Jack Williamson

“ Ellen and I are married. Soon we shall go back to El Tigre, to see the Doctor and Bill. Dr. Vernon is working on a new model of his tube, and is making a painstaking examination of the strange ship we brought back to earth.
Did the destruction of a single city destroy the menace? In all that world above the air, larger than our own, may there not be other cities, or nations and races, perhaps, of intelligent beings? What might we not gain from them in the arts of peace, or not lose to them in war? ”

“ With the rising of the sun, a sentry's hail proclaimed the appearance of a score of dark specks above the grim outline of Mocolynatal—a fleet of red planes, coming to the attack!
In a moment the camp was alive. The gun crews got to their posts, airplane engines were started, infantry were lined up in the freshly dug trenches, with machine guns and rifles ready. I saw the gleaming tip of the Doctor's great tube projecting above the huge glass dome.
In a few minutes the planes were taking the air, flying to meet the coming ships. I was with them, in the Camel-back. ”

“ The red fleets might sweep over the world, sending armies, battleships, cities and factories into the frozen night of space. That madman, Vars, with his incredible allies that we had glimpsed, with the negative gravity bombs and Dr. Vernon's ray machine, could realize his mad dream of world dominion. Humanity would be helpless against his insane power. ”

“ I saw a rifle hanging in the air ten feet above me, and a steel boat rising a dozen feet over the mast. Suddenly it came to me that something had negated the gravity of the metal parts of the ship. I thought of the story of the gravity-destroying bombs used in the raid of the night before upon the thorium stores.
The forward gun was still firing steadily, though the terrorized men had deserted the others. I saw a man point above us, and looked. A red airplane, with thick fuselage and short wings, was flying silently and swiftly across our bows. ”

“ As for the matter of the red planes, I could suppose nothing but that the outs in Mexican politics were preparing a little military surprise for the ins. There have been too many military forces raised secretly in Mexico for one of them to be much of a novelty. Then I thought of the queer radio messages. They did not fit in very well. But my mind returned to Ellen again. I thought no more of the red machines. I had no thought—no one on earth had warning—of the terrible force that was rising to menace the world. ”

“ Sitting there on the dull-hued plain, with the Cordillerras rising so abruptly a few miles back, the buildings looked very tiny and insignificant. Across the stream from the shaft-house, the shops, and the quarters of the men is a square, fortress-like two story residence of rough gray stone.... The narrow-gauge railroad track runs from it down toward the canyon like thin black threads.
As we flew over the buildings, a trim white figure appeared on the roof of the residence, and waved a slender arm. I knew that it must be Ellen, and I felt oddly excited at the thought of seeing her again. ”

“ All scientists for decades have been wondering what the mysterious Heaviside Layer is. Radio engineers know of the Heaviside Layer from its effect on radio waves. It is very much of a fact, yet no one has ever been able to get near it, due to its distance above the surface of the earth, and till we have penetrated it, we cannot be sure what lies above it. ”

“ Ordinary heat and light waves set up molecular disturbances in matter; in fact, heat is merely molecular vibration. I hope to discover a frequency in the spectrum that will stimulate atomic vibration to such an extent as to break down the electronic system. Objects upon which such a ray is directed will explode with incredible violence. In my earlier experiments with Vernonite, the molten alloy in the tube, I almost had a catastrophe from the atomic explosion of the electrode. It would have blown El Tigre off the map! The radioactivity of thorium is slight; I must increase it vastly. ”

“ I still had the tube in my hand, concealed against my coat. Though it seemed to have no effect, I was missing no chances. We passed through a door at the end of the room, into another fitted up like a luxurious office. At a paper-littered desk, the lunatic, Vars, was sitting with three other men, who, for all their looks, might have been ex-pugilists or bootlegger kings (or both) .
Suddenly Vars ducked, and a pistol flashed at his side. My hand went numb, and I heard the crash of glass. He had shot the tube as I turned it upon him. ”

“ They seem to have formed a relatively substantial crust, and to have formed an entirely new series of chemical compounds, to make life possible upon that crust. (The rare gases of the air are monatomic, and consequently inert, at ordinary temperatures.)
It would appear that intelligence had been growing up upon that transparent and unsuspected world above, through all the ages that man had been fighting for survival below. Vars had been the first to suspect it. He had got into radio communication with the denizens of that second crust, had enlisted their aid in a war upon his fellow men! ”

“ We flew on toward the crimson city.
"The armies from there will conquer the world. Those purple things fight like demons," the fat man boasted complacently, waving his half-empty flask toward the gleaming crimson battlements.
"Demons! Yes. Devils! Hell in the sky!" the shrunken man whispered through chattering teeth, never taking his red eyes from the door to the pilot's cabin. ”

“ Before dawn, El Tigre looked like a military encampment. In the glare of great searchlights, men were digging trenches, leveling a landing field for the planes, and planting the battery. The Doctor had his ray machine ready for use. ”

“ Strength and weight are relative terms. The strange crust must have seemed solid enough to the weird beings that trod upon it, until they acquired the use of metals and of the negative-gravity gas. (Their "mines" may have been the meteorites of space.)
In the center of the city was a huge transparent dome, with a slender tube projecting through it. I was struck at once with the semblance of it to Dr. Vernon's ray tube. ”

“ When the pilot desired, a touch of a button would release the mast and vanes, and the machine became an Autogiro, which could spiral slowly or drop almost perpendicularly to a safe landing on a small spot of ground.
The machine had a further innovation in the shape of a Wright turbine motor. This had but a single important moving part, the shaft which bore the rotors, the flanged wheel that drew the mixture into the combustion chamber, and the propeller. Because of its extreme light weight and high efficiency, the internal combustion turbine engine now promises to come into general use. ”

“ Then men were running about, babbling and cursing in utter confusion. I saw one man don a life belt and jump insanely over the rail—to plunge like a plummet to the water five hundred yards below. A dozen more poor fellows followed him before the mate could stop the rush. And perhaps their fate is as good as that of the others. ”

“ Certainly our machine had risen easily enough through the purple rocks below us. The scientific aspects of that second crust about the earth have been considered very carefully, and the best scientific opinions have been sought.
Mankind dwells upon a comparatively thin crust about the molten or plastic interior of the earth. It would seem there is a similar crust about the air. Science long ago had evidence of it in the reflection of radio waves by the so-called Heaviside Layer. ”

“ The Vernon Ray will bleach indigo, or the green of plant leaves. It stimulates oxidation, and has a tendency to break up the proteins and other complex molecules.
"This tube has a range of five miles, and will penetrate a foot of lead. I have killed animals with it by breaking up the haemoglobin in the blood. By special adjustment, its effects would be fatal at even greater range. It might be set to break the body proteins into the split protein poisons—there are a thousand ways it might kill a man, quickly or by hideous lingering death. ”

“ The volume of the gases in the atmosphere depends upon temperature and pressure. As one leaves the surface of the earth, the air grows thinner, because the pressure is less. But interplanetary space is nearly at absolute zero, where molecular motion ceases. It follows that the molecular motion of the outside of the atmosphere is not sufficient to keep it in the gaseous state at all.
The top of the air is literally frozen into a solid layer! ”

“ The girl ran out to me, with Bill and the Doctor at her heels. The Doctor took in what had happened.
"The r-r-r-ray made slow p-p-p-p-poisons in their blood. Not adjusted right. It can upset the chemical equilibrium of the body in a thousand ways. But let's get b-b-b-back in the other ship before something happens."
We got through the manhole. I closed it again and unfastened the clamps that held us to the other ship, while the Doctor and Bill ran forward into the pilot's compartment. I felt the vessel rise.
Ellen and I stood by one of the round ports. ”

“ Here and there were dead men, singly and in piles. They showed no wounds; either they had been killed by the intense radioactivity of the gravity bombs, or by a Vernon Ray machine carried on the red planes. ”

“ I was in Vernon's chemistry class before he went daft on his death ray machine, and left to work on that."
"The Doc is still at work on the machine. In fact, that is a part of the mystery.
"The mine is in an old corner of the desert, about fifty miles south of Mocolynatal—the big mountain. And there's something queer going on about that mountain!
"Ellen got herself a radio set to pass away the time with. She got to picking up strange stuff. Sounds we couldn't make out! Not just a strange lingo. They don't sound like the human voice at all! ”

“ It was closed and made air-tight. We were seated upon comfortable chairs, and had a good view through circular windows in the sides. The pilot was forward, out of sight, and there was another closed space to the rear, but our compartment took up most of the hull.
The guard refused to answer my questions concerning the ship's propulsion, but I later learned that it was lifted by the negative gravity gas. The motors utilized intra-atomic energy derived by the forced decomposition of thorium, and at high altitudes the propellers were supplemented by rocket guns. ”

“ Few authors have Jack Williamson's knack to pack their stories with so much adventure and with so much imaginative science. And while it may be fantastic today, most of it we know, sooner or later, will have become reality. ”

“ There have been airplanes flying about it—queer red machines with short stubby wings! They flew off mostly to the west. I did a little more investigation, and found that a line of run-down Jap tramp steamers has been hauling cargoes of the-lord-knows-what, and unloading somewhere along the Pacific coast of Mexico—evidently making connections with the red machines.
"Now, the Doc has his machine where he thinks it will be the end of the world if anybody gets hold of it. We've seen one or two of the red planes over the mine, and he is afraid they have found out about it, somehow. ”

“ The sun is thought to ob-ob-ob-obtain its boundless energy from the process of atomic disintegration, and m-m-m-m-m-men of science long since agree that any instrument using intra-atomic energy would be a t-t-t-t-terrible weapon! ”