H. Thompson Rich

“ They were ants—or at least more like ants than anything on earth—great fiery termites ten feet long, hideous mandibles snapping like steel, hot from the forge, their huge compound eyes burning like greenish electric fire in their livid orange sockets. ”

“ What do you think the things are, Professor?”
“God knows! As I told you, those seeds, should they germinate, would produce something quite alien to our experience; and as I feared, it is a form of life that will not blend well with humanity.”
Jim shuddered.
“But look, father!” exclaimed Joan. “They’re flying away! They seem to be way up among the stars. Maybe they’ve left the earth altogether.”
Professor Wentworth following his daughter’s gaze, saw that many of the monsters were now mere orange pinpoints against the night. ”

“ As on his former foray into that fiery realm, Jimmy timed his flight to arrive over the eastern edge of the Arizona desert just before dawn. Somewhere in that great sandy waste, they felt, there would be a place to set the plane down and get the ray going.
Professor Wentworth had broadcast the particulars of his tube to his scientific colleagues wherever humanity still remained, and the eyes of the world were on this flight. If successful, swift planes would bear similar tubes to the centers of the devastated regions elsewhere, and sweep outward with their deadly rays. ”

“ Whereupon, for a moment, Jim’s fear seemed confirmed.
“But, good God!” he exclaimed. “It couldn’t possibly be that powerful, could it?”
“I think it can be made to be,” was Professor Wentworth’s grave assurance. “The greatest power we know in the universe is radiant energy, which reaches us from the sun and the stars, traveling at the speed of light.”
“Like light rays, these heat rays can be focused, directed; and the beta rays of the cathode, traveling at the same velocity, can be made to ride these rays of radiant heat much as electric power rides radio waves. ”

“ Professor Wentworth rose as they entered and laid aside some scientific book he had been reading.
A man of medium height and build, he had the same twinkling hazel eyes as his daughter, though somewhat dimmed from peering at too many stars for too many years.
“Good evening, Jim,” he said. “I’ve rather been expecting you. What is on your mind?”
“Seeds! Eggs! Baseballs!” was the reply, “I don’t know what. You’ve seen the latest television reports, I suppose?” said Jim, noting that the panel on the receiving cabinet across the room was still lit. ”

“ There were some optimists, of course, who believed that the miracle would happen—that Professor Wentworth or some other scientist would devise some means of repelling the invader before it was too late.
Young Jim Carter of The York Press was not among them, however, though he would have gambled it would be Professor Wentworth if anyone. For what hope was there that any mere man could figure out a weapon that would be effective against such a deadly, such a superhuman foe? ”

“ And now, as they waited, suddenly a sinister tinge of orange suffused the rosy hues of the east.
“The Fire Ants!” cried Joan, shrinking. “They’ve seen us! They’re coming!”
It was true, Jim saw with a heavy heart.
Turning to Professor Wentworth, he gasped out:
“Quick! We’ve got to do something! You’ve no idea how fast they move!”
“Very well.” The professor’s voice was strangely calm. “You may start your motor. I shall do what I can. Though if we only had the sun—”
Jim leaped for the cabin.
A touch of the starter and the powerful engine came in. ”

“ It was littered with strange devices now, strangest of all perhaps a huge glass tube like a cannon, mounted on some sort of swivel base.
Ignoring this for the moment, he turned to a smaller tube set upright on a table at the far end of the room. In it, glowed a sinister orange lump that made the whole tube fluorescent.
“Behold one of your monsters in captivity!” said the professor, again with a wan smile. “In miniature, of course. What I have done is to condense some of that vapor into a solid.” ”

“ As the Tokyo dispatch and the Berlin television flash had indicated, they were orange in color, about the size of baseballs.
“Weird looking eggs, all right!” said Jim. “What are they made of, anyway?”
“Some element unknown on earth,” replied Professor Wentworth.
“But I thought there were only ninety-two elements in the universe and we’d discovered them all.”
“So we have. But don’t forget this. We are still trying to split the atom, which nature has done many times and will doubtless do many times again. It is merely a matter of altering the valence of the atoms in an old element ”

“ It could only be a few more weeks before the last stronghold fell. Daily, hourly, those deadly Fire Ants were everywhere expanding their fields of operations. Presently all humanity would be driven to the seacoasts, there to perish by fire or water, as they chose. ”

“ Then Professor Wentworth switched off the current and stepped toward the tank. Waving away that orange gas, he reached for the cathode and held it up. It was no longer iron, but silver, now.
“Plated, you see!” he exclaimed in triumph.
“Yes, but those fumes!” cried Jim. “Why, they were the same color as the—the Fire Ants, as you call them.”
“I know.” The professor was not as calm as he pretended. “We have released some of their actinic rays captured by the negative, in prying loose our excess silver. Later I shall repeat the process and capture some of that vapor for analysis. ”

“ In fact, they are appreciably warmer than when they were first brought in. Curious behavior, this, for new-laid cometary eggs! More like seeds germinating than meteorites cooling, wouldn’t you say?”
“But good Lord!” Jim was somewhat taken aback to hear this celebrated scientist apparently commit himself to that wild view. “You don’t really think they’re seeds, do you?”
“Why not?”
“But surely no seeds could survive the temperature they hit getting here.”
“No seeds such as we know, true. But what, after all, do we know of the types of life to be found on other planets?” ”

“ The Television News people haven’t been able to get a thing, nor the War Department—not so much as a still. So those photos will be valuable.”
Overton paused, to let that sink in.
“They’ll be worth a million, in fact, in addition to what the War Department offers. And to you they’ll be worth ten thousand dollars.”
“How come?”
“Because that’s what the Old Man said.”
“Well, I can use it!” said Jim, thinking of Joan.
“All right. Then go to it!”
Leaving New York late that night, Carter timed his flight to arrive over the eastern edge of the desert just before dawn. ”

“ All radio-active elements are evidences of it. The feat consists merely in altering the valence of the atom, changing its electric charge, in other words. What I have done in the present instance is merely to speed up a process nature already had under way, inasmuch as we are dealing with a radio-active substance. ”

“ Out of a population, of some sixty millions, it was estimated that at least eight millions must have perished. The rest, by prodigious feats of transportation, managed to reach the mainland, where they spread as refugees throughout an apprehensive, demoralized Europe. ”

“ Jim handed them over.
For a moment or two Professor Wentworth examined them intently, holding them this way and that.
“They indeed appear to be extremely over-exposed,” he admitted at length. “Your Fire Ants are doubtless radio-active to a high degree. The results could not have been much worse had you tried to photograph the sun direct.”
“I thought as much,” said Carter, gloomily.
“But possibly the damage isn’t irreparable. Suppose we try re-developing a few of these negatives.” ”

“ He led the way to his study, which since the destruction of the observatory had been converted into a temporary laboratory.
Ten minutes later, Professor Wentworth had his re-developing bath ready in a porcelain basin and had plunged some of the negatives into it.
“This process is what photographers call intensification,” he explained. “It consists chemically in the oxidation of a part of the silver of which the image is composed. I have here in solution uranium nitrate, plus potassium ferricyanide acidified with acetic acid. ”

“ Professor Wentworth swung his cannon ray upon that advancing horde.
Spawn of the Comet By H. Thompson Rich
A swarm of huge, fiery ants, brood of a mystery comet, burst from their shells to threaten the unsuspecting world.
Tokyo, June 10 (AP) .—A number of the meteors that pelted Japan last night, as the earth passed through the tail of the Mystery Comet have been found and are puzzling astronomers everywhere.
About the size of baseballs, orange in color, they appear to be of some unknown metal. So far, due to their extreme hardness, all attempts to analyze them have failed. ”