Arthur J. Burks

“ He behaved like one who would be master in any situation. And then strange eyes were turned upon him – the eyes of the ‘children.’ A strange unearthly fact became instantly apparent: the children were all females! From mountains, from villages Parcele had never seen, from all the many fastnesses, they came to the rendezvous upon the plain. They were as many as the sands upon the shores of an inland sea. They were bigger even than Parlece – and all of entrancing beauty. There were roses in their cheeks, visible even in the subdued light of Callisto’s midnight. ”

“ New York City knows exactly where we vanished in the sky. Those six planes are aiming at us—at a spot in the stratosphere they can't see. And yet, why should Sitsumi and the Three be so fearful? All they have to do is move a half mile in any direction and they'll never find them."
"But to move will interfere with their plans," said Eyer. "Lucian, look at the expressions on their faces! Something tells me they are vulnerable in ways we haven't guessed at. If we knew the secret maybe we could destroy them. We've got to discover their weak spot." ”

“ Lieutenant! For the love of God what is happening to you?"
It was the voice of the sergeant of the guard, freighted with abysmal terror; but I did not care. The shapely, strangely warm arms of the sea-creature were about me, and the sound of the bells, unbelievably sweet now, was in my ears. For me the world had ceased to exist, save for knowledge that these two things were true. I was carried to the rail, and went over slowly, without commotion, as comfortably as though I had been riding on a couch of eiderdown—and came to myself to know myself lost indeed! ”

“ That was the reason I agreed to hide the model "metal bird." How and when, if ever, would it be found? Without faith I could not have endured the emptiness of the obvious answer—that eventually, in course of time, Saint Dennis would crumble into ruins, raining those ruins down upon the crypt, burying it for all time from the sight of men, losing to men the thing I had brought into being from my dream inspired.
Other things I had shaped, invented, had come into human use, had bettered the living of mankind. Why should this "metal bird" be an exception? ”

“ Ten sets of footprints led in a wavering line back to the invisible dome which hemmed us in. Hoose and I hung back to let Matzuku go on ahead of us. He came to the invisible wall and halted, looking foolish as a fore-thrust foot slid down what appeared to be nothingness.
The footprints all ended against the invisible wall. Moonlight shed its brilliance over everything, and we could see far out beyond the invisible wall, into the eerie area of sand dunes, stunted brush, to a horizon which offered no hope whatever. ”

“ Countless fingers of shadowy gray substance were undulating up the surface of the window, like pale angleworms or white serpents of many sizes, trying to climb up a pane of glass.
"Well," said Jeter, "here we are! You see? Outside we can see nothing. Inside we begin to see a little, and what good will it do us?"
Eyer grinned. It was as though he lighted a cigarette and nonchalantly blew smoke rings at the ceiling, save that they dared not use up any of their precious oxygen by smoking. ”

“ I would not need then to make haste to leave my vessel. I would be Master of the New World, with no need to hurry. I would be THE Master!
Into this vast indecision I stepped, through the tiny door in the Building of The Skull—forgetting the door, the key, and the building, to become Anghor of twelve thousand years ago.
I sat there, still undecided, with the Catastrophe almost upon Atlantis, when the Three Superior Masters—these titles related solely to natural science, from which all other arts and sciences derived—came to see me. That their coming expressed the general fear I knew. ”

“ The corpse was dripping wet, entirely nude, and the lips and cheeks as coldly blue as though the corpse had been dragged for hours on a line in the wake of the ship!
No matter how secluded one's life may have been, no matter how carefully one may have been guarded during one's lifetime, there come into the lives of most of us certain inexplicable happenings which may never be forgotten. This matter of the dead sentry was one of these for me, and I shall go to my grave with the memory of his cold cheeks and bluish lips limned upon the retina of my very soul. ”

“ Jeter and Eyer exchanged glances.
"Just what are you doing?" asked Jeter. "I've seen some of the results of your activities, but I can see no reason for them. I would pronounce everything you have done so far to be the acts of madmen."
"We are not mad," said Sitsumi. "We are simply a group of people of mixed blood who deplore the barriers of racial prejudice, for one thing. We are advocates of a deliberately contrived super-race, produced by the amalgamation of the best minds and the best bodies of all races. We ourselves are what the world calls Eurasians. In our youth people patronised us. ”

“ In fifty years, if nothing is done to prevent it, the world will be filled with men whose bodies are so soft as to be almost worthless. But I shall take steps to prevent that, as soon as I am ready. I need a week. Then I shall begin my crusade to make the white race a race of supermen, whom I alone shall rule. They shall keep the brains they have, which shall be transferred to bodies which I shall furnish. ”

“ We could not tell whether the group had formed facing us or with their backs to us.
A chill crept over and through the dome as the formations fell in. The sounds in our walkie-talkies grew in volume. I think we all sensed menace in the words that were not human words, in tones that were not human tones. We could sense growing menace, and intonations of command.
We could make out nothing resembling any weapons we knew, but never once did we doubt that the shadows were forming against us. We forgot, while the shadows closed ranks, that we had been fed, watered, kept warm. ”

“ There were flanges on the sides of the thing which must have steadied it in flight brought it to passably safe landing on Callisto. Even so it had struck deeply into Callisto’s soil, slid forth again to rest upon the plain where not the children were gathered.
“Open it, Parlece!” snapped Cala. “It is not proper that a ruler should place herself in danger, if this should prove a machine of destruction!”
By ‘ruler’ Cala did not mean herself, but any woman of Callisto. Women were ‘rulers’ to distinguish them from men, who were slaves and who lived solely on sufferance. Parlece smiled. ”

“ The nearest land, save that which stretched in eternal darkness some three miles below us, was more than a thousand miles beyond the southern horizon. We were just a single ship, burdened with a precious freight of souls, upon an ocean that seemed endless. The first day out had been squally, and everyone had been sick, save those of us who had gone down to the sea in ships before. But with the dawning of the second morning the sea had calmed down, and our vessel rode through the blue, toward the horizon bowl which ever crept before us, in the golden wake of the setting sun. ”

“ Keep it secret, for all our lives, and afterward, unless somewhere in the Secret Wisdom of the Sages of the Past, there is an answer to dreadful knowledge such as this, to make it safe for men to manage!"
They understood me, every one of them, for they were men of intelligence beyond their time—and why not? Three of them were obviously the Three Masters of Atlantis!
"To trace every possible knowledge of man," said Doctor A, "we must trace in detail the past of every man on earth. That we cannot do. To trace all the past of even one would take generations." ”

“ Must we confess the fears to which all humanity is heir? We had not thought ourselves liable to attack, but there still is a way to destroy these upstarts. To your places, everyone! We shall fight these winged upstarts and destroy them!"
The denizens of the space ship were at their stations. Jeter and Eyer could imagine the minions of Sitsumi and the Three, below the floor of the white globe, standing-to on platforms about the unseen engines which gave life and movability to this ship of the stratosphere. ”

“ There is only one genius greater––Professor Caleb Barter!”
Naka Machi bowed low, and as he spoke his breath hissed inwardly through his teeth after the Japanese manner of admitting humility––“that my humble breath may not blow upon you”––which never needed really to be sincere.
“I am merely a genius with my fingers, Professor Barter,” said Naka Machi in a musical voice. “The smaller the medium in which I work the happier I am, Professor; and in that I am a genius. But the plan for this so marvelous little radio-control, as you call it, came entirely from your head, my master. ”

“ I was tempted to laugh, until I remembered something that was absolutely no comfort whatever: in other parts of the world, a long way from Cuba, Japs still were holding out against patrols that hunted them down, Japs who somehow hadn't got the word that the war was over, or else refused to believe it.
I was proud of the marines when the Japs asked for food and water. Not one of them spoke up and said, "You don't need either one here." I knew then that every marine regarded it as at least possible that what was happening to us was a top-brass secret, or series of secrets, of our own government. ”

“ There was one consolation – no one looked at the two pronged sticks in his leathern belt. Cala thrust her hand into the opening – and Parlece was struck in spite of himself with a surge of admiration for her. What a mate she would make for a powerful man – if only there were no conflict, if only things were as they had been when Parlece had been young! He steeled himself against admiration. Cala drew from the inside of the cylinder a smaller cylinder, apparently of the same metal as the larger one. But there were strange hieroglyphics on it. None in all Callisto had ever seen such writing... ”

“ A god had no need to make undue speed.
When I was ready, and not before. I sat down under a fig-tree and thought:
"What shall I create in this Eden?" I began to form pictures in my mind, to make mental designs of the living things I would create. I would begin small. I would, first, make a simple tree. I saw a stately palm in my mind, like no palm that ever grew on Atlantis anywhere. ”

“ My manifesto shall say that my apes must not be slain. It shall say that for every ape slain by the police one of my eighteen hostages will die.”
Bentley would have gasped with horror, but he could not. Now he saw Thomas Tyler, his face a white mask of despair, in the midst of his helpless men.
“I’ll give you a hand, somehow, Tommy,” Bentley whispered deep down inside him.
“Now you shall see what I do, Lee,” said Caleb Barter. “Naka Machi, bring the ape skin you took from my friend. Bentley, you will follow us.” ”

“ Eyer talked on softly, unbothered by Jeter's silence, knowing that Jeter wouldn't hear a word, that his partner had drawn into himself and was even now, perhaps, visualizing what they might encounter in the stratosphere. Eyer talked to give shape to his own thoughts.
A world gone mad, a world that fled from the menace which hung over Manhattan.... Jeter hoped that the calm brains of men like Hadley would at least be able to quiet the populace somewhat, else many of them would be self-destroyed, as men and women destroy one another in rushes for the exits during great theater fire alarms. ”

“ Any Fifth Column from "Outside" is considered fantastic beyond all possibility.
Well, there it is. The high brass all along the way has spoken. Now it's up to me. I checked to find that every nation in the world had denied knowledge of the Shadow Men—except our own United States. But without asking for volunteers, our most ruthless high brass would not have sent us to face those shadows, wherein someone was almost certain to die horribly.
So, some nation has lied! We, the United Nations, have the perfect A-bomb-proof, capable of instant transmission to anywhere it is needed. ”

“ To think to decelerate was to decelerate. To think speed was to gain speed—for thought was the motive power which guided the magnet by which my vessel traveled, the switch its signal to perform.
So I came to the surface of the blue sea which lay between the sunlit peaks I had chosen for myself. They still were damp as from a lengthy rain. The water had covered them, long enough to drown all living things upon them save the trees, the plants. The twin peaks were mine. Not one person lived among all the many bodies that floated in the sea about me, and doubtless in the seas beyond the peaks. ”

“ Instinctively I whirled about, knowing somehow that I must move my head before I met this creature's eyes again, and stared forward to the shadowy portion of the promenade whence the sentry had emerged before his plunge over the side. Up the starboard side of the ship crept a veritable wall of seaweed; up to the rail, pausing there for a moment, then to the deck, where it writhed for a moment or two, taking a weird distorted shape that made me think of a man, yet which I knew was not a man, before it strode into the center of the promenade. ”

“ Suddenly a human body was tossed violently against the side of a building, and the fleeing car passed on. As the pursuing car passed the spot Bentley knew by the shape of the bundle that the enemy had killed a woman. At that speed he must have crushed every bone in her body. In a matter of seconds the information would be telephoned to radio studios and people would be warned to take to open doorways when they saw cars traveling at undue rates of speed.
“I’m a better driver than he is!” yelled the police chauffeur, out of the side of his mouth at Bentley. “I haven’t killed anyone yet.” ”

“ Thousands of lives had been snuffed out, a twelve-story building had leaped five thousand feet into the air, and the world's biggest bridge had turned upstream as though turning its back against the mad traffic it had at last been called upon to bear. ”

“ I always thrilled to a landing, even a make-believe one. So did the men, boring though peacetime soldiering was. The APD was dropping dud shells ashore. The jets were diving on us, just to make a noise, and our three motors sounded like the crack of doom. The men kept down because that was the rule, but occasionally I pulled myself up and looked ahead over the ramp—which would come crashing down when we rammed our nose into the sand. Out over that ramp the marines would charge, to race for cover and swing into position to give our new weapons a workout. ”

“ I had scarcely absorbed this utterly fantastic thought than I realized something else, something that I could not have seen until I lost the outer, apparent detail of the Building of the Skull, by coming close enough to see smaller, more intimate details. Then I made my second, most amazing discovery. The Building of the Skull was walled, roofed and domed, by an infinite mosaic of tiny hexagonal doors! They were doors of a strange shining metal which something inside told me was far more precious than gold. ”

“ After all, the material of the human brain and the ape brain were perhaps very much alike, and Barter was working on a sound scientific principle in making a sounding board of an ape’s brain.
Bentley shuddered through the fur that covered him. Knowing the sort of creatures with which he had to deal––men in all things save their intelligence––made him tremble with nausea. Such grim, ghastly hybrids. But he stopped shuddering when he recalled that he still dealt with men after all––at least with one man, Caleb Barter. ”

“ Some terrible fascination held me, my eyes fixed on that space of black water, for several moments after the tendrils of seaweed had drawn away to right and left—and up from the depths, into the opening, came two who filled all my being with abject terror—and something else.
One of the two was dead, I knew on the instant, for I could see his face, all white and drawn, yet with the blue lips smiling, of the ill-fated sentry who had gone over the side before my very eyes! And he had been brought up from the depths in the arms of—I hesitate to give the creature a name. A woman? ”

“ Jeter would never forget the screams of mortal terror which came from the lips of the doomed who had been working late in the Vandercook building—for, horror piled upon horror, those who had sought to escape calamity did not fall to Earth at all, but, at the same speed of the rising building, traveled skyward with it, human flies outside those leering dark windows. ”

“ It would be impossible for you, Bentley, to play the ape well enough to fool this mad Mind Master. But a hitherto unknown type of ape has just been discovered in Colombia. I read the story of it in a scientific journal to-day. The ape is more manlike than any other known to science. You shall be that ape, brought in during the night by a famous returned explorer. There will be great interest in you now that the story of Saret Balisle’s kidnaping has broken. With the attention of New York upon you, certainly your presence will interest Caleb Barter. ”

“ I didn't know how to explain Father Wulstan, or Anghor, but they'd have to be more reasonable than reincarnation to convince me.
"Just what," I asked, becoming more serious, "have you managed to get out of my experiences, if you must call them that, as Anghor? Before you answer, it strikes me that all Anghor's palaver about the creative power of thought is on a par with what we've seemed to prove about reincarnation, a kind of waking-sleeping nightmare! How could anybody except the gods create by the power of thought?" ”