sat alone.

"I knew he would go," said Sarka, "for he cannot endure to see someone
else take credit for winning this first victory--if it is even possible
to win it! I knew that, vain though he is, Dalis is yet a man!"

"I am not so sure of that, son!" replied the Elder Sarka. "For I have
known him longer than you have! There's something else in that brain of
his which takes no thought of the death of people of his Gens--or for
the betterment of the other people of the Earth! I wonder...."

But even as he spoke, Dalis was away, flying free and fast toward the
scene of battle. In a few minutes his will would be felt by his Gens,
and Jaska could return again. Sarka sought for her. She was still safe,
high above the battle. Thousands and thousands of those shriveled things
now floated in the space about the cars, above them, below them,
everywhere. But the Gens of Dalis had at last caused some trouble to the
Aircars of the Moon.

A hundred of them, like stricken birds, were falling downward toward the
Moon, great holes torn in their sides. But as they fell, their
tentacles, which whipped here and there like snakes in their
death-throes, carried with them their full capacity in people of the
Gens of Dalis!

* * * * *

With the partial destruction of the Aircars which were falling, the
force that actuated the death-dealing of those tentacles seemed to have
gone out of them. For the people now held in the grip of the mighty
tentacles were still alive! Their squirmings could be plainly seen, and
their cries could have been heard, had it not been that the noise of
battle drowned out all other sounds.

A hundred Aircars falling, and the men and fighting women of the Gens of
Dalis, with new courage in them now they realized that the Aircars were
not entirely invincible, renewed the attack with savage vigor.

Taking no thought of the death which must surely come to them, they
circled and pressed the Aircars; and when the tentacles caught at some
of them, others climbed to the very body of the Aircars, over the
shriveling bodies of the dying, and turned their Ray Directors and Atom
Disintegrators against the gray sides of the monsters.

Even before Dalis had reached the vanguard of his Gens another hundred
Aircars were falling, each with its tentacles wrapped tightly about such
of the earthlings as they could grasp. Falling ... falling ... still
living, plunging down.

Now Dalis had reached the scene of the fray, and was assuming command.

As he did so a single white-robed figure, life-size when seen through
the Micro-Telescopes, darted out of the fray and headed at top speed for
the dwelling place of Sarka. Jaska, relieved, was returning home!

But though Jaska flew at top speed, she did not seem to grow larger, or
draw nearer to the Earth!

* * * * *

Out of the ruck of the defenders of the Moon, a single Aircar, whose
gleaming gray side was marked with queer crimson splashes, broke free to
pursue Jaska!

She fled at top speed, yet the Aircar was gaining, proof that the Moon
had developed speed greater than Earth had attained.

"But why," queried Sarka, "does she draw no nearer?"

"Great God!" ejaculated Sarka the Second, after a brief examination of
certain chartographs beside his Micro-Telescope. "We are moving away
from the Moon! Something is forcing us away! The people of the Moon have
something whose nature we do not know, capable of forcing them away from
us--while they pull our people toward them! You see? If they pulled us
toward them, we could overthrow them, for we outnumber them perhaps
thousands to one; but if they force themselves away faster than the Gens
of Dalis, if defeated, can follow us, they can destroy, or capture, the
Gens at their leisure!"

* * * * *

Suddenly, out of the Earth, past the all-seeing eyes of the
Micro-Telescopes, swept a new myriad. Men in white, wearing the Red Lily
of the House of Cleric! Cleric was sending out men to rescue Jaska from
the Aircar which pursued her! But would Jaska or these who went forth
to fetch her ever be able again to attain landing place upon the Earth!

It looked doubtful.

Even as Sarka asked himself this question fresh Aircars shot from the
rims of Moon craters, rushing outward to add their weight in the battle
against the Gens of Dalis. The Gens of Dalis was doomed!

In the mind of Sarka the Second there still loomed a hellish doubt that
would not down.

The men of Cleric were surrounding Jaska now, protecting her with their
lives against the tentacles of that lone Aircar splashed with
crimson--and all were flying a losing race with the Earth, which was
still being forced outward from the Moon!

* * * * *

_IN THE NEXT ISSUE_


ON THE PLANET OF DREAD

_An Exciting Interplanetary Story_

By R. F. Starzl


EARTH, THE MARAUDER

_Part Two of the Thrilling Novel_

By Arthur J. Burks


THE FLYING CITY

_A Novelet Concerning an
Amazing Aerial Metropolis_

By H. Thompson Rich


MURDER MADNESS

_The Conclusion of the
Gripping Continued Novel_

By Murray Leinster

----And Others!

* * * * *

[Illustration: Marable, in a desperate frenzy, hacked at the reptile's
awful head.]