Thermidorian Reaction

“ Here, then was the Intellect that ruled the tribe, the super-termite, the master mind of the mound! This travesty of a termite! This thing with wasted limbs and torso, and with enormous, voracious brain that drained all sustenance constantly from the body! It was, in the insect world, a parallel to the dream that present-day Man sometimes has of Man a million years in the future: a thing all head and staring eyes, with a brain so enlarged that it must be artificially supported on its flabby torso. ”

“ A wave of heat struck Tremaine. Let it be cool here, he thought. Now, Niss world....
"No!" Bram's voice shouted. "Stop, stop!"
Tremaine hesitated. He stared at the vista of volcanic fury before him.
I could destroy it all, he thought. And the stars in the Niss sky....
"Great is the power of your hate, man of Earth," Bram cried. "But curb it now, before you destroy us all!"
"Why?" Tremaine shouted. "I can wipe out the Niss and their whole diseased universe with them, with a thought!" ”

“ I had said once, jestingly, in his hearing, after his quick recovery from a short and sharp attack of illness:
“It is hard to kill a Terhune. Nothing is really effectual except a stroke of lightning, and that will paralyze but one side. ”

“ Did the termite hordes make a practice of devouring their helpless and worn-out directing brains as it was known they devoured all their worn-out, no longer potent queens?
It certainly looked as if that was what the leaderless horde of soldiers was doing here! Or, at any rate, trying to do; accustomed to being fed by the workers, with mandibles too huge to permit of normal self-feeding, they would probably be able to hardly more than strain clumsily after the choice mass beneath them and absorb it in morsels so small as to be more a source of baffled madness than of satisfaction. ”

“ They are all so anxious to follow up the victory, as they put it, and make a great show of taking Spartan ships, that they will not take the trouble. Theramenes and Thrasybulus are to do it. I know that they have been in command in former years and may be supposed to be competent. Thrasybulus, too, is trustworthy; but Theramenes—to put it plainly—is a scoundrel. You know that I don’t care about politics; I am a plain sailor and leave such things to others; but I say this, politics or no politics, a man who turns against his friends is a scoundrel. ”

“ Though there is nothing creative in him, and all his aims are of conquest and destruction, he still has the command of vast stores of Sirenian science.
"I am not a warrior or clever in the ways of fighting. It was not difficult for Demarzule to best me. I die soon, therefore it is for you who may read this in the ages to come. This is my message to you, my warning: Destroy the contents of the protoplasm chamber without mercy. Demarzule is there and he will be the scourge of any civilization in which he arises. He dreams of conquest and he will not rest until he is master of the Universe. ”

“ As a last precaution—a bit grim—I will arrange it so that if the 'Terrestrian' is damaged to the point of utter helplessness we can, by pushing a single button, explode the entire car—as material energy. It will utterly destroy everything within a radius of a hundred miles, and damage everything within a much greater radius. I believe it will not be serious enough to change the Earth's orbit, though. ”

“ They found a light switch, but the bulbs were so dust-coated that only a faint glow shed on the surrounding metal. They sneezed and coughed, as the dust-laden air filled their lungs.
"Darned if you don't get the craziest ideas, Dick. What good will it do to know how much 'ship juice' there is, anyway? We can't make it! This hole wasn't built for self-respecting men to crawl through."
"I don't know, John, but this trip may not be as easy as it appears. They've been driving at full force for months, when it seems to me that less power might carry us when we're not within the pull of some planet. ”

“ Tremor may be compared with incapability of fixing the attention, and this involuntary state of muscles ordinarily subjected to the will, also finds a parallel where the mind loses its influence in the train of thought, and becomes subject to spontaneous intrusions; as may be exemplified in reveries, dreaming, and some species of madness. ”

“ His voice was hard and his attitude one of complete indifference. "What's going on, anyway?"
"You've heard of two countries, or two men fighting for their lives?"
"Yes."
"Ackerman, you started this. Unwittingly, of course. Bombardment of Element X—which we call Temperon—produced a freak field of force that caused a division in the universal stream of time. It has never happened before and it will never happen again according to the probabilities—no one knows what happened.
"This, Ackerman, produced a twin existance. Two probabilities that stem from a dual explosion in your laboratory. ”

“ A sort of super-termite? A super-intellect set in the minute head of an insect, yet equal to the best brains of mankind? We'll probably never know, for, whatever the unknown intelligence is, it lurks in the foundations of the termitaries, yards beneath the surface, where we cannot penetrate without blowing up the whole mound—and at the same time destroying all the inhabitants. ”

“ Their flaming levins threaded the shimmering veils, patterned them, as though they were the flying robes of the very spirit of fire.
And the tumult was as ten thousand Thors, smiting with hammers against the enemies of Odin. As a forge upon whose shouting anvils was being shaped a new world.
A new world? A metal world!
The thought spun through my mazed brain, was gone—and not until long after did I remember it. For suddenly all that clamor died; the lightnings ceased; all the flitting radiances paled and the sea of flaming splendors grew thin as moving mists. ”

“ So Tremsin went out into the wide world and pastured his steed on the vast steppes, and his steed spoke to him and said, “When we have gone a little farther, thou wilt see before thee a plume of the Bird Zhar [12] ; pick it not up, or sore trouble will be thine!” Then they went on again. They went on and on, through ten tsardoms they went, till they came to another empire in the land of Thrice Ten where lay 96 the feather. And the youth said to himself, “Why should I not pick up the feather when it shines so brightly even from afar?” ”

“ Torrington! we are on the eve of stranger things than we have yet known.
"I spoke of your recent study of Atomic Pathology as a singular coincidence. It was not a coincidence. We three now in this room are instruments of those higher laws which we cannot control because we do not understand them. From now until a certain menace to the peace of the community has been removed there will be for us no coincidences and no accidents. This phenomenal diamond did not come haphazard into your possession. The stranger did not select you by accident. ”

“ The new Therma, rebuilt on European methods after its bombardment by the Powers, was a city of enchantment to the little barbarian from Strio, but she durst not let her eyes wander to the tall white houses or the astonishing shops. The swarming crowd of all nationalities that jostled her as she stumbled along, ill and miserable, in the wake of Petros, was simply a collection of moving obstacles, blocking the way to the attainment of her aim, the deliverance of the brother who represented all the romance that had ever touched her life from the spells of the witch-woman. ”

“ Pursue your former path, and the science which you think you command will destroy you, as well as the unhappy creature who shares your fate, and whose existence is offensive to Heaven. This is your last warning, of which, when you live again, your brain will know nothing, but your spirit—knowing—can win freedom if it be strong enough."
A great agony, an agony almost unendurable, claimed Trepniak. ”

“ It was only Gaddon's vanity talking, Trent knew, so he let him put in the barb of ridicule, waiting.
"I was sent over here, as you may know, to aid in the current experiment. To formulate it as a matter of fact. This test is being conducted to determine just what effect cosmic rays will have on a living organism. As I said, Mathieson, and your other scientists are of the opinion that the rays are lethal. That they will destroy life. In effect, that they are death rays. ”

“ For precisely as it perishes, if it does not rise again, so also does it equally perish even if it does rise again, on the supposition that it is lost [1] in the change. It will as much fail of a future existence, as if it did not rise again at all. And how absurd is it to rise again for the purpose of not having a being, when it had it in its power not to rise again, and so lose its being—because it had already begun its non-existence! Now, things which are absolutely different, as mutation and destruction are, will not admit of mixture and confusion ”

“ But he must be evicted none the less. To do that, all you must do is confront the individual who is bearing him, the three of you together. But you must all be within seeing distance of him at once. For we work through your minds. What you cannot perceive, we cannot affect."
"How will we do this?"
"One of you has already been made immune to the radiation barrier. So will the rest of you when it becomes necessary. This is what you will do for us, and it will also remove the threatening element of the unknown that distracts Toromon from her own problems."
"But why our planet?" a voice asked. ”

“ On the other hand man, via the force of the numbers of the ions collected within himself, his race, and by degrees so gaining in numbers, and so power or intelligence equal to that of the ions which had originally enslaved him, might rise and question of this other elemental ionic combination its right to lordship over him. And again, by reason of laissez faire conditions which apparently hold throughout all Nature and force, he would then be able to overthrow this higher ionic combination and so set up a lordship of his own—as in some ways even now he appears to be doing. ”

“ It is the 'Terrestrian.' But now, if we want to make that one factor upset the whole equation, we have to calculate how to make its value a maximum, and to do that we have to know every other factor in the equation. I have suggested two weapons they will have, the cathode rays and the heat ray. They will, of course, have others; they will have atomic bombs, and I am sure that they will find us so dangerous that they will be willing to lose a ship and crash us. ”

“ Carruthers nodded. "A variation of the main principle, but it goes much farther in its delving into the core of life. This ponderous machine, though much smaller than those giants in use at the government's research laboratories, has successfully bombarded that rare clement of Thoridium, atomic weight 319, "with heavy neutrons thereby stepping its weight up to 320. And since the even-numbered atoms are explosive, the Thoridium split into two parts creating the greatest energy ever produced by man." ”

“ If attention be directed to the mass in motion, it will be observed that flanking it on each side throughout its whole length are stationed a number of horned soldier termites, whose duty it is to protect the labourers, and to give notice of any danger threatening them. ”

“ It was possible that even that terrific injury might not be fatal to a thing so great and flexible of brain, and so divorced from the ills as well as the powers of the flesh. But for the moment at least it was helpless, an inert mass on the patient backs of the termite team.
"To the acid vat," snapped Jim. "We'll make our last stand there."
Dodging the nearest snapping mandibles, Denny ran beside his companion to where the termite, dead now, with its distended abdomen deflated and the last of the acid trickling from the hole caused by Jim's spear, still hung head down from the ceiling. ”

“ Andrew Tremaine smiled solemnly and said, flatly: "Gene, I'm almost convinced that Gerd Lel Rayne and company are generating some force-field that prevents it!"
Gene sat silent after that. He thought about it for some time before answering. "The answer to that," he said very slowly and very carefully, "is this: If some force is being generated to prevent full use of the human brain, a counter-force may be set up to nullify the field. That will be simple enough once we isolate the field that prevents thought. ”

“ We use thorium. Thorium is radioactive. I won't give you a lecture on radioactivity, Foster. But thorium mostly gives off the kind of radiation known as alpha particles. Alpha is not dangerous unless breathed or eaten. It won't go through clothes or skin. But when mixed with fine carbon, thorium alpha contamination makes a mess. It's a dirty mess, Foster—so dirty that I don't want my spacemen to fool with it.
"I want you to take care of it instead—you and your men. The deputy commander will assign you to a squad room. Settle in, then draw equipment from the supply room and get going. ”

“ Bram said. "The resonance effects are unpredictable. When one seeks to channel the power of thought—"
"Wait a minute!" Tremaine burst out.
"What is it?" Miss Carroll said, alarmed.
"Hyperwave," Tremaine said. "Instantaneous transmission. And thought. No wonder people had headaches—and nightmares! We've been broadcasting on the same band as the human mind!"
"This 'hyperwave'," Bram said. "You say it is instantaneous?" ”

“ Tyndall declared that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all forms of life, and with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a world of magnetic atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole, arranging itself by attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline structure. Such a picture is dangerously fascinating to thinkers oppressed by the bloody disorders of the living world. ”